ACLU challenges government's no-fly list -- 10 years late

News that the American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit to challenge the federal government's "no-fly list" should be regarded as both good news and bad news for U.S. residents concerned about Washington's growing authority over their lives. That it has taken so many years to assemble a credible constitutional challenge to what assuredly was an immense power grab by federal authorities speaks quite loudly about the passivity of most Americans and their lack of involvement in governing their country. To be sure, the circumstances that led the feds to closely monitor airplane travel after the Sept. 11 attacks were unprecedented and outrageous. But the emergency that arguably justified the imposition of such a draconian regulatory regime -- barring U.S. citizens from traveling on airplanes based on possibly incorrect but still secret information -- has surely passed. And that it took a citizens group to mount that challenge, and not any of the array of federal agencies whose taxpayer-funded mission is to defend the U.S. Constitution, is nothing short of disgraceful. Even the lawsuit filed Wednesday tacitly accepts the legality of the restrictions, since it argues on behalf of 10 residents that the rules are unconstitutional because they do not permit people on the list to challenge their inclusion, according to the Reuters international news service. An ACLU lawyer told Reuters that the lawsuit was the first filed on behalf of legal U.S. residents challenging the no-fly list system. A lawsuit by a non-citizen seeking to get removed from the list is still pending, Reuters said. "The Constitution does not permit such a fundamental deprivation of rights to be carried out under a veil of secrecy and in the absence of even rudimentary process," the suit filed Wednesday says. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., and names Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, Reuters said.

FBI pins blame for anthrax attacks on Army microbiologist

News that the FBI had wrapped up its long-running investigation into the anthrax mailings that terrorized the United States in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 is, apparently, not reassuring to anybody. Friday's announcement set off a storm of criticism because some government experts were still studying the evidence collected in what have called the largest investigation in FBI history. U.S. Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-New Jersey), a physician, said the closure of the case was premature and laid out only "barely a circumstantial case" against a U.S. Army scientist, according to the New York Times. "Arbitrarily closing the case on a Friday afternoon should not mean the end of this investigation,” Holt said, since the National Academy of Sciences was still studying the FBI's scientific work, and since the bureau had accused the wrong man earlier in the probe. The case catapulted into the national spotlight just a week after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington when anthrax-contaminated letters began arriving at the offices of news organizations and two senators. Five people were killed and 22 more, including five postal workers, were exposed to the contamination, and offices on Capitol Hill and the U.S. Supreme Court had to be evacuated. The U.S. Postal Service spent hundreds of millions of dollars to decontaminate its offices, the Times said. But the FBI concluded in a 92-page report that Dr. Bruce Ivins, who even helped work on the investigation at the Army’s biodefense laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md., was solely responsible for the contaminated mailings, based on coded DNA messages discovered in them. Ivins killed himself in 2008 after months of being followed and questioned by agents. But Ivins' colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fredrick, Md., said the scientist was not capable of such an act, and doubted whether he had the capability of producing the powder in his lab, the Times said. The report also revived memories of the FBI's earlier incorrect pursuit of Dr. Steven Hatfill, a former Army scientist who was kept under 24-hour surveillance in 2002 and 2003. Hatfill eventually sued the government for violating his privacy and settled for $4.6 million, the Times said.

Shadowy environmental group knocks down radio towers

In a world grappling with international terrorism and cowardly attacks that kill hundreds or thousands of people in an instant, it's easy to react with outrage but not nearly as simple to craft a proportionate reaction to Friday's toppling of two radio station towers north of Seattle by a radical environmental group. The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for knocking the KRKO-AM towers down with a stolen bulldozer in Snohomish County, Washington, according to Cable News Network. One of the towers was 349 feet tall. The ELF, which has been involved in other high-profile attacks in the Northwest, issued a statement claiming the towers were destroyed because they caused higher cancer rates and harmed wildlife, as well as interfering with phone lines. "When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet," said Jason Crawford, a spokesman for the group. No one has been killed in any of the group's attacks. But federal and local law enforcement officials were not exactly tolerant. The Snohomish County Sheriff's Department turned the case over to the FBI's Seattle office for a formal investigation. KKRO manager Andy Skotdal said the tower complex was "flattened like a pancake" and would take at least three months to repair. "There's quite a bit of destruction to the antenna and it will probably take at least three months to get it back up and operational again," station manager Andy Skotdal said, according to CNN. If caught, the ELF people responsible for the attack will no doubt face prosecution. A crime is a crime. But there's a difference between crimes against property and crimes against people.