All Blog Posts from Taking Liberties

A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.

The leaked documents (see our previous coverage) come from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world's largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it "relies on most heavily" when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.

Last week's leaked e-mails range from innocuous to embarrassing and, critics believe, scandalous. They show that some of the field's most prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data ("have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots"), cheered the deaths of skeptical journalists, and plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

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A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Wisconsin man barred from owning firearms because of his criminal record, ruling the lifetime prohibition may violate Americans' Second Amendment rights and calling into question the future of a 13-year old gun control law.

In a 3-0 decision on Wednesday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a trial judge to take a second look at the evidence that a 1996 federal law prohibiting anyone convicted of a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence" is constitutional in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that emphasized "the individual right to possess and carry weapons."

This case involves a man named Steven Skoien, who previously had been convicted of misdemeanor domestic battery. A year later, a Winchester 12-gauge hunting shotgun was discovered in a truck parked outside his home, along with evidence (including an orange hunting jacket, a deer carcass, and a state-issued tag for a deer kill) that he had used it earlier in the day. He was charged with illegal possession of a firearm.

This is a notable -- even remarkable -- appellate opinion for a few reasons. First, it shows that U.S. Justice Department has become a bit lazy in prosecuting gun cases: the court noted that "the government has made little effort to discharge its burden of demonstrating" the constitutionality of the law, and "relied almost entirely on conclusory reasoning by analogy."

Second, and more importantly, this is one of the first appeals court cases to take an in-depth look at the impact of the Supreme Court's ruling last year in D.C. v. Heller on existing federal firearms laws. It's true that Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion said: "Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill..."

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Gun rights advocates have sketched out arguments they hope will convince the U.S. Supreme Court that no state can be a Second Amendment-free zone.

In a 73-page legal brief filed on Monday, the groups representing four Chicago residents asked the Supreme Court to overturn the city's extremely restrictive firearms laws, some of the most severe in the nation.

"It is unfathomable that the states are constitutionally limited in their regulation of medical decisions or intimate relations, because these matters touch upon personal autonomy, but are unrestrained in their ability to trample upon the enumerated right to arms designed to enable self-preservation," says the brief, written by attorneys Alan Gura of Alexandria, Va. and David Sigale of Lisle, Ill. on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation.

Translation: Even though abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, courts have nevertheless declared it to be a fundamental right. Shouldn't the Second Amendment, which originally was requested by more states than the First Amendment was, receive at least equal treatment?

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In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that, according to their principles of unity and mission statement, work toward "promoting social and economic justice" and "social change.")

The subpoena from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

"I didn't think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention," Clair said in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com on Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost.

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Twittering from court is prohibited, according to a federal judge in Georgia who banned spectators from sending live updates from a criminal trial.

U.S. District Judge Clay Land in Georgia wrote that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should be interpreted to ban Twitter.

Rule 53 says: "Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom."

A reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer had asked permission to Twitter updates from the corruption trial of local attorney Mark Shelnutt, which was scheduled to start on Monday.

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The University of Akron is backing away from a controversial new policy, which appears to be the first in the nation, saying that new hires can be DNA tested as part of a background check.

William Rich, the vice chairman of the Ohio university's Faculty Senate, said late Thursday that the administration was now willing to remove references to DNA testing from its background check policy.

As CBSNews.com reported last week, the university's board of trustees adopted a rule saying a "DNA sample for purpose of a federal criminal background check" may be collected from any prospective faculty, staff, or contractor. That policy, which includes no explicit privacy guarantees, appears to violate a federal law that takes effect on November 21 called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

Rich, a law professor at the University of Akron who teaches constitutional and criminal law, said that the university's general counsel, Ted Mallo, sent a letter to the Faculty Senate recommending that the DNA sampling language be deleted and replaced with this sentence: "The candidate may be required by the law enforcement agency to provide additional information which is needed by the law enforcement agency for purposes of conducting the criminal background check."

As recently as last week, Mallo had defended the new policy as completely legal.

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For the last decade or so, Internet service providers have been dealing with requests to block access to pornographic or copyright-infringing Web sites, or in China, ones that dare to criticize the government.

Now a U.S. House of Representatives bill is taking the unusual step of requiring Internet providers to block access to online financial scams that fraudulently invoke the Securities Investor Protection Corporation -- or face fines and federal court injunctions.

The House Financial Services Committee is set to approve the legislation on Wednesday.

If you've never heard of the SIPC before, you're not alone. It's a government-linked entity that aids investors when funds are missing from their accounts, up to a limit of $500,000 for stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Only investor accounts with members of SIPC -- here's a list -- qualify for its protection.

It turns out that occasionally, Internet fraudsters, scamsters, and other assorted malcontents have posed as legitimate brokerage firms that are SIPC members, often with a similar name or domain name. The scam may be a too-good-to-be-true offer to buy securities that asks the unwitting customer to pay fees in advance, or schemes involving fraudulent checks that eventually bounce.

That seems to be in part what prompted Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of a key subcommittee, to introduce the Investor Protection Act a few weeks ago.

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I've written recently about how courts in New Jersey and Illinois have concluded that the Second Amendment poses no obstacle to local governments enacting stringent anti-gun laws.

Now a Maryland appeals court has followed suit. A three-judge panel ruled last Thursday that the Second Amendment does not interfere with a Maryland law that generally restricts state residents from carrying handguns.

That's not much of a surprise. What is remarkable is that Judge Albert Matricciani went out of his way to write that even if the Second Amendment applied to state laws, Maryland's statute would be perfectly constitutional in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court D.C. v. Heller decision last year to invalidate the District of Columbia's handgun ban.

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(AP Photo/Nick Ut)

commentary Never mind the debate about whether to prop up the U.S. housing market by extending the $8,000 home-buying tax credit. (See related CBS News video about the credit, which is scheduled to expire on December 1.)

A more important housing subsidy has already snuck into law without many people noticing. Last Thursday, President Obama signed legislation, H.R.2996, that was billed as providing funding for the Forest Service and the Indian Health Service and temporary cash for the rest of the government. It also extended, substantially, the federal government's support for higher housing prices for another year.

You won't see any mention of housing policy in the Congress' official summary or the White House's announcement that Obama had signed the measure. But if you look carefully, you'll find it buried in the middle of the 31,332-word bill (which can claim the dubious virtue of topping out at over 1,000 words longer than George Orwell's novel Animal Farm).

If Congress had done nothing, the maximum government-backed loan for a house or condo in the continental United States would have dropped from $729,750 to $625,500 on January 1, 2010. Other loans -- known as "non-conforming" loans -- would still be available, but they'd be more expensive. TotalMortgage.com, for instance, puts the difference at around 1.1 percentage points as of this week.

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SAN JOSE, Calif.--When San Francisco tried to restrict its residents' right to keep and bear arms, it quickly got shot down by the courts. Now it seems to be Seattle's turn.

Here's the background: the Washington state legislature has, with very few exceptions, instructed cities and municipalities that they shall not regulate firearms because state laws are sufficient. The relevant law says: "The state of Washington hereby fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation within the boundaries of the state... Cities, towns, and counties or other municipalities may enact only those laws and ordinances relating to firearms that are specifically authorized by state law."

Nevertheless, Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, a Democrat, signed an executive order last year directing government agencies to ban guns -- except, of course, for police -- from city property. A more detailed list published last month says that firearms will be banned from parks, golf courses, beaches, playgrounds, athletic fields, and so on. The final rule was signed on October 14.

Nickels allowed no exceptions for law-abiding Washington state residents who have undergone background checks and obtained permits to carry concealed weapons. There are no specific criminal penalties for violating Seattle's regulations, but violations would be treated as trespassing and residents are urged to call 911 if they spot one of their fellow citizens who may be armed.

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