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November 2006
by Marco Rosaire Rossi
For almost a decade, the crime rate in the United States has been steadily declining. The reasons for this decline are varied, but most criminologists have pointed to the continuous increase in prisons and jail populations as the primary cause. The rationale is that we have less crime because we have fewer criminals on the street. However, something important happened in the last two years that has forced many criminologists to question this theory: in almost all major cities in the country, crime rates -- especially violent crime rates -- have gone up despite the fact . . .
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October 2006
Marie Crystiana Smith, a former WIPworker passed away peacefully of natural causes September 8 in Lacey.
She was born in Bemidji MN to Daniel and Emma (Hendrickson) Schulz April 10, 1916. A graduate of St Cloud Teachers' College, she taught in rural one-room schools before moving to the West Coast during WWII.
In Seattle she met Vernon Smith, a merchant marine who was part of the war effort to supply ships in the Pacific Theater. They married December 1, 1944 and settled in West Seattle to begin their family.
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June 2006
by Kay Oss
From Olympia Civil Liberties Resource
Olympia Civil Liberties Resource is an Olympia-based organization working to defend the civil liberties of all citizens -- particularly activists exercising their constitutional rights. OCLR seeks to educate the public regarding current threats to civil liberties, and to act as a general resource for activists. Our website is http://www.olycivlib.org . Our email address is olycivlib@riseup.net
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May 2006
by Melissa Roberts
It should come as no shock that the U.S. government has perfected the art of deception while simultaneously criminalizing dissent. The agenda is clear: the U.S. government intends to protect those with wealth and power, and will do so by any means necessary. The past year alone has revealed a campaign which includes: warrantless wiretapping; Presidential "signing statements" contradicting laws passed by Congress; and secretive "declassification" of information with intent to harm high-level dissenters. In short, those in power whose interests revolve around short-term profits . . .
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February 2006
by Drew Hendricks
A lot of criticism has been committed to print since it was revealed that President Bush authorized warrantless wiretaps on United States citizens. Many Senators and legal experts have taken issue with the President's explanation that the targets of these warrantless wiretaps are terror suspects speaking with persons outside the United States. These Senators and experts point out that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established for just such a purpose, and has only denied a handful of requests in the two and a half decades of its existence. But their shock and . . .
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January 2006
by Marjorie Cohn
Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order.
-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004, Buffalo, New York.
In an assertion of executive power that rivals the excesses of the McCarthy era of the late 1940's and 1950's, and the dreaded COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) of the 1950's and 1960's, George W. Bush's National Security Agency has been secretly spying on United States citizens without warrants for the last three years.
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March 2005
by Tom Wright
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." --George Orwell
Nearly a year has passed since the lurid photographs of Abu Ghraib first surfaced, briefly capturing the attention of the nation. Even to a public saturated by every imaginable form of transgression, the bizarre images of "Hooded Man," the piles of naked bodies and sordid sexual domination stood out, whether because they seemed like demons lurching from the Puritan unconscious, or just because they were so baldly at variance with the fairy tales through which much of the nation . . .
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