Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, was arrested at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial for…..dancing.  The video below shows footage from this weekend of peace activists being violently arrested by police for dancing.  A small group of them were given warning that they would be arrested if they danced, but when asked what law they would be breaking, the officer would not say.  At one point, the officers told a handcuffed activist to “shut up,” and he replied, “you can’t shut me up.”

The level of brutality is shocking considering they knew they were being video taped.  One man was tackled, another body slammed, and it looks like they were searching Benjamin’s pockets while she was sitting down handcuffed.  Judging by the incessant shouting and righteousness of the police officers, it’s apparent that they felt they were doing nothing wrong.  Check out the appalling video below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8jUU3yCy3uI&w=560&h=349]

While we have been frantically playing defense against relentless assaults on multiple fronts, from anti-union legislation to draconian anti-choice laws to the attempted privatization of Medicare, the selling off of public assets to the private sector has received little attention.

As states face a budget shortfall of $125 billion dollars for fiscal year 2012, leaders are searching for creative ways to fill budget gaps, while refusing to consider the one legitimate solution: forcing tax-dodging corporations and the rich to pay their fair share in taxes.  Rather than upset the moneyed interests who bought their seats in office, politicians of all stripes prefer to cut pensions, close schools, slash child nutrition programs, and most importantly privatize, privatize, privatize! Read More

I did an interview this afternoon with PressTV’s US Desk about my latest article, This Is What A Police State Looks Like.  It’s a little over 5 minutes long and if you’re interested, you can listen to it here.

I also want to point out something I didn’t mention in my article that is absolutely relevant to the assault on Fourth Amendment rights.  Last week, The Indiana Supreme Court ruled 3-2 in Barnes vs. State that people have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes, which defies common law dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215.

Writing for the court, Justice Steven David said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

Some background on the case:

The court’s decision stems from a Vanderburgh County case in which police were called to investigate a husband and wife arguing outside their apartment.

When the couple went back inside their apartment, the husband told police they were not needed and blocked the doorway so they could not enter. When an officer entered anyway, the husband shoved the officer against a wall. A second officer then used a stun gun on the husband and arrested him.

David justified the ruling by writing that “allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”  But the court gave no definition of what ‘resistance’ entails, meaning that it is open to broad interpretation by law enforcement.  Does this mean that verbally resisting illegal police entry by rightly arguing that your Fourth Amendment rights are being violated and demanding the police leave at once qualifies as unlawful resistance?

For an excellent analysis of both the Kentucky and Indiana rulings, I highly recommend The Changing Face of the Police and the Death of the Fourth Amendment, an article by John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.

The late Chalmers Johnson often reminded us that “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.”  His warning rings more true by the day, as Americans watch the erosion of their civil liberties accelerate in conjunction with the expansion of the US Empire.

When viewed through the lens of Johnson’s profound insights, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kentucky v. King makes perfect sense.  On May 13, in a lopsided 8-1 ruling, the Court upheld the warrantless search of a Kentucky man’s apartment after police smelled marijuana and feared those inside were destroying evidence, essentially granting police officers increased power to enter the homes of citizens without a warrant. Read More

On September 24, 2010, the FBI, in a coordinated effort, raided the homes of peace activists in Minneapolis and Chicago.  As it turns out, the FBI accidentally left behind documents at one of the raided homes, that detail the motives for investigating citizens practicing their First Amendment right to free speech and assembly.

In a statement released by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR), the organization that made the documents available online, they summed up the overall premise of the documents: Read More

In case you’re interested, I did a short, 2 minute long interview this afternoon with Press TV’s US desk about my article In America, Being Poor is a Criminal Offense.  You can listen to the interview here.  I should warn you, I used the word umm a lot and stuttered a bit, but in my defense I was nervous (it was my first ever interview!).

In case you’re unfamiliar with the story, Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright Tony Kushner was set to receive an honorary degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.  Until the degree was abruptly blocked by the City University of New York Board of Trustees during a May 2 meeting, after one trustee accused Kushner of being anti-semetic due to his past criticism of Israeli government policies. Read More

It takes a special kind of bully to target the most vulnerable and neediest families in society, which millionaire politicians like to argue are draining America’s treasury.  I am referring to Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), who recently introduced a bill that would require states to implement drug testing of applicants for and recipients of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.  This is reminiscent of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) failed legislation last summer to drug test the unemployed and those receiving other forms of government cash assistance, which ultimately died in the Senate.  So far, Boustany’s proposal is following the same fate as Hatch’s, but around the country states are taking matters into their own hands. Read More