Meanwhile, government documents made public on Wednesday said lawyer Brandon Mayfield was held for two weeks under the material witness law because of a fingerprint analysis that later proved faulty and because of his ties as a convert to Oregon's Muslim community, which included advertising in a Muslim yellow pages and attending a mosque under government surveillance.

We have created a system in which the race or religion of a US citizen is itself a evidence of guilt. Thanks to the Patriot Act's many violations of the Constitution, the government can track people secretly, gather evidence secretly, and prosecute people secretly, without ever revealing its evidence or methods. Had the Spanish government not been involved in this case, I have no confidence that Mayfield would be free now.

And guess what? Because Mayfield is a white American, his jailing caused a lot of people to reconsider the Patriot Act. The scales of bigotry now failing to occlude their vision of this fine white boy, they were able to see the rampant violations of his rights. And, because he was not a Jordian-born Muslim, we didn't hear too much of his "Islamic beard." This time around, it didn't seem quite as much a forgone conclusion that he was guilty just by looking at him. Remove the blinding force of racism from a case, and it looks a whole lot different.

Today's post on the American Street