Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is pursuing a deeply misguided effort that threatens to reopen the door to torture.

At the most recent Republican presidential debates on national security, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has said President Obama had “outsourced” public policy on torture to the ACLU – a misrepresentation if ever there was one. To be sure, the ACLU is opposed to the use of torture – but so, too are CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and many other high level current and former military and national security officials. The ACLU strongly believes that our use of torture makes it more likely that our soldiers will be tortured when captured and that its use undermines core American values.

An amendment offered by Ayotte to the defense spending bill will likely come to a vote today. It seeks to roll back the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which prohibited the military from using interrogation techniques not allowed in the Army Field Manual.   A Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly supported the prohibition by a vote of 90-9 in 2005. Ayotte’s effort should be rejected by at least the same margin.

Our military and intelligence agencies have made clear they do not want this issue revisited. In 2009 they unanimously reported they had all the authority they needed to effectively interrogate. Responding to calls to bring back “enhanced interrogation techniques,” when he was commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan last year, General Petraeus unequivocally stated “we should not go there.” 

While Ayotte and several of the GOP presidential candidates seem unclear on whether waterboarding is actually torture, McCain, himself a victim of torture while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has been more forthright.  “It’s torture. It’s in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of the international agreement on torture, treaty of torture signed during the Reagan administration,” he said. The practice was used by Japanese prison camp guards (who were later prosecuted for war crimes) and by the Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror.

The Ayotte amendment would also overturn an executive order that strengthened the DTA by requiring all U.S. interrogators, not just those in the military, to abide by the Army’s interrogation manual. By allowing some interrogators to evade established protocols and requiring the creation of a secret annex of approved techniques, Ayotte threatens to muddy the waters and hinder U.S. military operations.  Even the Bush administration rejected the idea of an interrogation annex because of concerns that the resulting lack of clarity would obstruct training and ally collaboration. 

Our intelligence professionals also see abusive techniques as likely to produce false or misleading information. “Most military and FBI people say that you can gain better results through other techniques because once you hurt someone badly enough, they’re going to tell you whatever they want you to hear in order to make it stop,” McCain said. ”We can gain better information through using different techniques, which are not in violation of any of the treaties or obligations, not to mention our image as a nation.”

McCain’s final point bears emphasis. Reconsideration of torture resurrects harmful images of Abu Ghraib and the serious damage that abusive practices have done to America’s standing in the past. Our position as a nation grounded in the rule of law has always been one of our greatest strengths. When we stray from those values, we diminish that standing and create additional obstacles for our troops trying to win hearts and minds in their missions abroad. 

Ayotte’s amendment and the recent statements by Republican candidates on torture seek to reopen old wounds, flatly reject the best advice of military and intelligence professionals and offend America’s core values. Any one of those alone should be a sufficient reason to oppose the amendment and reject calls for a return to torture.

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In recent weeks, local police have been circulating predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods in Alabama, asking those standing on the street to go inside their homes or face arrest — all because the state passed a law requiring police to be immigration agents.

During the past decade, as international terrorism became a subject of intense concern, Arab Americans and South Asian Americans have been spied upon, stopped, questioned and subjected to intensified inspection based on their racial characteristics rather than any evidence of wrongdoing.

And for more than a century, black men and women traveling through predominantly white neighborhoods have been questioned for no reason — simply because police officers felt they didn’t belong there.

Before there was even a name for it, racial profiling has been engrained in our country’s law enforcement practices. But racial profiling not only goes against our Constitution and our country’s value for equality — it also hinders law enforcement officials from doing an effective job.

For years, many of our political leaders have vowed to put an end to racial profiling. Attorney General Eric Holder has made it clear that ending the practice of racial profiling is a "priority" for the Obama administration. And certain members of Congress have echoed that sentiment, by introducing S. 1670, the End Racial Profiling Act of 2011 (ERPA), in the U.S. Senate on Oct. 6. The law also will be reintroduced in the House, and should receive bipartisan support.

The law would take concrete steps toward eliminating the practice of making a group of people subject to heightened scrutiny based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. ERPA is a laudable starting point, not a complete remedy, because the operational lines between legitimate practices and illegal profiling have become dangerously blurred at our borders, in our airports, and on our streets and freeways. It will take sustained vigilance to make these boundaries meaningful and to ensure that anyone violating them faces consequences.

Now is the time for us to come together and end this unlawful practice. Racial profiling is ineffective, erodes public trust in law enforcement and violates the Constitution. It has no place in American life.

In the coming days, through a blog series on “The Three Faces of Racial Profiling,” it will become evident the damage that racial profiling has done to many Americans. At the core, racial profiling is about discrimination, not about keeping our communities or our country safe.

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We listed those new powers, realizing our government would react quickly to determine who committed these monstrous acts and to prevent future attacks. Based on our country’s reactions to previous acts of terrorism, such as the Antiterrorism Act passed in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, we worried government might sweep too broadly, targeting the innocent along with the guilty based upon their race, religion, immigration status, and political views. We knew the ACLU would serve a crucial role protecting constitutional rights and American values over the following months. None of us imagined we’d be waging that battle 10 years later, or that policy priorities moving forward then, such as immigration reform and a ban on racial profiling, would be thwarted because some lawmakers would use fear of terrorism to manipulate public policy.

The list we created barely scratched the surface. The unprecedented powers granted to the government created an insatiable security machine blurring the lines between national security, policing, and intelligence work at home and abroad. In the process, a dramatic transformation of privacy, surveillance, our concept of war, and government took place. This monstrous security apparatus uses fear to justify its ever-expanding, and largely secret, budget.

While the threat was new, racial and religious discrimination and political oppression are not. The Red Scare of the 20th century saw a wave of terrorist violence leading to thousands of warrantless raids, arrests, and the improper deportation of innocent immigrants based on national origin, speech, associations and political views. Japanese internment in the 1940’s and McCarthy-era investigations in the 1950’s all demonstrated what government is capable of when turned against its citizens. In the 1970s, abuses of intelligence and law enforcement powers saw the government routinely spying on anti-war and civil rights organizations.

Each era of civil liberties abuses was followed by courageous Americans reclaiming their rights, establishing legal precedents that protected political speech and non-violent political organizing. We passed civil rights laws ensuring equal access to voting and equal protection under the law. We even made great strides in exposing the injustice of racial profiling, proving it is as ineffective as it is illegal and immoral. Before 9/11 we were frustratingly close to obtaining a nationwide ban. Even President George W. Bush had declared, racial profiling “is wrong and we will end it in America.”

Unfortunately, after 9/11 our government opted to violate the constitutional and legal limits designed to protect the rights of the innocent. The guidance the Justice Department produced in response to President Bush’s call to ban racial profiling contained loopholes for national security and border integrity investigations. The loopholes made the rule ineffective, as tactics originally justified as necessary and temporary infringements on liberty to ensure security from foreign terrorists are now, predictably, used to address ordinary crime. Law enforcement agencies now identify behaviors as innocuous as public photography and note-taking as precursors of terrorism and crime, and have developed formal programs to collect reports of this behavior, leading to improper police stops and detentions.

Once again, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are using race and ethnicity as primary factors in deciding whom to investigate. The FBI has a racial and ethnic mapping program directing investigations on an array of criminal activity and potential national security threats to communities identified by race, ethnicity and national origin. This is racial profiling on steroids. The FBI is not alone: the Los Angeles Police Department started a “Muslim mapping” program, but shut it down as a result of public outrage, and recent reports indicate the NYPD has teamed with the CIA, potentially in violation of its legal prohibition against domestic spying, to engage in broad surveillance targeting the Muslim community.

Americans know racial discrimination is wrong. We must summon our courage and push back on fear and the erosion of civil liberties, turning our attention again to the promise of America by ending racial profiling, reforming disastrous immigration policies, and ensuring Americans are treated equally under the law. America can be both safe and free.

On Thursday, September 15 at 4 p.m. EDT, we’ll be hosting a live chat on Facebook. We hope you’ll join us; send your questions to @ACLU with #ACLUchat and #911 hashtags, or leave them in the comments section below.

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Requiring coverage of FDA-approved contraceptives like birth control pills, implants and IUDs and other necessary preventive services would seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, when it comes to health care in America today, nothing is ever that simple.

Following the HHS announcement, some groups have objected to the contraception requirement on religious grounds. They want a wide range of employers to get a special exception so they can deny their employees birth control coverage. The HHS guidelines already propose to exempt churches, synagogues and other exclusively sectarian institutions. But critics of the policy say that’s not enough.

These groups want special exceptions to allow any religiously affiliated institution, including hospitals that employ people of all faiths, to deny its employees insurance for birth control. If the critics had their way, the HHS guidelines would be meaningless for hundreds of thousands of women, who would lose the ability to determine which health services are best for them and their families and instead could be beholden to the religious beliefs of their employers.

Consider that Catholic hospitals alone employ over half a million people. The effects of broadening the exception would be sweeping.

While everyone is free to make personal decisions regarding whether and when to use birth control, it is wrong for employers to force this decision on their employees by denying them access to essential health services.

This isn’t the first time that religious groups have tried to impose their views on health policy. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops tried to have contraception excluded from the guidelines altogether, denying these benefits to all women. Currently, the bishops are pushing an even more extreme measure that could allow employers to refuse to provide coverage for any service they oppose, leaving health care coverage for thousands of people of all belief systems to the influence of one particular faith.

This is completely contrary to our values of both personal and religious freedom.

Women need, demand and utilize contraceptive services. This is the reality of women’s health, and has been acknowledged and affirmed by the medical community and now by HHS. Those who oppose family planning cannot be permitted to allow their ideology to dictate others’ health care. To do otherwise would mark a dismaying retreat from rationality in women’s health policy.

(Originally posted on McClatchy.com.)

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June 2011 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world’s largest incarcerator. Throughout the month, check back daily for posts about the drug war, its victims and what needs to be done to restore fairness and create effective policy.

Today is an exciting day for the ACLU and criminal justice advocates around the country. Following much thought and careful deliberation, the United States Sentencing Commission took another step toward creating fairness in federal sentencing by retroactively applying the new Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. This decision will help ensure that over 12,000 people — 85 percent of whom are African-Americans — will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.

This decision is particularly important to me because, as director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, I have advocated for Congress and the sentencing commission to reform federal crack cocaine laws for almost 20 years. In 1993, the ACLU lead the coalition that convened the first national symposium highlighting the crack cocaine disparity entitled "The 100 to 1 Ratio: Racial Bias in Cocaine Laws." Now, 25 years after the first crack cocaine law was enacted in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the sentencing commission has taken another step toward ending the racial and sentencing disparities that continue to exist in our criminal justice system.

By voting in favor of retroactivity, I am pleased that the commission chose justice over demagoguery and concluded that retroactivity was necessary to ensuring that the goals of the FSA were fully realized. It is important to remember that even with today’s commission vote not every crack cocaine offender will have his her sentence reduced. Judges are still required to determine whether a person qualifies for a retroactive reduction so, contrary to what some have said, this is not a "get out of jail free card."

While we celebrate the sentencing commission’s decision, we must not lose sight of our ultimate goals — removing all disparities between crack and powder cocaine sentencing and ending the misguided, ineffective and harmful war on drugs that continues essentially unabated. The FSA and its retroactive application are extremely important steps in a national ACLU campaign to combat mass incarceration in this country. We hope this is just one of many victories to come in our crusade to break the addiction to incarceration in this country.

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