Freer today? Safer?

I don't know why Republican enthusiasts often get all hot and bothered about being called fascists.

The governments they produce look, walk and quack like the duck.

link

A Muslim chaplain imprisoned for 76 days in solitary confinement and then cleared in an espionage investigation will receive an honorable discharge, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The Army approved the request from Capt. James J. Yee on Monday, a year and three days after Yee was arrested at Guantanamo Bay, carrying what authorities alleged were classified documents.

"It's amazing to think just over a year ago, he was behind bars ... and being vilified throughout the country," attorney Eugene R. Fidell said. "On a certain level, justice has triumphed."

Yee has declined to comment on the case, but in his letter of resignation to the Army last month he expressed resentment.

"Those unfounded allegations -- which were leaked to the media -- irreparably injured my personal and professional reputation and destroyed my prospects for a career in the United States Army," Yee said.

And in Republican-controlled New York City:

Republican National Convention protesters told a City Council hearing on Wednesday that the police department engaged in a series of abuses, including using unnecessary force against them, refusing to allow them medical attention and arresting people who weren't taking part in demonstrations.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said hundreds of the 1,800 arrests made during the four-day convention were unjustified.
Twenty percent of the people who were arrested were not demonstrators, they were bystanders," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU....

Several people told the committee they had been unfairly arrested and mistreated.

Father Johnathan Harris, a member of the War Resisters League, a pacifist group, said he and others were arrested during a protest for no apparent reason. He said he asked a police officer whether he was being detained and on what charge.

"The officer said, `I don't know what the heck's going on,"' Harris said.

Simone Levine, a representative from the National Lawyers Guild, which monitored many of the demonstrations, said 15 of her group's legal observers were arrested during protests, including one who was hit by a police club and another who was thrown to the ground.

Civil rights attorney Norman Siegel said one man who'd just bought a pastrami sandwich at a delicatessen stepped outside, was arrested and was held for 27 hours. Other arrestees, including a man who had his jaw broken, a pregnant woman and a man who suffered a collapsed intestine were denied medical attention, he said.

"This needs to be discussed instead of being denied and minimized," he said.

The NYCLU also questioned the widespread use of police videotaping of protesters, which it said might be a violation of city law, and the detainment of some demonstrators for nearly three days at a pier building they claimed was contaminated.

Lawyers for the protesters alleged during the convention that people were detained to keep them off the streets the night of President Bush's acceptance speech. The police department denied that accusation, but a judge ordered the city to release hundreds of detainees within hours.

The fact is, this is not the America I was taught about in school, and it's time to get these people out. Their contempt for people is repulusive.