is america becoming more or less...

Are Americans losing any of their freedoms?

Since the country's birth, Americans have always considered their country to be "the land of the free." The Declaration of Independence set forth the American creed: "All men are created equal." Jefferson famously declared that all people are "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights," including "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The American Constitution included a Bill of Rights designed to limit the power of the government and to ensure that the rights of the individual could not be trampled upon by the tyranny of the majority.

As American society has changed, the freedoms and rights of its citizens have changed, too. Certainly, women and people of color have more freedom and power than they did centuries - and even decades - ago. Social and economic progress has provided many people a fighting chance to pursue the American dream.

However, in the 21st century, many Americans have grown frustrated and fearful as technological and societal changes have seemingly made it more and more difficult for the individual to protect his/her privacy. Some people believe that "political correctness" is limiting our ability to speak freely or to express controversial ideas, and others claim that the size and scope of government destroys the ability of each person to exercise free will.

Former President Ronald Reagan claimed: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

Reagan's words suggest that it is our duty as Americans to vigorously protect our freedoms. Still, the question remains, what, if any, freedoms are currently threatened?

As you read the articles and documents in this packet, consider whether or not our freedoms are under attack. Read skeptically - be a filter not a sponge.

Make sure to read for understanding, summarizing key ideas and points made by each author. Once you understand what the author is saying, evaluate his/her points, noting whether you agree or disagree with the ideas presented.

When we are finished with this article packet, you will pick a topic related to American freedoms to research more fully. You may choose to research a right that you believe is under threat, or you may choose to research a right that you feel is stable or expanding. All of the articles in this packet are designed to get you thinking about threats to rights. They are NOT designed to push a particular agenda. You can certainly argue that the threats described in these articles are not

genuine if you wish. You may also argue that restraining any of these rights is proper and appropriate.

"The Bill of Rights: A Transcription." National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records

Administration, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2014

Amendment ICongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment IIA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment IIINo Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IVThe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment VNo person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VIIn all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VIIIn Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIIIExcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IXThe enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment XThe powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

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Turley, Jonathan. "10 Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free." Washington Post.

The Washington Post, 13 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that thepresident can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

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Indefinite detention

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)

Arbitrary justice

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)

Warrantless searchesThe president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)

Secret evidence

The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.

Secret court

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The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)

Immunity from judicial review

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)

Continual monitoring of citizens

The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)

Extraordinary renditions

The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.

These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.

Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”

Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”

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And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.

Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

MAIN CLAIM / ARGUMENT:

Supporting evidence or argument (paraphrase or a quote)



My opinion or reaction: My opinion or reaction: My opinion or reaction:

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AFTER READING: Complete a two-paragraph summary and evaluation of the article. Follow the format modeled by your teacher.

Two-Paragraph Summary and Evaluation

Paragraph One

1. Clear topic sentence – identifies claim2. Includes at least three pieces of

evidence used to support the claim3. One or more blended quotation4. Ends with a concluding sentence

Paragraph Two

1. Clear topic sentence – identifies your opinion

2. Explains why you agree or disagree3. Includes an example to explain your

opinion4. Addresses the other side5. Ends with a concluding sentence

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5 Outstanding effort.

The student obviously proofed these paragraphs, focusing on neatness and accuracy. Exceeds all requirements.

4 Good effort. The product is neat and legible. Meets all requirements.

3 Adequate effort. The product is legible. Meets most requirements.

2 Weak effort. The student only completed some of the task.

0-1 The student completed little to none of the task.

Starnes, Todd. "Baker Forced to Make Gay Wedding Cakes, Undergo Sensitivity Training, after

Losing Lawsuit." Fox News. FOX News Network, 03 June 2014. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.

A family owned bakery has been ordered to make wedding cakes for gay couples and guarantee that its staff be given comprehensive training on Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws after the state’s Civil Rights Commission determined the Christian baker violated the law by refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, in Lakewood, Colorado was directed to change his store policies immediately and force his staff to attend the training sessions. For the next two years, Phillips will also be required to submit quarterly reports to the commission to confirm that he has not turned away customers based on their sexual orientation.

Think of it as reverse conversion therapy (or straight man’s rehab) so that the state can mandate diversity through conformity.

The plight of Jack Phillips and his family is something I write about in my new book, “God Less America.” His story of religious persecution is one of many that I document.

Nicolle Martin, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, called the ruling Orwellian and said they are considering an appeal.

“They are turning people of faith into religious refugees,” Martin told me. “Is this the society that we want to live in – where people of faith are driven out of business?”

Martin said it was “truly frightening” that Phillips will be forced to submit quarterly reports to the government disclosing whether he turned away any wedding cake business.

“There will be some reporting requirements so that Jack can demonstrate that he doesn’t exercise his belief system anymore –that he has divested himself of his beliefs,” she said.

He will also be required to create new policies and procedures for his staff.

“We consider this reporting to be aimed at rehabilitating Jack so that he has the right thoughts,” Martin said. “That’s offensive to everything America stands for.”

Phillips, who is celebrating his 40th year in business this week, told me he’s not going to create any new policies.

“My old ones are pretty adequate as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I don’t plan on giving up my faith and changing because of that.”

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The controversy started in 2012 when a gay couple asked Phillips to make their wedding cake. Phillips politely declined, saying he could not make a cake promoting a same-sex ceremony because of his faith. He offered to make them any other baked item they wanted.

Charlie Craig and David Mullins filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission alleging they were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. For the record, same-sex marriage is against the law in Colorado.

The commission affirmed a civil court’s ruling that the bakery cannot discriminate against persons in a public place based on sexual orientation.

“You can have your beliefs, but you can’t hurt other people at the same time,” Commission Chairwoman Katina Banks told The Denver Channel.

ACLU attorney Amanda Goad, who heads up the organization’s LBGT group, heralded the ruling.

“Religious freedom is undoubtedly an important American value, but so is the right to be treated equally under the law free from discrimination,” she said in a statement.

No, my dear. Religious freedom is a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT.

“Everyone is free to believe what they want, but businesses like Masterpiece Cakeshop cannot treat some customers differently than others based on who they are as people,” Goad added.

David Mullins, one of the two men who brought the lawsuit against Phillips, was thrilled with the ruling.

“What should have been a happy day for us turned into a humiliating and dehumanizing experience because of the way we were treated,” he said in an ACLU statement.

Who knew butter cream frosting could cause such angst?

“No one should ever have to walk into a store and wonder if they will be turned away just because of who they are,” Mullins added.

But that’s not what Phillips did. He was more than willing to make them a cupcake.

“Jack doesn’t turn people away,” Martin told me. “There are just some events that he won’t lend his artistry to.”

The ACLU accused Masterpiece Cakeshop of considering itself above the law.

“Everyone who shops in our stores and conducts business in our state should be treated with equality and dignity,” attorney Paula Greisen said in an ACLU of Colorado statement. “That’s what this ruling was about.”

No ma’am, it was not. That ruling was about bullying – bullying Christians.

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“There’s a collision between religious liberty and the gay rights movement,” Martin told me.“This collision is coming to the forefront almost every day. Somebody is losing their liberty, their job or both.”

But thank goodness for someone like Jack Phillips, who refused to capitulate to the government’s demands.

“My God is bigger than any bullies they’ve got,” he said. “I don’t worry about it. I honor my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and be true to what He wants me to do.”

And the Civil Rights Commission is going to have a mighty hard time trying to “rehabilitate” Phillips and his staff.

“My 87-year-old mom works here and she says she’s not being rehabilitated,” he said.Martin said the Alliance Defending Freedom will “continue to stand with Jack against overreach and tyranny by the state.”

“Jack has gone out on a limb and taken this stand – and not capitulated to the government’s demands,” she said. “That speaks volumes about him.”

And should the highest court in the land force Jack to do the bidding of homosexuals?

“There’s civil disobedience,” Phillips told me. “We’ll see what happens. I’m not giving up my faith. Too many people have died for this faith to give it up that easily.”

Meanwhile, the bullying tactics of the militant gay rights community have not hampered the bakery’s bottom line. They’ve gotten so much business from the sales of cookies and brownies, they’ve temporarily stopped making wedding cakes.






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Turley, Jonathan. "Shut up and Play Nice: How the Western World Is Limiting Free

Speech." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2012. Web. 29 Oct. 2014

Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.

In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called “Innocence of Muslims” appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.”

It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.”

A willingness to confine free speech in the name of social pluralism can be seen at various levels of authority and government. In February, for instance, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Martin heard a case in which a Muslim man was charged with attacking an atheist marching in a Halloween parade as a “zombie Muhammed.” Martin castigated not the defendant but the victim, Ernie Perce, lecturing him that “our forefathers intended to use the First Amendment so we can speak with our mind, not to piss off other people and cultures — which is what you did.”

Of course, free speech is often precisely about pissing off other people — challenging social taboos or political values.

This was evident in recent days when courts in Washington and New York ruled that transit authorities could not prevent or delay the posting of a controversial ad that says: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”

When U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said the government could not bar the ad simply because it could upset some Metro riders, the ruling prompted calls for new limits on such speech. And in New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority responded by unanimously passing a new regulation banning any message that it considers likely to “incite” others or cause some “other immediate breach of the peace.”

Such efforts focus not on the right to speak but on the possible reaction to speech — a fundamental change in the treatment of free speech in the West. The much-misconstrued

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statement of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that free speech does not give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theater is now being used to curtail speech that might provoke a violence-prone minority. Our entire society is being treated as a crowded theater, and talking about whole subjects is now akin to shouting “fire!”

***Speech is Hateful

In the United States, hate speech is presumably protected under the First Amendment. However, hate-crime laws often redefine hateful expression as a criminal act. Thus, in 2003, the Supreme Court addressed the conviction of a Virginia Ku Klux Klan member who burned a cross on private land. The court allowed for criminal penalties so long as the government could show that the act was “intended to intimidate” others. It was a distinction without meaning, since the state can simply cite the intimidating history of that symbol.






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Caplan-Bricker, Nora. ""The Strongest Evidence We Have That Background Checks Really

Matter"" New Republic. N.p., 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.

The Strongest Evidence We Have That Background Checks Really MatterThe Strongest Evidence We By Nora Caplan-Bricker

During last year’s battle over gun control, the pro-gun side did more than passionately invoke the Second Amendment: They claimed that gun control doesn’t work. Sometimes even the reformers, surveying the limited impact of legislation from the 1990s, feared the same. But a new study on universal background checks makes the strongest case yet that the policy saves lives.

“This is probably the strongest evidence we have that background checks really matter,” said Philip Cook, a gun expert at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

The study, from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, found the murder rate in Missouri jumped 16 percent—an additional 55 to 63 murders a year—after the repeal in 2007 of a state law that required anyone purchasing a handgun to obtain a permit showing they had passed a background check. (Though federal law mandates background checks by licensed dealers, private dealers don’t have to perform them in all but 14 states.) "This study provides compelling confirmation that weaknesses in firearm laws lead to deaths from gun violence," said Daniel Webster, the study’s lead author, in a statement.

Since this is only a single study, "it's just suggestive," warned David Hemenway of Harvard's School of Public Health. It is "another piece of evidence that is consistent with the bulk of the literature, which shows where there are fewer guns, there are fewer problems... But you want eight more studies that say background checks really matter."

And the study isn’t perfect: Missouri also enacted a “stand your ground” law in 2007, creating some challenges in disentangling the effects. But Cook said he is confident that background checks played a major role because the authors tracked an increase in guns that went directly from dealers to criminals—exactly the scenario background checks are designed to prevent. The study also notes an uptick in guns “purchased in Missouri that were subsequently recovered by police in border states that retained their [permit-to-purchase] laws.”

The findings at least begin to fill a gap in the research that last year’s debate exposed. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group, found that the shortage of data stems from a shortage of funding—especially federal funding. In 1996, the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby pushed Congress to eliminate the $2.6 million appropriation that underwrote the Center for Disease Control’s research on firearm injuries. President Barack Obama ended the funding freeze last year, and Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence

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Research Program at the University of California, Davis, told NBC that private funding for gun research has also spiked with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and other high-profile acts of violence.

So why hasn’t the new finding gotten much attention? “I don’t mean to diminish the value of the study, but I don’t think it could have made a difference last year, and I don’t think it will now,” said Tom Diaz, a former policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center. He called the finding “very clear,” but added: “The debate is just unhinged from the facts.”

As the study notes, 89 percent of Americans, and 84 percent of gun owners, supported universal background checks in 2013, before this study bolstered the argument for them. But that’s just one more reason for Congress to pick up the issue again—that, and a new analysis last week which found there have been 44 school shootings since the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.






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Good, Chris. "The Case Against Gun Background Checks." ABC News. ABC News Network,

10 Apr. 2013. Web. 29 Oct. 2014

With the fate of gun control as muddled as ever, the best hope for congressional compromise centers on the most popular policy move Washington could make: universal background checks.

The public supports other measures, but among all the limits on gun ownership that Democrats have advanced since the December shooting in Newtown, Conn., background checks enjoy the most support.

A Quinnipiac University poll last week showed 91 percent of respondents in favor of “requiring background checks for all gun buyers,” compared with slimmer margins, 59 percent and 58 percent, for banning “assault weapons” and magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, respectively.

To many, the idea of preventing criminals from buying guns seems like a no-brainer, regardless of whether they’re stopped at gun stores, as current background checks have successfully done, or at gun shows or from private sellers, where background checks aren’t required. Still, Congress is hung up.

Some Republicans have balked at universal background checks. The National Rifle Association opposes them. Why?

Here are a few arguments that have been offered up against the most popular move Congress could make on gun control. Underpinning most of the arguments is a similar idea, usually from conservatives: that universal background checks aren’t worth an expansion of government power.

Few prosecutions of denied gun buyers. Created under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 and implemented in 1998, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System allows licensed gun sellers to check with the FBI, as required by law, before making a sale. While background checks have prevented tens of thousands of unlawful gun sales each year, opponents have said that the government doesn’t prosecute enough attempted buyers who are turned away. “The law right now is a failure the way it’s working,” National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has said. According to Justice Department statistics supplied by the office of Sen. John Cornyn, out of more than 76,000 denials in 2010, 62 were referred for prosecution, and 13 resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts. Cornyn and LaPierre argued this point at a February hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on guns.

There are already enough gun laws. At the same hearing in February, NRA’s LaPierre argued that more robust prosecution of criminals for gun crimes would be more effective than instituting universal background checks. “The fact is, we could dramatically cut crime in this country with guns and save lives all over this country if we would start enforcing the 9,000 federal laws we have on the books,” LaPierre said.

They’re an invasion of privacy. As opponents of gun control warn about privacy issues, background checks are tangled up with another proposal, that records of gun sales must be kept. In a March 22 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, six GOP senators, led by Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, warned that they would oppose any measures that involved “government surveillance.” While it’s not entirely clear what policy those senators had in mind, the American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns about both records and background checks. “You just worry that you’re going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected,”

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Chris Calabrese, an ACLU privacy lobbyist, told The Daily Caller last week. Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has made it clear that a “national gun registry” is illegal and won’t be part of any Democratic gun bill.

They might be too broad. Another concern raised by the ACLU’s Calabrese was that, if a “transfer” of guns is defined too broadly, people with good intentions could unwittingly become criminals. “You worry about, in essence, a criminal justice trap where a lawful gun owner who wants to obey the law inadvertently runs afoul of the criminal law. … They don’t intend to transfer a gun or they don’t think that’s what they’re doing, but under the law they can be defined as making a transfer,” Calabrese told The Daily Caller. The Heritage Foundation has said it is wary of any bill that would ban loaning guns to friends at gun ranges or on hunting trips.

Criminals don’t submit to background checks. This argument sounds a bit tautological, but the NRA argues that most criminals don’t get their guns from stores, but on a black market. “My problem with background checks is, you’re never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks,” the NRA’s LaPierre said at the February hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Gun shows … are not a source of crime guns, anyway. It’s 1.7 percent.” The Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, notes that this figure comes from Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, who cites a 2004 survey of incarcerated gun-violence convicts about where they got their guns, in his new book “Reducing Gun Violence in America.” A Johns Hopkins spokeswoman said the figure is probably higher, as some “friends and family members” who give guns to criminals (40 percent of inmates surveyed said they obtained their guns this way) likely get them from gun shows in the first place. The Brady Center has argued that surveys of prisoners underestimate how many criminals get their guns from private sellers and gun shows, and the center has chronicled cases in which criminals bought guns from private sellers and used them to kill people.

The stories of criminals who bought guns that would be prevented by universal background checks are, in many cases, heartbreaking. In 2009, the Brady Center released a report entitled “No Check, No Gun,”disputing many of the cases made against universal background checks and chronicling instances in which they would have saved lives.

By 2009, the group argued, background checks had blocked more than 1.6 million prohibited purchasers from buying guns.






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AFTER READING: Complete a two-paragraph summary and evaluation of one of the four previous articles (pgs. 9-17). Follow the format modeled by your teacher.


Paragraph One



Paragraph Two




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Weber, Pete. "6 Reasons You Should, and Shouldn't, Freak out about the NSA Data-

mining." The Week. N.p., 13 June 2013. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.

Amid all the strong, clashing opinions over the leaked National Security Agency surveillance secrets, there's one thing everybody says they agree on: It's great we can finally have a long-overdue conversation about how we should balance national security with civil liberties.As The Week's Keith Wagstaff and others have noted, though, it's hard to have that conversation. For one thing, many of the most knowledgeable people on the national security end aren't allowed to discuss what they know — and the rest of us, as Wagstaff says, "don't even know what we don't know about the NSA." Also, many of the loudest voices are less interested in conversing than in advancing their own beliefs. (Shocking, right?)

But it's also true that we're not even on the same page when it comes to broad themes like privacy. "Privacy is hard to define and even harder to defend," says Rebecca J. Rosen at The Atlantic. Most Americans seem to be on board with the NSA's data-mining operations, but it depends on how you ask the question:

On Sunday, Rasmussen reported that 59 percent of likely voters oppose the government "secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans for national security purposes regardless of whether there is any suspicion of wrongdoing."

But on Monday, Pew found that 62 percent of Americans say it's more important for the government to "investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy." More specifically, 56 percent are fine with the NSA tracking the "phone call records of millions of Americans" and 45 percent are okay with monitoring "everyone's emails and online activities" if that might prevent terrorist attacks.

A new CBS News poll, on the other hand, finds 58 percent of Americans opposed to the government collecting the "phone records of ordinary Americans." At the same time, 62 percent of respondents say they are not concerned that the government might be collecting their own phone records, and a plurality — 46 percent — say the government has the privacy-security balance "about right" (36 percent say Uncle Sam has gone too far, and the other 13 percent, not far enough).

Where does this leave us? Libertarians and civil-liberties advocates are frustrated that not everyone sees the grave danger of giving up freedom for the illusion of security; national security hawks are annoyed that the media and activists are exaggerating (or misunderstanding) the level of NSA snooping; and everybody else is confused, ambivalent, or bored with what seems like yet another shouting match.

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So, here are three cogent arguments for why these NSA revelations are a huge deal you should be very worked up about, and three for why we should all take some deep breaths and relax. We condense, you decide:

THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL

1. Unchecked surveillance threatens our democracy

Perhaps Americans are blasé about the NSA's massive collection of our private data because President Obama, congressional leaders, and intelligence officials "insist that such surveillance is crucial to the nation's anti-terrorism efforts," says The New York Times in an editorial. But that sets up a false choice between liberty and security, and "Americans should not be fooled." The stakes are incredibly high.

The surreptitious collection of "metadata" — every bit of information about every phone call except the word-by-word content of conversations — fundamentally alters the relationship between individuals and their government.... The government's capacity to build extensive, secret digital dossiers on such a mass scale is totally at odds with the vision and intention of the nation's framers who crafted the Fourth Amendment precisely to outlaw indiscriminate searches that cast a wide net to see what can be caught. It also attacks First Amendment values of free speech and association.

In a democracy, people are entitled to know what techniques are being used by the government to spy on them, how the records are being held and for how long, who will have access to them, and the safeguards in place to prevent abuse.... Even if most Americans trust President Obama not to abuse their personal data, no one knows who will occupy the White House or lead intelligence operations in the future. [New York Times]

2. The NSA could come for you

The "unimaginably vast trove of communications data" the NSA is compiling isn't just a digital record of each of us, says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, but "the bigger it gets, the more useful it is in enabling analysts to make predictions." So you may not be concerned that U.S. spooks can, at least theoretically, read the emails of ordinary Britons and Germans — though our allies certainly are — but digital crystal balls are dangerous.

It's one thing if the NSA looks for patterns in the data that suggest a nascent overseas terrorist group or an imminent attack. It's another thing altogether if the agency observes, say, patterns that suggest the birth of the next Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movement. [Washington Post]Even if you've never done anything wrong, this massive collection of your data could come back to haunt you — think IRS audits, but worse, says Danah Boyd at Slate. "A surveillance state will produce more suspect individuals." Why? "Because if someone has a vested interest in you being guilty, it's not impossible to paint that portrait, especially if you have enough data." But even if you aren't worried about being targeted yourself, think about ethnic, religious, and other minorities. "Is your perception of your safety worth the marginalization of other people who don't have your privilege?"

3. The small threat of terrorism isn't worth the cost

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The terrorists didn't win entirely after 9/11, says Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. Most of us still go on "enjoying life's opportunities and pleasures." But "as a collective, irrational cowardice is getting the better of our polity." Even the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history killed only about 3,000 people, Friedersdorf adds — the same number of Americans who die from food poisoning every year, and a tiny fraction of U.S. automobile and gun deaths.

The seeming contradictions in how we treat different threats suggest that we aren't trading civil liberties for security, but a sense of security. We aren't empowering the national-security state so that we're safer, but so we feel safer.... Ceding liberty and privacy to keep myself safe from terrorism doesn't even guarantee that I'll be safer! It's possible that the surveillance state will prove invasive and ineffective....

Civil libertarians are not demanding foolish or unreasonable courage when they suggest that the threat of terrorism isn't so great as to warrant massive spying on innocent Americans and the creation of a permanent database that practically guarantees eventual abuse. Americans would never welcome a secret surveillance state to reduce diabetes deaths, or gun deaths, or drunk-driving deaths by 3,000 per year. [Atlantic]

EVERYBODY CALM DOWN

1. The NSA programs are legal, with checks and balancesWhere to set the legal and procedural limits on electronic data collection is "a worthy debate to have," says The Washington Post in an editorial. But as far as we know, there's nothing illegal about the NSA information gathering, the courts and Congress are part of the program, and there's not "any evidence that the authorities were abused or that the privacy of any American was illegally or improperly invaded."

Just as it is important not to exaggerate the national security risks of transparency, it is also important not to give in to the anti-government paranoia of grandstanding politicians such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who on Sunday invoked the tyranny of King George III to criticize programs that are the result of a checked, deliberative process across three branches of government. Part of what makes this different is that if enough Americans expect more privacy after the debate... their representatives in Washington can act on their behalf. [Washington Post]

2. Terrorism is the real threat to civil liberties

Listening to this debate over the NSA leaks, "I do wonder if some of those who unequivocally defend this disclosure are behaving as if 9/11 never happened — that the only thing we have to fear is government intrusion in our lives," says Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. "Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened," he adds. "But I worry even more about another 9/11." Civil libertarians should, too.

What I cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: "Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again." That is what I fear most.

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That is why I'll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and email addresses — and then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress — to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any email, any phone call, anywhere, anytime. [New York Times]

3. Data mining is better than eavesdropping

Civil libertarians are upset about the massive amount and scope of the data being sucked up by the NSA, but it's not as if "NSA goblins have been studying everyone's phone calls," says William Saletan at Slate. The feds may indiscriminately collect all our phone records, but they have to cross a much higher legal barrier to take a peek at it, Saletan says. "In other words, the rules that most of us would apply at the collection stage — reasonable suspicion, specific facts, court approval — are applied instead at the query stage."

"Civil libertarians are right to worry" that the NSA never deletes those records, says Saletan — that's the point of the database, since phone companies do purge their databases — but if the government doesn't convince us that strong enough protections against abuse are in place, "we don't have to reject the NSA's database. We just have to build in sensible, visible restrictions." For all we know,Saletan says, the NSA has sensible, strong oversight systems in place (see Marc Ambinder's primer at The Week), but "what's absurd is that we don't know, because the government won't tell us."

THREE KEY QUOTES or PARAPHRASES

YOUR OPINION / REACTION

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Cohen, Jon. "Most Americans Back NSA Tracking Phone Records, Prioritize Probes over

Privacy." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 10 June 2013. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.

A large majority of Americans say the federal government should focus on investigating possible terrorist threats even if personal privacy is compromised, and most support the blanket tracking of telephone records in an effort to uncover terrorist activity, according to a new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll.

Fully 45 percent of all Americans say the government should be able to go further than it is, saying that it should be able to monitor everyone’s online activity if doing so would prevent terrorist attacks. A slender majority, 52 percent, say no such broad-based monitoring should occur.

The new survey comes amid recent revelations of the National Security Agency’s extensive collection of telecommunications data to facilitate terrorism investigations.

Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders “acceptable,” while 41 percent call the practice “unacceptable.” In 2006, when news broke of the NSA’s monitoring of telephone and e-mail communications without court approval, there was a closer divide on the practice — 51 percent to 47 percent.

General priorities also are similar to what they were in 2006: Sixty-two percent of Americans now say it’s more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even if those investigations intrude on personal privacy, while 34 percent say privacy should be the focus, regardless of the effect on such investigations.

But with a Democratic president at the helm instead of a Republican, partisan views have turned around significantly. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government’s main concern, an 18-percentage-point jump from early January 2006, when the NSA activity under the George W. Bush administration was first reported. Compared with that time, Republicans’ focus on privacy has increased 22 points.

The reversal on the NSA’s practices is even more dramatic. In early 2006, 37 percent of Democrats found the agency’s activities acceptable; now nearly twice that number — 64 percent — say the use of telephone records is okay. By contrast, Republicans slumped from 75 percent acceptable to 52 percent today.

Compared with a 2002 Pew poll, Democrats are now 12 percentage points more apt to support the government’s monitoring of all e-mails and other online activity if officials say that it might help prevent terrorist attacks. On the flip side, the number of Republicans who say the government should not do this has increased by 13 points.

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What was your reaction to these poll results? What surprised you? What didn’t?

Cohn, Cindy, and Trevor Timm. "The NSA's Warrantless Wiretapping Is a Crime, Not a State

Secret." The Guardian. N.p., 10 July 2012. Web.

This week, cellphone carriers publicly reported that US law enforcement made an astounding 1.3m demands for customer text messages, caller locations, and other information last year. The disclosure has sparked a flood of press coverage and consumer outrage, given much of the information was obtained without a warrant.

But this is only one way that communications and communications records are being monitored by the government. Since 2006, Americans have known that the National Security Agency (NSA), in league with telecommunications carriers like AT&T, has been engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. And since shortly thereafter, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been suing to stop it.

Despite the fact that the mass wiretapping was first exposed by the New York Times in 2005, and subsequently reported on by dozens of news organizations, the government continues to maintain that the "state secrets" privilege should prevent the courts from even the basic determination of whether the NSA's actions are legal or constitutional. This position isn't correct legally, since, in 1978, Congress created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance law specifically requiring the courts to determine the legality of electronic surveillance. But it also isn't the right answer for a country founded on the supremacy of law and the constitutional protections against untargeted searches and seizures.

Now, three longtime NSA employees – William E Binney, Thomas A Drake, and J Kirk Wiebe – have come forward and offered additional inside evidence to support the lawsuit, all of which confirms what an increasing mountain of evidence shows: that the US government is engaging in mass dragnet surveillance of innocent, untargeted American people, as well as foreigners whose messages are routed through the US. As Binney states, "the NSA is storing all personal electronic communications."

Our lawsuits – first, against the telecommunications carriers, and now, against the government directly – also included other undisputed evidence from a former AT&T technician named Mark Klein. He provided blueprints and photographs showing an NSA-installed "secret room" in an AT&T facility less than a mile from EFF's San Francisco office, which experts say siphons massive amounts of internet usage data, phone calls and records flowing through the facility directly to the NSA.

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The surveillance has not stopped, either. In 2009, after President George W Bush left office, the New York Times reported that the NSA was still collecting purely domestic communications of Americans' in a "significant and systemic" way. In 2010, the Washington Post reported:

"Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other types of communications."

And a Wired investigation published in March revealed the NSA is currently constructing a huge data center in Utah, meant to store and analyze "vast swaths of the world's communications" from foreign and domestic networks.

The government's response? A preposterous claim that no court can consider the legality of this surveillance unless the government formally admits it. In fact, the government maintains that even if all the allegations are true, the case should be thrown out under the state secret privilege.

The courts should not participate in this charade, nor should the American people or Congress. We are currently asking the court to rule that the 1978 FISA law supersedes the government's claim of state secrets and requires the court to rule on the legality of the surveillance.

And in Congress, two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been asking the NSA for a year simply for a ballpark figure of how many Americans have had their communications surveilled by the spy agency. The NSA finally responded two weeks ago, claiming it did not have the capacity to find such number. Apparently unaware of the irony, the NSA argued that releasing an estimate of how many people's emails they read would violate Americans' privacy.

Sadly, the UK government seems to be following suit, proposing its own mass surveillance plan, asking Parliament to pass a law allowing the government to monitor every email, text and phone call in the country. But at least in the UK, the plan is now public – after an earlier secret one was inadvertently revealed.

Whether the threat comes from the warrantless surveillance of our cell phone location data by the local police, or the wholesale collection of our emails and phone calls by the NSA, all citizens deserve reasonable privacy in our communications. And we assert the right to hold the government accountable for violating that privacy.





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Dansky, Kara. "Police Militarization Is Out of Control." The New York Times. N.p., 15 Aug.

2014. Web. 2 Nov. 2014.

Kara Dansky, a senior counsel at the ACLU's Center for Justice, is the author of "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing," an ACLU report.

Police departments across the country have unquestionably become excessively militarized. Our year-long investigation found that not only has policing become excessively militarized, but this militarization has occurred with almost no oversight. Further, of the more than 800 paramilitary raids that we studied, almost 80 percent were for ordinary law enforcement purposes like serving search warrants on people’s homes. Only 7 percent were for genuine emergencies, such as a barricade or hostage situation.

Of the more than 800 paramilitary raids that we studied, almost 80 percent were for ordinary law enforcement purposes like serving search warrants on people’s homes.

We also found — perhaps not surprisingly, given the appalling way in which the war on drugs has targeted communities of color — that people of color were more likely than whites to be impacted by paramilitary raids. More often than not, these violent raids are conducted to serve warrants in search of drugs, disproportionately affecting people of color, despite the fact that whites and people of color use drugs at roughly the same rates. And the militarization of policing is dangerous. Paramilitary weapons and equipment escalates the risk of violence and threatens public safety.

The federal government fuels this trend. The police have virtually unlimited access to the U.S. military’s arsenal through what’s called the 1033 program. They also have access to billions of dollars’ worth of funding from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which they can use to buy military equipment from weapons manufacturers, who line their pockets with the spoils. Through these federal programs, hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed to local police departments, which have been stockpiling their arsenals with weapons designed

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http://www.dps.mo.gov/dir/programs/cjle/dod.asp

https://www.aclu.org/billions-dollars-wasted-racially-biased-arrests

https://www.aclu.org/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-policing



for combat.

The situation in Ferguson is disastrous. Let it be a wake-up call to America: The police are here to protect and serve us, not to wage war in our neighborhoods.






Lemieux, Scott. "These Are Your Rights on Drugs." The American Prospect. N.p., 19 May 2011.

Web. 02 Nov. 2014.

This week, the Supreme Court continued its long-standing assault on constitutionalprotections in service of the war on drugs (or, as it might be more accuratelydescribed, the war on some classes of people who use some types of drugs).

Kentucky v. King concerned the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonablesearches and seizures. After witnessing a drug deal on the street, police in Lexington,Kentucky, followed a suspect into an apartment complex. When they entered thebuilding, they smelled marijuana and knocked on the door from where it seemed tobe coming. The police had no idea if the person inside was the suspect they hadtracked into the building, but after they knocked, they heard a nervous scrambleinside. Without possessing a warrant, they broke down the door and arrested theman in the apartment, who, it turns out, was trying to flush his pot stash down thetoilet. He was later convicted.

Warrantless searches of homes are unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendmentexcept in "exigent circumstances," one of which is the imminent destruction ofevidence. However, courts have long held that exigent circumstances cannot becreated by the police themselves, which is why the Supreme Court of Kentuckystruck down the man's conviction.

Despite this, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of thesearch. The police, reasoned Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion, can createexigent circumstances as long as the actions were not themselves constitutionalviolations. The problem with this should be clear. Exigent circumstances should onlycover genuine emergencies like imminent threats of violence or a suspect's escape --not a guy trying to flush his pot stash. In this case, police could have, in keeping withthe Fourth Amendment, obtained a warrant using the smell of drugs as probablecause. Adding to the list of exceptions to justify corner-cutting by police is nothing

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short of irresponsible. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- the only member of thebench to dissent -- noted: "How 'secure' do our homes remain if police, armed withno warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of thingsmoving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?"

That the other eight justices signed on to the majority opinion shows how bipartisana cause the war on drugs has become. It is especially disappointing that PresidentBarack Obama's two appointees -- Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor -- joinedthe majority to dilute Fourth Amendment protections. It is too early to fully evaluateeither justice, but their decision in King vindicates progressives who felt thatObama squandered an opportunity to install committed civil libertarians on theCourt. Ginsburg, 78 and in poor health, is the only justice on the Court with a strongcommitment to civil liberties, and given the likely configuration of the Senate even ifObama wins re-election, it will be difficult to replace her.

The lack of effective advocates for civil liberties on the Court would be less of aproblem if King were an anomaly. In fact, it's but one in a long string of cases wherefederal courts have carved out ad hoc exceptions to constitutional provisions for thesake of the drug war. In a 2006 case, Hudson v. Michigan, for example, the Courtruled that drug evidence obtained as the result of an illegal "no knock" search -- asearch in which law-enforcement officials don't give notice before they break downyour door -- was admissible, despite the fact that illegally obtained evidence isinadmissible under the exclusionary rule. In the 2006 case, police had a warrant butfailed to give adequate notice they were entering; now, they don't even need one.

The Supreme Court has also ignored the Fourth Amendment by allowing lawenforcement to submit government employees and students at public schools tohumiliating, invasive drug tests without individualized suspicion or any evidence ofa drug problem. In one case, the Court upheld random drug searches by CustomsService agents despite the lack of evidence of drug abuse. The decision so infuriatedJustice Antonin Scalia -- not exactly a bleeding heart -- that his dissent decried the"immolation of privacy and human dignity in symbolic opposition to drug use." Thisdescription applies to much of the Court's drug-war-related Fourth Amendmentjurisprudence, including decisions Scalia has written or joined.

Students have been particular victims of the drug-war frenzy. The Court has givenschool administrators wide discretion in conducting searches without probablecause and has also upheld policies that require students to submit to drug testing as acondition of participating in any extracurricular activity. The Court has alsosacrificed the First Amendment in the name of the war on drugs. The same justiceswho believe that corporations have a virtually unlimited right to spend money toelect preferred candidates upheld the suspension of a student for holding aninnocuous banner across from the school reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

As with the broader drug war, civil-liberties violations have a disparate impact interms of race and class. It is generally not wealthy white suburbanites who haveto worry about being stopped and frisked on the streets or having their doorsbroken down. Like the grotesquely harsh sentencing disparity between powder andcrack cocaine possession, this erosion of Fourth Amendment rights has persistedbecause wealthy people are largely insulated from its effects.

All of these civil-liberties violations might be more tolerable if they were part of avaluable and effective policy. But while the drug war has been successful at lockingup huge numbers of people (especially young African American men), it's done little

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to reduce drug use. Alas, the drug war has been far more effective in curbing ourcivil liberties.






AFTER READING: Complete a two-paragraph summary and evaluation of one of the four previous articles (pgs. 25-29). Follow the format modeled by your teacher


Paragraph One



Paragraph Two




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__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ WC = _____







Liptak, Adam. "Supreme Court Rejects Contraceptives Mandate for Some Corporations." The

New York Times. The New York Times, 30 June 2014. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. It was, a dissent said, “a decision of startling breadth.”

The 5-to-4 ruling, which applied to two companies owned by Christian families, opened the door to many challenges from corporations over laws that they claim violate their religious liberty.

The decision, issued on the last day of the term, reflected what appears to be a key characteristic of the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — an inclination toward nominally incremental rulings with vast potential for great change.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, emphasized the ruling’s limited scope. For starters, he said, the court ruled only that a federal religious-freedom law applied to “closely held” for-profit corporations run on religious principles. Even those corporations, he said, were unlikely to prevail if they objected to complying with other laws on religious grounds.

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent sounded an alarm. She attacked the majority opinion as a radical overhaul of corporate rights, one she said could apply to all corporations and to countless laws.

The contraceptive coverage requirement was challenged by two corporations whose owners say they try to run their businesses on Christian principles: Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, which makes wood cabinets. The requirement has also been challenged in 50 other cases, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Hobby Lobby.

Justice Alito said the requirement that the two companies provide contraception coverage imposed a substantial burden on their religious liberty. Hobby Lobby, he said, could face annual fines of $475 million if it failed to comply.

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Justice Alito said he accepted for the sake of argument that the government had a compelling interest in making sure women have access to contraception. But he said there were ways of doing that without violating the companies’ religious rights.

The government could pay for the coverage, he said. Or it could employ the accommodation already in use for certain nonprofit religious organizations, one requiring insurance companies to provide the coverage. The majority did not go so far as to endorse the accommodation.Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined the majority opinion.

Justice Ginsburg, joined on this point by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the court had for the first time extended religious-freedom protections to “the commercial, profit-making world.”

Summarize the ruling of the Supreme Court:

Summarize the dissent to the ruling (Ginsberg, Sotomayor):

"Respect for Religion." NY Daily News. New York Daily News, 1 July 2014. Web. 03 Nov.

2014.

The free exercise of religion trumps an Obamacare requirement that employers must provide health insurance that covers no-cost contraception, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday. This being America, well it had to.

Happily, the ruling eliminated the last vestige of President Obama’s overreaching in imposing the contraception mandate without regard to the conscience-based objections of some employers.

First, political blowback forced the President to pull back from ordering churches and church organizations, such as the Archdiocese of New York, to provide the coverage. Then the President offered an accommodation to religiously affiliated non-profits. Now, the court has properly barred the government from forcing its will on closely held corporations that are steeped in faith.

Broadly speaking, Obama’s mandate is aimed at noble goals. Free access to contraception, including methods for preventing a fertilized egg from developing, can be crucial to the health and lives of women. Where he went wrong was in failing to respect those religions that view some or all of the techniques as morally abhorrent.

Two family-owned businesses, Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialities, a maker of wooden cabinets, objected to being forced to provide health coverage for four pregnancy-prevention methods that they see as abortion. The corporate owners have steeped the companies in their view of Christianity.

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While accepting their sincerity, the Obama administration nonetheless insisted on compliance, arguing, among other things, that profit-making corporations have no claim to religious rights.

In a stunningly simple decision, a five-to-four majority led by Justice Samuel Alito held to first principles: A federal statute bars the government from clashing with religious belief except when the government has a compelling interest to do so and has no less intrusive alternatives.

Alito acknowledged that the government has a compelling interest in promoting women’s health, but he also rightly found that the administration could achieve the aim either by paying for contraception or by offering companies like Hobby Lobby the same accommodation given to religious non-profits. There, insurers pick up the tab.

Easily disposing of the argument that profit-making corporations cannot exercise religious beliefs, Alito concluded that the firms should be treated the same as non-profit corporations, which have a recognized right to free exercise. Wisely, he also concluded that the owners of closely held companies should not be forced to sacrifice their religious liberty simply because they incorporated to do business.

With wild overstatement, the minority led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted that the ruling would lead to an epidemic of religious objections to the law. In fact, the ruling is tailored to small firms with a handful of owners. Few will be able to show deeply held religious belief.

For Obama’s part, the White House said the ruling would endanger the health of women. The claim was predictable cover for having been found in the wrong. It’s up to Obama now to craft a solution that makes access to contraception available without infringing on faith.





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"Editorial: Hobby Lobby Is Another Dubious Victory for Corporate Personhood." Detroit Free

Press. The Detroit Free Press, 30 June 2014. Web. 03 Nov. 2014

There is nothing particularly conservative about Monday’s Supreme Court ruling excusing closely held corporations from a federal mandate to provide female employees with insurance coverage for certain forms of contraception.

Flying under the false colors of religious liberty, the five Catholics in the majority insisted they were acting to protect the constitutional rights of two closely held corporations owned and operated by Christian families.

But their ruling’s practical import was to expand the majority’s already inflated notion of corporate personhood, effectively extending employers’ dominion over the personal lives and health care choices of female employees.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke for wary employees everywhere when she warned, in a dissent joined in whole or in part by three other justices, that the majority’s deference to the corporation’s junk-science views “invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faiths.”

Ginsburg speculated that the majority had “entered a minefield” by inviting judges to second-guess other treatment conventions, asking not unreasonably whether the exemption enshrined in the Hobby Lobby case would “extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus), and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others). The ruling

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was a victory for proprietors of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain and Conestoga Wood Specialties. Both companies are controlled by families who say they endeavor to run their businesses on religious principles and argued that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that they provide contraceptive coverage to employees was a violation of their religious belief that certain forms of contraception are tantamount to abortion.

But what about the companies’ employees and their covered dependents who don’t happen to share the owners’ scientifically dubious views? Monday’s majority ruling subordinates their right of access to the contraceptive coverage that millions of other similarly situated workers enjoy to the religious whims of their employers.

The majority’s casual rejoinder that there are other ways of providing the mandated contraception coverage ignores the burden that the majority’s deference to the religious objections of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood places on employees and taxpayers.Justice Samuel Alito dismissed the government’s assertion that Monday’s ruling would encourage publicly held corporations to evade other public health and safety regulations on religious grounds, speculating that “numerous practical restraints would likely prevent that from occurring.”

But like Justice Ginsburg, we take little comfort in such bland assurances, which may prove as naive as Justice Anthony Kennedy’s confidence that government-mandated disclosure of campaign expenditures would temper the impact of unrestricted corporate political spending. (Today, four years after conservative justices opened he floodgates to such spending in their Citizens United case, its corrupting influence is manifest.)

Now, in yet another ruling that belittles the general public’s stake in a crucial public health issue, the court’s conservatives have again expanded the prerogatives of corporate employers at the expense of ordinary workers. The latter can only hope — or perhaps pray — that the collateral damages arising from that expansion remain limited.






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is america becoming more or less...

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