Surveillance

U.S. Rep. John Kline knows his buttons. As a Marine, he stayed at the side of Presidents Reagan and Carter, carrying the satchel known as the “nuclear football” that holds the how-to kit for pressing the most fearsome button of all. Now he’s once again the go-to guy, carrying the ball for Republicans who want [...]

Iran has proven the headline prescient, even if the terminology needed tweaking: “The revolution will be Twittered.” That was the title of Tom Elko’s Sept. 9, 2008, Minnesota Independent post about how Twitter messages (technically, “tweets” that were “tweeted”) came in handy during protests outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

The Minnesota Independent contacted four outspoken critics of America’s torture policies and practices — Dr. Steven Miles, Douglas Johnson, Coleen Rowley and Kirk Anderson — for reaction to recent revelations about Bush-era treatment of prisoners. None of them said, “I told you so.” But the truth is … they told us so.

The Bush “torture memos” that Obama released yesterday owe a heavy literary debt to George Orwell’s novel “1984.” The most blatant rip-off is the government’s now-famous plan to sic insects on captive Abu Zubaydah:

A bike tour of sites that had been raided by police in the days before the Republican National Convention (RNC) attracted the interest of…police. That’s apparent from a video of the tour, which took place on Saturday.

All eyes are on the release this afternoon of the Heffelfinger-Luger report on law enforcement during the Republican National Convention that was commissioned by the City of St. Paul, where most of the RNC events, protests and policing took place. But at least three studies from outside of St. Paul are pending as well: an internal report by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), an outside review by a national police organization by invitation of the MPD, and a winter term research project by a team of students from Ohio’s Oberlin College.

I was killing time on a back bench of an 8th floor Ramsey County courtroom Wednesday, waiting with about 50 others for something to happen (all the action in the RNC8 case that day took place behind closed doors, as it turned out), when a person with a familiar face took a seat in the next row. Could it be Coleen Rowley, famed FBI whistleblower, TIME magazine 2002 person of the year and the DFL Party’s 2006 candidate in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District? Indeed it was.

Trials beginning today for protesters at September’s Republican National Convention will themselves be protested in a variety of ways over the next few days. A new coalition called Community RNC Arrestee Support Structure  — or CRASS – plans to pack courtrooms with supporters and rally against St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman today. CRASS has also called for [...]

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) cannot withdraw his guilty plea in the infamous 2007 Minneapolis-St. Paul airport bathroom sex case, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled today in an unpublished opinion. That means Craig is stuck with having copped in District Court to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct for allegedly signaling an interest in engaging in sex via foot taps from one restroom stall to another in which a undercover police officer was staked out. The decision’s “unpublished” status means the court doesn’t want their ruling used as precedent in future cases — interesting, in view of charges that Craig sought special treatment or was being singled out for preferential or especially harsh treatment because of his status as a U.S. Senator.

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a freedom of information (FOIA) request to the U.S. government over “reports that an active military unit has been deployed inside the U.S. to help with ‘civil unrest’ and ‘crowd control’ – matters traditionally handled by civilian authorities.” As MnIndy has reported, the Army’s Consequence Management Response [...]