A former Georgia deputy from Cobb County, Jason Bill, was found guilty today on a total of seven counts, including, kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault, aggravated sodomy, rape and false imprisonment of a 23-year-old undocumented woman. According to reports, Bill accused the undocumented immigrant from El Salvador of stealing his phone. He threatened to deport her and then “used the power of his badge to force her to his nearby apartment.” Then he forced her to “commit sexual acts” at gun point. He will be sentenced tomorrow and faces a minimum of 25 years in jail. To add insult to injury, Bill’s attorneys alleged that the victim was actually a prostitute.

This isn’t the first time a Cobb County police officer has been accused of exploiting an undocumented immigrant. In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)of Georgia released a report documenting the stories of 10 people who claimed they were victims of racial profiling by Cobb County law enforcement.

In 2010, a 23-year-old Latino man filed a lawsuit against the Cobb County Police Department claiming that two officers “stopped him without cause, beat him and then jailed him on a pretext in an effort to get him deported.” According to the police report, officers stopped Angel Francisco Castro Torres (who was riding a bike) after observing his race. They then allegedly demanded Castro’s papers before proceeding to beat him. Castro required surgery to repair his broken nose and eye socket.

The ACLU attributed the civil rights violations to the federal government’s 287(g) program which involves an agreement between local law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that allows police to enforce immigration laws. “In Cobb, members of the immigrant community live their daily lives in terror as Cobb law enforcement and jail personnel abuse the power afforded to them by their contract with ICE,” wrote the ACLU. The ACLU further noted that, “This problem is compounded in Georgia, as there is currently no state legislation banning racial profiling and mandating accountability and transparency for law enforcement.”  

Of course, not every police officer who is charged with enforcing immigration law is going to go out of his or her way to target brown-skinned immigrants. Nor is every case of racial profiling going to turn into the horrific crime that Bill committed. However, as Georgia continues to move forward on a slew of bills that would expand law enforcement’s authority to enforce immigration laws, the likelihood that the state will confront more of these cases could go up.

Taking a page from Newt Gingrich’s playbook — who recently criticized the Obama administration for having not already taken unilateral action against pro-government forces in Libya — presumptive 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty took a swipe at President Obama yesterday, presumably, for wanting to assemble a broad international coalition to deal with the situation in Libya militarily. Politico reports:

Tim Pawlenty on Thursday attacked President Obama’s “incoherent response” to the political upheaval in the Middle East – and said the White House should stop worrying about winning an international popularity contest.

“I’m not overly concerned about our popularity ratings in Europe or the Middle East,” Pawlenty said at a presidential house party in his honor. “What I am concerned about is, is this nation secure.”

But it’s not really about a popularity contest. It’s about smart policy. Unilateral action would fracture the unprecedented consensus at the UN thus far on Libya — which has resulted in referring Muammar Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court and kicking Libya off the Human Rights Council. UN Dispatch’s Mark Leon Goldberg explains that, by acting without allies and international support in Libya, the U.S. not only “would constantly have to defend the decision to work outside the council” but also unilateral U.S. military action on Libya could have a destabilizing effect:

It would probably also divide the Arab world, and in so doing undermine what are arguably more important American interests. To name a few: ensuring a steady transition to democracy in Egypt; progress on Israel and Palestine; and working to ensure that this wave of revolution spreading across the Arab world brings about governments that, at the very least, are not hostile to the United States. [...]

With a Security Council resolution, these kinds of choices between interests are simply not as stark. You don’t have to choose between angering half the world. Military intervention would have both legal and political legitimacy and enjoy broad (if not unanimous) backing by the international community. That is because if such a measure were to pass the Security Council, it would probably have to have the backing of relevant regional organizations like the Arab League and African Union.

And this is what the Obama administration is doing: working to shore up international support, with Britain and France working at the UN Security Council to get a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone. “I think it’s very important that this not be a US-led effort,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week. British foreign minster William Hague agrees. “We are…making clear the need for regional support, a clear trigger for such a resolution and an appropriate legal basis,” he said. Former UN official Bruce Jones said as much to Yahoo News’ Laura Rozen. “We would be vastly better off if it was the Arab League calling for action and the UN taking it up and the U.S. implementing,” he said.

President Obama has said that he has not taken any options of the table, including military ones. “We are slowly tightening the noose on Qaddafi,” he said this afternoon, expressing the utility of the U.S. and the international community’s preference for a united front on Libya. But like Gingrich, it appears that a commander-in-chief Pawlenty would be pulling the trigger first and asking questions later.

“We must be fully aware that homegrown radicalization is part of al Qaeda’s strategy to continue attacking the United States,” said Rep. Peter King (D-NY) as he opened yesterday’s House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response. “Al Qaeda is actively targeting the American Muslim Community for recruitment. Today’s hearing will address this dangerous trend.”

So what did we learn about the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community and that community’s response? Not much. We got some very moving testimony from Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who effectively shamed King for what seemed a clear attempt to hold all American Muslims responsible for the actions of a tiny extremist faction. We heard from two fathers who told of their son’s and nephew’s process of radicalization, important stories to hear but still not telling us much about the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community and that community’s response.

The only witness able to speak with any law enforcement experience or authority to the hearings’ stated subject, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, actually offered evidence that refuted Rep. King’s past assertions that there hasn’t been “sufficient cooperation” from the American Muslim community with law enforcement agencies. “The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has long been a leader in the development of relationships with the various ethnic, cultural and religious communities that thrive in the Los Angeles area,” Baca said. “Nowhere is that relationship more positive than that which exists between my agency and the American Muslim Community.” Baca went on to note that “American Muslims helped foil seven of the last ten plots propagated by Al-Qaeda within the United States.”

Baca also directly criticized the framing of the hearing, saying that focusing “only on the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim Community may be viewed as singling out a particular section of our nation. This makes a false assumption that any particular religion or group is more prone to radicalization than others.”

As far as I could tell, the main point of the exercise was for Peter King to empower Muslim voices he likes, such as Dr. Zuhdi Jasser — narrator of the anti-Islam propaganda film The Third Jihad and recipient of an award from sharia conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney — and marginalize those that he doesn’t, such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), who were disparaged a number of times by King and other Republicans based on having been identified as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial.

In the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column today, Glenn Kessler looks at those allegations, concluding that “repeated references to CAIR being an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ is one of those true facts that ultimately gives a false impression.” JTA’s Ron Kampeas also had a good post back in November on this same issue.

It’s probably worth pointing out the hypocrisy of King making these sorts of allegations, given that he himself supported an actual terrorist organization, the Irish Republican Army, and continues to defend its terrorism as “legitimate force.” (How nice for him that none of his colleagues were gauche enough to bring this up.)

None of this is to say that the question of “who gets to speak for American Muslims?” isn’t an important one. It very much is. It’s just not one that really seems to me to fall under the purview of Congress.

Congressional Republicans’ 2011 budget would slash funding for government agencies directly responsible for issuing tsunami warnings and severely reduce the government’s capacity to track and respond to these disasters, the president of the union that represents employees of the National Weather Service told ThinkProgress today in the wake of the tragic tsunami in the Pacific. The House Republican budget, which was rejected by the Senate this week, would have cut funding to NOAA — the agency directly responsible for tsunami monitoring and warning — restricting the government’s ability to respond.

Dan Sobien, the president of National Weather Service Employees Organization, said in a statement to ThinkProgress that while his agency, a subsidiary of NOAA, has made contingency plans, the GOP cuts would “put considerable stress” on the country’s tsunami monitoring and response systems:

NOAA has put together part of a contingency plan to handle such a massive cut and while it spares tsunami buoys, all other coastal buoys are non funded and there will be furloughs at both Tsunami Warning Centers (TWC). These furloughs will take away the TWC’s ability to upgrade tsunami models and will put considerable stress on watchstanders ability to react. This plan unfortunately only account for about half the cuts that need to be made, about 60 of the 126 million that needs to be cut. While today’s disaster is of particular concern to everyone, we are just now entering tornado season and soon will be hurricane season and our organization firmly believes any effort to defund and dismantle our nations early warning system for all disasters is very unwise.

These furloughs could result in “a very heightened risk for loss of life,” a National Weather Service forecaster told CNBC. Indeed, the GOP’s cuts would have a significant impact on the nation’s disaster preparedness:

– $1.2 billion cut in funding for NOAA, the government agency with “primary responsibility for providing tsunami warnings to the nation, and a leadership role in tsunami observations and research.”

– $1.5 billion cut in grants for first-responders to disasters of “mass destruction.”

– 12 percent cut to Emergency Management Planning Grants, which provide critical funds to help communities conduct “effective catastrophic all-hazards planning.”

– Closure of local National Weather Service offices and a furlough of NOAA employees for more than 27 days at a time. The closures would essentially silence the government’s warning system during disasters.

– Cuts in NOAA’s satellite maintenance budget, putting satellites out of commission more quickly and crippling the government’s ability to track tsunami wave patterns, hurricanes and even routine weather patterns.

– Additional cuts to FEMA and the Coast Guard.

According to a Ocean Conservancy fact sheet obtained by ThinkProgress, at least a third of US GDP is concentrated in weather sensitive industries and the GOP’s cuts could leave large sectors of the economy vulnerable to natural disasters. The cuts would also deny daily weather information to more than 30 million Americans, and reduce the military’s access to weather information before combat missions.

For now, funding remains in place and agencies have been able to respond properly to today’s crisis. Negotiations over the agencies’ budget are now taking place in the Senate, where at least one Tea Party senator, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), has argued that federal relief for tsunami victims is unconstitutional.

– Kevin Donohoe

This past May, the military arrested Private First Class Bradley Manning, a soldier who worked in military intelligence and had served overseas in Iraq, over charges that he was involved in leaking numerous classified documents and videos to the Wikileaks whistleblowing group, including a video of a U.S. attack helicopter killing numerous unarmed journalists.

Since his arrests, civil liberties groups and members of Congress have protested his treatment, which involves being kept in solitary confinement, being denied access to a pillow or bed sheets, and being forcibly stripped naked every single night.

Last night, as reported by former BBC America journalist Philippa Thomas, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley commented on Manning’s treatment during an event organized by the Center for Future Civic Media. Crowley blasted the treatment of Manning by his “colleagues at the Department of Defense“:

Around twenty of us were sitting around the table listening to his views on social media, the impact of the Twittersphere, the Arab uprisings, and so on, in a vast space-age conference room overlooking the Charles River and the Boston skyline. And then, inevitably, one young man said he wanted to address “the elephant in the room”. What did Crowley think, he asked, about Wikileaks? About the United States, in his words, “torturing a prisoner in a military brig”? Crowley didn’t stop to think. What’s being done to Bradley Manning by my colleagues at the Department of Defense “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” He paused. “None the less Bradley Manning is in the right place”. And he went on lengthening his answer, explaining why in Washington’s view, “there is sometimes a need for secrets… for diplomatic progress to be made”. [..]

A few minutes later, I had a chance to ask a question. “Are you on the record?” I would not be writing this if he’d said no. There was an uncomfortable pause. “Sure.” So there we are.

Crowley’s response is the strongest condemnation yet by an American official of the treatment of Manning. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who was asked about the soldier last month, defended his treatment. “There are concerns about what is happening, but a strong argument is being made that they’re trying to preserve his safety, they don’t want him harming himself, and using his own clothing to hang himself, or do something like that,” Kerry said.