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he Kalispel Tribe of Indians of Washington State received approval on Wednesday to allow sports wagering on tribal grounds, effective as of September 15.

According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fourth Amendment in the Tribal-State Compact between the Tribe, which runs the Northern Quest Casino, and Washington state was approved at the tribes gaming facilities.

The amendment applies to Class III Gaming, which according to the Washington State Gambling Commission includes lotteries, casino games, house-banked card games, machine gaming, and other forms of gambling. With sports wagering now available, bettors will be able to bet on professional sports, the Olympics as well as other international events, however, they cant wager on in-state college teams.

The Tribe reached a tentative agreement with the gambling commission earlier this year to add sports betting. However, it had to go through the legal steps before bets could be placed. Northern Quest has been revamping its Turf Club to welcome sports gamblers, reports the KXLY.

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Washington State tribe granted approval to offer sports betting - Yogonet International

U.S. Supreme Court

Following the death of George Floyd, the nation focused attention on the enormous problems of police violence and racism in law enforcement, but there is a failure to put blame where much belongs: on the United States Supreme Court.

Many provisions of the Constitution exist to limit what police can do and to protect the rights of all of us, including those suspected and accused of crimes. Yet the court has done an ineffective, and indeed a poor job, of enforcing provisions of the Constitution intended to constrain the police. The Supreme Court has historically and consistently empowered the police to engage in racialized policing that especially harms people of color.

That is the thesis of my new book, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights. There are many provisions of the Constitution meant to limit police behavior. The Fourth Amendment restricts the ability of the police to seize people and to search them. The Fifth Amendment protects the privilege against self-incrimination and constrains police questioning. The due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th Amendments impose many restrictions, including preventing suggestive police identification procedures, such as lineups.

Yet through almost all of American history, the Supreme Court has done little to enforce these provisions and to constrain the police. For the first century after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the court virtually never decided a case about them, leaving the police unchecked by the Constitution. Except for a brief time during the Warren Court, particularly from 1961-1969, the court has narrowly interpreted these constitutional protections and instead has consistently ruled in favor of the police.

It is not hyperbole to say that under current law, as developed by the Supreme Court, the police can stop any person at any time and frisk the person, a power that is disproportionately used against Black and brown people. There is little protection of individuals from coercion in police interrogations, so long as the police dont use physical force. The court has virtually ignored the problem of false eyewitness identifications that have led to convictions of many innocent people, especially when a person is identifying someone of a different race. The court has made it difficult for victims of police abuse to successfully sue, even when an officer used egregious excessive force leading to serious injuries or death. In fact, the court has weakened, or gutted, all of the remedies that might be used to challenge police misconduct.

In empowering law enforcement, the courts decisions have led to enormous racial disparities in policing. In 2016, Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers, according to the Guardian. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men, a study in the American Journal of Public Health found. It also showed Hispanic men are nearly twice as likely to be killed by police as white men. The United States Civil Rights Commission concluded that while people of color make up fewer than 38% of the population, they make up almost 63% of unarmed people killed by police. Overall, civilian deaths from shootings and other police actions are vastly higher in the United States than in other developed nations.

And even when death does not result, there is a serious problem of excessive police force, especially directed at racial minorities, that causes physical and psychological injuries. There are seemingly endless accounts of police unnecessarily striking suspects, especially men of color, with batons, using tasers, applying chokeholds, and employing far more force than needed under the circumstances. The Center for Policing Equity found that 1 in 5 Americans interacts with law enforcement yearly. Of those encounters, 1 million result in use of force. And if youre Black, you are 2-4 times more likely to have force used than if you are white.

Discussions about the problems with policing usually do not focus on the Supreme Court, which does not hire or train or supervise or discipline police officers. It does not set budgets for police departments or manage their operations. As people focus on what police do on the streets, the connection to Supreme Court rulings is not apparent and seems remote. But the Constitution contains crucial provisions limiting how policing is to be done and what the Supreme Court says about them, or more importantly does not say, has an enormous effect on what police do every day. Without enforcement of the Constitutions constraints on police, all too often the rights of criminal suspects and defendants become illusory.

To take one example, under the Supreme Courts decisions, police can stop and frisk virtually any person at any time. Studies in many cities show that police disproportionately use this power against people of color.

The court opened the door to this practice in Terry v. Ohio, in 1968, under the liberal Warren Court. Notwithstanding the language of the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for a police stop or search, the court said that only a lesser standardreasonable suspicionneeded to be met. To this day, the court never has defined reasonable suspicion other than to say that it requires more than a hunch and less than probable cause.

In subsequent decisions, the court made it easy for the police to find reasonable suspicion in almost any situation. Whren v. United States, from 1996, is particularly important. Undercover officers in Washington, D.C., became suspicious when a car stopped at a stop sign for about 30 seconds. They followed the car until the driver committed a minor infraction, turning without a signal. Even though undercover officers in D.C. were not allowed to enforce traffic laws, the police pulled the car over, ordered the driver and passenger out of the vehicle and searched the area of the car where they were sitting. They found illegal drugs.

The traffic stop clearly was a pretext; the officers had no authority to enforce traffic laws and no interest in doing so. The court said that does not matter. The actual motivation of the officers is irrelevant. The court said that the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. So long as the officer has probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion, that a traffic law has been violated, the officer may stop the vehicle.

If police officers follow anyone long enough, they will observe a driver changing lanes, turning without a signal, exceeding the speed limit by a mile or two an hour, orand this is the easiest for policethe car not stopping long enough, or too long, at a stop sign. It is irrelevant for Fourth Amendment purposes that the officers actual motivation for the stop had nothing to do with traffic enforcement. And studies show that this power is used disproportionately against people of color. Emma Pierson and the Stanford Open Policing Project analyzed data on vehicle stops from 21 state patrol agencies and 35 city police departments from 2011 to 2018. They found that Black drivers were stopped 43% more often than white drivers relative to their share of the population.

This is just one example of how the Supreme Court has empowered the police and how it has led to highly racialized policing. But what can be done about it?

In light of the political composition of the Supreme Court, now and for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that it will interpret the Constitution to control the police. If the court continues to fail, and I fear it will given that a majority of the justices have shown no concern or awareness of the problems with policing in the United States, then we must turn to other institutions to control the police, check police abuses and end racist policing in the United States. Congress, state legislatures and city councils can enact new laws to reform policing. After the tragic death of George Floyd, bills were introduced into Congress and into state legislatures to impose crucial new checks on the police. Unfortunately, these have stalled; even the progressive California legislature failed to enact new laws last year.

State courts can interpret state constitutions to protect rights and to impose limits on state and local police departments. State constitutions always can provide more protection of rights than the United States Constitution. For example, some state courts, such as in Arkansas and Washington, have rejected Whren and prohibited pretextual police stops.

The U.S. Department of Justice can aggressively enforce existing laws to reform police departments. A federal law, 42 U.S.C. 14141, authorizes the DOJ to sue police departments when there is a pattern and practice of civil rights violations. This has been used to reform many major police departments, such as in Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore and Cincinnati. The Trump administration expressly refused to use this authority, but Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that once more the Justice Department will be bringing suits under it.

All of these actions can make a big difference in how policing is done in the United States. And perhaps someday, the court will fulfill its duty of enforcing the parts of the Constitution that are meant to control the police and ensure equal justice under the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. He is an expert in constitutional law, federal practice, civil rights and civil liberties, and appellate litigation. Hes the author of several books, including The Case Against the Supreme Court (Viking, 2014) and The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State, written with Howard Gillman (Oxford University Press, 2020). His latest book is Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (Liveright, 2021).

Link:
Chemerinsky: The Supreme Court has done a poor job protecting against police abuse of power and racism - ABA Journal

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S. governments subsequent war on terror. As part of this war, the government has engaged in extensive military operations abroad.

While attention is currently focused on its withdrawal from Afghanistan, we must note that in prosecuting its war on terror, the U.S. government has also massively expanded its powers at home. While these powers have been adopted in the name of protecting people and freedom in America, they also pose a threat to our liberty. The anniversary of the attacks offers an opportunity to take stock of these long-lasting government powers.

Less than two months after the attacks, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, which expanded the governments domestic surveillance powers, including the power to review information about people that is held by third parties. It also weakened Fourth Amendment protections related to trap and trace searches, in which incoming phone calls to a person are recorded. In addition, President George W. Bush issued an order to ease the constraints imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the National Security Agency (NSA). This allowed the agency to execute warrantless searches of American citizens emails and phone calls.

After several reauthorizations, key provisions of the PATRIOT Act expired in March 2020. However, its spirit is alive and well. The underlying surveillance apparatus, which was expansive even before 9/11, is still in place. And many surveillance activities and programs outside of the PATRIOT Act still exist in expanded form and will be with us for the foreseeable future.

A second domestic legacy of the war on terror is the militarization of domestic police forces. According to one estimate, since 9/11, the Department of Defense has transferred $1.6 billion worth of equipment to law enforcement agencies for items like mine-resistant vehicles, machine guns, grenade launchers and military aircraft. Domestic police departments have also obtained stingrays, or cell site simulators, which can be used to make cell phones transmit information, such as location and other identifiers. Originally developed for military and intelligence use abroad, these devices are now used by local law enforcement, which can spy on people in the United States with little to no oversight.

A final domestic legacy of the war on terror is civil asset forfeiture, which allows the police to seize assets from anyone suspected of illegal activity, but without having to charge them with a crime. The PATRIOT Act weakened earlier protections against forfeiture abuse, making it easier for the government to seize the property of anyone suspected of being associated with terrorist activity. Once property is seized, owners who want it back have the onus of demonstrating innocence. Further compounding this perverse system is the arrangement in which state and federal authorities share the proceeds from the sale of seized assets. Law enforcement thus has an incentive to take property assets, since the evidentiary bar is low and the benefits are high.

These expanded government powers impose high costs on many innocent people. The hardest hit are people who lack the money and time to fight back through the courts.

The famous sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) once observed that, it is not possible to experiment with a society and just drop the experiment whenever we choose. The experiment enters into the life of society and never can be got out again.

This is certainly the case with the post-9/11 expansions of government powers. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, there were protests against police brutality throughout the country. Protestors were monitored through aerial surveillance, and a range of military-grade equipment was deployed. More recently, since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, there have been calls for a new war on domestic terror.

Perhaps the lasting legacy of the war on terror is the expansion and entrenchment of government power over the lives of Americans.

Christopher J. Coyne is senior fellow at the Independent Institute and professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is the co-author of Police State, USA which appears in the fall edition of The Independent Review.

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The domestic legacy of our global 'war on terror' | TheHill - The Hill

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Nothing reveals peoples true selves like death.

Take the new law passed by the state legislature in Texas, for instance, regulating abortion of humans who have a detectable heartbeat.

It seems like a pretty reasonable place for a society to begin the discussion about that moment at which an unborn human baby assumes God-given and constitutionally protected rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Perhaps even that most precious Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Oh, but this is not a reasonable discussion with honest, fair-minded people who care about rights, liberty, life, or even privacy. No, they are frothing zealots who peddle death with a rage hotter than the Taliban and bow to every abortion with blind, religious fervor.

A reasonable reporter seeking reasonable answers asked a reasonable question about President Biden last week. Who does he believe then should look out for the unborn child? the reporter asked.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki could not contain the rage that flickered behind her black eyes.

He believes that its up to a woman to make those decisions, she replied. And up to a woman to make those decisions with her doctor.

In other words: Heartbeat? What heartbeat? I dont hear a heartbeat.

Perhaps realizing she had failed to answer the simple question, Ms. Psaki shifted from not answering the question to attacking the reporter for being born without reproductive organs.

I know youve never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant, the Merchant of Death spat with contempt. But for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing. The president believes that right should be respected.

Wait? What?

What right? Whos right? The right to life? The right to kill? Or the right to privacy? For the baby with a heartbeat?

End of discussion for the Merchant of Death.

A person named Richard Hanania picked up the discussion where Ms. Psaki left off.

You cant screen for Down syndrome before about 10 weeks, and something like 80% of Down syndrome fetuses are aborted, Mr. Hanania wrote on the Twitter website, retreating to the well-worn euphemism fetus instead of human or baby.

If red states ban abortion, we could see a world where they have five times as many children with Down syndrome, and similar numbers for other disabilities.

Well, Mr. Hanania certainly makes a case for heartbeat abortions, but I dont think its the one he intends to make. Its more like that old question about whether if you had an opportunity to kill Hitler when he was a baby, would you?

To Mr. Hananias credit, at least he is more honest than Ms. Psaki and willing to engage her argument to its logical conclusion. He makes no pretenses that the abortion industry in America is about anything other than eugenics, which of course, was the whole basis for Planned Parenthood in the first place. And Hitlers political party as well.

Another good question for Ms. Psaki and the Fourth Reich: Does the president support the right of a woman to abort a baby who has a heartbeat but not reproductive organs? Or, how about aborting a baby with a heartbeat because she does have reproductive organs? Or does that right only extend to babies with disabilities, such as Down syndrome?

How about the right to abort a baby with a heartbeat who is suspected might turn out gay? Or born with gender dysphoria? You know, as Mr. Hanania explained, those abnormalities can give a place a bad reputation.

Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at the Washington Times.

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Merchants of Death - Washington Times

As America remembers the loss of life on 9/11, many have forgotten that the country responded with mass surveillance, indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay, religious discrimination, governmental policies of torture, and targeted drone killings.

The greatest infringement on civil liberties is Americans right to privacy, Dr. Wilmer Leon, author and syndicated columnist, told The Final Call. America has developed into a surveillance state, whether its through closed circuit television, whether it is through the monitoring of telephone conversations, or spying on Americans by the intelligence apparatus in this country. Its the Fourth Amendment that says people have the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, he said.

It is very, very serious. It is very detrimental. It is something that a lot of people dont pay attention to. People have no idea that this continues to happen.

Soon after 9/11 a scared Congress rushed through the Patriot Act.

It increases the governments surveillance powers in four areas:

Records searches. It expands the governments ability to look at records on an individuals activity being held by a third parties. (Section 215)

Secret searches. It expands the governments ability to search private property without notice to the owner. (Section 213)

Intelligence searches. It expands a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that had been created for the collection of foreign intelligence information (Section 218).

Trap and trace searches. It expands another Fourth Amendment exception for spying that collects addressing information about the origin and destination of communications, as opposed to the content (Section 214).

It gave unbeknown power to the government. When you look at the history, the motivations behind creating the country in the first place, in terms of breaking from England and uniting the 13 colonies into a country, it was because, according to the Declaration of Independence, the overreach by the king, said Dr. Leon.We have now been convinced through this trope of national security and terrorism that we have to relinquish our personal liberties in order for us to be safe. This phrase is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Those who will sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Terry Albury is a perfect example of the Patriot Act gone very wrong. He was so disillusioned by what he was forced to do as an FBI agent in the so-called war on terror that he was willing to leak government documents to the press and go to jail when he was caught.

The reporter in his case was not named, however the dates in his plea agreement coincide with a series of articles published by The Intercept that detail how the FBI surveils both informants and suspected terrorists.

Day in and day out Mr. Albury confronted Muslims and terrorized them under the guise of surveillance. He would knock on their doors requesting to interview them and follow and harass them.

According to a sentencing memo filed by Mr. Alburys attorneys, This was an every-day encounter for Mr. Albury. He comported himself in this setting as a model FBI agent. But the conflict and depression generated by these routine but soul-destroying events took its toll.

When it got to be too much for Mr. Albury he sent at least 25 documents, 16 of which were classified according to court documents, to the press.

I did it because it got to a point where the reality of what I was a part of hit me in a way that just shattered my existence, he said. There is this mythology surrounding the war on terrorism, and the F.B.I., that has given agents the power to ruin the lives of completely innocent people based solely on what part of the world they came from, or what religion they practice, or the color of their skin. And I did that, he adds. I helped destroy people. For 17 years.

I apologize to everyone I have hurt as a result of my actions, especially my family, my co-workers in California and Minneapolis, and my colleagues in the law enforcement community, Mr. Albury wrote in a letter to the court. He was sentenced to 48 months in prison in 2018.

These documents confirmed what American communitiesprimarily Muslims and communities of colorand rights groups had long known or thought to be true, explained Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, to the media.

For years weve been hearing from people who were surveilled or investigated, or watch listed with no apparent basis for the F.B.I. to suspect wrongdoing but based primarily on their race or religion or political organizing and beliefs. And heres someone who was trying to do the right things from inside government and ended up either participating or being a witness or adjacent to a range of abuses that defined, and continue to define, the post-9/11 era. What are you supposed to do as a person of conscience when you see what your country is doing?

Twenty years after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba, the United States is still holding 40 detainees, indefinitely, most without charge and none having received a fair trial.

After 9/11 happened, I was kidnapped from Mauritania to Jordan, from there to Afghanistan and from there to Guantanamo Bay where I was tortured, Mohamedou Ould Slahi told the virtual audience at the Rights or Rightlessness Event, January 11, to commemorate the 20thAnniversary of the first detainees arriving at Guantanamo Bay.

I stayed there for 15 years and was released in 2016. I was never convicted or charged with any crimes, he said. Muslim dictators rounded up so many young men just because of suspicion. I understand suspicion but I dont understand kidnap and torture. The U.S. twisted the arms of the leaders of so many countries, but we expected better from the U.S.

Amnesty International released a new report January 11, that highlighted historic and continuing human rights violations at theGuantnamoBay.

This is about more than just the 40 people still held at Guantnamoit is also about the crimes under international law committed over the past 19 years and the continuing lack of accountability for them. It is about the future, too, as we move towards the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and strive for enduring justice, said Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights Program at Amnesty International USA.

The report documents a catalogue of human rights violations perpetrated against those detained at the camp, where victims of torture are held with inadequate medical care indefinitely and in the absence of fair trials. Transfers out of the facility have stalled, and even those cleared for release have remained incarcerated for years on end.

Religious persecution became a hallmark of the war on terror after 9/11. The war on terror became the war on Islam.

There was a heightened surveillance. The government started sending agents into masjids to see what they were up to. For the immigrant communities, the South Asians, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Muslims come from so many places they were not surveilled in the same way. I think that they were just coming into view as Muslims, Dr. Aminah Al Deen, chair of the Islamic Studies Department Emeritus at DePaul University, told The Final Call.

When African American women, especially, started trying to look like Arab American women who are Muslim, they came under the same kind of surveillance and it was a cyber surveillance, just seeing who went to which masjid. Who was coming in and out of their houses, which houses they were coming in and out of, she added.

We definitely were not protected. Youre talking about a huge community of people from over 87 countries. Some were here undocumented; they were more at risk and many of them were deported. It was an interesting phenomenon, for Bangladeshis and some South Asians, they didnt deport the wives and children, but they deported the men.

ElHajj Mauri Saalakhan is president of the Aafia Foundation. He told The Final Call, The list is long of cases of young and old but primarily young Muslims who were preemptively prosecuted by the fear of the American government.

Mohammed Hossain, a respected member of his community, was targeted in a fictional FBI sting in 2004. He was convicted of material support for terrorism in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years. He was subjected to preemptive prosecution, which is a law enforcement strategy to target and prosecute individuals or organizations whose beliefs, ideology or religious affiliations raise security concerns for the government. Just in case the targets might become terrorists, the government concocts a sting. He was finally released in 2020 and returned to his community.

In another case the Liberty City 7, poor men from a Black neighborhood in Miami, were arrested by the FBI in June 2006 on charges of attempting to wage war on America. Then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed they were plotting to blow up Chicagos Sears Tower, to launch a full ground war against the United States, and to support al-Qaida.

The men, members of an unknown religious group called the Seas of David, had no actual connection to al-Qaida, no weapons, no explosives, no reconnaissance on the Sears Tower, no consistent ideology of violence.

The little if any evidence against them was based on a dialogue encouraged by a paid informant in a grand scheme of make believe. Their story became the making of a film directed by Dan Reed.

These are all poor Black men, said Mr. Reed in an article published in The Guardian. Had they not been from that background, had they been well-off white kids, none of this wouldve happened probably, because the circumstances wouldve been totally different, the outlet reported.

In 2004, Abu Ghraib was the worst example of U.S. secret military torture facilities around the world. The administration of then-president George W. Bush justified torture as necessary during the war on terror. Abu Ghraib housed several thousand prisoners, including women, teenagers, civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints.

They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of crimes against the coalition; and a small number of suspected high-value leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

It would have continued until pictures of the degrading, dehumanizing actions by the soldiers leaked out and numerous charges were filed against the leadership and it was shut down.

The Middle East Times summed up what Arab papers around the world said about the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo situations; London based, Palestinian owned dailyAl Quds Al Arabion Abu Ghraib:

President Saddam never presented himself as a leader of the free Western world and messenger of democracy for the Arabs and Third World, like President George W. Bush who invaded and occupied Iraq, killed 100,000 of its people under the pretext of spreading the culture of human rights and democratic freedoms.

U.S. official justifications that these violations were carried out by a small number of soldiers was totally unacceptable because these troops represent the American government and because it doesnt need 150,000 troops to torture prisoners.

Since 9/11, Muslims in America have been the victims of FBI watching Muslims, arresting Muslims, breaking into Muslim homes. Muslims have suffered in the airports; being stopped because of their names. Searched once, searched twice; and sometimes even if they spoke Arabic, something would come up that might even deny them a flight, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan noted in a 2010 interview with Al-Jazeeras Abderrahim Foukara.

Since 9/11, the way the government has acted toward Muslims, many Islamic scholars who would come to the United States to lecture, have found it difficult. And some, even now, do not wish to come because of what they have to go through to enter the United States. So the climate is getting increasingly more difficult, the Minister stated.

Drone strikes used to target ISIS and other targets were used as late as August 27 in Kabul ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after two decades. The strike killed 10 civilians, including seven children of a family looking forward to evacuating to America. Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said that the U.S. was aware of reports of civilian casualties.

The governments increasing erosion of civil liberties over the past 20 years can be seen in many ways. Luci Murphy is a D.C. community activist. After 9/11people were so afraid about significant buildings being attacked that they closed the streets around the White House. We were used to being able to go to the White House to demonstrate, she told The Final Call.

Now there are barricades on Pennsylvania avenue, the White House side is closed to all vehicular traffic and sometimes to foot traffic. Lafayette park, which is close to the White House, across the street where a lot of people also demonstrate too is often fenced off and people are kicked out.

Its not just the barricades and lack of access to facilities that concerns Ms. Murphy.

We had a celebration for Leonard Peltier, who is a Native American and has been falsely convicted of killing some FBI agents. Even though theres evidence to show that he was not involved hes been incarcerated almost 50 years now. Our celebration, a few days before 9/11, was to raise money for his defense, she said.

Since then, the proprietor of the cafe where we held the fundraising cannot get a permit to carry a legal firearm because he offered his space to raise funds for Leonard Peltier. He was visited by the FBI. The proprietor of Brooklyns Cup of Dreams is a very law-abiding citizen but because of the support he gave to one of our political prisoners cannot get a firearm.

Retired U.S. Marshal Matthew Fogg sees a contradiction in the way America has handled the whole war on terror that has led to a massive erosion in civil liberties. We promote terrorism on our soil and through our citizens, when we talk about racism. African Americans right up until today continue to face racism. We go to other countries and fight terrorist activity on their fronts while in America we have terrorists when we talk about hate crimes, race crimes and hatred that weve been dealing with for years, he said.

When it comes down to fairness, equality, were finding a lot of those things changing. What are your civil liberties? What are your rights? Its always that question that comes down to somebody has to make a determination on it. That person does not look like you. That person in Congress or the Senate tends to be White. They dont have to deal with the same issues. They dont see it as a problem where we, people of color, live it and understand it.

The rest is here:
Loss of freedom and an erosion of civil liberties - FinalCall.com News