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When someone gets a traffic citation, one alternative to reduce the price of the fine is to take a protective driving program. On the other hand, with one of these simple programs without receiving a citation, not simply will this program remind you of a few simple safe driving practices you might have forgotten, however it may also provide you with a discount on your auto insurance plan, with specific companies.

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From the point of view of civil libertarians, the Obama administration has been an exercise in frustration, with every hopeful sign followed by failures to live up to its own promises. The ACLU has just issued a report (pdf) , titled “Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration,” which focuses on this pattern of inconsistency. “The administration has displayed a decidedly mixed record,” explains ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romaro, “resulting, on a range of issues, in the very real danger that the Obama administration will institutionalize some of the most troublesome policies of the previous administration — in essence, creating a troubling ‘new normal.’” As summarized in a press release announcing the report, “President Obama has made great strides in some areas, such as his auspicious first steps to categorically prohibit torture, outlaw the CIA’s use of secret overseas detention sites and release the Bush administration’s torture memos, but he has failed to eliminate some of the worst policies put in place by President Bush, such as military commissions and indefinite detention. He has also expanded the Bush administration’s ‘targeted killing’ program.” The report is divided into seven sections covering transparency, torture and accountability, detention, targeted killing, military commissions, speech and surveillance, and watch lists. The most striking areas of the report, however, are those which focus not on torture or secret prisons but on less-publicized recent actions by the Obama administration. Story continues below… The transparency section, for example, emphasizes that the program of “targeted killing” of suspected terrorists has been “shrouded in secrecy,” and that despite a FOIA request by the ACLU, “the CIA has refused even to confirm or deny whether it has records about the program.” It also points out that rather than living up to Obama’s promise as a candidate that he would make sure whistleblowers got protection, “the administration has been prosecuting them.” “It has charged Bradley Manning,” the report notes, “a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst, for allegedly leaking a video showing the killing of two Reuters news staff and several other civilians by U.S. helicopter gunships in Iraq. (Reuters had spent nearly three years trying to obtain the video through FOIA; now that the video is in the public domain, it is clear that there was no basis for withholding it.)” “We urge the administration to recommit itself to the ideals that the President himself invoked in his first days in office,” the report urges. “Our democracy cannot survive if crucial public policy decisions are made behind closed doors, implemented in secret, and never subjected to meaningful public oversight and debate. It cannot survive if the public does not know what policies have been adopted in its name.” Another striking revelation appears in the section on surveillance: “Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has invested border agents with the authority to engage in suspicionless searches of Americans’ laptops and cell phones at the border; Americans who return home from abroad may now find themselves confronted with a border agent who, rather than welcoming them home, insists on copying their electronic records — including emails, address books, photos, and videos — before allowing them to enter the country. (Through FOIA, the ACLU has learned that in the last 20 months alone, border agents have used this power thousands of times.)” And the report blasts the use of watch lists of suspected terrorists as “a disaster that too often implicates the rights of innocent persons while allowing true threats to proceed unabated.” “Rather than reform the watch lists the Obama administration has expanded their use and resisted the introduction of minimal due process safeguards to prevent abuse and protect civil liberties,” the report charges. “The result is an unconstitutional scheme under which an individual’s right to travel and, in some cases, a citizen’s ability to return to the United States, is under the complete control of entirely unaccountable bureaucrats relying on secret evidence and using secret standards.” “There can be no doubt that the Obama administration inherited a legal and moral morass, and that in important respects it has endeavored to restore the nation’s historic commitment to the rule of law,” the report concludes. “But if the Obama administration does not effect a fundamental break with the Bush administration’s policies on detention, accountability, and other issues, but instead creates a lasting legal architecture in support of those policies, then it will have ratified, rather than rejected, the dangerous notion that America is in a permanent state of emergency and that core liberties must be surrendered forever.”

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The Obama administration is launching a special coverage program for uninsured Americans with medical problems this week, the most ambitious early investment of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. But here’s the catch: Premiums will be a stretch for many, even after government subsidies to bring rates close to what healthier groups of people are charged. And $5 billion that Congress allocated to the program through 2013 could run out well before that. The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan will begin accepting applications in many states on Thursday, with coverage available as early as Aug. 1, an administration official said Tuesday. Consumers can check availability in their states on a new website, healthcare.gov, starting Thursday. The goal is for all states to be enrolling people by the end of the summer. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the administration’s announcement later this week. Story continues below… “I would enroll as soon as you can,” said Stephen Finan, policy director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. “These rates are going to be as affordable as consumers can get these days, particularly for a high-risk individual.” Premiums will vary from state to state. In California, for example, the cost for a 50-year-old is estimated at $575 a month, with a $1,500 annual deductible and 15 percent co-insurance. Premiums in states with lower medical costs could be around $400 a month. “That’s still quite a lot of money, so there will be some folks who struggle to afford that,” said Marian Mulkey, health reform director for the California HealthCare Foundation. “But it’s going to mean a big jump in access.” The insurance program is a stopgap fix for the most vulnerable until 2014, when core provisions of the new health care law take effect. At that time, insurance companies will be barred from turning away people in poor health, low- and middle-income households will get government assistance with premiums, and most Americans will be required to carry coverage. To qualify for the temporary program, a person must have a pre-existing medical condition and must have been uninsured for six months or longer. The main beneficiaries are likely to be the self-employed and their families, and those who work for small employers that don’t provide coverage. Only U.S. citizens and legal residents qualify. Millions fit that description, and technical experts who advise Congress and the administration have repeatedly warned that the White House underestimated the cost. The Congressional Budget Office said last week it would take probably another $5 billion to $10 billion to fully meet the demand, about 700,000 people who would potentially sign up by 2013. Medicare economists earlier estimated the program would sign up 375,000 people this year, but run out of money around the end of 2011. That would be an embarrassment for Obama, since the program is a centerpiece of his plan for putting the nation on a path to coverage for all. “There’s a political concern of whether expectations are being raised that are unreasonable, and may not be able to be fulfilled,” said health economist Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare for President George H.W. Bush. Launching the new program in about three months has not been easy. Most states have opted to administer their own plans, but about 20 have asked Washington to run the program directly for them. To make matters more confusing, most states already operate their own high-risk insurance pools, covering about 200,000 people in total. However, the state plans tend to charge significantly higher premiums than the new federal plan, and many offer skimpier coverage. Consumers will not be able to switch from state to federal coverage — unless they’re willing to risk going six months without health insurance. Worries about unfunded costs prompted many states to shy away from taking on the new program directly, even though Washington has promised to cover the cost. “Part of the reason those 20 states deferred to the federal government was a concern about the financing,” said Richard Cauchi, health program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “State budgets are in such tough shape.” It’s unclear what the administration and its supporters will do if the money runs out. “Once you have a significant number of people in each state who gain the benefit of the new coverage, it will be a difficult decision for a member of Congress to say that needed funds will not be provided,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. ___ Online: National Conference of State Legislatures http://tinyurl.com/2va89tj Powered by Mochila

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The Pentagon’s spy unit has quietly begun to rebuild a database for tracking potential terrorist threats that was shut down after it emerged that it had been collecting information on American anti-war activists. The Defense Intelligence Agency filed notice this week that it plans to create a new section called Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records, whose purpose will be to “document intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and counternarcotic operations relating to the protection of national security.” But while the unit’s name refers to “foreign intelligence,” civil liberties advocates and the Pentagon’s own description of the program suggest that Americans will likely be included in the new database. FICOR replaces a program called Talon, which the DIA created in 2002 under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as part of the counterterrorism efforts following the 9/11 attacks. It was disbanded in 2007 after it emerged that Talon had retained information on anti-war protesters, including Quakers, even after it was determined they posed no threat to national security . DIA spokesman Donald Black told Newsweek that the new database would not include the more controversial elements of the old Talon program. But Jeff Stein at the Washington Post reports that the new program will evidently inherit the old Talon database. Story continues below… “Why the new depository would want such records while its parent agency no longer has a law enforcement function could not be learned,” Stein reports. “Nor could it be learned whether the repository will include intelligence reports on protest groups gathered by its predecessor.” The Pentagon’s notice states that the database will collect “identifying information such as name, Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data.” As only US residents have Social Security Numbers, it appears the program is being designed at least partly to contain domestic information. Newsweek cites two unnamed US officials as suggesting that the new program essentially echoes the old one. When CIFA, the DIA division running Talon, was disbanded in 2008, “many of its personnel and some of its functions were transferred” to the new DIA unit running the new database program. The new program will be housed “in the same office space that CIFA once occupied, in a complex near suburban Washington’s Reagan National Airport.” Mike German, a former FBI agent now working with the ACLU, says “Americans should be just as concerned” about the new database as the previous one under the Bush administration. “It’s a little hard to tell what this is exactly, but we do know that DIA took over ‘offensive counterintelligence’ for the DoD once CIFA was abandoned,” he told the Post ’s Stein. “It therefore makes sense that this new DIA database would be collecting the same types of information that CIFA collected improperly.”

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The Republican governor of Virginia has quietly changed a state law last month that would teach gun safety to elementary school students, mandating that it use a gun safety program run by the NRA. The National Rifle Association exerts considerable influence in American politics, and has recently won a series of victories in the US Congress. Democratic leaders have been reluctant to challenge the powerful lobbying group, in part because they rely on a more conservative bloc of Democrats for their control of the legislative branch. Now, Virginia Gov. Bob McConnell has delivered the NRA another coup: a monopoly on teaching gun safety to schoolchildren from kindergarten to fifth grade. With the stroke of a pen — or a keyboard — the governor eliminated a provision in a new law allowing gun safety classes which would have given educators the power to choose between an NRA-sponsored program and one offered by the group that promotes McGruff the Crime Dog. The liberal blog ThinkProgress caught the governor’s move in a blog post, which was reported by the Associated Press in April. ThinkProgress’ Amanda Terkel writes : Story continues below… Earlier this year, the Virginia legislature passed a bill allowing public schools to “offer gun-safety education to students in kindergarten through fifth grade.” Included in the legislation was a provision directing these gun safety programs to use materials from the National Crime Prevention Center as well as the NRA: The curriculum guidelines shall incorporate, among other principles of firearm safety, accident prevention and the rules upon which the Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program offered by the National Rifle Association or the program of the National Crime Prevention Center is based. There is no National Crime Prevention Center. However, there is a National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) — the group behind McGruff the Crime Dog. But when McDonnell signed the legislation, he didn’t insert the NCPC’s name. Instead he offered this change: Strike or the program of the National Crime Prevention Center. A spokesman for the governor, when announcing that he was striking the provision allowing the NRA to operate the state’s sole elementary school gun safety class, said that he’d deleted reference to the other group because “the council doesn’t have a current stand-alone gun-safety program.” The spokesman also referenced the fact that the name of the non-NRA group was incorrect in the bill. The liberal anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence protested McConnell’s move in a little-noticed blog posting earlier this month, ThinkProgress notes. A “study published in the late 1990s by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) noted that Eddie Eagle was like ‘Joe Camel with feathers,’ pointing out that: ‘The primary goal of the National Rifle Association’s Eddie Eagle program is not to safeguard children, but to protect the interests of the NRA and the firearms industry by making guns more acceptable to children and youth… The hoped-for result is new customers for the industry and new members for the NRA.’” The mother of a Virginia woman who survived the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre told Fox News in April that the move was a “freebie” to a “special interest group.” “I personally don’t think firearm safety has a place in the schools,” Lori Haas, who is also a spokeswoman for Virginia’s Center for Public Safety, told the network. “That’s up to the parents to teach that at home.” “For the general assembly and governor to dictate to the board of education in writing curriculum is not their area,” she added. It’s a “freebie to a special interest group.” The website for the NRA child gun safety program says their goal “isn’t to teach whether guns are good or bad, but rather to promote the protection and safety of children.”

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Despite claims that the US military’s private spy operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been shut down, the program continues to run and is feeding information to the Pentagon “on an almost daily basis,” the New York Times reported Saturday. Additionally, the private operation has ballooned from its original goal of collecting general information about the war-torn region and is now carrying out potentially illegal covert spy operations, the Times states. In March, an investigative report by the Times uncovered the existence of a $22-million contract to outsource the collection of intelligence about the tribal areas of Pakistan. The news sparked controversy, with many observers concerned the US was handing over some of its most sensitive activities to private, unaccountable contractors. According to that report, a US official identified as Michael Furlong organized a network of private contractors to run the intelligence operation. The original contract, which was signed in early 2009 and tasked contractor Lockheed Martin with managing the project, allowed the private spy ring to gather “atmospheric information” — general, broad data about the political and social circumstances in the area. But that original mandate appears to have been expanded into a full-scale intelligence-gathering and covert activities operation. The Times reports: Story continues below… The boundaries separating “atmospherics” from what spies gather is murky. It is generally considered illegal for the military to run organized operations aimed at penetrating enemy organizations with covert agents. [D]efense officials with knowledge of the program said that contractors themselves regarded the contract as permission to spy. Several weeks ago, one of the contractors reported on Taliban militants massing near American military bases east of Kandahar. Not long afterward, Apache gunships arrived at the scene to disperse and kill the militants. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a review of the program following its revelation in March. A Pentagon official told the Times the review is still ongoing. The paper reports it has been told the private spy ring will be shut down at the end of May, but there is speculation the Pentagon is dragging its feet on ending it because it finds the program’s information useful. The private contractor network was born in part out of frustration with the CIA and the military intelligence apparatus. There was a belief by some officers that the C.I.A. was too risk averse, too reliant on Pakistan’s spy service and seldom able to provide the military with timely information to protect American troops…. The Times also raises concerns about Furlong, a civilian with ties to the military. Furlong has “a history of delving into outlandish intelligence schemes, including an episode in 2008, when American officials expelled him from Prague for trying to clandestinely set up computer servers for propaganda operations,” the Times reports. In April, it was revealed that Furlong is under investigation for possibly having taken federal funds from an official program to study the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and used it to fund his covert spy ring. The use of private contractors in war zones has become a contentious issue. While the use of security contractors such as Blackwater has been well documented, the Furlong spy ring appears to be the first documented case of a private, for-profit intelligence operation run for the US military. Even some defense officials are worried about “private citizens running around a war zone, trying to collect intelligence that wasn’t properly vetted for operations that weren’t properly coordinated,” the Times reports. In February, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced the “Stop Outsourcing Security Act.” If passed, the act would force the United States to phase out its controversial use of private security contractors in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district’s ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure. State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district’s Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people. Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said. “It’s just like the old South, and it’s long past time that we prohibited it,” Horne said. Brewer’s signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation’s toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated. Story continues below… The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group. The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group. For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors. Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He’s been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that “Republicans hate Latinos.” District officials said the program doesn’t promote resentment, and they believe it would comply with the new law. The measure doesn’t prohibit classes that teach about the history of a particular ethnic group, as long as the course is open to all students and doesn’t promote ethnic solidarity or resentment. About 1,500 students at six high schools are enrolled in the Tucson district’s program. Elementary and middle school students also are exposed to the ethnic studies curriculum. The district is 56 percent Hispanic, with nearly 31,000 Latino students. Sean Arce, director of the district’s Mexican-American Studies program, said last month that students perform better in school if they see in the curriculum people who look like them. “It’s a highly engaging program that we have, and it’s unfortunate that the state Legislature would go so far as to censor these classes,” he said. Six UN human rights experts released a statement earlier Tuesday saying all people have the right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage, they said. Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman didn’t directly address the UN criticism, but said Brewer supports the bill’s goal. “The governor believes … public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people,” Senseman said. Arce could not immediately be reached after Brewer signed the bill late Tuesday. Powered by Mochila

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