Here's yet another reason to impeach Alberto Gonzales (remember I speak for me only on this, not Talk Left); from Ralph Neas and People for the American Way:

Americans learned today that the F.B.I. has been abusing its authority under the Patriot Act to obtain private information about American citizens without judicial approval. So says a report issued today by the Department of Justice’s inspector general.

At issue are “national security letters”—an executive branch mechanism that was greatly expanded by the Patriot Act and essentially allows the government to circumvent the longstanding requirement that warrants be obtained before individuals’ private data, such as telephone records, bank statements, or Internet data can be examined without those individuals’ approval. According to the inspector general’s report, the F.B.I. has been obtaining national security letters inappropriately or even illegally and the result has been an unwarranted intrusion into Americans’ privacy.

“This scandalous abuse of power is exactly why we opposed the Patriot Act in the first place,” said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way, a national nonpartisan civil rights and liberties organization with more than one million members and activists. “Our nation’s founders made the judiciary an independent check on the executive branch of government for a reason. They knew that without checks and balances, it is far too easy for government officials to abuse their power to the detriment of our constitutional rights. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now. The Patriot Act undermines checks and balances, and this is the consequence.”

The Washington Post reports that an Inspector General's review of FBI secret requests for personal records found 22 instances where internal DOJ and FBI regulations were violated.

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters." The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.

In 2005, the FBI issued more than 19,000 National Security letters (background here.) Inspector General Fine said the abuse could be more widespread than the 22 cases, which were found during a review of 293 such requests.

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The feds have gone and done it again, this time in New Bedford, Mass.

Dozens of young children were stranded at schools and with baby sitters after their parents were rounded up by federal authorities who raided a leather goods maker suspected of hiring illegal immigrants, authorities said Wednesday.

Immigration officials said 327 of the 500 employees of Michael Bianco Inc., mostly women, were detained Tuesday by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal aliens.

About 100 children were stuck with baby sitters, caretakers and others, said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts.

"We're continuing to get stories today about infants that were left behind," she said. "It's been a widespread humanitarian crisis here in New Bedford." (my emphasis)

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Beginning in 2010, documents obtained from Whitehall show that Britian plans to fingerprint all kids from age 11 up and store the prints in a secret database for immigration purposes.

The plans are outlined in a series of “restricted” documents circulating among officials in the Identity and Passport Service. They form part of the programme for the introduction of new biometric passports and ID cards.

Opposition politicians and privacy campaigners warn that the plans show ministers are turning Britain into a “surveillance society”.

Think it can't won't happen here?

An enlightened legislator in Florida has introduced a bill to ban the phrase "illegal alien" from state documents.

"I personally find the word 'alien' offensive when applied to individuals, especially to children," said Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami. "An alien to me is someone from out of space."

She has introduced a bill providing that: "A state agency or official may not use the term 'illegal alien' in an official document of the state." There would be no penalty for using the words. In Miami-Dade County, Wilson said, "we don't say 'alien,' we say 'immigrant.'"

The better phrase, as I've used here on TalkLeft for years, is "undocumented resident." I hope this bill passes...and spreads.

The U.S. Government says there are 500,000 torture survivors living among us. California has Torture Survivor Treatment Centers, and today marks No Torture.Org's beginning of its awareness campaign, which will run through June 26.

The U.S. government estimates that 500,000 torture survivors live in the United States. University of the Pacific’s School of International Studies in Stockton, Calif. is in the process of developing baseline population data for torture survivors in California. The research will be conducted under the supervision of Professor Jean-Marie Stratigos, a former United Nations humanitarian affairs officer.

“Survivors are a hidden population in our state and many obstacles prevent them from receiving adequate healthcare,” said Kathi Anderson, executive director of Survivors of Torture, International. “We hope that this campaign will build knowledge among both medical professionals and the general public.”

It's the largest awareness campaign to date in the U.S. Here are the points they would like to get across:

American tourists with old misdemeanor records are being turned away at the Canadian border -- after a stop at secondary immigration checks.

Take the case of 55-year-old Lake Tahoe resident Greg Felsch. Stopped at the border in Vancouver this month at the start of a planned five-day ski trip, he was sent back to the United States because of a DUI conviction seven years ago. Not that he had any idea what was going on when he was told at customs: "Your next stop is immigration.''

Felsch was ushered into a room. "There must have been 75 people in line," he says. "We were there for three hours. One woman was in tears. A guy was sent back for having a medical marijuana card. I felt like a felon with an ankle bracelet.''

More than two years ago, the Boston police fired a pepper spray projectile into the eye of a college student during the celebration of a Red Sox victory. The student died. The incident convinced some police agencies to stop using the pellet gun as a crowd control device. Boston suspended its use of the weapon, and a 2005 commission report faulted the city for buying the pellet guns and for failing to train officers to use them safely.

This week, Boston finally found a responsible use for the pellet guns.

The department's 13 pellet guns, bought before the 2004 Democratic National Convention, will be melted down and recycled into sewer caps.

Almost a year ago, our nation's immigrants marched in cities across America, rightly proclaiming, "We are America."

The New York Times takes a look at what's happened in the year since the marches.

• border enforcement
• federal raids
• local crackdowns
• gutted due process
• a web of suspicion
• the bureaucratic trap
• the rise of hate

The Times opines:

Hopelessly fixated on toughness, the immigration debate has lost its balance, overlooking the humanity of the immigrant. There is a starkly diminished understanding that hospitality for the stranger is part of the American ethos, and that as much as we claim to be a nation of immigrants, we have thwarted them at every turn. We must do better.

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The new police chief of Bunnell, Florida likes to drive around town and introduce himself to people. And if those people are black, he likes to arrest them. To his way of thinking, they must be drug dealers.

On Feb. 7, Cecil Hubbert, a 21-year-old resident of Palm Coast who grew up in Bunnell, was walking to his aunt's house with Nateshawn Royal, his sister's boyfriend. Both men are black. Hubbert says Bunnell Police Chief Armando Martinez pulled up and at first said he was just introducing himself as the new police chief in town. ... Immediately, Hubbert says, the chief then accused him and Royal of being drug dealers prowling in "a known drug area," had them arrested on a charge of loitering and prowling, and confiscated the cash they carried. No drugs were found on them.

So much for probable cause. Being black in a "known drug area" is cause enough in Bunnell.

What holds 400 illegal immigrants from 30 countries, 170 of them children? The T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center, for which the Corrections Corporation of America receives $2.8 million per month.

A jail by any other name is still a jail. A detention camp is still a detention camp. That the prisoners wear scrubs instead of orange jumpsuits or pink underwear doesn't change a thing.

The Government invited the media today. Surprise, for the first time there was pizza on the menu. How humane. They brought in plastic potted plants to warm up the place. The Government says its more like a community college than a jail.

What a farce. Can the "students" leave? Of course not. It's a jail.

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I am all in favor of amnesty for undocumented residents. President Bush's plan is neither amnesty nor open borders, but in response to critics who say it is, Karl Rove reportedly gave this ridiculous justification for Bush's plan at a women's luncheon this week:

According to a congressman's wife who attended a Republican women's luncheon yesterday, Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president's amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

The Corner's Mark Krikorian responds:

There should be no need to explain why this is an obscene statement coming from a leader in the party that promotes the virtues of hard work, thrift, and sobriety, a party whose demi-god actually split fence rails as a young man, a party where "respectable Republican cloth coat" once actually meant something. But it does seem to be necessary to explain.

Rove's comment illustrates how the Bush-McCain-Giuliani-Hagel-Martinez-
Brownback-Huckabee approach to immigration strikes at the very heart of self-government. It is precisely Rove's son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they're young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It's not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don't want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.

[hat tip Raw Story.]