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The panel
From the left: me, Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior
counsel at the Constitution Project, David Zirin
(The Nation, Campaign against the Death Penalty),
Johnny Barnes, executive director of the National
Capital Area ACLU.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew
For a slideshow of all forum photos, click here.
[All photos are by Madeleine Nephew
-- thank you, Maddie!]

As advertised, I was joined by Sharon Franklin, David Zirin, and Johnny Barnes on Wednesday evening for a forum about the TPPD license plate scanner proposal.  (For background, see my prior posts on this issue or this resource page.)  [UPDATE - video here] [UPDATE - transcript here]

I thank each of them very much again for coming; their discussions were on point and helpful, as was a lively question and answer period with the audience, which included one councilmember, a public safety committee chair, and — by advance request  — Chief Ricucci and Captain Coursey from the police department.

My publicity efforts were not as successful as I’d have liked, but both local press and friends were on hand; my friend Michelle videotaped the proceedings as did the ACLU; assuming there aren’t technical difficulties, that will eventually be online for others to view for themselves.

I prepared some introductory remarks.  An excerpt:

…So far, we have had an upside down process: a grant application for a device before a community decision to seek one, an agency drafting policy after the money is in hand rather than a legislative body doing so before, all before consideration of alternatives.

Some say I’m making “much ado about nothing.” I disagree, and I think after tonight many of you will as well. A decision to subject ourselves to automated surveillance ought to be a very, very hard decision, not an easy one. I think it moots the 4th Amendment and chills freedom of speech and of assembly — especially in a permissive legal environment where we will have little control or even knowledge of how that surveillance is expanded, reused, or shared with federal agencies armed with “National Security Letters.” Even if approved — as I personally hope it will not be — hard questions would remain: when and where to deploy it, which wanted tag databases to download, what kind of safeguards to set up and who will run them, what penalties to impose if those safeguards are violated.

We in Takoma Park do not need to look to what’s merely permissible to police departments. We can also say how we want our community to be, and what safeguards on our rights we will insist on.

The forum produced a few new points of specific information from my perspective.  First, Captain Coursey noted that the city attorney was looking into the question of whether data collected in this fashion could be compelled to be divulged to other agencies.

Second, Chief Ricucci and Captain Coursey appeared to me to be saying that (a) the grant application did not request funding for so-called “back office” hardware and software that would facilitate the reanalysis of stored data, and (b) that they were thereby saying they did not envision doing so.

While that was comforting to me, Captain Coursey also clearly wanted the door kept open for that, pleading for no “rush to judgment” on that score.  Also, the lack of dedicated funding for storage isn’t all that telling.  As the TPPD’s own press release last December stated, “50,000 and 60,000 plate reads equal one gigabyte of hard drive space.” Assuming the interface with the squad car device can be bridged, off-the-shelf PCs could store millions of images; assuming the scanned image tag/time/location records can be downloaded as well, even more simple data records could be stored.  The software requirements are probably not insurmountable either; a simple file/directory system might do, or records could be stored in a conventional database.

But given the open, frank, and cooperative impression both officers made on me and the rest of the audience, perhaps both the press release and the worksession discussion of storage and reanalysis were more about capabilities than firm intentions.  I’m willing to believe they don’t seek this, and that they can support an explicit “no storage” provision by City Council for the device.
Read the rest of this entry »

Change.org’s “Ideas for Change in America” competition is trying to get the Obama administration’s attention — and is likely to succeed:

“The Ideas for Change in America competition was created in response to Barack Obama’s call for increased citizen involvement in government. The final round of voting began on January 5 and is comprised of the top 3 rated ideas from each of the 30 issues in the first round of the competition, which collectively received more than 250,000 votes.

The top 10 rated ideas from the final round will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, co-hosted by the Case Foundation. At the event we will also announce the launch of a national advocacy campaign behind each idea in collaboration with our nonprofit partners to turn each idea into actual policy.

The idea “Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties” is among the ideas competing for the final ten slots, with the following introduction:

FISA and the PATRIOT Act strike at the core of our Fourth and First Amendment Rights and institutionalize a surveillance society — and  FISA’s telecom immunity clause mocks the rule of law by not holding telecom companies accountable for any illegal actions.  Beginning the new Administration and Congress by focusing on these issues sends one of the clearest signals possible that that the new government is committed to ending the abuses of the last eight years and restoring our civil liberties.

For some specific ideas on rolling back the FISA Amendment Act and “Protect America Act,” see:

• The Constitution Project: Reform of the National Security Surveillance Laws and Procedures
• EFF: What Obama Can and Should Do To Stop Telecom Immunity
• ACLU: First 100 Days: Warrantless Spying

You can vote for “Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act” using the embedded widget below (most readers will need to register with a username and password first).  Voting ends January 15, and you get 10 votes to spread around to this and other good ideas.

As Jon Pincus writes in an associated blog post Turning the page on FISA:

The coming year will present a unique opportunity for a broad-based activism campaign to restore our civil liberties and begin rolling back key pillars of the national surveillance state institutionalized by the Bush Administration and Congress over the last eight years. By first pressuring President Obama to follow through in the first 100 days on his campaign promises to uphold the rule of law and protect Americans’ rights and privacy, and then gearing up for a 50-state strategy to pressure the House and Senate to repeal the PATRIOT Act and reform FISA, we can turn the page on this shameful chapter in our country’s history.

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UPDATE, 1/7: The “Ideas for Change” voting process can be confusing; here are step by step instructions.
EDIT, UPDATE, 1/9: “Specific ideas” bullet list added.  Other worthy ideas to vote for:

• Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration
• Make the grid green in 10 years
• US Leadership to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Globally

I’m a Constitution Voter
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

I helped get a mass mailing out the door on Wednesday, to members of the facebook and mybarackobama.com “Get FISA Right” groups.  The full text is here or here; from the mailing:

…This election needs to be about more than lipstick, hockey moms, and Blackberries. It’s time to talk about the Constitution and how the two candidates propose to undo the damage of the past eight years.We’re contacting editorial boards across the country asking that they:

• urge presidential candidates to present their views on constitutional issues on September 17 — and for the rest of the campaign
• prepare editorials on restoring the rule of law to the next administration and Congress
• report on and analyze how the candidates would exert their executive authority as President. (Charlie Savage and the Boston Globe did this late last year; it’s time for a remake.)

In addition, we believe it is critical that the televised presidential debates pose questions about constitutional issues like warrantless electronic surveillance, torture, abrogation of habeas corpus, and how to restore our Constitution.

Again, we need your help — in two ways.

1. Please take a moment to write and send a *short* letter (best no more than 4 sentences!) to the editor of your local newspaper, putting these demands in your own words. We wouldn’t be “Get FISA Right” if we didn’t hope you’d mention rolling back the infamous FISA Amendment Act, but these letters will really have more impact if we don’t provide a canned script for you to follow.

If you don’t know your local paper’s letter to the editor email address, use this tool to find ones in your area. (Please don’t send the same letter to multiple newspapers, though.)

2. Help us with our op-ed piece. Collaborative writing — of open letters, blog posts, ad scripts — has always been one of Get FISA Right’s strengths; and with the media attention we’ve gotten so far, we think we’ve got a good shot at getting this op-ed piece placed. Please join in here. [...]

The conception and execution of this was interesting; the American Freedom Campaign held a press conference last Friday that a couple of us from “Get FISA Right” attended.  The editorial board outreach effort was AFC’s, and we thought we’d see if we could lend a hand by encouraging a fairly large base of support (about 23,000 people on myBarackObama, and another 2,300 on facebook) to support that with letters to the editor.  The drafting process took place on a “wiki” site (the same one being used for the op-ed piece), which makes it easy to see how a document has changed as different authors add to or subtract from it, and makes collaboration possible even when writers are literally on opposite sides of the country.

Anyhow.  There are plenty of other initiatives going on about constitutional, rule of law, civil liberties and human rights issues this campaign season.  A selection:

• Common Cause: Recapture the Flag Candidate Pledges
• ACLU: I’m a Constitution Voter
• Human Rights First: Elect to End Torture
• National Religious Campaign Against Torture (voter guides, tips on lobbying and questioning Congresspersons during election season)
• People for the American Way: Voter ID toolkits for CA, FL, GA, MI, OH, TX
• Institute for America’s Future: Demand the Debate We Need

Meanwhile, as “Get FISA Right” superactivist Jon Pincus writes, it seems like one of the biggest barriers we face is a deep unwillingness to cover these issues by the media, matched by a general reluctance among politicians to talk about them.  Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, a rare exception, wrote about this in “It’s the Constitution, Stupid“:

Maybe I live in a teensy little rarefied bubble, in which a handful of constitutional law professors, tetchy libertarians, and paranoid bloggers have been tearing their eyebrows out for the past seven years over the president’s use of the “war on terror” to run his tanks over great swaths of the Constitution and much of the Bill of Rights. Maybe I overestimate American concern that their president likes to eavesdrop on their phone calls and root through their library records. Yet Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side is on the best-seller list. Sixty-one percent of Americans oppose warrantless wiretapping. And both presidential candidates have recognized Guantanamo for the international disaster it is. So clearly somebody cares about the loss of civil liberties in America. It’s just that nobody wants to talk about it.

Jon concludes:

Like a lot of people, I believe that this election’s a choice between restoring the Constitution and continuing down the path to fascism and a police state.  Okay, maybe that’s not the most pressing issue to everybody … but it certainly seems worth talking about.

Via watching the vote on C-SPAN.

Now is as good a time as any to say I’ll support any reasonably liberal Democrat in the primaries against Senator Mikulski should she run for office again. The opponent should preferably make Mikulski’s votes on FISA a centerpiece of the campaign, but the main thing is that Mikulski must go.

Other Nays include Inouye, McCaskill, Salazar, Hagel (R), Landrieu, Lieberman, Feinstein, Warner.

Ayes include Clinton, Obama. Hm. They’re “Leaders” of “our” “party,” but this is still happening and going down to defeat. Also Menendez, Whitehouse, Boxer in decreasing order of surprise. Also Kerry, Byrd.

The motion has failed 32-66. Roll-call when available. More votes ahead, of course; the Bingaman amendment delaying immunity for 90 days pending investigation of the surveillance is said to have an outside shot of approval.

===

Specter appears to get it, at least re unexamined prior illegal surveillance. Having joined in mid-debate, I’m honestly not sure which amendment he’s referring to; turns out it’s his own. Jay Rockefeller is worried for the poor widdle telecoms: “it’s not fair” to put the burden of assessing legality on them, too. Sorry, that’s what FISA did. That is, that’s what it used to do, as of the expected vote for this disaster later on today.

===

Now voting on Specter’s amendment to the FAA: it failed.

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Now another two-minute!!!! debate on the Bingaman amendment; Feinstein co-sponsors. He says FISA Amendment Act gets the order wrong. Says opponents and proponents of the FAA itself are cosponsors. Kit Bond gets up and warns Bingaman amendment will get a veto and “we’ll have to start all over.” That would be terrible, of course.

===

Now voting. I’ll have to quit now, but doubt there will be a happy ending.

I don’t usually just cut and paste a post, but this will be an exception. I’ve added a couple of links within the post; to see the reply itself, click the first link below. “Get FISA Right” is a group primarily organized at the Obama campaign web site “mybarackobama.com.”

An Open Letter to Senator Obama
From the 20,000+ members of the my.BarackObama.com group
“Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right”

Dear Senator Obama,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to us with your post “My Position On FISA” dated July 3rd, 2008. In your response, you pledged to “listen to [our] concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn [our] ongoing support,” and in that spirit, we would like to continue this conversation. We ask that you help transfer our passion and political activism into getting the FISA bill right — now.

Senator, as a legal scholar who has done extensive study of our country’s constitution you know that the FISA re-authorization bill currently before the Senate (HR 6304) threatens the rights guaranteed to American citizens in the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment.

One of the most troubling parts of this bill is its provision to provide retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits for telecommunications companies that may have assisted the Bush administration in violating the civil rights of Americans. You wrote in your statement that you “support striking Title II,” which provides this immunity, “from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Near Philadelphia and Maple, July 4th (photo by
Michelle Bailey). Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

Once again, I rented some “Minuteman”/colonial town crier type duds and joined the Takoma Park Fourth of July parade and spectacle. I had about a thousand little 4 by 5 fliers with phone numbers for Senators Cardin, Mikulski, and (sigh) Obama, urging them to vote against the FISA Amendment Act. Here’s a reproduction and text version of the flier (4 to a page) I used, which quoted the 4th Amendment as well. The text is from something I ran across at the mybarackobama.com site about this issue, I just rearranged it a bit. (For incoming visitors, more specific information about the issue — joining the mybarackobama.com group, links to the ACLU, etc. — is in the prior post, Celebrate the Constitution this 4th of July!)

Both my spouse Crickey and my friend (and fellow impeachment activist) Michelle Bailey came along to help pass out the fliers; Michelle also snapped some photos like the one here.

Some notes: people — even Obama supporters with buttons or stickers — were disappointed in Obama’s reversal on this. The phrase that helps the most with recognizing the issue is “telcom immunity” — maybe Takoma Park is exceptional, but that got pretty high “issue recognition,” to coin a phrase.

As anyone knows who’s done this kind of thing more than once, you wind up getting a “rap” down if you didn’t already have one — some stock phrases to get across what the issue is about. Not saying it’s golden, but one thing that worked was this:

“…telcom immunity is a terrible idea looking back” — thumb one way — “…we’ll never find out what happened. And it’s and even worse idea looking forward” — thumb other way — “some other company, under some other president — asked to do something sketchy? They’ll think to themselves ‘why not — phone companies got away with it.’

I also talked with people about how the bill threatens the Fourth Amendment (in my opinion) by settling for a judge authorizing protocols for “computer dragnets” rather than insisting on probable cause for a specific person and reason.

In addition to “thanks for doing this” from many parade watchers, I got good reactions from parade participants and local politicians Jamie Raskin, Heather Mizeur, George Leventhal, and Tom Hucker, so that was a plus as well. Raskin and Mizeur are delegates to the Democratic Convention in Denver (Obama, “super” who’s endorsed Obama, respectively).

I had a blast; I like doing this kind of thing — whether in costume or not. Thanks again to Michelle and Crickey for joining me, and for the great photos they took; slideshow here.

=====
UPDATE, 7/6: eRobin works the crowds in Philadelphia about the FISA Amendment Act.

..stop the FISA bill! Don’t let illegal wire-tappers off the hook!

What is it? The FISA Amendments Act — H.R. 6304 — will, as a letter from the ACLU to Senators puts it,

unconstitutionally and unnecessarily [permit] the government to vacuum up Americans’ international communications, without a connection to al Qaeda, terrorism, or even to national security. While there is limited prior review by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the protection afforded by that review is almost completely illusory. H.R. 6304 also grants retroactive immunity to companies that facilitated warrantless wiretapping over the last seven years.

When is the vote?

Tuesday, July 8.

Why is the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) a bad idea?

• The bill gives telecommunications companies immunity from lawsuits for cooperating with George Bush’s illegal warrantless electronic surveillance. That will block one of the only means of finding out exactly what was done, and will set a bad precedent for the future — should companies automatically cooperate with a president even if they suspect what’s being ordered might be illegal? (Some, like Qwest, did not.) As a friend of mine wrote, “Retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecoms is forever. The precedent it would set is also permanent.”
• The bill is so complicated, vague, and poorly debated that even experts are not sure what additional powers are being conferred to the president. That’s never a good idea — even if you like the current president or the likely next one, you may not feel the same way next year or five years from now.
• What seems likely is that vast “vacuum cleaner” surveillance protocols are envisioned, with a court only seeing how the protocol is constructed — not who specifically is being surveilled, and why. Goodbye “probable cause” — the foundation of the 4th Amendment, saying the government must have a good, specific reason to search you, your effects, or your communications.
• That, in turn, will likely ratify an exponential increase in “false positives” — people who seem like they might be a security threat, but turn out not to be. Even if you don’t care about your 4th Amendment rights (i.e., “who cares — I have nothing to hide”), it should concern you that the NSA is wasting its time and the time of other agencies with an explosion of useless leads to follow up.

What can I do?

• Call your Senators. For citizens of Maryland, the phone numbers are
  • Senator Cardin: 202-224-4524
  • Senator Mikulski: 202-224-4654
• Call Barack Obama’s presidential campaign: 866-675-2008. Unfortunately, Obama has said he would support the bill — despite pledging last fall to oppose any bill with telecom immunity.
• Join online “Senator Obama - Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right” groups at mybarackobama.com and facebook. (Both facebook and mybarackobama.com are easy to join if you haven’t already.) The “mybarackobama.com” group is already the largest group at the Obama web site.

What might I say in a phone call?

I’m a constituent and I urge you to oppose telecom immunity and the FISA Amendments Act. As a constituent, I am very troubled that during this patriotic holiday season, the Senate appears ready to toss civil liberties and the rule of law out the window, and so I urge you oppose telecom immunity with every vote that you have when the FISA bill comes to the Senate floor on Tuesday, July 8th:

Vote “YES” on the Dodd-Feingold amendment, which would strip telecom immunity from the bill entirely.

Vote “YES” on the Bingaman amendment, which would delay implementation of telecom immunity until after Congress has received the Inspectors General report on the president’s warrantless surveillance program.

Vote “NO” on the cloture motion to end debate on the FAA,

And finally, vote “NO” on the FISA Amendments Act, an unconstitutional and dangerous bill that would radically expand the president’s spying powers and immunize the companies that helped him break the law.

(Via Electronic Freedom Foundation)

Where can I learn more about this?

• ACLU “Don’t Spy on Me”; Letter to Senate Members Urging Opposition to H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act
• Electronic Freedom Foundation: HOWTO: Analyze Immunity Provisions in FISA Legislation
• Get FISA Right (Obama supporters site), esp. “Resources“
• Posts at this blog: A belated note on Obama and FISA: argh (June, 2008), Discuss (August, 2007), FISA –color coded for your convenience (September, 2007), For impeachment (May 2007)
• Does “Targeting” Authorize the Vacuum Cleaner? (Jim Dempsey, Center for Democracy and Technology, June, 2008)
• The legal blog “Balkinization”: The Key Questions about the new FISA bill, A Guide to the New FISA bill: Part I, II, III
• FISA-related article links saved to my deli.cio.us
• Text of the bill

Thanks for visiting! Please join the fight.

I may need to send Ron Paul a contribution. Some of his supporters have been saying John McCain is ineligible to be President because he was born in the Canal Zone, but while Article II of the Constitution seems to bear them out –“no person except a natural born Citizen… shall be eligible to the Office of President.” — it all depends on what ‘natural-born citizen’ means, doesn’t it, says the Washington Post’s Ron “Political Junkie” Rudin:

Some might define the term ‘natural-born citizen’ as one who was born on United States soil. But the First Congress, on March 26, 1790, approved an act that declared, ‘The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States.’ That would seem to include McCain, whose parents were both citizens and whose father was a Navy officer stationed at the U.S. naval base in Panama at the time of John’s birth in 1936.

Well waddayaknow. Not clear if it takes both parents being U.S. citizens, so that may take a little bit of litigation… And then: Thomas in 2012! (Hear all the T’s? Alliteration. Plus I’ve already got my slogan: “Change I can believe in.”) I have, like, twenty friends on Facebook, so this should be a cinch.

Dave Neiwert (”Orcinus”) is doing a bit of fundraising over at his blog, and you should head over and give him some of your hard-earned cash for… what? For nothin’.

Actually, not for nothing. Neiwert is an excellent writer, author, and journalist, who now contributes to the liberal/progressive supersite “firedoglake” as well. In a recent post there, “Repackaging Korematsu,” he picks up on Stephen Griffin’s observation (at “Balkinization”) that a certain variety of legal mind is now trying to peddle the story that Korematsu v. United States — the Supreme Court ruling OK’ing the Japanese internments during World War II — was only a terrible decision in guilt-ridden, liberal, 20/20 hindsight. Among said peddlers, I’m not surprised to learn, is the “pragmatist” judge and frequent op-ed scribbler Richard Posner. Griffin:

Apparently making a comment about liberals today, Posner states: “Liberals detest Korematsu, but not because it allowed pragmatism to trump principle; rather because of suspicion of the military and a sense of shame about the history of the nation’s mistreatment of East Asians.”

Japanese-American camp, war emergency relocation,
[Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, Calif.] (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress,
one of several War Relocation Authority photos.

And surely we can all agree that suspicion of the military and shame about mistreating East Asians are mere emotional outbursts, unworthy of such eminent and pragmatic folk as ourselves. But Griffin and Neiwert make the point that the internments weren’t just opposed in hindsight; Griffin writes that “[m]ost responsible lawyers with access to relevant information knew the internment was unjustified at the time.” Neiwert:

The problem, of course, is not that “pragmatism trumped principle” in the Korematsu ruling — it’s that hysteria trumped both pragmatism and principle, a hysteria fueled by unchecked military officials seeking to accrue new powers outside the purview of the courts. [...]

Neiwert makes a couple of important points that extend and crystallize Griffin’s post. First, the argument helps “the Bush administration further open wide the hole in the Constitution (one, in fact, largely created by the internment episode) by wildly expanding executive-branch powers during wartime.”

The second and perhaps even more instructive point is that the “Korematsu — you had to be there” notion was also circulated by the eminent legal thinkers and noted online harpies Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin,* illustrating the principle that in the wingnut ecosphere, the worse the idea, the more often it is reconsumed and re-excreted.

Another “Balkinization” post by Eric Tamanaha once crystallized my own feeling that while Judge Posner might write elegantly, he was a worthless guide to human rights, civil liberties, and especially to how to safeguard them with the laws he’s supposed to judge by. According to Tamanaha, Posner once wrote:

The way I approach a case as a judge–maybe you think it heresy–is first to ask myself what would be a reasonable, sensible result, as a lay person would understand it, and then, having answered that question, to ask whether that result is blocked by clear constitutional or statutory text, governing precedent, or any other conventional limitation on judicial discretion. That is how I would proceed if asked to decide a case challenging the legality of the NSA surveillance program.

Perfect: start with the result you want, and work your way back to the legal flim-flammery you can employ to justify it. Those of us watching this kind of thing from home may often feel powerless to stop it. But with David Neiwert’s help, at least you know what’s going on and can observe the life cycle of a nasty little wingnut idea, from its birth as a judicious little sentiment in a $34.95 hardback by Judge Posner, to its final instar as degraded spewings by Coulter or Malkin.

So when you give Neiwert a nice donation, why, it’s almost like you’re personally kicking Posner or Malkin in the shins. Surely that’s worth a little something.

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* See Muller vs. Malkin and Malkin v. Muller on this site. — It’s not clear Neiwert means to imply otherwise, but it seems to me Posner’s arguments preceded Malkin’s. Judging by the “Bush v. Gore” description in Griffin’s post, he seems to be citing Posner’s 2001 book “Breaking the Deadlock,” though the judge appears to have made a similar argument in a 2003 book “Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy”. Either way, Malkin — whose book was published in 2004 — is likelier to have picked up the general idea from Posner than the other way around.

UPDATE, 2/1: LOC photo added. — My post fails to mention that Mr. Neiwert has written a book about the Japanese internment, “Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community,” so I’m correcting that here.
UPDATE, 2/26: Kip Esquire (”A Stitch in Haste”) is another Posner-fightin’ blogger, e.g., More Posner Rantings Against Civil Liberties, 9/27/06.

We the People
John Nirenberg talks with two supporters
next to a “We the People” banner signed by
impeachment supporters.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

John Nirenberg is a retired college professor from Vermont who began walking from Boston’s Faneuil Hall to Washington, D.C. on December 2 last year to demonstrate his support for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. In the first entry on his web site about the march — March In My Name — he explained:

I’ve decided that being outraged isn’t enough. Bush and Cheney have so perverted our system of government, I have to do more than just be angry. What can we do as citizens? As a former Social Studies and American History teacher I remember telling my students to get involved, to vote, to speak their minds. Today, unfortunately, that’s not enough. We voted for change a year ago and nothing has happened. Congress is controlled by the Democrats but instead of holding the administration accountable for its wanton disregard of the Constitution, gets scolded by Bush for inaction and is intimidated by Cheney! Yikes, what’s a citizen to do?

I have chosen to march for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney for their many high crimes and misdemeanors including placing themselves above the law.

I joined several dozen other impeachment supporters in accompanying him on the last leg of his journey on Saturday morning at the National Arboretum. We chose a huge and seemingly abandoned parking place for the rendezvous with John and his support crew. Not abandoned enough, though — the cars had to be reparked elsewhere, we were told by Arboretum police (or rent-a-cops, not sure which to be honest). Fine, whatever.

Around quarter to 10 the initial group — about twenty of us — started walking west down New York Avenue, which (other than the Arboretum quickly left behind) is initially a fairly bleak urban panorama — gas stations, overpasses, Washington Times printing plant, cheap motels. But as it bends southwest it begins to descend into Washington proper. I stopped briefly to take in a nice view of the city and the Capitol building in the distance. The weather was fine; blue skies and a sunny day; it must have been a great sight indeed for John after his long walk south. Along the way, we got mostly honks of support and thumbs-up reactions, though on one occasion an angry fellow yelled out of his window… what was it… oh, yes: “You guys are the greatest for sticking up for our Constitution!” At least, that’s how I remember it now.

Cheney: “I’ve got my own branch, so
go f*** yerself.”
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

We made for Union Station, where additional supporters rendezvoused with us around 11:30, among them AfterDowningStreet’s David Swanson, with his wife and little boy (Wesley; not quite two; loves pigeons; cute as a button; smiles or wails enormously as warranted.) We were also joined by Deborah Vollmer, who is once again challenging Chris Van Hollen in the primary (February 12) for the Democratic candidate for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District. Ms. Vollmer is running a decidedly low-budget, shoestring type of campaign, but I hope her advocacy for impeachment and for a tougher Democratic stance on ending the Iraq War cuts into Mr. Van Hollen’s totals a month from now.

As we waited for others to join us, security personnel again approached. We had set down our signs, and assured the security people we were just passing through. But they preferred we do so sooner rather than later; with two new participants costumed as Bush and Cheney in prison stripes, we apparently seemed like an imminent threat to make a slow Saturday more interesting than they wanted it to be.

Union Station being private property, we made a kind of slow retreat across the Liberty Bell plaza in front of the station, with “Bush”, “Cheney,” and two Code Pink “policewomen” blowing whistles at them. Cheney was very good; he found a little branch of a bush and started waving it around, declaring “I’ve got my own branch now, so go f*** yerself.” Some concern was expressed about young Wesley’s exposure to such language, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care, and survived.

Impeachment advocate, Capitol
in background. Note the poncho.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

Our destination was the National Archives — home to original copies the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Archives (or NARA, National Archives and Records Administration) have spared no expense to protect the physical documents from decay; in 2003, the documents were enclosed in “new airtight containers made of aluminum, titanium, and glass that will be filled with argon gas.” But we quickly learned that while the Archives may be wizards at protecting the documents themselves, they’re not so good at protecting the values those documents are supposed to represent and protect.

We gathered on the right side of the staircase — next to an inscription intoning “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” — and were quickly met by NARA rent-a-cops. “You can’t have those signs here,” they said, meaning our local green “IMPEACH THEM” signs or the Vermonter’s yellow counterparts. “This is a place of business,” one of the security people explained. “Business!?” I reacted, only to be hushed (wisely) by fellow Takoma Park impeachment activist Lisa Moscatiello, who was trying to defuse the situation and negotiate some kind of compromise. But we eventually capitulated and crossed the street to march up and down the block for a short while holding our signs.

We gathered to listen to brief remarks by Nirenberg, Swanson, and Ray McGovern — an ex-CIA agent who has been a vocal war opponent and impeachment advocate. For his part, Nirenberg said that his walk was simply “Phase One” of his efforts, which will now turn to lobbying Congressmembers to take up impeachment hearings. John will meet with Rep. Wexler, who also wants impeachment hearings, and hopes to meet with Nancy Pelosi, who still wants them off the table. I confess I didn’t take notes about Swanson’s and McGovern’s remarks — I agreed with them, and noted that Swanson also thought the “place of business” comment was a strange view of the mission of the National Archives. Like much of the march, the remarks were videotaped by Michelle Bailey, and will soon be available for viewing on her web site (”Impeach Them!“). [UPDATE: see above]

And then it was over, or so it seemed. Having walked hundreds of miles to see them, John and others wanted to go in and have a look at the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. I stayed across the street with the signs and other paraphernalia of the march — bullhorn, satchels, whatnot. But inside, one last disappointing brush with our diminished United States of America was unfolding.

“To your right, the National Archives. The Archives
are charged with hermetically sealing off the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and
the Bill of Rights from the American people and
any complaints they might have about their
government.”
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

As John’s wife Allyson reports at the March in My Name site, she was stopped and told she couldn’t enter wearing the yellow rain poncho with a protest slogan on it. The slogan — “Save the Constitution”!*

I tried to talk to the guard about my goal in being in the building – simply to see the Constitution of the United States. He wasn’t convinced and kept repeating his mantra, “Just take off the poncho and you can go in.” I asked him what was wrong with my poncho. He replied that they do not allow protests inside the building. I said that I was not protesting, that I was just an American citizen visiting the most important document of our country. [...]

I asked for a copy of the policy that mandated I remove my objectionable clothing in order to see the Constitution. They would provide nothing… I asked them how the policy is practiced - that knowing how they interpret and implement the policy might help me understand the policy or law I was violating. They simply and finally said, “You will have to leave if you do not remove your garment.”

So she chose to leave.

And, as I was turning to leave, I told him he was part and parcel of the reason that I found it necessary to articulate my point of view to “Save the Constitution,” on my clothing. “You might want to read the Constitution before you leave work today to find out what this is all about.” I said as I left.

She told us outside, “I’m not going to take off a poncho with a political statement on it to go in and see the document giving me the right to keep it on.”

I’m almost as dissatisfied with myself as with the cops involved — for not being surprised or immediately outraged any more. In the scheme of things, it’s obviously not a major incident if someone doesn’t get to wear precisely what she wants to precisely where and when she wants to, and I don’t feel comfortable trying to make a cause celebre out of it compared to homelessness, the war in Iraq, or our broken, stupid health care system, to name but a few alternatives. Yet I should think someone or other in NARA ought to blush if they ever read this account or others like it. Either their rules or their personnel did a silly, stupid, bad thing on Saturday.

Viewed in retrospect, as dispassionately as I’m able to, we were repeatedly and unjustifiably put on the defensive throughout the day for peacefully, imaginatively, and determinedly doing nothing more than saying what we thought about a highly important political issue. Completely shrugging off these little slights is just conditioning for shrugging off the next bigger one. Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for someone to say “what if anyone just had whatever they wanted on their t-shirt, or baseball cap — then what?” Because my answer would be: “Then the Bill of Rights would be working as intended.”

John Nirenberg walked to the National Archives to help defend its most cherished contents: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But by the time he got there, it was just a place of business, more concerned with “defending” them from him.

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* The full text of the poncho reads: Save the Constitution — Impeach Bush/Cheney — Tell Speaker Pelosi (202) 225-0100 — www.marchinmyname.org. Pretty inflammatory stuff!

NOTES: For a few more photographs of mine, go here; for a lot more, see Michelle’s slideshow; as mentioned above, she’ll also have video soon; check this post for updates.
UPDATE, 1/15: More discussion at my post about this at American Street; see also Avedon Carol (”The Sideshow”) and AfterDowningStreet.org.
UPDATE, 1/15: David Swanson (”AfterDowningStreet.org”) writes: “[Fellow Nirenberg marcher] Suzanne Haviland reported that a guard told her, “The reason I’m stopping you is that you are wearing something that criticizes the President. I’m a federal employee, and I’m not allowed to criticize the President.” I remember hearing about this, too, but didn’t know who to attribute it to.
UPDATE, 1/16: Libby (”The Newshoggers”): Is this freedom?
EDIT, 1/16: Allyson, not Allison.