Weeks after the FBI raided their home, two Chicago
activists, Stephanie Weiner and Joe Iosbaker, stood before a crowd of about 150
Chicagoans gathered outside the Dirksen Federal Building and declared during a
press conference they, and twelve others who were subpoenaed, have no intention to go before any grand juries and participate in a “fishing expedition.”

This story originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

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The coal industry, especially corporations like Massey Energy, have an interest in using the agencies of counterterrorism to target activists for conspiring to commit acts of “domestic terrorism.” Corporations like Massey Energy have lobbied for support from federal law enforcement so that they can be protected from the threat posed to them by a movement to end mountaintop removal.

Some bullet points from the Times’s story on how to celebrate Banned Books Week…

Glen Greenwald’s post on how Senator Feingold has been one of the few to stand up consistently for Civil Liberties and the Constitution.

An easy-to-use online database of personal information is catnip to law enforcement officials.

There is a power in the unity that we all shared when we all grieved and were hurt by September 11th. But, the problem is that unity inevitably has grown into a unity of fear when what Americans really need is a unity of reconciliation. There is a need for Americans to find the courage to not forget but forgive. And, unfortunately, there is still an amount of reflection needed because this nation is still somewhere between anger and depression when it comes to handling the grief experienced.

Carol Rosenberg, a journalist for the Miami Herald and one of the few journalists who continue to follow operations and proceedings at the Guantanamo Bay prison reports “an emotionally ill detainee still being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was first recommended for release by the Pentagon in 2004.”

A good amount of documentation on the involvement of psychologists in the torture and abuse of detainees or “terror suspects.” And, a new study provides even more revelations on the involvement of physicians making it increasingly clear that medical professionals put limits on ethical standards they were expected to follow in order to help the CIA interrogate detainees

…there is a very real danger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration.