Mother Jones Daily: Briefing

LAW & JUSTICE
Ashcroft's Home Front

As US officials begin their move to interrogate (and, in many cases, detain) thousands of Iraqi immigrants, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced this week that the Justice Department will grant new and expanded powers to federal agents to further those efforts.

According to Dan Eggen of the Washington Post, Ashcroft has bestowed upon FBI agents and US marshals the power to "detain foreign nationals for alleged immigration violations in cases where there is not enough evidence to hold them on criminal charges." These new regulations, says Eggen, will "significantly breach the wall that has long separated federal law enforcement agents from immigration officers." The move has been advertised as an effort to broaden law enforcement's reach in combatting terrorism.

However, immigrant advocates are issuing a collective sigh at what appears to be yet another step backwards for the civil liberties of non-citizens and Middle-Easterners. Within the new modus operandi, Iraqis and others who elicit agents' suspicion could be routinely arrested for immigration violations. Bill Frelick, an immigration policy expert for Amnesty International, calls the change "part of a pattern that we're seeing in which what may be minor violations of immigration law are used as a pretext for preventive detention."

Among the new tactics will be a method known as "knock and talk" operations, in which FBI agents visit the homes of targeted community-members in order to discreetly gain information about them. Pierre Thomas and Jason Ryan report in ABC News that the stated goal of the operation is simply gathering information and encouraging the reporting of hate-crimes.

"But the unstated goal is to get tips about those who might commit acts of terror -- within these groups U.S. officials have identified suspected Saddam Hussein supporters and al Qaeda sympathizers."

And, most significantly, immigrants discovered during those visits to be "out of status" will be detained, at which time detainees "go into a media black hole, and the government is not required to even reveal their names," Thomas and Ryan add.

The pundits at TalkLeft assert that the "knock and talk" is a scheme that has long been favored by the DEA in making sneaky arrests of marijuana growers. Agents don't have a search warrant to enter someone's home,

"so they go to the house to use trickery or worse to gain entry. Another end run around the Fourth Amendment. Which, according to the Supreme Court, protects everyone in this country, not just citizens."

Additionally, the archly-conservative Front Page Magazine has published a symposium of civil rights experts representing varying political stripes in order to examine the larger picture of Ashcroft's handling of American liberties since Sept. 11.

POLITICS
Equal Opportunity Bullying

Democrats, it turns out, aren't the only targets of the White House's notorious strongarm tactics in pursuit of its goals. As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Jim Vandehei report, conservatives, too, are feeling the heat from an administration that demands absolute fealty -- and enforces it in "uniquely fierce and vindictive" ways.

In just one recent example, moderate Republicans in the National Governor's Association have come under intense pressure to remove the bipartisan group's leadership, which has pushed Washington for more federal aid for cash-strapped states. Florida Governor Jeb Bush, along with a few others, even threatened to quit the group if it didn't abandon its call for help. Conservative groups and lobbying firms, too, are being told to toe the party line or else. All of which leaves even some of the President's staunchest allies nonplussed.

"'I think this monomaniacal call for loyalty is unhealthy,' Moore said. 'It's dangerous to declare anybody who crosses you an enemy for life. It's shortsighted.' Leaders of three other conservative groups report that their objections to Bush policies have been followed by snubs and, in at least one case, phone calls suggesting the replacement of a critical scholar. 'They want sycophants rather than allies,' said the head of one think tank."

ENVIRONMENT
Lightening the Load of Garbage Gases

Communities nationwide have discovered a means of confronting both rising electricity bills and global warming. The relatively simple yet innovative technology of harvesting methane, a greenhouse gas, from landfills and converting it to electricity has come to light in disparate parts of the country, including Boone County, Kentucky and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin. To date, about 340 landfill to gas projects exist in the country, reports Jennie Tunkieicz of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. But Kentucky's and Wisconsin's plans take the renewable technology to another level.

In Wisconsin, a manufacturer of household cleaning products will not only harness the methane gas from a nearby landfill, but also recapture the heat produced and use it as steam for other processes at the plant, writes Tunkieizc. In Kentucky, reports Andy Mead of the Lexington Herald-Leader, the East Kentucky Power Cooperative will offer its customers the option to utilize its "EnviroWatts" technology to light their homes. The impetus for the Kentucky Co-op stemmed from a desire to decrease its coal emissions -- which, notably, also contribute to global warming.

Energy Conservation's web-site has additional information on methane gas as renewable energy.