Legalectric

Edina: Weapons protesters get a break they don’t want
The protesters at Alliant Techsystems say an Edina ordinance stifles their dissent. The city says it’s only trying to save money and streamline the courts.

From today’s STrib:

“It’s impossible to get into jail,” fumed protester David Harris, a 71-year-old surgeon from Red Wing, who fulfilled his court-ordered penalty from a previous trespassing conviction by publicly holding a sign that said simply, “Community Service.”

and this choice snippet:

Rachel Carlson, a research attorney at the League of Minnesota Cities, said it’s common for cities to enact trespassing ordinances to address property issues associated with snowmobiling, skateboarding and hunting. She knows of no other Minnesota city that adopted a trespassing ordinance to address war protesters, however.

Here’s the entire article.

The new Edina ordinance – nope, the STrib’s link isn’t working…

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And here’s more on NSA spying from the New York Times, very scary indeed:

Spy agency data after Sept. 11 lead F.B.I to dead ends

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans’ international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy

…

“We’d chase a number, find it’s a schoolteacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism – case closed,” said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. “After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.”

And from aol.com “news” yesterday:

Gore Assails Domestic Wiretapping Program
Former Vice President Says Bush Repeatedly Broke the Law

Can someone explain to me why this is a question?
And what good is a “poll” about this when most people don’t even recognize the Bill of Rights when it slaps them upside the head? Or when it’s taken away?

From Madison’s Capitol Times, they can’t see it when it’s right under their noses:
FBI missed internal signs of espionage