Think Twice Before You Text
oami, January 25, 2013 - 3:00pmWe recently heard a rumor that when police officers call up cell phone companies and asking for text message records, cell phone companies just hand over those records - records that include not only the identity of the sender and receiver, but also the content of the messages.
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Equality For Women Who Serve
zach, January 24, 2013 - 2:30pmThere was substantial resistance--and ignorance--to overcome, but yesterday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the Pentagon's official ban on women serving in combat roles will be lifted. The ban was a fiction--woman have continuously served in combat zones, and they have been injured and killed in the course of that service. | continue reading
10 Goals For A Civil Liberties Presidency
edward, January 24, 2013 - 12:33pmFrom a civil liberties perspective, Obama's first term was a disappointment. We still have Guantanamo, Indefinite Detention, Targeted Killings, warrantless surveillance of Americans and a immigrants bring detained and deported in record numbers.
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40 Years of Choice
Rachel, January 22, 2013 - 6:14pmToday marks 40 years since the Supreme Court affirmed, in Roe v. Wade, that a woman has the right to decide whether to have a baby or have an abortion.
No matter what you may think about abortion, we hope you agree that important decisions about if and when to have a baby are best made by women, their families and their doctors - not by politicians sitting in Augusta.
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No matter what you may think about abortion, we hope you agree that important decisions about if and when to have a baby are best made by women, their families and their doctors - not by politicians sitting in Augusta.
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I Just Want a Job
jill, January 22, 2013 - 6:13pmOn Sunday, I attended a meeting sponsored by the Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition for new Mainers. This meeting was specifically for members of the Iraqi community in Portland, a growing group of new Americans in our state.
Often times when I hear negative stereotypes about Maine's immigrant population, I feel discouraged. I want to live in a community where we welcome newcomers and help everyone feel as though they have a positive contribution to our state.
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Often times when I hear negative stereotypes about Maine's immigrant population, I feel discouraged. I want to live in a community where we welcome newcomers and help everyone feel as though they have a positive contribution to our state.
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Through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall
shenna, January 21, 2013 - 4:33pmFrom Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington:
"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."
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"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."
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Torture Doesn't "Work"
Ryan, January 18, 2013 - 6:47pmMovies are great places to escape into other times, places, lives, and events. And Zero Dark Thirty was exactly that—an alternate reality where torture produces valid, reliable information. Though the thriller was gripping, it should not be mistaken for a completely factual retelling of the information that led to bin Laden’s capture.
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Cloture Today
shenna, January 18, 2013 - 11:15amToday is the deadline for cloture at the Maine State Legislature, which means it's the deadline for bills to be submitted by legislators for this year. There are likely to be hundreds of bills this session, and we can be sure that dozens of them will affect the civil liberties and civil rights of Mainers.
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Getting A Warrant Works
edward, January 17, 2013 - 5:51pmIn our era of expanded tracking technologies that rapidly outpace our laws, there's a lot of work to be done to get back in line with the Fourth Amendment if we want to provide reasonable protections against warrantless surveillance.
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FBI Responds to ACLU Request with a Whole Lot of ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎∎.
Rachel, January 17, 2013 - 5:22pmThe ACLU is doing its best to protect and promote your privacy, and that means standing up to unnecessary and unconstitutional surveillance by the government. That's why we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year to force the Justice Department to release two key memos outlining their views about when Americans can be surreptitiously tracked with GPS technology.
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