For example 1) Use immunity -- a complete violation of the fifth Amendment. You have to testify against yourself. In theory this testimony cannot be used against you -- only if the police happen by coincidence (wink wink) to come up with evidence from an independent source they can use it against you. 2) As Peter said the whole grand jury system. A prosecutors dream. In theory the grand jury is independent. In practice it does whatever the prosecutor once. The witness have no right to an attorney, no right to a public record. (In fact it is illegal for them to talk about what went on.) There is no limit to what can be asked, fishing expeditions are routine. In fact, someone on this list pointed out to me on another list that this is why Britain eliminated grand juries -- one of the few pro-civil libertarian steps GB has taken. 3) The intimidation of witnesses. Maybe as some have said, perjury charges against defense witnesses are not routine (making it a genuine anti-civil liberties breakthrough). But the disrupting of adaptations, the filing of criminal charges against defense witness are pretty damn routine in our system. In the Mumia case I believe that physical intimidation was even used to drive potential defense witnesses out of town -- and I don't believe that Mumia is the only such case. 4) The whole snitch thing where prosecution witness are bribed with reduced sentences and face ten or thirty year or life sentences if their testimony if the prosecution does not like th eir testimony. Basically, the whole mandatory sentence thing has shifted sentencing discretion from the judges to the prosecutors. While this is most extreme in drug cases, it applies to others as well. The Hubbell's were a good example of a witness basically receiving the sentence desired by prosecutors.
In short (unless the use of perjury prosecution to intimidate witness is really unusual) what Clinton has undergone can best be explained as the routine of our prison industrial complex being applied to someone with power. When shit that is usually used to oppress the poor is turned against the powerful this is often a chance to put a crimp in that particular form of oppression. For example the establishment turned against black-lists during the Truman-McCarthy era when HUAC started going after the army. It took a lot of work to (for at least a long period of time) finish it off but I think this really opened up the door.
On a completely separate note: rights --- the way I've always seen rights such as free speech is that socialism should extend those rights without removing any of their old forms. In short a socialist view of rights in existing bourgeois is that they should be extended, not diminished in the name of "replacing" them. Free speech should include access rights. Free speech in which the vast majority of people are excluded from being heard is not free speech. But neither is a system where anyone can be heard, but censors decide what can and cannot be said. Socialist rights to be meaningful need to include everything the bourgeois rights include, plus more.
One last point -- for Jim Heartfield on the Internet hit list case. Normally I tend towards free speech absolutism. But when assert (with graphic detail) that doctors providing abortion services are murderers and war criminals, publish their home address, draw black lines through their names as they are killed, and red lines through their names as they are injured you are soliciting murder. This is no more free speech than handing a bank teller a note saying: "I have a gun. Hand me all the money at your station".
While I approve ruling against the defendent, I'm not sure I approve the basis of the decision. The judges rule against the defendents on broader grounds than were neccesary. My feeling is that they could have been rule against on very narrow grounds; the combination of inflammatory language, the publication of home addresses, and the crossing off of names as people were killed and injured (with color coding distinguishing between death and injury) could have been taken as evidence of intent.
============= Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/