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By Eric London 15 April 2017

In a speech Thursday at a Washington, DC think tank, CIA Director Michael Pompeo called the whistleblower site WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service and said news organizations that reveal the governments crimes are enemies of the United States.

Pompeos remarks announce an open break with the First Amendments protection of freedom of speech and a threat that the Trump administration will not tolerate opposition to war, surveillance and corporate plunder.

Referring to WikiLeaks founder, Pompeo declared that Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. Pompeos remarks were prompted by Assanges April 11 op-ed in the Washington Post, in which the whistleblower defended WikiLeaks. The threat of US prosecution or assassination has forced Assange to seek refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012.

In his remarks, Pompeo said, We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.

Pompeo is the head of an organization whose record in criminality, illegality and murder is unsurpassed. Over the course of its 69 year history, the CIA has overseen assassinations and coups dtat, trained and armed fascistic death squads, collaborated with dictators, and, following 9/11, established a global network of black site torture chambers, giving rise to a new vocabulary of words like extraordinary rendition, advanced interrogation, and rectal rehydration. The number of people killed by the CIA and its collaborators over the years is in the millions.

Organizations like WikiLeaks have exposed government actions that violate the US Constitution and international law. Had it not been for individuals like Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the public would have never learned about the National Security Agencys mass surveillance, the Guantanamo Bay prison operating procedures, many of the worst US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Democratic Partys efforts to force through the nomination of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 party primaries.

Pompeo called these exposures false narratives that increasingly define our public discourse and demean and distort the work and achievements of the CIA. Those who are behind them are committing treason.

This thuggish statement is a direct threat aimed at Assange and all who oppose the crimes of the government. In the US, the punishment for treason is death. Last November, Pompeo argued that whistleblower Edward Snowden should be put to death.

There is an element of trepidation in Pompeos remarks. He and the military-intelligence apparatus are concerned that in the absence of a vocal rebuttal, these voices, ones that proclaim treason to be public advocacy, gain a gravity they do not deserve.

The government is frustrated that figures like Assange, Snowden and Manning are widely regarded as popular heroes. In todays digital environment, Pompeo said, whistleblowers can disseminate stolen US secrets instantly around the globe to terrorists, dictators, hackers and anyone else seeking to do us harm.

Pompeo launched a personal attack on Assange, calling him a darling of terrorists, a narcissist, a fraud, and a coward. Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators, Pompeo said.

Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They champion nothing but their own celebrity, he added. Their currency is click-bait, their moral compass nonexistent, their mission personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values.

Pompeo also made clear that he considers as enemies those who grant a platform to these leakers. Many of these groups may be smalland I mentioned one particular character a few times [i.e. Assange]but its much bigger than that. Its much broader and deeper than that.

Pompeo compared opposition news organizations to terrorist groups and countries like North Korea and Syria that are presently targets of US military intervention. This new threat, he said, has as its motive the destruction of America in the very same way that those countries do. And Im confident this administration will pursue them with great vigor.

The CIA director attacks Assange for comparing himself to Thomas Jefferson in the Washington Post op-ed and then explains that the government relies on legitimate news organizations such as the New York Times and the Washington Post to protect against this threat of misinformation and propaganda. He called the corporate media truth-tellers extraordinaire and said, Im hopeful that we will get some of the truth-telling from these people.

In fact, Pompeos praise for the corporate media affirms the prescience of Jefferson himself, who wrote in a 1785 letter to the Dutch statesman Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp:

The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers to keep the nation quiet.

Pompeos speech has been uncritically cited by the Times and other corporate media sources who serve as the standing army of American imperialism. The Times covered Pompeos remarks only to criticize them as the latest sign that neither Mr. Trump nor many of his most senior officials consider themselves beholden to statements they made or stances they took in the presidential campaign, citing the fact that Pompeo once tweeted a link to WikiLeaks documents targeting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The fact that Pompeos fascistic rant calling for the abolition of free speech has passed without criticism is the product of two parallel and interrelated processes bound up with the growth of social inequality and the decline of the USs world economic position.

First, the government is controlled by an oligarchic ruling class made up of powerful banks and corporations that have empowered the military and intelligence agencies to wage 25 years of permanent war aimed at securing world domination and access to cheap labor and resources. The marriage between the two political parties, Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies has purged the media and political establishment of any genuinely oppositional voices. A figure like Donald Trump could have only emerged out of such a toxic climate of militarism and political reaction.

Second, permanent war and growing social inequality have created widespread social opposition in the working class to the policies of war, domestic surveillance and corporate dictatorship. Aware of growing subterranean discontent, the government is declaring that opposition is treasonous and illegal. Pompeos speech lays out the new standard: The First Amendment only applies to speech that the CIA deems tolerable.

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CIA Director calls WikiLeaks an enemy, says Assange has no First Amendment freedoms - World Socialist Web Site

New York Times

Can Churches Hire Police? Alabama Legislators Reckon With the First Amendment New York Times After the shooting at Sandy Hook and in the wake of similar assaults at churches and schools, Briarwood recognized the need to provide qualified first responders to coordinate with local law enforcement who so heroically and effectively serve their ... A Church Can Have its Own Police Force, Alabama's Senate DecidedNewsweek Bill Text: AL SB193 | 2017 | Regular Session | Introduced | LegiScanLegiScan Church Can Start Its Own Police Force, Alabama Senate SaysNPR Big Story AP - Associated Press -Briarwood Presbyterian Church, PCA -Alabama Public Radio all 74 news articles »

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Can Churches Hire Police? Alabama Legislators Reckon With the First Amendment - New York Times

DETROIT (AP) Michigan courts can have no role in admission decisions at faith-based schools, a lawyer told the state Supreme Court on Thursday in a case that tests whether a family can sue a Roman Catholic school over their daughter's rejection.

Notre Dame Preparatory School insists federal and state legal precedent protects religious schools under the First Amendment. But a lawyer for a girl who was rejected in 2014 told justices that the lawsuit should be evaluated purely as a case of illegal discrimination.

"It's the kind of case that can be decided without straying into ecclesiastical religious doctrine," Nicholas Roumel said.

Notre Dame Prep in Pontiac told the girl that she wouldn't be admitted to ninth grade because of poor grades. The girl was later diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. The school denied any discrimination based on her learning disabilities.

Attorney James Walsh, who represents the school and its sponsor, the Marist Fathers of Detroit, said courts can't tell a church how to fill its pews or decide who goes to a religious school.

"The pastor, principal whoever makes the decision can say, 'We will not be able to effectively convey our faith to this student.' ... Any inquiry by a court about why a student is or isn't accepted in a Catholic school would cause entanglement by a court in religion," Walsh said.

There's no guarantee that the Michigan Supreme Court will take any action. Justices could drop the case and let a 2015 appeals court decision stand in favor of Notre Dame Prep.

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Michigan court hears dispute over First Amendment, religious school - South Bend Tribune

Analysis Law and Policy

Apr 13, 2017, 4:06pm Jessica Mason Pieklo

On just day three of his time on the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch will hear arguments in a case that could reshape the landscape of government funding to religious institutions.

Associate Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will have been on the job three whole days when he hears arguments in what could be one of the most significant separation of church and state cases to come before the U.S. SupremeCourt in decades.

At first glance,Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer doesnt look like much of a case, let alone one that could bust open the barriers preventing direct government funding of religious institutions. But it is, and that is likelywhy Republicans pushed Gorsuchs confirmation so aggressively. They wanted him on the bench for a reliable conservative vote in Trinity Lutherans favor, and to hopefully bring Justice Anthony Kennedy along with him.

The case, which the Court hears Wednesday, involves a church playground and a Missouri state program that provides grants to help nonprofits buy rubber playground surfaces.The programs goal is to keep used tires out of state landfills and to upgrade playgroundsall good, laudable things.

Trinity Lutheran Church applied for, and was denied, a grant to refurbisha playground for adaycare and preschool it runs. When it was denied funds, the church sued, arguing among other things that its exclusion from the program violates the First Amendments Free Exercise Clause. According to the complaint, being denied grant funding because it is a church discriminates against religious institutions by denying them access to funding that they argue is secular and widely available, thus punishing them for exercising their faith.According to attorneys for the church, the state has no valid First Amendment reason for the exclusion.

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Not so, say attorneys for the State of Missouri, who argue that denying the grant in no way interferes with the church or its members ability to worship or even run its daycare as it sees fit.Instead, the attorneys for the state argue, giving the church grant dollars would be a violation of the Establishment Clause, because then government dollars would be directly supporting the church by helping it improve its grounds.Trinity Lutheran can pave its playground however it wants, the state argues. It just cant do soon the governments tab, because it is a church and itsdaycare and preschool programs are part of that institution.

The state also argues that its grantprogram is not the kind of generally available public benefit that would elevate it to the level of constitutional scrutiny argued for by Trinity Lutheran. That strict scrutinystandard views government action that restricts constitutionally protected activity like religious exercise as inherently suspect. In other words, the government has to provide a very good reason for why it is acting to curb a fundamental constitutional right. The attorneys note in their complaint that most applicants are rejected and that the grant programsfunding islimited. Furthermore, the program treats all religious institutions the same, by not including any of them as grant recipients.

The case boils down, ultimately, to what constitutional test courts should use when judging grant programs like Missouris that have a secular purposein this case lowering environmental impact and upgrading area playgroundsfrom which religious institutions like Trinity Lutheran have historically been excluded,because of First Amendment limitations on government funding of religious institutions and programs. How the Roberts Court answers that question could have wide-reaching consequences,particularly if the Courtexpands the ways in which religious institutions can receivegovernment dollars.

Which brings us back to newly mintedJustice Gorsuch, who has a complicated record on religious liberty decisions.His tendency to rule in favor of religiously affiliated groups could play a pivotal role in theTrinity Lutherandecision, especially since the church has framed itself as a victim of state hostility toward religious believers.

The case has the potential to change the very nature of social services funding at a time whenreligiously affiliated institutions have taken over large areas of the safety-net marketplace, from gobbling up secular hospitals to running nursing homes and childcare facilities. So far the law has been very clear that those institutions are free to exist in that marketplace and provide the services they do. But they cannot expect to have their work entirely subsidized by taxpayers.

But a blurring of the line between private business, religious activity, and government spending can be traced almost directly to Justice Gorsuch and his role in both the Hobby Lobby case while a judge on the Tenth Circuit, as well as the Little Sisters case. In each, Gorsuch laid out the intellectual framework for flipping the script on how courts could approach claims of government infringement on religious rights. Instead of taking a critical but objective look at the nature of the sincerity of the connection between the alleged government imposition and the actual religious practice at issue, Gorsuchs opinions suggested courts should presume both the religious beliefs are sincereandthat the connection to the plaintiffs religious exercise isreal and burdensome. The Roberts Court was, in the context of abortion rights, already sympathetic to this line of thinking when it ruled on behalf of the plump grandmas protesting clinics and harassing patients to strike down a Massachusetts buffer zone law. Gorsuchs line of reasoning could take the Supreme Court even further down that path.

If a secular, for-profit craft store can be excused from incurring a regulatory fine on the basis of a religious objection to birth control, as the Hobby Lobby opinion ruled, wouldnt the inverse logic work for conservatives on the bench? If the government cant punish secular businesses for launching religious objections to regulations, as was the case in Hobby Lobby, how can the government punish religious institutions by excluding them from certain spending programs that those religious institutions claim do not go to religious practice?

In other words, what should stop a state from directly funding a religious group that also provides secular services? Why cant a church get a government grant to improve its facilities?

These questions areseductively simple, as arethe answers. The First Amendments Establishment Clause and the case law interpreting it saysthat a state government cannot use its spending power to favor one religion over another, either directly or indirectly.

Butwhat the Hobby Lobby decision madeclear is that whenthe line between religion and government spendingis re-framed as the state punishing believers by enforcing its laws,the Roberts Court will likely side with the religious claimants.

Ive written about Gorsuch as a key actor in pushing corporate religious rights under Hobby Lobby, and his record here is clear. If there is a way to both insulate corporations and find a way to expand the reach of evangelicalism into popular culture, than Gorsuch is the legal brains to pave that way. Will that charming personality of his, though, be enough to sway Kennedy, who is likely the critical fifth vote the conservatives need to get a win here?

Well know sometime this summer when the Court releases its opinion.

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Will Gorsuch Reshape the First Amendment This Summer? - Rewire

In 2006, a human rights advocate, who is a friend, was prevented from boarding his flight from New York to California because of Arabic.

Yes, Arabic. The language spoken by more than 400 million people worldwide, making it one of the top five languages in the world and reportedly the fastest growing in the U.S., was the culprit.

My friend was wearing a T-shirt with the words We will not be silent in both Arabic and English. He was told he could not fly until the offending Arabic script was covered. And lest we think our issues with Arabic have resolved themselves in the last decade, remember that simply speaking Arabic on an airplane was grounds for removal from a flight just last year.

How we got to this point is a complicated matter, but the path forward doesnt have to be.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Arab-Americans and American Muslims have come to be viewed by some of our fellow citizens and our own government as either victims of hate or potential perpetrators of violence. The latter view dictates we should be seen through a securitized lens and has produced profiling and surveillance of our communities, watch lists, and special registry programs, to name but a few programs targeting us.

However, both oversimplifications fail to capture the experience of being Arab or Muslim in post-9/11 America, and last years presidential campaign demonstrated that with extraordinary clarity. We have heard condemnation of the surge in hate crimes but little discussion on how the rhetoric during the election contributed to that hate, particularly by leading policy makers and candidates. Instead of challenging bigoted misinformation, some candidates furthered it.

At a New Hampshire town hall, a voter declared to then-candidate Trump, We have a problem in this country. Its called Muslims. He concluded by asking, When can we get rid of them? Mr. Trumps answer: We are going to be looking at a lot of different things.

One could reasonably suggest President Trumps Muslim bans, in both incarnations, were the logical continuation of that conversation in New Hampshire. The Muslim ban is a candidate delivering on a campaign promise unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.

Thankfully, it is not that simple in our country.

Standing in the path between bigotry and policy is our Constitution. In this case, specifically the First Amendment.

Among the five freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment are freedom of speech and the right to religious freedom. Thus far, numerous judges have found the bans to be in violation of our First Amendment and their implementation has been stalled. In the guise of keeping us safe, Trump has proposed unnecessary, ineffective policies that sow fear. Americans know it, and responded by showing up at our nations airports with banners and legal pads to defend our Constitution and protect the people most impacted, including those who speak the feared language of Arabic.

In addition to winning the first stay of the ban, the ACLU has launched a We the People campaign that features the First Amendment translated into other languages, including Arabic, and is displaying it in ads and billboards. Seeing the First Amendment in Arabic is particularly satisfying at this moment as a fitting reminder that those words apply to all of us.

I worked on Capitol Hill on Sept. 11, and I was in the room when Attorney General John Ashcroft first presented the Patriot Act to congressional leadership. Many at the time asked: Are we striking the right balance between protecting our national security and our civil liberties? We should always remember that if we are told we must choose one or the other, we are being offered a false choice and a shortsighted remedy that will provide neither. The same goes for bigoted, undemocratic policies demanding that we choose between freedom or safety.

Like those who advance them, policy remedies can either move our country forward or take us back.

The slogan on my friends shirt belonged to a resistance campaign led by the White Rose, an extraordinary group of young people who were brutally executed for distributing leaflets in opposition to Nazi policies in Germany during World War II. The phrase We will not be silent is how they concluded their fourth resistance flyer.

Our fear of Arabic or more specifically, of Arabs and Muslims remains a problem for some, including those who currently hold some important positions in our government. It is driving an increase in incidents of hate and bad policies. We hope they will soon get over that irrational fear but until they do, we too will not be silent and are protected by the words of our Constitution and the judges sworn to uphold them.

After all, remember that my friend who was targeted for the two words of Arabic on his T-shirt is protected by the 34 words of Arabic or 45 in English appearing on a billboard near you.

If you want your own sticker copies of the First Amendment translated in Arabic, English and Spanish, they are available for pre-order here.

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The First Amendment Looks Especially Beautiful in Arabic ... - ACLU (blog)