Mother Jones has a feature article warning internet users about the amount of information Google collects about them.

Internet privacy? Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don't assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware.

....the question is not whether Google will always do the right thing--it hasn't, and it won't. It's whether Google, with its insatiable thirst for your personal data, has become the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast informational honey pot that attracts hackers, crackers, online thieves, and--perhaps most worrisome of all--a government intent on finding convenient ways to spy on its own citizenry.

700 miles of border fence will not keep out the undocumented, according to experts.

Building a fence to try to secure the U.S. border with Mexico is impractical and would simply lead illegal immigrants to cross elsewhere, according to former Customs and Border Protection agents and other experts.

Former U.S. Customs agents who have hunted drug traffickers in the mountains and deserts of around the Arizona border said the new barrier would be defeated by the rugged terrain. "You can't build a wall across the mountains of southern Arizona, as much of the terrain is inaccessible even on foot," veteran agent Lee Morgan told Reuters as he stood near the proposed route of the fence, east of the town of Douglas.

The Democrats in the Senate fail us once again. After Thursday's approval of the torture - denial of habeas bill, Friday they voted to approve the House bill to build a 700 mile fence across the border.

House Republicans, fearing a voter backlash, had opposed any approach that smacked of amnesty and chose instead to focus on border security in advance of the elections, passing the fence bill earlier this month. With time running out, the Senate acquiesced despite its bipartisan passage of a broader bill in May.

Congress also passed a separate $34.8 billion homeland security spending bill that contained an estimated $21.3 billion for border security, including $1.2 billion for the fence and associated barriers and surveillance systems.

Politics suck. No one has a spine. Everything is about compromise. If the minority party wants any of their bills to advance to a hearing or a vote, they have to capitulate to the party in power on their issues. I learned this first-hand many times, the last time being on a visit to Congress in 2003 to advocate for the Innocence Protection bill. Congressman Sensenbrenner's aide made it clear that if Democrats didn't cave on a bill he wanted -- the Feeney Amendment which would increase federal sentences -- neither the IP bill, nor any bill the Democrats sought to advance, would ever make it to a vote. They controlled the calendar. Congressman Bill Delahunt and Sen. Patrick Leahy's staff confirmed this.

I wondered then and I wonder now, who has the stomach for this? I certainly don't. I'm trained as an advocate, fight to the finish, if you lose, at least you fought the good fight.

A vote on the bill to build a 700 mile fence across 1/3 of the U.S. - Mexico border could come on Friday. That's because Sen. Bill Frist has attached the bill on detainee treatment to the border fence bill.

The Senate is likely to vote first on the detainee portions, and then take up the border bill.

If Democrats agree, the Senate would debate detainee treatment first and a vote on the border fence could happen Friday. Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he believed he and Frist could work something out.

Several key Republicans remain opposed to the border bill. The Senate passed a version of it calling for 370 miles of fence, but the House didn't act on it. Instead, the House wants the Senate to pass its bill, H.R.6061.

What a colossal waste of money. Does Congress think it grows on trees? Let's forget about border bills and punitive immigration bills and enact more important legislation. Here is the Democrat's wish list:

The immigration laws we have had on the books since 1996 are the toughest in 100 years. The last thing we need are more punitive ones.

Ask Gurdev Gill.

The expanding definition of an aggravated felony raises a troubling question: is the government's immigration policy of "one strike, you're out" tipping the scales of justice, and ruining people's lives? If ever there was someone symbolic of the American dream, it's Gurdev Gill.

The 1988 deportation law was changed in 1996.

This law as written in 1988 was meant to deport only felons who'd committed serious crimes like murder or drug trafficking. But in 1996 Congress broadened the law. And worse, they made it retroactive. Which means now immigration authorities can look back twenty, thirty, even forty years -- and virtually any minor offense, like drunk driving, even shoplifting, is enough to get a longtime resident deported.

by TChris

The First Amendment protects both religious and political speech. Preachers are free to encourage their congregations to take sides on the moral issues of the day, but religious organizations risk losing their tax exempt status when they advocate political support for a particular party or candidate. LA Times columnist Steve Lopez asks why the IRS is investigating the All Saints Episcopal Church, where Rev. George Regas imagined a debate between John Kerry, George Bush and Jesus, while the agency ignores the New Revelation Missionary Baptist Church, just two miles away.

[Pastor William Turner Jr.] has proudly boasted to President Bush about converting 80% of his congregation from Democrat to Republican.

If Turner is entitled to preach the church's position on gay marriage and stem cell research, shouldn't Regas be permitted to apply the teachings of Jesus to tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, to a war that slaughters the innocent, and to the torture of prisoners?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

It seems almost a made up story, but apparently true:

A Maine couple accused of tying up their 19-year-old daughter, throwing her in their car and driving her out of state to get an abortion were upset because the baby's father is black, a Maine sheriff said Tuesday.

Katelyn Kampf, who is white, told Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion that her mother "was pretty irate at the fact that the child's father was black, and she had made a number of disparaging remarks about that," he said. The Kampfs were apparently taking their daughter to New York to try to force her to get an abortion there, police said.

It seems to me that the pro-choice position could not be exemplified more clearly. A nineteen year old woman (we can quibble about parental notification later) has a right to privacy and liberty. This right includes the control of her own body. The apparent attempt by the Kampfs (no jokes please) to impose their will on Katelyn Kampf is precisely what the right to privacy is about. It is not pro-abortion - it is pro-liberty, pro-choice. It was and is Katelyn Kampf's right to decide about her pregnancy, no one else's. Not the state's. Not the parents. Not the husband/boyfriend. Just hers. If she chooses to carry to term, then her choice must be respected. If she chooses to terminate her pregnancy, that too is her choice. That is her right. Her fundamental right to privacy. Not her fundamental right to have an abortion. Her right is the right make her own private decision and have it be respected. By everyone.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Attorney General Gonzales appeared before Congress yesterday to urge them to require Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep content longer for child porn investigations. See Gonzales Urges Preserving Internet Records on NYTimes.com. Just in time for the election. It is just a cover for something greater?

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Congress should require Internet providers to preserve customer records, adding that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography. Testifying to a Senate committee, Mr. Gonzales acknowledged concerns that such legislation might be overly intrusive and encroach on privacy rights. But he said the government's lack of access to such information was the biggest obstacle to deterring child pornography.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Overnight I received an e-mail from the Youth Policy Action Center: Say "No" to More Student Searches /
Posted by: Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy is asking for your help to stop a bill that would further curtail the rights of students in public schools all across the country. The so-called "Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006" (H.R. 5295) would make it easier for teachers and school administrators to search students' lockers and bags for drugs and other contraband. SSDP needs your help to make sure that this bill never becomes law.

H.R. 5295 would allow school officials to search dozens or even hundreds of students based on the mere suspicion that just one student brought drugs to school. This kind of justification allowed police officers to storm a high school in Goose Creek, SC, in 2003, forcing dozens of students to the ground and pointing guns directly at their faces during a misguided raid in which no drugs were found.

This bill is nothing more than another attack on the constitutional rights of young people by the federal government. Students should never have to check their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door.

Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) reports that the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue has lost its tax-exempt status.

by TChris

It took little time after 9/11 for neocons to start repeating the mantra, "Everything changed after 9/11," a phrase that the traditional media uncritically reported. But many things didn't change: the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the American values of privacy and liberty, and the need for a governmental system of checks and balances. The LA Times reports on the things that did change:

[Law enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities] increased the tapping of Americans' phone calls and voice mails. They watched Internet traffic and e-mails as never before. They tailed greater numbers of people and into places previously deemed off-limits, such as mosques.

They clandestinely accessed bank and credit card transactions and school records. They monitored travel. And they entered homes without notice, looking for signs of terrorist activity and copying the contents of entire file cabinets and computer hard drives. ...

In the five years since the attacks, the scope of domestic surveillance has steadily increased, according to interviews with dozens of current and former U.S. officials and privacy experts.

Be careful what you do with your old cell phone when you upgrade to a new one. Even if you think you have deleted your e-mails and text messages, you haven't.

Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think.

A popular practice among sellers, resetting the phone, often means sensitive information appears to have been erased. But it can be resurrected using specialized yet inexpensive software found on the Internet.

Happily, I never caught the Crackberry addiction and don't even own one. Nor do I e-mail or text message on my cell phone. Even so, after reading this article, I'm glad I've never sold an old cell phone or computer. Better to dismantle them and destroy their innards.