Police State Spying and the Criminalization of Justice in America
by Tom Burghardt
Global Research
August 26, 2012
Another Day, Another Shameful Ruling on Police State Spying
Recently, federal district court Judge Cormac J. Carney of the Central District of California, dismissed a civil rights lawsuit filed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on grounds of bogus “state secrets privilege” claims made by the Obama administration.
That suit, Fazaga v. FBI, was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The plaintiffs forcefully argued that the Bureau illegally spied on Muslim residents in southern California, targeting them for “special handling” solely on the basis of their religious beliefs.
The atrocity played out in Carney’s court against a citizens’ right to due process under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, constitutional guarantees that extend to all government actions and proceedings that can result in harm to an individual either civilly or criminally, is only the latest in a long line of capitulatory rulings by a diminished Judicial Branch.
Under Bush, and now Obama, the Justice Department demanded that Fazaga be thrown out on the most specious grounds: that presidential authority in all matters relating to national security cannot be challenged by those who are the victims of predatory actions, regardless of their egregious nature, by the secret state.
Denouncing Carney’s cave-in to the Justice Department, Ahilan Arulanantham, the deputy legal director for the ACLU of Southern California said: “Under today’s ruling dozens of law-abiding Muslim Americans in Southern California will never know if the government violated their constitutional rights. Every American should be deeply troubled when the government can win dismissal of a case involving the most basic constitutional rights by claiming that it is acting, in secret, in the interests of national security. The notion that our basic safety requires relinquishing our most cherished liberties is as inconsistent with the Constitution as it is frightening.”
But in a collapsing Empire, where the indefinite detention or even the liquidation of “terrorism” suspects, alongside illegal warrantless spying, the trampling of First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, the persecution of government whistleblowers who bring high state crimes to light, are now deemed unreviewable by any court by a quasi-fascist “Unitary Executive.”
The Rest…HERE
