patriotism here and there

In the news...

-- A federal judge has ruled that Google must surrender customer data based on warrantless demands by the FBI. The ruling was written May 20 and obtained yesterday.

FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the secret letters, which don't require a judge's approval, after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The ruling comes in the wake of the Department of Justice secret seizure of two months worth of Associated Press reporters' phone records. Verizon Wireless was good enough to provide the data to federal officials earlier this month.

The government seized the records for more that 20 separate phone lines assigned to AP staff in April and May of 2012, the AP reported.

 
--  In Russia, a jailed member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, has ended her hunger strike after 11 days.

Maria Alyokhina was one of three punk rock members jailed after an anti-Vladimir Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral in February 2012.

She went on a hunger strike claiming that jail personnel had encouraged other hardened inmates to treat her badly. Previously, she had spent five months in solitary confinement.

The Pussy Riot trio were jailed for two years last August after being convicted of a breach of public order motivated by religious hatred.
The prosecution prompted worldwide condemnation, with Sir Paul McCartney among those calling for the band members to be freed.

-- On Monday, Pfc. Bradley Manning, 25, the soldier accused in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, is scheduled to go on trial, three years after his arrest in 2010. Manning is accused of providing more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks, an organization dedicated to more transparency in secret governmental activities.

Will Manning receive a fair trial -- a trial at which the honest parameters of the accusations are examined and aired? I doubt it. The government claims the right to secrecy and the right to keep its reasonings under wraps. Even if Manning is exonerated in the face of many of the prosecutorial claims, still the government is likely to feel he should be punished for something. It would all be too embarrassing otherwise ... forcing the government to review and revise its Vatican-esque assertions of the high moral, classified and patriotic ground.