Two years ago today, Sarah Palin gave a speech in which she, well, I’m not sure:

I guess down here that’s some southern sweet tea, and you know up in Alaska, we have a smaller version of Tea Party up there, and we call it iced tea, and I am a big supporter of this movement, believe in this movement, got lots of friends and family in the lower 48 who attend these events and, across the country, just knowing that this is the movement, and America is ready for another revolution, and you are a part of this.

Today, the movement to draft Sarah Palin at Americans Elect has six supporters, none of them from the South and none of them from Alaska.

Five years ago today, we admitted that we’d been accepting gifts in exchange for expressing favor for a prominent presidential candidate. Today, Mister Thumb sent us another shipment of his own personal nail clippings. We’re doing our best to resist this time. But it’s hard, so hard.

Well, think again.

According to federal law, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) is supposed to report on the uses of the Patriot Act power for the government to engage in “sneak and peek” searches of Americans’ homes, offices, and other personal property without letting the subject of the search know about it.

Did you think that under President Barack Obama these searches would decline?
Did you think that this Patriot Act power was being used in order to stop terrorism?

Thanks to WTAE of Pittsburgh for digging up these annual reports (FY 2007 | FY 2008 | FY 2009 | FY 2010), which show very clearly that under Barack Obama’s administration the use of sneak-and-peek powers have accelerated, not declined, and which also show very clearly that the overwhelming majority of the time, sneak-and-peek Patriot Act powers are used for the Drug War. Less than 1% of Patriot Act sneak-and-peeks are actually used to try and find terrorists.

No thanks are due to the administration of President Barack Obama, who promised the nation he’d be a leader in transparency but which has not published these reports for public view, not even on the web page of the very Administrative Office of the United States Courts that produces the report. No thanks are due to the House of Representatives, which receives the report every year but does not publish it. No thanks are due to the U.S. Senate, which receives the report every year but does not publish it. They’d rather you didn’t know the truth these reports tell.

Finally, on December 15 2011, nearly three years into his presidency, Barack Obama got around to nominating members to sit on the Board. This means a new count begins, as the Senate Judiciary Committee takes on the responsibility of holding hearings and voting on the confirmation of those members.

It’s been 1 month and 18 days since Obama’s nominations went to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee — controlled by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy — hasn’t taken any action at all on the nominations. No confirmation vote, no hearings, no hearings scheduled.

Will we go an entire presidential term without the board’s oversight of the privacy and civil liberty record of the Obama administration?

We will lead by having the highest standards, by setting an example of human rights and civil rights, due process and rule of law, which is why I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. And we will end torture and rendition because you will have elected a president who has taught the Constitution and believes in the Constitution and will obey the Constitution of the United States of America.

All these things are possible if you are ready for change. But you can’t just sit back and wait for it. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to go out and vote for it. There are people who are now saying, “Well, Obama may talk a good game, but he hasn’t been in Washington long enough.” That’s what they’ll tell you. And I’ve got to remind them, to remind them that I know they want to season and stew me a little while longer, boil all the hope out of me, but the American people understand we don’t need the same old folks doing the same old things, playing the same old games over and over again. We need something different.

President Barack Obama, Updated for 2012:

We will lead by having the highest standards, by setting an example of human rights and civil rights, due process and rule of law, which is why I will close Guantanamo I will not close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus I will not restore habeas corpus. And we will end torture put the power-drill interrogator in charge of procedural compliance and rendition while rendition will continue because you will have elected a president who has taught the Constitution and believes in the Constitution and will obey the Constitution of the United States of America.

All these things are possible if you are ready for change. But you can’t just sit back and wait for it. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to work for it. You’ve got to go out and vote for it. There are people who are now saying, “Well, Obama may talk a good game, but he hasn’t been in Washington long enough.” That’s what they’ll tell you. And I’ve got to remind them, to remind them that I know they want to season and stew me a little while longer, boil all the hope out of me, but the American people understand we don’t need the same old folks doing the same old things, playing the same old games over and over again. We need something different.

All these things are not going to happen. Never mind.

… you get the idea. Very few of the DNA records of innocent people are going to be expunged. Most of them are going to continue to aggregate in the records of the FBI. Indeed, since I last checked in November of 2009 the number of arrestee DNA samples (the FBI insists on assuming guilt by calling them “offender profiles”) has shot up from about 6 million to over 9 million.

What’s interesting to me as time passes and arrestee DNA data continues to be gathered by the FBI is that the rate of increase in DNA samples varies quite a lot according to the state where the DNA was gathered: the load of samples from Rhode Island is more than four times now what it was in 2009, while in Utah the number of “offender profiles” has actually declined by a third. Meanwhile, changes in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports from 2009 to 2010 (2011 state data isn’t yet available) allow us to see whether the change in DNA gathering in a state is associated with a decline in reported crime in a state. If the FBI DNA databanks are really keeping us safer, then in states where DNA collection has increased we should be seeing a decline in crime as nefarious evildoers are taken off the streets.

The following is a scatterplot of 50 dots for the 50 states, with each state placed on the graph according to two values: in the X-axis is the change in the number of “offender” DNA profiles coming from a state between the fall of 2009 and the fall of 2011, and in the Y-axis is the change in the Uniform Crime Reports Violent Crime Rate from 2009 to 2010:

There’s a very, very, very small rise in crime rate, not the predicted fall in crime rate, for states that collected greater amounts of DNA. The R-squared statistic, which when multiplied by 100 measures the % of variation in crime rate explained by variation in DNA collection, is very low as well: a mere .01 (explaining just 1% of the variation). There appears to be essentially no relationship between changes in DNA collection of a state and changes in the violent crime rate of a state. This may be why FBI statistics on DNA warehousing refer vaguely to the number of “investigations aided” thanks to the scraping together people’s DNA, not to arrests or convictions following DNA matches.

You might say the lack of an impact of the DNA program on crime is because there just hasn’t been enough time for super-duper federal government DNA warehousing to have its full impact on crime. Well, let’s see about that. Wait until this time next year, when we’ll look at the issue again. As of right now, the justifications for mass DNA collections don’t wash.

It is also not clear how many of the ‘investigations aided’ actually result in conviction. Based on the claims of increased efficacy in solving crimes, one might expect that the percentage of crimes being solved or ‘cleared’ would have increased as DNA databases expanded. However, while the crime rate has dropped over the past ten years, clearance rates have changed very little during that period. Moreover, the clearance rates for crimes typically associated with the availability of perpetrator DNA, homicide and forcible rape were actually lower in 2004 than in 1995, meaning that law enforcement actually solved fewer of the reported crimes than it did when DNA databases were still in their infancy.

For 1060 days, President Obama didn’t do this. Until December 15 of 2011, Obama had only nominated two people to sit on the board. By federal law, three members are required for the board to meet. Until President Obama nominated a third member, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board could not have possibly functioned.

On December 15 2011, three years into his four-year term, Barack Obama finally nominated the other three members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Thank you, Barack Obama. It’s about time.

The National Defense Authorization Act gives the military the new role, once outlawed under Posse Comitatus, of acting as law enforcement across the United States. Thanks to President Obama’s signature on the NDAA, Americans who have never enlisted in the military or participated in any military action will now be subject to the harsh standards of military law. We all can now be treated as if we are “enemy combatants” – with no evidence that we’ve ever done anything wrong.

The National Defense Authorization Act gives the federal government the power to throw anyone – citizen or non-citizen – into prison. The imprisonment can last the person’s entire lifetime. No substantiated evidence against the imprisoned person is required. No criminal charges are required. No criminal trial is required.

These provisions are plainly in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which promises due process and fair trial before people, citizens or not, can be deprived of their liberty.

When Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization into law today, he promised that he wouldn’t use the law’s powers against American citizens.

Obama promised? Honestly, what do Barack Obama’s promises mean anymore?

Back in 2008, Barack Obama promised that he would end attacks on our civil liberties and restore the rule of law. Signing the National Defense Authorization Act into law is a direct contradiction of that promise, as a new attack on our civil liberties and undermining the rule of constitutional law.

Besides, even if you have trust that Barack Obama himself would never abuse the powers of the National Defense Authorization Act, what about the President after Obama? Do you trust that President?

What if Rick Perry, or Rick Santorum is the next President of the United States? By signing the National Defense Authorization Act into law, Barack Obama granted all future presidents with the power to throw Americans into prison for life on the basis of nothing more than an unproven accusation against the prisoner.

There is no good excuse for Barack Obama’s approval of the National Defense Authorization Act today. There is also no good excuse for any American who sincerely supports the preservation of the Bill of Rights, to vote for the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012.

Occupy The Caucuses protesters held a nonviolent sit-in protest at the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters. They issued for concrete policy demands for Barack Obama:

“1. Ease the mortgage crisis by ending foreclosures
2. Stop accepting campaign contributions from Wall Street
3. Restore civil liberties by ending indefinite detentions
4. Finally step up as President and start listening to the issues of the 99% instead of the issues of Wall Street”

Who would have thought, four years ago, that protesters would have to demand from Barack Obama that he end his new policy of indefinite imprisonment of Americans without trial? That’s what’s happening, as Barack Obama is refusing to listen to rank and file Democrats who oppose the National Defense Authorization Act that Obama is preparing to sign into law.

The Iowa Democratic Party is also refusing to listen to the 99 percent. Sue Dvorsky, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, told people today that the Iowa Democrats will not talk with protesters any time soon. She says that protesters have to wait until national attention has left Iowa, after the Iowa caucuses. She also says that protesters shouldn’t come to the Iowa Democratic headquarters expecting to be heard. In other words, she wants liberal protesters to remain in the shadows.

That’s the same request that the national Democratic Party has been making of liberals for four years, telling us that our values will be represented, if we just sit down and shut up and stop complaining. Liberal America isn’t believing that promise any more, and liberal America isn’t believing in the Democratic Party any more either.

You can guess what happened next. The city government of Ithaca promptly denied the petition, on the basis of two points:

1) Occupy Ithaca didn’t file its petition before it started the occupation, and
2) Somebody else might want to go camping there, right now, in the middle of Ithaca, in Winter, and Occupy Ithaca is hogging the spot.

The arrests may begin tonight. Occupy Ithaca is asking people to turn out in solidarity and support.

But like I said, somebody active in the Facebook accounts for Occupy Ithaca has had it up to here with the bureaucratic file-this-paper-that-procedural-form-48B27-schedule-6 approach to stopping a political protest. So they’ve drawn up their own paperwork. It’s a Request for a Waiver of the Right to Assemble, just like the waiver forms cities have used across the country to trick occupations into evictions. But there’s one difference. In this case, it’s a Request for Waiver for the Government to fill out and turn in to you… and then you get to decide whether you’ll grant the waiver or not:

The text of the form reads:

Name of Official Requesting Waiver _____________________
Home Telephone Number _____________________
Cell Phone Number _____________________
Home Address _____________________

Citizens are requested to waive their right peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances for the following reasons (check all that apply):

___ Grass will need to be re-seeded.
___ Some people don’t like the way it looks.
___ Citizens lack requisite insurance for exercise of constitutional rights.
___ Constitutional curfew hours have expired. (If checked, please specify the hours during
the hours during which constitutional rights will be honored)
___ Political views expressed are inimical to those held by influential donors.

Have you requested that citizens waive their constitutional rights before?
Yes No If yes, when?

Signature of Official Requesting Waiver
___________________________________________________________________________
Signature Date

Approved/Denied by Citizen on (date)
Conditions/Stipulations:
___________________________________________________________________________
Signature Date

H.R. 1540 is a piece of congressional legislation that says something entirely different. According to H.R. 1540, people can be thrown into detention by the government for as long as the government, even if they’re never charged with a crime. H.R. 1540 says that a person in America no longer has the right to a public trial by a jury of one’s peers. The House passed it, then the Senate passed it, and President Obama is about to sign it.

The Constitution is supposed to be the “supreme law of the land” (see Article VI), and all other laws must follow it, at least if lawmakers respect the Constitution. If lawmakers in Congress respected constitutional limits, they ought to have voted NO, against the passage of H.R. 1540.

It turns out that there are three House caucuses (that is, three organized groups in the House of Representatives) that declare their purpose is to ensure legislation abides by the U.S. Constitution. One of them is the Tea Party Caucus (track vote here), introduced by Representative Michele Bachmann with explicit and prominent reference to the U.S. Constitution:

“I formed the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives in July 2010 because Congress had strayed from the fundamental principles of the Constitution…. Sadly, it seems today that the Constitution is no longer at the forefront guiding Congress.”

Another is the Constitution Caucus (track vote here), describing its mission in the following manner:

““The Constitution is the guide I will never abandon.” — George Washington….

Recognizing that the Constitution can only be preserved if it lives in the hearts and minds of the American people, the Constitution Caucus will provide an effective forum for education on founding principles and the appropriate limitations of congressional action.

A third is the Progressive Caucus (track vote here), which has this commitment as one of its four policy columns:

Protecting and Preserving Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

» To sunset expiring provisions of the Patriot Act and bring remaining provisions into line with the U. S. Constitution.

» To protect the personal privacy of all Americans from unbridled police powers and unchecked government intrusion.

How do the actions of these three caucuses’ members match up with their words? The graph below reveals patterns in caucus members’ votes on H.R. 1540 this December. A NO vote is a vote to defend the rights of people under the 5th and 6th Amendments.

The record:

Tea Party Caucus: 56 YES, 10 NO
Constitution Caucus: 46 YES, 12 NO
Progressive Caucus: 10 YES, 60 NO

If you’re angered by the conversion of the United States government into a gulag archipelago and you’re looking for a congressional caucus that stands with you in opposition, don’t look to the Tea Party Caucus or the Constitution Caucus. Those caucuses’ actions overwhelmingly belied their lofty words. Overwhelmingly, it was the Congressional Progressive Caucus that defended your constitutional liberties in action.