DOD to check if program broke Vietnam-era rules against monitoring peace protestors News
DOD to check if program broke Vietnam-era rules against monitoring peace protestors

[JURIST] Officials from the US Department of Defense [official website] have said that they will review its TALON program [Wired report], which gathers information about potential threats to military facilities, after an NBC News report disclosed that the database also includes information on peace protesters and others whose shouldn't have been in the database. Officials said that the Pentagon has a legitimate interest in gathering information about possible threats to bases and troops, but acknowledged that it is possible that the database has not been properly maintained. The Pentagon review will focus on whether Defense Department officials broke regulations [PDF text] adopted after the Vietnam War that limit what information the military can collect about people and activities taking place inside the US. According to the Pentagon, information that is "not validated as threatening" must be removed from the TALON database within 90 days. Thursday's Washington Post has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.