Civil Liberties

U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim says the Central Intelligence Agency “probably misled” a panel he led in the 1990s seeking documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That’s because the CIA didn’t tell Tunheim that its liaison to a panel that preceded his Assassination Records Review Board had been involved with [...]

Rep. Keith Ellison, speaking at a conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on Friday, said that better relations between the United States and the Arab-speaking world are in the best interests of all of us. But while Ellison seeks  peace, a group of Republicans is embracing the opposite.

Minnesotans disgusted by insipid Twins-Yankees TV commentators might find comic relief in civil libertarians’ online kibbitzing about U.S. Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, who last week voted to renew the Patriot Act without reforms in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In so doing, Minnesota’s senators committed the legislative equivalent of calling a plainly fair ball foul [...]

Republicans and Democrats have been sniping about the USA Patriot Act ever since Congress passed the law in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks to try to forestall another such disaster. But now, it’s the Democrats who are sniping among themselves about it.

Al Flowers believes the cops are out to get him. The mayoral candidate filed a lawsuit in Hennepin County District Court today alleging that Hennepin County Sheriff’s deputies violated his Constitutional rights while executing a search warrant at an Edina home last month.

Saying it protects the free market, U.S. Sen. Al Franken sounded optimistic in a speech today about the chances for preserving net neutrality by law. “For the first time, it looks like we might actually do this,” Franken told the Future of Music Coalition in Washington, D.C.

The National Socialist Movement, a homophobic and anti-semitic white supremacist group, is threatening to protest a workshop at the Minneapolis YWCA about white privilege and white supremacy. It will be the first public NSM event here since a 2007 book-burning, and several groups of Twin Citians say they plan to make that visit an unwelcome [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann will be headlining a fundraiser in November for controversial ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide. The Minnesota group has made a name for itself as an anti-drug Christian punk rock band that organizes motivational student assemblies to bring Christ to public schools. But over the last several years, parents and school administrators have complained that the ministry misrepresents itself, claiming that the group is not transparent about its Christian mission. And since schools pay using public funds, some are concerned that the group is violating the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.

WASHINGTON — Just in case he wasn’t familiar with it, Sen. Al Franken decided to read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee today to urge reauthorization of expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

A former crack user says she kicked her addiction because she found Jesus at Minnesota Teen Challenge. A man says that God healed his liver after a prayer service at the Christian drug treatment facility. While its clients sing its praises — some claiming it saved their lives — should such an overtly religious program be receiving taxpayer funding? According to state records, MNTC has gotten more than $2 million from the state of Minnesota since 2007.