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Is the NYPD infringing on civil liberties?
“This February, the outcry reached new heights. The Wall Street Journal reported that police stopped and questioned 684,330 people in 2011, an increase of 14 percent from the previous year. Only 9 percent of those stopped were Caucasian.”
-Jill Priluck, Why Mayor Bloomberg’s Equivocations On Civil Liberties No Longer Cut It
Photo Courtesy of the NYCLU
Did civil libertarians inadvertently strengthen the national security state?
“Two months after Barack Obama’s inauguration, his administration filed its first brief in a constitutional habeas corpus case from GTMO. To Ratner’s astonishment, the brief argued for a broad power of indefinite military detention over GTMO detainees. “We really thought that Obama wouldn’t fight us in court on the rights of the detainees, that he would get the detainees either to another country or he would charge and try them,” Ratner later said.
But Obama did fight them.”
-Jack Goldsmith, The Great Legal Paradox of Our Time: How Civil Libertarians Strengthened the National Security State
If President Obama wins re-election, what should be priority number one of his second term?
“I hope Obama uses his second term to address the challenge of protecting liberty in an age when Facebook and Google have more power over privacy and free speech than even the president of the United States. In Obama’s first term, the energetic head of the Federal Trade Commission, John Liebowitz, reached settlements with Google and Facebook after investigating both companies for violating their own privacy policies. But the FTC can only do so much: It’s regulatory authority is hampered by a statute, drafted by Louis Brandeis in the Progressive era, to protect small business from unfair competition at the hands of the oil and steel trusts.”
-Jeffrey Rosen, “The President Should Finally Fight For Civil Liberties”
This article is part of a TNR symposium on Obama’s Second Term. Visit TNR.com for more coverage.
Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe
Is the legal concept of “Wartime” a threat to American liberty?
“Political leaders instinctively understand this cultural feature of wartime, and take advantage of it. The president can frame a security threat as ‘wartime’ in order to rally the public, expand his powers, suspend civil liberties, and justify his abuses. But since conflict never really ends, and one war follows another, Americans end up permanently tolerating infringements of their civil liberties.”
—Eric A. Posner, “The Longest Battle”
