Following up on my post about Bobby Jindal being named Person of the Year by the India Abroad newspaper, a helpful anonymous source has emailed us a copy of the letter sent to the editor of India Abroad, expressing displeasure at their choice. What makes this story interesting is the list of signatories:

• Anurima Bhargava — Staff Attorney, NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund
• Vanita Gupta — Staff Attorney, NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, past winner of the Reebok Human Rights Award and India Abroad Publisher’s Special Award for Outstanding Achievement
• Shyam Maskai — attorney in private practice, former President of the South Asian Bar Association of New York
• Cyrus D. Mehta — leading immigration lawyer, TV commentator on immigration law issues, and member of the Executive Committee of the NYC Bar Association
• Purvi Shah — Executive Director, Sakhi for South Asian Women

Here is an excerpt of the full letter:

Dear Editor:

We attended the function on December 9 where Congressman Bobby Jindal received The India Abroad Person of the Year 2005 award. In his acceptance speech, Mr. Jindal paid tribute to the achievements of the Indian-American community, especially its first generation immigrants who, like his parents, have sacrificed much to enable the next generation to fulfill their dreams.

On December 16, a week after winning the award, Mr. Jindal voted in favor of The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, H.R. 4437, which if passed into law, would destroy immigrant families by creating new grounds of deportability and gutting immigrants’ due process rights. Continue reading →

The parade continues. The U.S. News and World Report details the latest warrant-less activity by the U.S. government [via The Huffington Post]:

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts…

Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government’s domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought. [Link]

I am glad that the Feds are protecting against a nuclear threat in the D.C. area where my family lives. BUT, why can’t they just get a warrant so that it’s all legit?

At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle.

Does the Bush Administration have any legal precedent on their side to conduct this type of activity?

[Georgetown University Professor David] Cole points to a 2001 Supreme Court decision, U.S. vs. Kyllo, which looked at police use — without a search warrant — of thermal imaging technology to search for marijuana-growing lamps in a home. The court, in a ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ruled that authorities did in fact need a warrant — that the heat sensors violated the Fourth Amendment’s clause against unreasonable search and seizure.

When it comes to a nuclear threat I am all for aggressive policing. In light of this weeks revelations though, this seems to be just another power grab by the Executive Branch.

Continue reading →

We are sad to report (thanks for the tip Yasmine) that Dr. Zehra Attari’s body has been found. It doesn’t appear to have been foul play, just foul weather that is to blame. America’s Most Wanted reports:

After a six-week search, Dr. Zehra Attari’s body was found in her car at the bottom of the Oakland Estuary in Almeda, Calif.

Divers at the Grand Street pier on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2005 located a car matching the description of Attari’s 2001 gray Honda Accord. After lifting the car from the murky water, police discovered the doctor’s body…

According to police and residents, the road on which Attari was traveling is deadly — no barrier between the street and the water exists. They say it is likely that someone who didn’t know the area could drive off the pier and into the water unknowingly. [Link]

This is kind of scary because I think it may remind many of us about our own mothers. Her family describes her as being an under-confident driver and easily disoriented when traveling new routes. I know this description fits my own mother when she is faced with highway driving.

Attari was not far from her destination that evening on Nov. 7. A right turn onto Otis Drive would have set her back on track. Instead, Attari made a left. When she finally made a right a few blocks down, it was onto Grand Street.

While Grand Street is not exactly a road to nowhere, it is a road that leads directly into the cold black waters of the Oakland estuary. That is where Attari’s journey ended. [Link]

See previous posts [1,2]

Continue reading →