"The danger to political dissent..."

1) ACLU in suit against Justice Department involving the Patriot Act.
2) ACLU files brief with Supreme Court.
3) Justice Department redacts portions of the brief on national security grounds.
4) It is revealed that the Justice Department redacted the following quote, which comes from a 1972 Supreme Court opinion:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

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via Boingboing

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DOJ: "Lawbooks don't belong in libraries"

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Blakely

So the Circuits don't know what to do with Blakely, and they've been issuing all kinds of crazy decisions. The Second took the rare step of asking the SCOTUS to fix the mess they'd made right away. The SCOTUS didn't take them up on the (somewhat impertinent) invitation, but will hear U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan (from other Circuits) on the first day of the term in October.

The Blakely blog is reliably on top of Blakely-related developments.

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SCOTUS Roundup

Going up the river

Someone over at the NLG tipped us to this page with all kinds of information about legal issues if you're planning to be / protest in NYC during the Republican National Convention.

I guess by the time of the convention, they'll have posted a phone number you can scrawl on your arm so you can use your one phone call to get a pro bono lawyer. Sounds pretty sensible to me.

451 degrees

So the Justice Department has just backed away from their request that the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents instruct depository libraries to destroy their copies of five books: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA). The reason for the initial request was apparently that the DOJ did not feel they were "appropriate for external use."

Not to be too alarmist, but: it is deeply troubling when the government starts deciding it doesn't want you to know (1) what the laws are, and (2) how they're enforced. I know the title of this post is from Bradbury, but even more I'm reminded of another mid-century dystopian vision, in which hiding the rules of the farm from public view allowed Napoleon to append the fateful words, "but some animals are more equal than others."

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