From reading Campaign Silo and other sources, however, I’m unable to get much of a feel from what’s going on.

In particular, it’s very hard to sequence disparate reports of overlapping events. I’m pretty sure that by the end of the sequence at least a small number of the demonstrators were behaving very badly — blocking streets, attacking a vehicle. It’s impossible to tell whether that was their plan from the start (although in the case of Black Flag, that’s what I would suspect), or whether they lost it, as mobs sometimes do, after being pushed around. Reports of the heavy police tactics came in before reports of the violence, but I’m not confident that proves anything.

At least some of these marchers had a valid permit — although they had to go to federal court to get it, as the city fought them tooth and nail. That history certainly raises the question about the extent to how professionally the police would choose to deal with the march they didn’t want, although it certainly doesn’t answer the question.

Suspicions are not eased by reports of journalists, videographers, and other seemingly innocent parties being detained, gassed and/or arrested.

On the other hand, people barricading streets and smashing things is what police are supposed to arrest people for, and there seems to have some of that.

This NYT report, Broken Windows and Pepper Spray Mark Protests, seems as likely to be accurate as anything when its says,

A large march, which had a permit from local authorities, got underway around 1 p.m. at the Minnesota capitol. Many in the group marched peacefully along the designated route, but not everyone wanted to follow the rules.

Near the start of the march, two women and a young man secured themselves with chains to a car that obstructed traffic.

“I would like a world of direct democracy,” said one man, who gave his name only as Alex, as he was led away by officers.

A larger group of about 200 protesters dressed in black roamed through the streets of downtown St. Paul, shouting and chanting and throwing street signs and concrete planters into the roads. Many of them wore black bandanas across their faces and some wore black balaclavas.

At one point, a police officer grabbed one of the youths. Others wrested him away, then appeared to knock the officer to the ground. On one knee, the officer released an arc of pepper spray that gushed into the air in a thick cloud.

The crowd backed off. A young man scattered bundles of nails secured with duct tape in the street. Over the next 40 minutes or so, the crowd weaved through streets, sometimes pursued or approached by police, but often eluding groups of police officers or sheriffs deputies.

Some members of the group smashed windows while others objected.

“Is this really protesting?” a young woman shouted, apparently in anger.

[Meanwhile…ABC News reports, GOP parties as Gustav rages]

• Breaking: As Police Mass Downtown and 9 More People Are Arrested, Legal Groups File Emergency Motion to Stop Cell and Camera Seizures During RNC
• Habeas Corpus in Ramsey County, MN

The 6 activists arrested during police raids in advance of the Republican National Convention are being held without charge by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, the Minnesota Independent reports.

The arrestees are being held on probable cause holds. These holds give the authorities 36 hours to charge them or let them go. Holds are typically used to give investigators more time to gather evidence before filing formal charges.

Holds allow police to charge first and ask questions later. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Arrest opportunities are unpredictable. A suspect could slip away in the time it takes to turn a solid suspicion into sufficient evidence to file charges. A probable cause hold buys the police some time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

However, it doesn’t take a genius to see how the power to detain people without charge can be abused. For example, unethical police officers have been known to use frivolous holds as quickie jail terms. Piss off the police, spend 3 days in jail—no trial required.

In Minnesota, a probable cause hold can be issued by an officer without review by a judge or a prosecutor. The 36-hour window doesn’t include weekends and holidays. So the protesters arrested over the long weekend could be locked up until Wednesday.

The National Lawyers Guild is asking a judge to review these detentions in the hopes of getting the arrestees out sooner.

Imagine if the police could hold these protesters as long as they wanted.

The United States is holding suspects without charge at Guantanamo—many of whom were apprehended without anything approaching probable cause. Of course, Bush administration asserts the right to put off their trials forever.

Scenarios like these illustrate why habeas corpus is vital to the rule of law.

Other resources:

Locals write about events in the Twin Cities (interactive online issues forums):

• St. Paul
• Minneapolis
• Minnesota Politics

National Lawyers Guild dondemns fabrications of Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher and preventative detention arrests
National Lawyers Guild Press Release

The Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild condemns the coordinated raids carried out by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher against citizens planning to engage in demonstrations at the Republican National Convention.

The primary prop used by Sheriff Fletcher in his afternoon press conference, where he displayed items seized in three early morning raids conducted in south Minneapolis, were three buckets of alleged urine. As shown by inventory sheets left by law enforcement, these buckets were seized at 2301 23rd Avenue South in Minneapolis, MN. Two buckets contain grey water and were being used to flush toilets, to conserve water, in the upstairs bathroom. Both were identified in the inventory as “unidentified liquid.” The third bucket, as shown by inventory sheets, was seized from illegal apartment over a garage in the rear. This apartment has been occupied for several years by a person unconnected to the house occupants or the RNC. No bathroom was in the illegal apartment and urine was collected in a bucket. This was listed as “unidentified yellow liquid” in the inventory sheets.

Bruce Nestor, chapter President of the Minnesota National Lawyers Guild, was present at both locations during the execution of the search warrants. “Police seized political literature, cellphones, computers, cameras, personal diaries, and many common household items such as paint, rope, and roofing nails. These items are present in almost any home in south Minneapolis and are not evidence of a crime,” said Nestor. “Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political. Sheriff Fletcher has staged a publicity stunt, violated constitutional rights, and misrepresented what was seized during the raids,” he said. Another raid was carried out the evening before on a political meeting hall in St. Paul. Inventory sheets for that raid show that no contraband items were taken. Literature, computers, maps of St. Paul, and banners were the vast majority of the items seized.

In addition, during the raids, four persons were arrested without arrest warrants or formal charges. They are being held on probable cause holds for “Conspiracy to Commit Riot,” which will allow their detention until Wednesday, September 3, 2008, at noon. Two other persons were also arrested without warrants, off the streets of Minneapolis, one after she addressed a mass rally of over 200 people at Powderhorn Park. “Conspiracy to commit riot was the charge used against the Chicago 8 after the police riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention,” said Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director the National Lawyers Guild. “Guild attorneys defended those charged in 1968 and we will do so again now.”

Some of these accounts are from reputable sources, including both lawyers who were called in to help clients only to be arrrested an handcuffed, and from a group called Founders of I-Witness, which specializes in filming police behavior and that was at the 2004 GOP Convention and took film that cost New York Police seven figures in settlements. Their account is chilling: Armed police surrounded their house and held them hostage for hours while waiting for a warrant to enter.

The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.

The first thing you do is silence the witnesses. Police are also detaining reporters.

“Food Not Bombs” — so far as I know a peaceful group — was also raided. Jane Hampsher of firedoglake has an account and links to a video..

See Glenn Greenwald for more, with updates.

I believe some people got quite upset when similar tactics were used recently in China to prevent demonstrations at the Olympics.

There is a cancer eating the Republic. This is clearly part of the cure. But is this? We have to hope.

In comparison, it took us two centuries to get to one million lawyers (play Tom Paxton snippet).

I am in no way surprised. This is the same Bill Nelson who voted for torture, after all. (See Senator Bill Nelson Votes for Torture.)

Florida, and the US, deserve better.

(It goes without saying that soon to be one-term Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) also voted to support the ‘if the President says so, it’s legal’ version of liability.)

Update: the vote was 32-66, so they had plenty of company. Cf. Amanda Simon, ACLU Blog, FISA Vote, or How I Lost Complete Faith in Our Legislative Branch.

Vote tally on Dodd-Feingold-Leahy below.

YAYS:

Akaka
Baucus
Biden
Bingamon
Boxer
Brown
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Clinton
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Harkin
Innouye
Kerry
Klobuchar
Lautenburg
Leahy
Levin
Menendez
Murray
Obama
Reed
Reid
Sanders
Shumer
Stabenow
Tester
Whitehouse
Wyden

NAYS:

Alexander
Allard
Barasso
Bayh
Bennett
Bond
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Carper
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Coleman
Collins
Conrad
Corker
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
DeMint
Dole
Dominici
Ensign
Enzi
Feinstein
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchinson
Inhofe
Innouye
Isakson
Johnson
Kohl
Kyl
Landrieu
Lieberman
Lincoln
Lugar
Martinez
McCaskill
McConnell
Mikulski
Murkowski
Nelsen (NB)
Nelson (FL)
Pryor
Rockefeller
Roberts
Salazar
Sessions
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Sununu
Thune
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner
Webb
Wicker

You can be one too, by clicking below.

Meanwhile, Glen Greenwald, who has a lot more stamina that I do, continues to document and explain the whole catastrophe. The latest, which discusses plans is here. In it he explains the Strange Bedfellows,

…the campaign we have been conducting is intended to be only the first step — not the last — in taking a stand against the endless erosion of core constitutional protections and the rapidly expanding Lawless Surveillance State. We have created a new organization, Accountability Now, to conduct the ongoing battle to target and remove from power those who enable these abuses; to force these issues into our political discourse; and to prevent the Washington Establishment from continuing to trample on basic constitutional protections with impunity.

The first campaign of this new organization is the formation of Strange Bedfellows, the ideologically diverse coalition we have formed with liberals, libertarians and others who are devoted to the preservation of our core constitutional liberties and the rule of law. …

To initiate and fund our new campaign, we have teamed with the individual who was behind the innovative and extraordinarily successful Ron Paul “money bombs” — Trevor Lyman, along with Rick Williams and Break the Matrix — to plan an “Accountability Money Bomb” for August 8. That is the day in 1974 when Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office for his lawbreaking and surveillance abuses. That day illustrates how far we have fallen in this country in less than 35 years, as we now not only permit rampant presidential lawbreaking and a limitless surveillance state, but have a bipartisan political class that endorses it and even retroactively protects the lawbreakers.

Only problem is, the two staff people I spoke to said they did not know how the Senator plans to vote. It seems strange to me that on a matter of such public interest neither the front-line staff nor the person who happened to be in the press office (not the actal press secretary) would know, but there you have it. Maybe Floridians have not been calling in droves. (This is your chance, guys.)

The staff were very charming, took my number, said they’d try to find out and would call me back.

Interestingly, saying I was a law professor got not a spark of reaction. But mentioning that I have a blog…that got their attention.

Update: I received the following email:

Nelson supports new intelligence-gathering legislation that enables the U.S. to get the information it needs to stop terrorist plots - as long as the final version contains protections for our civil liberties, such as requiring a court order before any American is targeted for eavesdropping.

Previously, in committee, he offered an amendment to deny telephone companies immunity for prior acts. That was defeated.

Subsequently, on the Senate floor, he offered an amendment to have the FISA court review requests for immunity. That amendment was defeated, too.

And, last week he co-sponsored an amendment that would allow the federal courts to determine whether the telephone companies acted in good faith and with reasonable belief that compliance with the government requests was lawful. The Senate has not acted on the amendment.

The current version of the legislation requires federal courts to review legal opinions that the telephone companies received from the government. Nelson will support that approach.

Mara Sloan
Press Assistant
United States Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)
716 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Does that answer the question? And if so, is that a “no” or a “yes”?

The article claims that this is the first lawsuit of its kind. Can that really be so?