News & Commentary
To Terrify and Occupy
This piece originally ran on TomDispatch and was completed before Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Police, rather than keeping the peace, have reacted to largely peaceful protests demanding justice for Michael Brown in an aggressive and militarized fashion. The ACLU of Missouri is currently on the ground in Ferguson, Mo., observing police conduct and educating protestors of their rights. You have the constitutional right to not only protest peacefully in public, but you also have the right to record police officers as they carry out their duties to serve and protect you, the citizen. For more on how police forces have become so excessively militarized, please see the ACLU report, "War Come Home."
By By Matthew Harwood, Media Strategist, ACLU
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By Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union
An Innocent Man Is Dying of Cancer on Texas's Death Row
Max Soffar has a long history of self-medicating. When he was four, his parents found him passed out next to their car, gas cap in hand. Since birth, Max's brain has been damaged. That damage has been made worse by years of physical and mental abuse by adoptive parents and staff at mental institutions.
By By Sarah Solon, Communications Strategist, ACLU
Ten Years Without Other People
Every time they throw my brother into solitary, he loses contact visits. When we visit, he's behind glass, or we can only see him via video. We can't hug him. He can't hold his new baby niece.
By By Nzinga A. Harrison, MD
3 Reasons the Guantánamo Military Commissions Need the Senate Torture Report
On August 1, President Obama acknowledged again that "We tortured some folks." Last week, one of those people, Abd al-Rahim Hussayn al-Nashiri, was back in the courtroom in the Guantánamo military commissions, where he faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the bombing of the USS Cole.
While the
By By Marcellene Hearn, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project
2+2=5? Why South Carolina's Creationism Compromise Doesn't Add Up
Politicians in South Carolina don't have a great track record with science. Earlier this year, creationists in the state legislature tried to derail an 8-year-old girl's request to make the woolly mammoth the state fossil. They demanded the resolution also declare that the wooly mammoth was "created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field."
The creat
By By Carrie Ellen Sager, PFRB Legal Fellow, ACLU
Are We Getting Fooled on Surveillance Reform?
This piece originally appeared on the Monkey Cage blog at washingtonpost.com.
By By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office
Numbers Tell the Story of Our Government's Watchlisting Binge
The government is adding people to its already bloated watchlisting system at breakneck pace, and it's still hungry for more. That's the unavoidable conclusion from documents published yesterday in The Intercept.
By By Hugh Handeyside, Staff Attorney, ACLU, National Security Project
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