ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director Matthew R. Segal wrote this guest blog.

Starting on May 15, the federal government will effectively force Massachusetts--that’s right, force--to participate in “Secure Communities,” an immigration dragnet that risks pushing Massachusetts toward an Arizona-style “show me your papers” regime.

This is bad news for all Massachusetts residents. S-Comm promotes racial profiling, jeopardizes public safety, and inhibits economic growth. Although the federal government seems intent on implementing this flawed program anyway, Massachusetts officials should try to limit the havoc that it wreaks.

To a person wielding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So it's no surprise that when you put a bunch of armed cops into public schools, they start arresting kids for behaviors such as swearing, banging lockers, and throwing tantrums--behavior that is nothing new but that, once upon a time, parents and school officials used to handle.

That's what our report Arrested Futures: The Criminalization of School Discipline in Massachusetts' Three Largest School Districts found. In this study of three comparable Massachusetts cities--Boston, Worcester, and Springfield--researchers for the ACLU and Citizens for Juvenile Justice found that where schools deploy uniformed police officers in the hallways, kids are handcuffed, booked, and locked up for committing "public order" offenses at a far higher rate than at schools where social workers are hired to walk the halls instead. The cops are the hammers; the kids are the nails. Wham.

ACLU of Massachusetts Staff Attorney Laura Rótolo contributed the following:

It’s Friday afternoon. Time for another hollow announcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purporting to fix its controversial “Secure Communities” program. These announcements—exquisitely timed to avoid media attention—have become such a pattern that advocates have come to expect “Friday surprises.”

This time, ICE announced its response to the criticisms of a task force comprising a diverse group of stakeholders hand-picked by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The task force criticized Secure Communities (S-Comm) for its inconsistent messaging, lack of transparency, and interference with community policing.

ACLU of Massachusetts Development Director Steve Hurley wrote this guest blog.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Those words--originally directed to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy by Massachusetts resident Joseph Welch, lead counsel for the U.S. Army during the "McCarthy hearings" in 1954--came to mind earlier this week upon hearing of Nate Little's verbal attack on Harry Belafonte.

Little is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Republican Party, who contacted the press this week to call Belafonte's political views "extreme," "repugnant," and--here comes that last refuge of any scoundrel--"anti-American." State GOP Chairman Bob Maginn kept up the attack today.

Despite what others may say, justice has not been done in the Trayvon Martin shooting death simply because the accused shooter, George Zimmerman, has been indicted for second-degree murder.

If we had real justice in America, Trayvon Martin would still be alive.

ACLU of Massachusetts Education Director Nancy Murray contributed the following guest post:

Tarek Mehanna is no David Stone.

David Stone and members of his Hutaree anti-government militia amassed a huge arsenal of weapons, including the ingredients for explosives, and allegedly plotted to kill a police officer and bomb his funeral. A federal judge in Michigan said they were just venting and exercising their First Amendment rights.

Mehanna, a 29-year-old pharmacist from Sudbury, Massachusetts, emailed friends, downloaded videos, translated and posted documents on the web, and traveled to and from Yemen in 2004.

Watching court arguments for and against equal marriage in a federal appeals court in Boston today, I have to wonder how "equal protection under the law" can have any meaning if Congress is permitted to discriminate against an entire class of Americans.

I was particularly perplexed by Paul Clement, the attorney flown in by Republican House Speaker John Boehner and the US House of Representatives' Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to defend the "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) after the Department of Justice refused to defend the law. Just last week, Clement was arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that Congress trampled on the Constitution when it passed a law that regulates the health insurance market by requiring everyone to participate or pay a fine.

ACLUm Online Communications Coordinator Danielle Riendeau contributed the following guest blog:

True or false? If you are a public high school student in Massachusetts, you have a right to display that phrase on your t-shirt--or many messages that others might find "political," "offensive," "controversial," or "disruptive."

The answer: true. Even though school administrators at Lynn English High School told a student she could not wear the shirt there, they were wrong. Both Massachusetts law and the First Amendment protect a student's right of free expression unless the student "substantially and materially" disrupts the school. (The Supreme Court has carved out some exceptions under the First Amendment, but they don’t apply to this situation.)

In the incident in question, a student wore said t-shirt to school. She was sitting in the lunchroom (not engaging in any disruptive behavior, unless you count "eating one's lunch" as "disruptive") when she was approached and reprimanded by a school official. She had to cover up the phrase on her shirt for the rest of the day, and was told never to wear it again because it was "political" and "offensive to some people".

Our democracy rests on the fundamental notion that no branch of government should have unchecked power. When that system of checks and balances breaks down, abuse of power is inevitable.

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to learn that, after nine weeks of secret court hearings, the Suffolk Superior Court has ordered Twitter, Inc., to comply with a state administrative subpoena issued by the Suffolk District Attorney's office on December 14, 2011, seeking personally identifying information for an anonymous Twitter user during the period December 8, 2011 to December 13, 2011, for "account or accounts associated with" the names "Guido Fawkes", "@p0ison0N", "@OccupyBoston", or the Twitter hashtags "#d0xcak3" and "#BostonPD".

So, Scott Brown trusts women to risk their lives on the front lines for America. “We have an obligation to expand the professional opportunities available to women, especially considering their sacrifices,’’ he says. Good.

He’s willing to have women take part in combat, but he doesn’t trust women to make decisions to protect their own bodies? How else can you explain Senator Brown’s support for extreme legislation (the Blunt Amendment) that would allow any employer to deny their employees insurance coverage for any health care service -- from contraception to cancer screening -- by citing "religious beliefs or moral convictions."

Allowing CEOs to impose their religious views on their employees is not religious liberty. It's discrimination, plain and simple. And “moral convictions” could be used to justify almost anything.

ACLU of Massachusetts communications director Christopher Ott wrote this guest blog.

Senator Scott Brown would presumably never support legislation allowing a restaurant owner to refuse service to members of a specific race--and rightly so. We've made it unlawful for business owners to impose views like this on their customers or the communities where they do business.

Senator Brown would also never support legislation making it legal for a business owner to refuse to hire people of another religious faith. Except for ministerial-type positions, we've passed laws to prevent that kind of discrimination too.

That's what makes it confusing--and alarming--that Senator Brown now supports legislation that would allow employers to impose their beliefs on employees. Senator Brown has cosponsored an extreme measure known as the Blunt Amendment, which would allow any employer to deny coverage for any health care service--not just contraception, but things like HIV testing, cervical cancer, fertility treatment, genetic testing, and more--by citing "religious beliefs or moral convictions."

We need to tell Senator Brown that no one's boss should be making decisions about employees' use of birth control, or other private health matters.

ACLU of Massachusetts Online Communications Coordinator Danielle Riendeau wrote the following guest blog:

As someone who cares deeply about women’s health--and has participated in races for breast cancer awareness that are affiliated with the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure--the news yesterday that the breast cancer charity announced it would stop funding Planned Parenthood for breast health services utterly shocked me, and I know I’m not the only one.

The issue at hand, of course, is the fact that Planned Parenthood provides comprehensive care to women. They provide cancer screenings, information about contraception, and yes, abortion care, to anyone who needs their services, including many low-income and uninsured women who would otherwise have no safe access to any of the above. The Komen Foundation has pulled their funding wholesale, thanks to intense political pressure from anti-choice voices--one of which is coming from inside the organization.

This guest blog was written by ACLU of Massachusetts Privacy Rights Coordinator Kade Crockford.

Last night, President Obama book ended his State of the Union address by praising the US military. The beginning of the speech:

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda's top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban's momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

The end of the speech:

Which brings me back to where I began. Those of us who've been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn't matter if you're black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you're in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.

The defense industrial complex was likely thrilled. Americans can unite in war, the message went.

Obama's speech predictably described his economic outlook and plans for reasserting US dominance in the global marketplace. It addressed education, war, the mortgage crisis, jobs, manufacturing, immigration, energy, infrastructure, deficit reduction, institutional reform in Washington, popular cynicism with the government, and veterans issues, among others.

But there was a major, symbolically resonant hole in the speech. Obama only said the word 'liberty' once, in reference to the revolutions of North Africa. He said 'freedom' once, but in the context of the US military, not civil liberties. He did not say the word 'transparency,' and he said 'accountable' twice, both in the context of the financial crisis.

The out of control, civil liberties destroying federal 'intelligence' and surveillance bureaucracy got a pass. Listening to Obama's speech last night, you wouldn't know that the billions of dollars a year surveillance industrial complex exists, or that it is intimately integrated with the defense industrial complex through private corporations like Booz Allen, which profit massively off of both. The speech likewise didn't mention that the US system provides a constitution with robust liberties that should keep such a system at bay.

The constitutional law scholar in chief made no mention of those rights we hold most dear. In a year dominated by vigorous social movements in the United States, he did not even pay lip service to freedom of expression at home. On the other hand, nor did he brag about any of his administration's attacks on our core rights.

He made no mention of his FBI's investigations of antiwar activists in the Midwest, or of the DOJ's numerous prosecutions of young Muslim men on terrorism charges only possible because the FBI set them up.

Obama and his political advisors didn't see fit to describe the FBI's massive biometrics gathering scheme, or Immigration Customs Enforcement's contributions to said program. They did not brag about the historic levels of secretive government spending dedicated towards spying on ordinary US Americans. They did not describe the sixteen federal agencies that receive hundreds of millions or billions of taxpayer dollars every year towards this endeavor, completely absent public debate.

Yesterday on our blog, we addressed Obama's miserable civil liberties record, describing his attacks on whistleblowers and his war on transparency and accountability at the highest levels of government. The surveillance state that underlies these abuses is the subject of much of our work at the ACLUm of late.

Obama did not say one word last night about this massive government bureaucracy, because the surveillance state can only succeed when it operates in the shadows. That's why it is up to us, ordinary citizens and muckraking journalists, activists and Twitter leaders alike, to shout and investigate and protest and agitate. We must expose the underbelly of the US system, the secretive monitoring and data gathering and tracking, before it is too late.

The President will not discuss these issues in the light of day, in part because he doesn't have to: the expansion of the surveillance state has become a bipartisan project.

Obama made one thing clear by avoiding the issue last night: we are our only hope if we want a vigorous defense of liberty and core political rights. Last night's speech shows us that no President, Democrat or Republican, will willingly give up the many powers the office has usurped.

Like the revolutionaries who are celebrating one year into their fight for the rule of law in Egypt, we are our best shot. If we want the rule of law restored at home, we must fight for it.

Don't let the political class silence us, even by omission. Don't be silenced by the fear campaigns.

As renowned internet freedom fighter and high-profile target of government surveillance Jacob Appelbaum has said, courage is contagious. The first step is breaking the silence about surveillance.

Pass it on.

The following guest blog was written by ACLU of Massachusetts privacy rights coordinator Kade Crockford.

In a breathtakingly important decision we've anticipated for months, the Supreme Court today decided, in a unanimous ruling, that the government needs a warrant before placing a GPS tracking device on a car. A number of lower courts had disagreed on the question, raising the profile of the US v. Jones case at the nation's highest court.

The decision today is a major victory for privacy advocates and for all people who want to see a clear translation of basic constitutional rights in the digital age.

While it was the right call on the specifics of the case in question, the decision didn't go far enough. Unfortunately, the ruling does not extend to GPS tracking by other means, such as mobile phone tracking, although a number of justices wish that it had. Justices ultimately wrote three concurring opinions, with Scalia's narrow ruling serving as the majority. Justice Alito wrote one, arguing that the ruling should have extended to other types of GPS monitoring, including that of mobile phones. Justice Sotomayor raised the all important issue of third party information holders in her concurring opinion.

While the justices all agreed that the warrantless tracking in the Jones case violated the Constitution, they differed as to why. Scalia's majority ruling argued that the government had violated the Constitution because, in installing the GPS device on his car, it had invaded Mr. Jones' physical property. Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Sotomayor joined Scalia in the majority opinion.

But Justice Alito criticized the narrowness of Scalia's ruling, arguing in a concurrence for four judges that it inappropriately tied 18th century legal constructs to 21st century technologies. Alito is onto something big.

The majority ruling's reliance on the invasion of Mr. Jones' private property leaves unsettled the question of whether the government can access our location or other private data when we do not physically possess it, or when the government never physically invades our homes or cars in order to spy on us.

The New York Times highlights key passages of Sotomayor's concurrence, in which she raises just these issues, warning that the Court did not deal with the question of third party content holders such as telecommunications companies. "It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties," she wrote.

People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers...I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.

Given the government's keen interest in mobile phone tracking and obtaining information about us from third party holders without warrants, these issues are likely to come before the Court more directly. Since most people in the United States travel with their mobile phones 24/7, and use the internet to communicate and store private information every single day, these questions could not be more important.

For more information, see Marcy Wheeler's analysis on the Jones decision.

ACLU of Massachusetts communications director Christopher Ott wrote this guest blog.

The Obama administration announced today it will keep in place a proposed rule that says birth control is an essential service, and employer health insurance plans must cover birth control without a copay. This will ensure effective birth control is available for millions of women.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbied hard to get the administration to widen an existing religious exception to this rule, asking that religious-affiliated employers such as hospitals and social-service organizations be allowed to deny women birth-control coverage, along with churches and other religious bodies. Fortunately, the administration refused to broaden this exemption. By not caving into to the USCCB, the Obama administration has signaled that it will not allow discrimination against women employees by religious-affiliated employers that serve the public--often with taxpayer dollars.

There's nothing like a victory for equal rights to restore my faith in human courage and basic decency. So I braved the cold in order to show up for Governor Deval Patrick's ceremonial and very public signing of the Transgender Equal Rights Law at the State House this morning.

It was standing-room-barely as Massachusetts luminaries and civil rights advocates gathered in the ornate Senate Reading Room to watch our Commonwealth take another important step forward for equal rights under the law.

One way that Republican presidential contenders could go after President Obama is by criticizing his record on civil liberties, such as his yet-to-be fulfilled pledge to close Guantanamo--but, with only a few exceptions (Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman), they can't, because their stance on indefinite detention without charge or trial is worse than the President's. ACLU of Massachusetts education director Nancy Murray wrote the following guest blog.

It is fitting that Mitt Romney consolidated his lead to be the Republican nominee for president on the day that Guantanamo Bay marked its tenth anniversary: January 11, 2012. Back on April 21, 2006, the Massachusetts governor spent a few hours touring Guantanamo to buttress his presidential ambitions.

"Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo," he proclaimed as he hit the campaign trail. Brandishing his strong-on-national-security credentials, he declared that Guantanamo was "a symbol of American resolve."

ACLU of Massachusetts staff attorney Laura Rótolo wrote the following guest blog.

The state’s highest court today held that the Commonwealth cannot discriminate against non-citizens when it comes to access to its state health insurance program, because that is a violation of the right to equal protection under the Massachusetts Constitution. This is a victory not just for immigrants, but for the Massachusetts Constitution. Even in tough fiscal times, there is no basis for discriminating against a whole class of people.

Facing a financial crisis, the state had cut all non-citizens from the program. But last year, the Supreme Judicial Court held that this kind of discrimination—based on alienage—could only be constitutional if the state’s justification were subjected to the highest form of legal scrutiny.

So, in a second round of the case, the Commonwealth responded that it was merely following federal policy that immigrants should not be entitled to health benefits. The Court disagreed with that “hypothetical” justification, since it was clear that the actual justification was a fiscal one, and that the state was not obligated to follow a national policy.

The ACLU of Massachusetts, together with other groups, filed a friend of the court brief arguing that discrimination against non-citizens is unconstitutional and that the state’s justification did not pass the high hurdle set out by the court.

Tonight, thousands of Iowans will assemble in school cafeterias, gymnasiums and town halls in every hamlet and city across the Hawkeye state for the Iowa presidential caucus. Hopefully, a few of them will have taken a look at the ACLU’s candidate scorecard for civil rights and civil liberties, to see which candidates actually vote for liberty and justice for all.

As a child growing up in Iowa and later as a reporter for the Des Moines Register, I’ve always enjoyed caucus night. It's a cross between a New England town meeting and an Occupy Wall Street general assembly—only with less order and less direct democracy than either.

One of my favorite memories occurred during the 1988 caucus—a night in which Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis had a break-through victory by coming in third (which was a good showing for a guy from New England). It was a snowy night and the voters were gathered at the gymnasium of the Longfellow Elementary School. I was covering the election as a cub reporter, when I got to witness my parents get into a political—public—skirmish at the caucus.

What do get when you take America's overly-broad conspiracy and material support laws and mix them with efforts by federal prosecutors to criminalize unpopular speech?

In the short run, you get easy jury verdicts against guys like Tarek Mehanna. In the long run, you get an attack on freedom of speech itself. And that's a threat to all of us.

Mehanna, an Egyptian-American Boston University graduate, was convicted today largely because the jury was permitted to decide the case based on allegations that that Mehanna espoused and translated documents promoting ideas about jihad.

Like most of you, I find much of what Mehanna is alleged to have translated and shared on the Internet to be offensive and even hateful. Then again, also like many of you, I find a lot of stuff on the Internet to be offensive and hateful.

Where did this monstrosity come from?

It just rolled by a peaceful demonstration of about 60 people at the JFK Federal Building in Boston. How dangerous was this small group that supports the Bill of Rights and opposes the indefinite detention provisions of a federal bill about to be signed into law?

At a time of tight budgets everywhere and looming MBTA fare hikes that could raise the price of a single ride to $3.25, it's outrageous that money is being wasted on things like this.

Is the MBTA planning mass civil arrests?

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is one of the most powerful men in government. A decorated war hero and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Kerry brings both honor and influence to his work. His voice carries weight.

Like others, I carry with me a memory of John Kerry upon his return from the Vietnam war, bravely testifying before Congress in an act of courage and conscience. His willingness to speak out against a war that was endangering our country is how we knew that Kerry was a hero. It’s what got him elected to office.

Now, again, our nation needs John Kerry to stand up for freedom.

Congress is about to pass a National Defense Authorization Act (the bill that funds our troops) with truly scary provisions that would permit the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians -- including American citizens -- anywhere in the world.

This bill is a historic threat to American citizens and others because it expands and makes permanent the ability of the military to imprison American citizens without charge or trial. If it becomes law, American citizens and others are at real risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial.

It’s hard to imagine anything more antithetical to our democracy or our liberty. No wonder Massachusetts citizens will be protesting the NDAA provisions at Dewey Square on December 15 -- the anniversary of our Bill of Rights.

Just because the court ruled today that Boston city officials may shut down the Occupy Boston encampment at Dewey Square does not mean that they should. As city officials have repeatedly--and recently--stated, there is no immediate need to remove Occupy Boston from Dewey Square.

City officials have a choice. The judge ruled, "this decision clears the way but does not order the [Occupy Boston protestors] to vacate the site."

The eyes of the world are on Boston.

Crowding into a Boston Courtroom earlier today to watch the witnesses and attorneys from Occupy Boston and the city make their respective cases for whether the Occupy Boston Protesters should be allowed to stay at Dewey Square was one of the best instances of democracy in action I’ve seen in a long time.

Compared to the mass arrests and pepper-spraying of peaceful protesters in other major cities around the United States, it feels like Boston is getting it right – at least for now.

Judge Frances A. McIntyre is proving to be an open-minded and courageous jurist. In the two hearings to date on the Occupy Boston’s rights to free speech, assembly and petition, she clearly recognizes the important civil liberties issues at stake.

The Judge also made it clear to everyone in the courtroom that she wants to let the parties have their day in court.

Twice now, Judge McIntyre has declined to shut down the Occupy protesters at Dewey Square until she has an opportunity to fully air the unique factual and novel legal issues at stake. By continuing the temporary restraining order that has been in place since November 16 until she has time to issue her final written order on or before December 15, the Judge has created a thoughtful and deliberative setting in which to air the opposing views.

Perhaps Judge McIntyre realizes – and attorneys from both sides acknowledged today in court – that the Occupy movement in Boston and around the country has created a historic challenge to business as usual in America.

Senator Scott Brown can make good on his promise to support our troops and veterans this week by supporting a proposal by New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen to ensure that military servicewomen and their families have the same access to medical care as their civilian counterparts.

Sen. Shaheen’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (the Act that funds our troops) would allow the military health system to cover abortion care in cases of rape and incest--and only in those cases--just as the federal government does for all other federal employees, women enrolled in Medicaid, and women in federal prisons.

More than 400,000 women currently serve in the United States Armed Forces. At a time when servicewomen and their families put their lives and limbs at risk to preserve our rights and freedom, it’s critical that Congress ensure that they have the same care as the civilians they protect.