Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is at the center of massive controversy.

Barack Obama’s controversial pastor and the church he’s served for 36 years may be in hot water over statements he has made from the pulpit in support of the Illinois senator’s run for the White House.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. preaches that he follows the righteous path, but when it comes to the federal tax law, his Trinity United Church of Christ may have crossed the line.

Although Wright delivered what was billed as his final sermon last month on his path to retirement, prior to his departure he delivered commentary from the pulpit now being scrutinized in which he praised Obama.

“There is a man here who can take this country in a new direction,” Wright said during his Jan. 13 sermon, according to recordings obtained by FOX News.

It was not the first time Wright appeared to endorse Obama, who was baptized at Trinity United, has been an active member of the church for two decades and receives spiritual mentorship from Wright.

The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from a sermon by Wright.

During a Christmas sermon, Wright tried to compare Obama’s upbringing to Jesus at the hands of the Romans.

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said. “Hillary would never know that.

“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”

“I’m still In Bible country,” is what Jeremiah Wright said as he spoke of a “a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” and began to describe Christ as a black man. Watch the video excerpt of the controversial sermon.

Privacy Maven can’t help but note the irony of Jeremiah Wright angrily shouting that Jesus taught him to “love the hell out of my enemies.” It is a bit earthier than the King James English we are more accustomed to, “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and [to] the evil.” (Luke 6:35).

In the final analysis, actions really do speak louder than words. Jesus Christ healed the servant of a Roman centurion, and thus seemed to be able to cope with living under the rule of “rich white people.” Jeremiah Wright would do well to explore that part of “Bible country.”

Last year, Jeremiah Wright appeared on Hannity & Colmes, to explain his views.

ABC News has also examined Jeremiah Wright’s controversial theology.

Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

The article continues.

Jeremiah Wright’s controversial theology aside, infusing his sermons with politics is jeopardizing the church’s tax exempt status, a serious matter indeed. From a WSJ article,

Mr. Wright, who will be ending his 36-year tenure as the church’s senior pastor in June, has previously been criticized for comments deriding President George Bush and lauding Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Now Mr. Wright’s and his successor’s repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

Sen. Obama’s campaign issued a statement saying that he has repeatedly stressed that personal attacks “have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they’re offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church.” The statement also said he “does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Senator Obama deeply disagrees.” Mr. Wright declined to comment.

Trinity’s national parent, the United Church of Christ, recently disclosed that it’s being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for a speech Sen. Obama gave to 10,000 people at a church conference in June in Hartford, Conn., in which he mentioned his candidacy and parts of his platform, namely health-care reform.

Scholars and attorneys say that a growing number of congregations are delving into issue advocacy and partisan politics, a trend dating back to the 1980s, when the religious right enlisted churches to fight abortion. An increasing number of complaints to the IRS over church politicking have triggered agency probes into both liberal and conservative religious groups. A Baptist church in California has acknowledged it’s under IRS scrutiny after a watchdog group complained that the church backed Republican Mike Huckabee in his recently ended bid for the White House.

“There have never been more audits than in the last three or four years” involving churches, says Marcus Owens, an attorney who represents some congregations and is a former director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division. But while the agency has issued dozens of warning letters aimed at halting advocacy for political candidates, it has only twice revoked a church’s tax-exempt status since the tax law was amended in 1954, a spokeswoman said.

According to Fox News,

In a certified letter, Marsha Ramirez, IRS director, EO Examinations, wrote:

“Our concerns are based on articles posted on several Web sites including the church’s which state the United States Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama addressed nearly 10,000 church members gathered at the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod at the Hartford Civic Center, on June 23, 2007. In addition, 40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside the center to promote his campaign.”

The church and the Obama campaign have denied that any inappropriate political advocacy occurred during this speech.

Embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, embroiled in a widely publicized text-messaging sex scandal has now lashed out against the Detroit Free Press.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick today accused the Free Press of illegally obtaining the text messages that exposed an affair between him and his chief of staff and showed that they lied to jurors about their sexual tryst.

“How did they obtain these records? Where did they get them?” Kilpatrick said during a radio interview on WMXD-FM (92.3, the Mix). “The Free Press obviously had some meetings that they ought to answer to.”

Kilpatrick said the text messages were confidential and came after an $8.4- million settlement stemming from a whistle-blower lawsuit brought by three former police officers.

“I think the Free Press has committed a crime. I believe they committed a crime,” Kilpatrick said.

Caesar Andrews, executive editor of the Free Press, denied the mayor’s accusation.

“The Free Press did nothing illegal. We verified our coverage in numerous ways and reported only on the facts. This is such an important story that we’ve insisted on the highest standards in deciding what to publish,” Andrews said.

“No one, including the mayor, has challenged our factual reporting. And no one, including the mayor, has offered one iota of evidence that the Free Press engaged in anything criminal. His claims about the nature of Free Press coverage are just not logical, and they’re not true,” Andrews said.

“The proper focus for our coverage has been the conduct of the mayor. That’s the real deal,” Andrews said. “The mayor cannot be allowed to shift the blame elsewhere. There is no conspiracy. There is no hidden agenda. Our news coverage really stands on its own.”

In this video, shot today at the courthouse, Wayne Circuit Judge Robert Colombo Jr releases the documents to the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News.

A public figure’s pain and humiliation does not change the fact that freedom of the press is essential to our free society. Similarly, public servants, beholden to the public whom they serve, must accept the consequences for their actions, especially if and when those actions prove to be criminal actions. This troubling case continues to unfold in Detroit where the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press unrelentingly seek to uncover the truth.

This video documents the mayor’s supporters and opponents in a rally held on January 30, 2008.

Real ID pits states against the federal government.

The federal government issued national standards on Friday that states would have to meet in order for driver’s licenses they issue to qualify as identification at airports and federal buildings, setting the stage for a confrontation with states that have voted not to cooperate.

Under a measure known as Real ID legislation, the states must comply by May 11, the third anniversary of the measure’s enactment, or obtain a waiver from the Department of Homeland Security.

Meeting the May 11 deadline is impossible because the regulations have been delayed so long, but Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, said Friday that his department would issue a waiver to states that promised to comply later.

He laid out a very long schedule, with the final deadline in December 2017, more than 16 years after the events that prompted the law, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Several states have voted not to comply. One is Washington, where the chairwoman of the Senate’s transportation committee, when asked what difference the new federal rules would make, said, “None.”

The Washington Legislature is to begin a special session on Monday but it will be brief, said Senator Mary Margaret Haugen, the chairwoman.

“It’s very unrealistic of the federal government to think that states that are not in session or in a short session can resolve this in a short time frame,” she said. “Our state has said we will not spend money on the Real ID unless they fund it, and I don’t see any money coming from the federal government.”

The article continues. Privacy rights groups and individuals have objected to Real ID for some time. It is a clear, obvious and appalling erosion of Constitutional rights.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is interviewed in this CBS Eye to Eye report.

Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence wants us to change the way we perceive privacy.

As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

Kerr’s comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans’ privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people’s private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

Donald Kerr

As Wired’s Ryan Singel points out, this redefinition of privacy has staggering and worrisome implications.

Hmm. Suppose there was a rogue employee at your ISP who got access to your internet traffic. The worst case scenario I can think of for most people is that that person might try to blackmail you. As for stealing your credit card, its far more likely this would happen at a restaurant or a retail store.

What can’t your ISP do that an intelligence service can?

* Arrange to have you sent to a country like Syria to have you tortured like the government did to Maher Arar. Though the Canadians have since apologized and paid him $10 million for being tortured for almost a year, the U.S. government hides its culpability using the “state secrets privilege”

* Put you on a government watch list

* Find a tenuous connection between you and suspected bad guys in order to justify further surveillance

* Find a way to nail you for material support to terrorism

* Build secret files on Americans’ First Amendment-protected political activities

* Use those files to round up dissidents in the event of an “emergency”

In other words, this Administration – of which Kerr is only a small player – believes that the nation’s spooks microphones and data-mining robots should be inserted deep into the nation’s telephone and internet infrastructure. They don’t want court oversight, they don’t want Congress asking questions, they don’t want inspectors general crawling through their program logs. They think that they should have this power because they promise not to abuse it and there are laws prohibiting some of the things on that list.

They believe that they, unlike the Nixon Administration, won’t be tempted to create an domestic enemies list. That they won’t start adding groups like Food, Not Bombs and Quakers to terror data bases (only the Pentagon could be so stupid). That they won’t make mistakes and transpose phone digits when doing phone surveillance (only the FBI could be so careless.) That they won’t confuse Tuttle for Buttle, or Senator Ted Stevens’ wife Catherine for notorious terrorist Cat Stevens.

Yes, quite worrisome. As Mike Nizza points out, there are no end to the objections that we can and, indeed, must raise:

And there were many more objections from privacy-focused observers, including a declaration that Mr. Kerr “has decided to kill privacy,” an invocation of Benjamin Franklin about those who “deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,” and a compact summation of Mr. Kerr’s remarks by an expert talking to The A.P.:

‘’It’s just another ‘trust us, we’re the government,’ ” said Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A writer at Ars Technica added, “It’s hard to have too much confidence when the F.B.I. is busy losing laptops and the nature of such programs appears to be one involving little oversight from independent branches of government.”

It took two years – two years that Genarlow Wilson spent in prison, two years of a 10 year sentence for having consensual sex with a 15 year old when he was 17, before authorities – in this case, the Georgia Supreme Court – finally regained their senses and set him free:

The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, the Douglas County teenager who has been serving a controversial 10-year sentence for consensual oral sex.

The court’s 4-3 decision upholds a Monroe County judge’s ruling that the sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment under both the Georgia and U.S. constitutions.

The majority opinion said the sentence appeared to be “grossly disproportionate” to the teenager’s crime and noted that it was out of step with current law.

Wilson was convicted in April 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a 2003 New Year’s Eve party in a hotel room. He was 17 at the time.

At the time the crime carried a mandatory 10-year sentence with no parole. However, the law was changed in 2006 to make Wilson’s crime a misdemeanor with a maximum 1-year sentence.

“Although society has a significant interest in protecting children from premature sexual activity, we must acknowledge that Wilson’s crime does not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children …” wrote Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears in the majority opinion.

She said that “for the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disporportionate to his crime.”

Justice George Carley, in the dissent, said the 2006 change in the law was specifically written so it would not be retroactive. The sentence is not cruel and unusual because “the General Assembly made the express decision that he cannot benefit from the subsequent legislative determination to reduce the sentence for commission of that crime from felony to misdemeanor status,” Carley wrote.

Carley said the majority opinion showed “unprecedented disregard” for the legislative intent of the law change and creates the potential for releases of “any and all defendents who were ever convicted of aggravated child molestation and sentenced” under circumstances similar to Wilson’s.

The majority opinion acknowledged that the state’s high court rarely overturns sentences on grounds that they are cruel and unusual, but notes that it has done so twice before following legislative changes. It also said a review of other states showed that most “either would not punish Wilson’s conduct at all or would, like Georgia now, punish it as a misdemeanor.”

You can read the Georgia Supreme Court’s press release regarding their decision (pdf file) or read the full text of the court’s decision (pdf file). For background information on this case, Privacy Maven recommends this excellent article by Wright Thompson of ESPN.com and the article on Wilson v. State of Georgia on Wikipedia. Throughout the case, ESPN’s reporting has been notable. Wilson was, at the time of his arrest, a high school football star as well as an honors student with a 3.2 GPA, who intended to further both academic studies and football in college. Here are two video reports from ESPN on Genarlow Wilson.

The tasering of Andrew Meyer at the University of Florida continues to generate commentary and reactions worldwide. On YouTube we can watch countless videos, including this protest rally at the University of Florida.

Through it all, Privacy Maven finds it remarkable that discussion of the deeper issues is somewhat eclipsed by caustic banter about Andrew Meyer’s alleged quest for instant fame and the derision that affords him.

Perhaps it is indicative of our culture to interpret an event such as this as a quest for fame and attention and to judge it accordingly. A whole genre of television programming, “Reality TV” is based on such a concept. A decade or so ago, who would have believed that large audiences would watch people endure grueling and humiliating experiences on camera, such as they do on programs like Survivor, America’s Biggest Loser, The Apprentice or American Idol, to name just a few such programs.

We often speak of a lack of civility in our society, the lack of politeness, and the commonness of coarser language. How easy it is to vilify Andrew Meyer as a publicity seeker or a conspiracy nut or a prankster. How easy, apparently also, to witness someone, unarmed and already under police control, tasered unnecessarily, and say he got what he deserved.

The U.S. Constitution asserts otherwise, not willing to make exceptions for alleged publicity seekers or pranksters.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

John Pozadzides, points out the deeper issues here. He presents a detailed analysis of the phenomena of tasering, of the history of use and misuse of this police tactic:

Now, police are being given the green light all over the world to completely disable people whenever they feel like it, and I’m certain we are going to see a whole lot more abuse as a result.

• People will be tasered long before it’s a necessity. Think about it, if you were a cop why even bother to break a sweat when you know you could probably control a situation physically? All you have to do is taser the hell out of someone and they’ll do anything you say.
• People will be intimidated and threatened by the use of tasers. Most people are not that scared of police officers because they feel reasonably sure they won’t be shot (like with a gun). But now you can’t be sure that even arguing with a cop won’t result in a tasering.
• Women will be tasered and raped while they are conscious but unable to react. If you were a rapist you could use one of these to rape anyone you wanted. This guy did, and it happened to this homeless woman and two women in D.C.
• Men will be tasered and then beaten without being able to defend themselves. Want proof? Here is a group of “private security guards” hired by the Israeli government using stun guns against unarmed Rabbis.
• More people will die as a direct result of taser use. In the US nearly 200 people have already died after being shot by a taser gun, including a mentally ill homeless woman who was stunned with a Taser while on the ground in handcuffs.

Privacy Maven has to wonder, how would the significant, history making protests of years gone by unfolding in this atmosphere? Have we become so jaded that we do not recognize violations of civil rights, trampling of First Amendment freedom of speech? Are we too quick to accept the encroaching power of the state to intrude upon our rights and our lives as Paul Craig Roberts of LewRockwell.com asserts:

The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?

Kerry’s meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush’s wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.

Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?

The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer’s rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.

How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?

Absolutely. When do citizens react? Or will they react at all? Have we reached the stage in which images from the 1960s, of civil rights protesters are hosed down and attacked by dogs no longer trouble us?

At the time, such images were shocking and outraged the world.

Are we too jaded now to feel moral outrage over these unfolding events, frozen in black and white images?

What would happen today? Today are we so eager to continue in name calling — publicity seeker, conspiracy nut — to forget the importance of freedom, indeed that we even have the freedom to express opinions and label Andrew Meyer as we choose.

By now there are countless opinions of the Andrew Meyer taser incident which took place a few days ago at the University of Florida, and which has been documented via numerous YouTube videos.

This video documents Andrew Meyer’s entire question and the police action which ensued.

Another video of the incident:

This video documents what occurred after the taser incident and has been edited:

Regardless of any observer’s opinion or perspective, and regardless of whether or not Andrew Meyer was a prankster or an aspiring media star, he had every right to ask a question in a public place during a public debate. A person who is long-winded or who dares to make mention of The Skull and Bones Society does not deserve to be brutalized by police officers. This dramatic and unfortunate curtailment of one individual’s freedom of speech is appalling. It brings to mind history, of not so long ago, of student protest and activism from the 1960s and 1970s, numerous clashes and confrontations with police which culminated in the tragic slaying of four Kent State students on May 4, 1970.

Let us hope that discussion of instant celebrity-making and media spectacle and pranksterism does not cloud the essential issue of freedom of speech.