The US Government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has relented and “eased” its ban on editing foreign work. (For background see this post on the attempt to control the work of the IEEE.)
Showing again that when pressured by bad publicity, the goverment sometimes does the right thing.
The NYT has finally gotten around to covering the scandal about the US government trying to impose prior restraints on US scholarly journals editing manuscripts authored by foreigners in countries subject to a trade embargo. Treasury Department Is Warning Publishers of the Perils of Criminal Editing of the Enemy has lots of good quotes, but probably doesn't tell you much more than you might have read here in my October entry, US Export Control Rules Applied to Prevent Editing of Scholarly Articles.
CALIFORNIA YANKEE: Supreme Court Refuses “Secret Case”: In an astounding decision the U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear the “secret case.”
The Supreme Court's decision means it is okay for a federal appellate court's published calendar to be obliterated to omit the names of litigants. ; a federal appellate court's computer records to be altered to remove from public view any information about the case; a federal appellate court to close its courtroom to the public and the press to hear arguments in a case; and for litigants to be prohibited from talking about it.
I didn't think this could happen in America.
What he said.
More info on the (surprising!) cert denial from AP.
Earlier posts of mine on this depressing case are The Secret Attack on the Right to an Open Court and an update . The only silver lining is that one of my brilliant colleagues is all over this one.
Not in any way a surprise, although it was nice to dream of a cert. denial leaving in place the Second Circuit decision finding that Constitution has not been suspended.
Now that the Supreme Court Expands Review of 'Enemy Combatant' Rule to include Padilla, the Court has almost every element of the Bush-Ashcroft re-write of the Constitution before it (the only bit missing is the secret deportation trials of immigrants—the court let stand a decision allowing these earlier in the year).
An enormous amount rides on these decisions. Losses on any of them will diminish our liberty, or our national claim to be a law-based state. But some are more essential than others—and the Padilla case is the most essential of them all, as it involves a claimed government power to grab anyone off the street in the US, hold them for ever in solitary, without lawyers, family or judicial review. That has no place in a free country.
Read Eric Muller on why today, Feb. 19, ought to be designated as a day of remembrance.
Via Dave Farber's IP list, a pointer to 'This Machine Kills Fascists', a story of self-censorship in the age of Ashcroftian exercises of public power.
I'm saddened to so quickly find such a powerful example of the third of my four reasons for concern in the previous post
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