ACLU of Massachusetts Online Communications Coordinator Danielle Riendeau wrote the following guest blog:

As someone who cares deeply about women’s health--and has participated in races for breast cancer awareness that are affiliated with the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure--the news yesterday that the breast cancer charity announced it would stop funding Planned Parenthood for breast health services utterly shocked me, and I know I’m not the only one.

The issue at hand, of course, is the fact that Planned Parenthood provides comprehensive care to women. They provide cancer screenings, information about contraception, and yes, abortion care, to anyone who needs their services, including many low-income and uninsured women who would otherwise have no safe access to any of the above. The Komen Foundation has pulled their funding wholesale, thanks to intense political pressure from anti-choice voices--one of which is coming from inside the organization.

This guest blog was written by ACLU of Massachusetts Privacy Rights Coordinator Kade Crockford.

Last night, President Obama book ended his State of the Union address by praising the US military. The beginning of the speech:

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda's top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban's momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

The end of the speech:

Which brings me back to where I began. Those of us who've been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn't matter if you're black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you're in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.

The defense industrial complex was likely thrilled. Americans can unite in war, the message went.

Obama's speech predictably described his economic outlook and plans for reasserting US dominance in the global marketplace. It addressed education, war, the mortgage crisis, jobs, manufacturing, immigration, energy, infrastructure, deficit reduction, institutional reform in Washington, popular cynicism with the government, and veterans issues, among others.

But there was a major, symbolically resonant hole in the speech. Obama only said the word 'liberty' once, in reference to the revolutions of North Africa. He said 'freedom' once, but in the context of the US military, not civil liberties. He did not say the word 'transparency,' and he said 'accountable' twice, both in the context of the financial crisis.

The out of control, civil liberties destroying federal 'intelligence' and surveillance bureaucracy got a pass. Listening to Obama's speech last night, you wouldn't know that the billions of dollars a year surveillance industrial complex exists, or that it is intimately integrated with the defense industrial complex through private corporations like Booz Allen, which profit massively off of both. The speech likewise didn't mention that the US system provides a constitution with robust liberties that should keep such a system at bay.

The constitutional law scholar in chief made no mention of those rights we hold most dear. In a year dominated by vigorous social movements in the United States, he did not even pay lip service to freedom of expression at home. On the other hand, nor did he brag about any of his administration's attacks on our core rights.

He made no mention of his FBI's investigations of antiwar activists in the Midwest, or of the DOJ's numerous prosecutions of young Muslim men on terrorism charges only possible because the FBI set them up.

Obama and his political advisors didn't see fit to describe the FBI's massive biometrics gathering scheme, or Immigration Customs Enforcement's contributions to said program. They did not brag about the historic levels of secretive government spending dedicated towards spying on ordinary US Americans. They did not describe the sixteen federal agencies that receive hundreds of millions or billions of taxpayer dollars every year towards this endeavor, completely absent public debate.

Yesterday on our blog, we addressed Obama's miserable civil liberties record, describing his attacks on whistleblowers and his war on transparency and accountability at the highest levels of government. The surveillance state that underlies these abuses is the subject of much of our work at the ACLUm of late.

Obama did not say one word last night about this massive government bureaucracy, because the surveillance state can only succeed when it operates in the shadows. That's why it is up to us, ordinary citizens and muckraking journalists, activists and Twitter leaders alike, to shout and investigate and protest and agitate. We must expose the underbelly of the US system, the secretive monitoring and data gathering and tracking, before it is too late.

The President will not discuss these issues in the light of day, in part because he doesn't have to: the expansion of the surveillance state has become a bipartisan project.

Obama made one thing clear by avoiding the issue last night: we are our only hope if we want a vigorous defense of liberty and core political rights. Last night's speech shows us that no President, Democrat or Republican, will willingly give up the many powers the office has usurped.

Like the revolutionaries who are celebrating one year into their fight for the rule of law in Egypt, we are our best shot. If we want the rule of law restored at home, we must fight for it.

Don't let the political class silence us, even by omission. Don't be silenced by the fear campaigns.

As renowned internet freedom fighter and high-profile target of government surveillance Jacob Appelbaum has said, courage is contagious. The first step is breaking the silence about surveillance.

Pass it on.

The following guest blog was written by ACLU of Massachusetts privacy rights coordinator Kade Crockford.

In a breathtakingly important decision we've anticipated for months, the Supreme Court today decided, in a unanimous ruling, that the government needs a warrant before placing a GPS tracking device on a car. A number of lower courts had disagreed on the question, raising the profile of the US v. Jones case at the nation's highest court.

The decision today is a major victory for privacy advocates and for all people who want to see a clear translation of basic constitutional rights in the digital age.

While it was the right call on the specifics of the case in question, the decision didn't go far enough. Unfortunately, the ruling does not extend to GPS tracking by other means, such as mobile phone tracking, although a number of justices wish that it had. Justices ultimately wrote three concurring opinions, with Scalia's narrow ruling serving as the majority. Justice Alito wrote one, arguing that the ruling should have extended to other types of GPS monitoring, including that of mobile phones. Justice Sotomayor raised the all important issue of third party information holders in her concurring opinion.

While the justices all agreed that the warrantless tracking in the Jones case violated the Constitution, they differed as to why. Scalia's majority ruling argued that the government had violated the Constitution because, in installing the GPS device on his car, it had invaded Mr. Jones' physical property. Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Sotomayor joined Scalia in the majority opinion.

But Justice Alito criticized the narrowness of Scalia's ruling, arguing in a concurrence for four judges that it inappropriately tied 18th century legal constructs to 21st century technologies. Alito is onto something big.

The majority ruling's reliance on the invasion of Mr. Jones' private property leaves unsettled the question of whether the government can access our location or other private data when we do not physically possess it, or when the government never physically invades our homes or cars in order to spy on us.

The New York Times highlights key passages of Sotomayor's concurrence, in which she raises just these issues, warning that the Court did not deal with the question of third party content holders such as telecommunications companies. "It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties," she wrote.

People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers...I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.

Given the government's keen interest in mobile phone tracking and obtaining information about us from third party holders without warrants, these issues are likely to come before the Court more directly. Since most people in the United States travel with their mobile phones 24/7, and use the internet to communicate and store private information every single day, these questions could not be more important.

For more information, see Marcy Wheeler's analysis on the Jones decision.

ACLU of Massachusetts communications director Christopher Ott wrote this guest blog.

The Obama administration announced today it will keep in place a proposed rule that says birth control is an essential service, and employer health insurance plans must cover birth control without a copay. This will ensure effective birth control is available for millions of women.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbied hard to get the administration to widen an existing religious exception to this rule, asking that religious-affiliated employers such as hospitals and social-service organizations be allowed to deny women birth-control coverage, along with churches and other religious bodies. Fortunately, the administration refused to broaden this exemption. By not caving into to the USCCB, the Obama administration has signaled that it will not allow discrimination against women employees by religious-affiliated employers that serve the public--often with taxpayer dollars.

There's nothing like a victory for equal rights to restore my faith in human courage and basic decency. So I braved the cold in order to show up for Governor Deval Patrick's ceremonial and very public signing of the Transgender Equal Rights Law at the State House this morning.

It was standing-room-barely as Massachusetts luminaries and civil rights advocates gathered in the ornate Senate Reading Room to watch our Commonwealth take another important step forward for equal rights under the law.

One way that Republican presidential contenders could go after President Obama is by criticizing his record on civil liberties, such as his yet-to-be fulfilled pledge to close Guantanamo--but, with only a few exceptions (Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman), they can't, because their stance on indefinite detention without charge or trial is worse than the President's. ACLU of Massachusetts education director Nancy Murray wrote the following guest blog.

It is fitting that Mitt Romney consolidated his lead to be the Republican nominee for president on the day that Guantanamo Bay marked its tenth anniversary: January 11, 2012. Back on April 21, 2006, the Massachusetts governor spent a few hours touring Guantanamo to buttress his presidential ambitions.

"Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo," he proclaimed as he hit the campaign trail. Brandishing his strong-on-national-security credentials, he declared that Guantanamo was "a symbol of American resolve."

ACLU of Massachusetts staff attorney Laura Rótolo wrote the following guest blog.

The state’s highest court today held that the Commonwealth cannot discriminate against non-citizens when it comes to access to its state health insurance program, because that is a violation of the right to equal protection under the Massachusetts Constitution. This is a victory not just for immigrants, but for the Massachusetts Constitution. Even in tough fiscal times, there is no basis for discriminating against a whole class of people.

Facing a financial crisis, the state had cut all non-citizens from the program. But last year, the Supreme Judicial Court held that this kind of discrimination—based on alienage—could only be constitutional if the state’s justification were subjected to the highest form of legal scrutiny.

So, in a second round of the case, the Commonwealth responded that it was merely following federal policy that immigrants should not be entitled to health benefits. The Court disagreed with that “hypothetical” justification, since it was clear that the actual justification was a fiscal one, and that the state was not obligated to follow a national policy.

The ACLU of Massachusetts, together with other groups, filed a friend of the court brief arguing that discrimination against non-citizens is unconstitutional and that the state’s justification did not pass the high hurdle set out by the court.

Tonight, thousands of Iowans will assemble in school cafeterias, gymnasiums and town halls in every hamlet and city across the Hawkeye state for the Iowa presidential caucus. Hopefully, a few of them will have taken a look at the ACLU’s candidate scorecard for civil rights and civil liberties, to see which candidates actually vote for liberty and justice for all.

As a child growing up in Iowa and later as a reporter for the Des Moines Register, I’ve always enjoyed caucus night. It's a cross between a New England town meeting and an Occupy Wall Street general assembly—only with less order and less direct democracy than either.

One of my favorite memories occurred during the 1988 caucus—a night in which Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis had a break-through victory by coming in third (which was a good showing for a guy from New England). It was a snowy night and the voters were gathered at the gymnasium of the Longfellow Elementary School. I was covering the election as a cub reporter, when I got to witness my parents get into a political—public—skirmish at the caucus.

What do get when you take America's overly-broad conspiracy and material support laws and mix them with efforts by federal prosecutors to criminalize unpopular speech?

In the short run, you get easy jury verdicts against guys like Tarek Mehanna. In the long run, you get an attack on freedom of speech itself. And that's a threat to all of us.

Mehanna, an Egyptian-American Boston University graduate, was convicted today largely because the jury was permitted to decide the case based on allegations that that Mehanna espoused and translated documents promoting ideas about jihad.

Like most of you, I find much of what Mehanna is alleged to have translated and shared on the Internet to be offensive and even hateful. Then again, also like many of you, I find a lot of stuff on the Internet to be offensive and hateful.

Where did this monstrosity come from?

It just rolled by a peaceful demonstration of about 60 people at the JFK Federal Building in Boston. How dangerous was this small group that supports the Bill of Rights and opposes the indefinite detention provisions of a federal bill about to be signed into law?

At a time of tight budgets everywhere and looming MBTA fare hikes that could raise the price of a single ride to $3.25, it's outrageous that money is being wasted on things like this.

Is the MBTA planning mass civil arrests?

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is one of the most powerful men in government. A decorated war hero and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Kerry brings both honor and influence to his work. His voice carries weight.

Like others, I carry with me a memory of John Kerry upon his return from the Vietnam war, bravely testifying before Congress in an act of courage and conscience. His willingness to speak out against a war that was endangering our country is how we knew that Kerry was a hero. It’s what got him elected to office.

Now, again, our nation needs John Kerry to stand up for freedom.

Congress is about to pass a National Defense Authorization Act (the bill that funds our troops) with truly scary provisions that would permit the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians -- including American citizens -- anywhere in the world.

This bill is a historic threat to American citizens and others because it expands and makes permanent the ability of the military to imprison American citizens without charge or trial. If it becomes law, American citizens and others are at real risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial.

It’s hard to imagine anything more antithetical to our democracy or our liberty. No wonder Massachusetts citizens will be protesting the NDAA provisions at Dewey Square on December 15 -- the anniversary of our Bill of Rights.

Just because the court ruled today that Boston city officials may shut down the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square does not mean that they should. As city officials have repeatedly--and recently--stated, there is no immediate need to remove Occupy Boston from Dewey Square.

City officials have a choice. The judge ruled, "this decision clears the way but does not order the [Occupy Boston protestors] to vacate the site."

The eyes of the world are on Boston.

Crowding into a Boston Courtroom earlier today to watch the witnesses and attorneys from Occupy Boston and the city make their respective cases for whether the Occupy Boston Protesters should be allowed to stay at Dewey Square was one of the best instances of democracy in action I’ve seen in a long time.

Compared to the mass arrests and pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters in other major cities around the United States, it feels like Boston is getting it right – at least for now.

Judge Frances A. McIntyre is proving to be an open-minded and courageous jurist. In the two hearings to date on the Occupy Boston’s rights to free speech, assembly and petition, she clearly recognizes the important civil liberties issues at stake.

The Judge also made it clear to everyone in the courtroom that she wants to let the parties have their day in court.

Twice now, Judge McIntyre has declined to shut down the Occupy protesters at Dewey Square until she has an opportunity to fully air the unique factual and novel legal issues at stake. By continuing the temporary restraining order that has been in place since November 16 until she has time to issue her final written order on or before December 15, the Judge has created a thoughtful and deliberative setting in which to air the opposing views.

Perhaps Judge McIntyre realizes – and attorneys from both sides acknowledged today in court – that the Occupy movement in Boston and around the country has created a historic challenge to business as usual in America.

Senator Scott Brown can make good on his promise to support our troops and veterans this week by supporting a proposal by New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen to ensure that military servicewomen and their families have the same access to medical care as their civilian counterparts.

Sen. Shaheen’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (the Act that funds our troops) would allow the military health system to cover abortion care in cases of rape and incest--and only in those cases--just as the federal government does for all other federal employees, women enrolled in Medicaid, and women in federal prisons.

More than 400,000 women currently serve in the United States Armed Forces. At a time when servicewomen and their families put their lives and limbs at risk to preserve our rights and freedom, it’s critical that Congress ensure that they have the same care as the civilians they protect.

Reports that former senior aides to presidential candidate Mitt Romney took the unusual step of wiping out all four years’ worth of emails from his time as governor of Massachusetts has me wondering: what is Mitt hiding?

Did the erased emails divulge Romney’s previous support for an individual mandate in health care coverage? Did loyal aides purge evidence that Romney once supported LGBT equality and reproductive health care for women? Did they hope to wipe away embarrassing personal tidbits, such as the time Romney tied the family dog to the top of the car for drive to Canada?

Or could it be that the leading Republican candidate for president just has a Nixonian- penchant for secrecy and cover-ups?

Romney insists he broke no laws because his aides saved hard-paper copies – some 700 boxes worth -- of the expunged emails. Good luck searching those! Still, it’s troubling that a guy who wants to be president thinks it’s okay to have his chief of staff and legal counsel purchase government property with the intent to destroy it and thus deprive the public, historians, and future government officials of legitimate access to the digital record of official state business.

Erasure-gate isn’t the first time Romney as shown a penchant for secrecy in government. In 2003, then-newly-elected Governor Romney’s administration issued an order forbidding executive branch employees from have any contact or even talking to members of the legislative branch or the media unless they had prior approval to do so.

In response, the ACLU of Massachusetts sent the governor’s Legal Counsel a note reminding him that “public employees retain a first amendment right to speak out as citizens on matters of public concern, even in connection with the operation of their own workplace.” The ACLU also urged the governor to issue a “clarifying memorandum” so that “public employees will not be afraid to exercise their first amendment rights as citizens to speak with legislators and the press.”

There is no record of whether the ACLU’s letter was discussed by Governor Romney and his top aides; those emails were deleted along with the rest of the digital record of his time in public office. The only record that remains is from the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Still, there is a bright side to email erasure-gate: it provides a perfect opportunity to evoke Rosemary Woods! For those of you too young to remember, Rosemary Woods was President Richard Nixon’s faithful secretary, who conveniently erased critical portions of a 1974 audio-tape of Nixon and his chief of staff discussing the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Building.

Rosemary Woods and the 18-minute “gap” was so infamous that it became the subject of folks songs, including this lovely obscurity by Bill Horwitz, which is well worth listening to with Mitt Romney's email escapades in mind:

If I had a friend like Miss Rosemary Woods,
How simple my life would be
I'd just give all my problems to Rosemary Woods
and she would erase them for me…

Devoted to me like a leaf to a tree,
like a prison needs a wall
I would get my protection from Rosemary Woods
And the world couldn't touch me at all.

ACLU of Massachusetts legislative counsel Gavi Wolfe wrote the following guest blog.

Congratulations, Massachusetts! Today, with the passage of the Transgender Equal Rights Bill by our state legislature, the Commonwealth has taken another important step forward for equality. Governor Patrick has pledged to sign the legislation into law.

This means that Massachusetts will now provide vital protections in employment, education, housing, and credit--and against hate crimes--that transgender residents of the Commonwealth urgently need. We now join 15 other states, the District of Columbia, and nearly 150 cities and towns around the country that have passed laws and ordinances protecting transgender people from discrimination.

Massachusetts is a better state for embracing civil rights. More important, tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents will be better off.

Update: Freedom of speech, association, assembly and the right to petition won a victory in court today, when Judge Frances McIntrye issued a temporary restraining order barring the city of Boston from evicting Occupy Boston protesters from Dewey Square. The order applies unless there is a fire, medical emergency, or outbreak of violence.

McIntyre, who set a further hearing on a preliminary injunction for Dec. 1, also ordered the city and the protesters to enter mediation -- over objections from the city's attorneys.

It was great fun to watch the masterful lawyering by Howard Cooper, from the firm of Todd & Weld, who represented Occupy in conjunction with the ACLU of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild-Massachusetts chapter.

Cooper urged the court to "convey a message to the community and the world at large" that Boston should continue to be our nation's "City on the Hill" and an exemplar of what a better society can be.

It's one of those days when those of us who dedicate our lives to defending liberty can say: I love the law.

(P.S. While I enjoy all the hate mail posted on the comments, I do wish you'd get your facts right: I have defended the free speech rights of the Tea Party activists here in Boston -- and would do so again. Keep those cards and letters coming.)

_______________

In the wee hours of the morning Tuesday, the NYPD forcefully raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Liberty Plaza in downtown Manhattan.

Reports from the scene included allegations that the police used excessive force to remove demonstrators, their belongings, and their tents.

At least seven credentialed journalists were arrested, their city-issued press passes cast aside like meaningless garbage.

The People’s Library, stocked with more than 5,000 publications, was demolished and the books trashed in a dumpster, along with people’s personal possessions, tents, and blankets.

Hundreds were arrested for refusing to leave the park.

Even though Mayor Bloomberg said he was proud of the raid, he ordered it executed in the dead of night while most people on the East Coast were sleeping.

In response, the ACLU of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild, led by cooperating attorney Howard Cooper, this afternoon filed a suit asking the courts to prevent this kind of midnight raid from happening to the peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights to speech, petition, and assemble at Dewey Square here in Boston.

Today, more than 400,000 women serve in the Armed Forces. They serve at every level and in every branch of the military, and they dedicate years of their lives--and sometimes their lives--to protecting the country we love.

Why then are US servicewomen treated as second-class citizens when it comes to access to certain health care services?

Under current law, our military health care program denies servicewomen coverage for abortion care when they become pregnant as a result of rape. That's why Congressional leaders for reproductive choice have introduced a measure in both the House and Senate known as the MARCH for Military Women Act (Military Access to Reproductive Care and Health). MARCH gives Congress an opportunity to right this wrong.

Ten years ago, Congress passed the so-called Patriot Act with virtually no public debate about what this extraordinary grant of power to the executive branch would mean for our democracy.

So what have we learned in a decade?

One lesson is that the Patriot Act hasn’t been about getting the bad guys – namely, terrorists or even criminals. The government had the power to do that without the Patriot Act. Instead, the Patriot Act gives the government the power secretly to collect and forever keep information on ordinary people who are not suspected of doing anything wrong.

And that is a threat to all of us.

Whoever gave the green light for Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis to have his police troops charge the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the middle of the night and, under the cover of darkness, to cuff and arrest a bunch of Veterans for Peace, legal observers, medics, students, laborers and unemployed people needs to get better advice.

Occupy Boston and its nationwide counterparts are about as pure an expression of political speech as one can imagine. Citizens from around the country, increasingly frustrated at their inability to be heard in Washington, are gathering peaceably in Boston and other key cities around the nation in an effort to have their say in the future of our nation. Until last night, Boston provided one of the models for defending peaceable political protest. (In fact, I also applauded Boston for welcoming Tea Party protesters to Boston recently.)

So, what changed?

Freedom-loving people should take heart: Peaceful assembly and protest is alive and well in the cradle of liberty.

Occupy Boston, the local offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, is gaining support on a daily basis, with students, nurses, labor unions, and others joining the non-violent protest in Boston’s Dewey Square.

I applaud the protestors for flexing their rights to demonstrate. Use it or lose it.

I also applaud Mayor Menino’s recognition of these rights and the Boston Police Department’s respect in dealing with the protestors thus far. Boston’s treatment of the Occupy Movement stands in sharp contrast to NYC’s, where nearly 1,000 people have already been arrested, and many have beaten and pepper sprayed.

The NYPD’s heavy-handed policing had the effect of inspiring more disgruntled citizens to join the movement. A Harvard Crimson story about students joining the movement quotes a typical student who joined Occupy Boston in response to repressive police tactics in New York:

“I had some friends who were in Occupy Wall Street in New York, and they got mace in the face. That actually ended up on video. They were arrested, they were put in handcuffs for three hours, detained for three hours. It was bad ... I was so angry about it, and then Occupy Boston began.”

Tea Party members, perhaps feeling out done in the protest-the-government department, reportedly are miffed that the police are not arresting people at Dewey Square for lacking a permit. Really? Gee, I thought the Tea Party folks wanted less government repression, not more of it. Go figure.

I’m also amused by the folks who critique the Occupy Movement for not having clear goals and ready solutions to the problems of corporate greed and growing economic inequalities.

But as the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart so aptly noted: “America cannot expect a bunch of disenfranchised park-dwellers to come up with a solution to its economic woes — they have a political ruling class to do that."

Nothing tests our humanity - or our democracy - more than how we respond to tragedy. Our hearts go out to the families of victims of crimes. We are horrified when we learn the details of their suffering.

But emotions alone are not a sound basis for making policy, particularly when it comes to keeping our communities safe and free. Recent events involving immigrants accused of committing terrible crimes is the most recent case in point.

One such tragedy was the death of a local Milford man, Matthew Denice, who was hit and dragged by a pickup truck driven by an Ecuadorian man, who police say was driving drunk and has since been charged with vehicular homicide. The other needless death involved a man from Brazil who police say brutally murdered his girlfriend.

Rather than respond to these terrible crimes by raising awareness of the danger to our communities posed by drunk driving and domestic violence, three local sheriffs, various legislators and Senator Scott Brown instead opted for political gamesmanship. Calling a press conference, the Sheriff sought to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment and score media points by blaming “illegal immigrants” as a whole for these heinous crimes.

They even pleaded for the Feds to bring in a federal fingerprint dragnet that will scoop up immigrants and U.S. citizens alike into a new federal biometric database (see my recent “On Liberty” blog about why all Americans should oppose this bad idea.)

In so doing, Sen. Brown, the legislators and the sheriffs put a chance to score political points before public safety.

ACLU of Massachusetts Legislative Counsel Gavi Wolfe wrote the following guest blog.

Pop quiz: What little-known holiday, being celebrated across the world today, honors essential freedoms central to a healthy democracy? Why, it’s International Right to Know Day, of course!

Ok, so you’ve never heard of it.

Despite that minor detail, its core concept--freedom of information--affects the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. It’s the basic notion that we have the right to find out about the workings of our government--how well it’s working (and how it might be improved), whether the Big Dig was built safely, how government jobs and contracts are handed out, whether we’re using “enhanced interrogation techniques” that run afoul of the Constitution, or how police are trained to respond to suspicious birdwatchers.

ACLU of Massachusetts communications director Christopher Ott wrote the following guest blog.

Richard Collins didn't "tell"--but he still paid a heavy price under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), the US military's policy against lesbian and gay members of the armed forces. DADT finally becomes history today.

The Pentagon honorably discharged Richard Collins, a decorated Air Force staff sergeant, after someone spotted a kiss he gave his boyfriend off-base, and not in uniform. Ordinarily, service members involuntarily discharged after more than six years of service get separation pay to help them get started again in civilian life. Under DADT, however, the Defense Department adopted an obscure, arbitrary policy of only providing half the separation pay to those discharged because they were gay.

Now that DADT is gone, the people it harmed deserve to be treated fairly. An ACLU class action suit challenging this policy gets a hearing in federal court on Thursday. As Collins wrote the other day in Stars and Stripes, "for someone who has just had his military career destroyed, that money makes a big difference... We gave our all in serving this nation. The Pentagon should not give us half in return."

ACLU of Massachusetts staff attorney Laura Rótolo wrote the following guest blog.

Some days it’s hard to believe that “Secure Communities” or S-Comm, the Obama administration’s principal immigration enforcement initiative, is still alive. It wasn’t enough that communities across the United States have been loudly and visibly organizing against it. It wasn’t enough that representatives of Congress questioned the honesty with which it was rolled out. It wasn’t enough that cities and states, including Boston and Massachusetts, have been saying they don’t want the program. And it wasn’t enough that the Homeland Security Inspector General is investigating.

Yesterday, the task force created by John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to advise him on S-Comm, issued its report. Morton had created this task force in response to growing criticism of the program but had stacked the deck so that he was sure to win. He put people on the task force whom he believed would be on his side, including police chiefs and state homeland security officials, but failed to put a single community leader on it. He gave the committee just a few short weeks to write a report, and he even narrowed the mandate to one question--what to do with people picked up for traffic violations. Even with all of this, yesterday, Morton and the Obama administration got a resounding vote of no-confidence.