December 18, 2010
Way to go Joe. Hardly there, and already an embarrassment....
December 07, 2010
Or at least the liars: 3.32pm: "This case is not about WikiLeaks," district judge Howard Riddle told the court, according to my colleague Sam Jones, who was there. No. Of course not. Sexual assault in Sweden is of the utmost...
November 14, 2010
So, the 'Coup has been quiet for some time now. Armand held down the fort and exhausted himself. Baltar's epic reviews are, well, epic and infrequent. And my situation... I can't speak for the others, but for me, the last...
February 16, 2010
I read the NYT's long report on the Tea Party Movement. Pretty damn frightening. Those people are really crazy. In my worst Randian/Libertarian days, I never believed what these nutballs do. Oh, and a brief note to Ms. Stout (first...
July 21, 2009
Henry Louis Gates arrested: Police responding to a call about "two black males" breaking into a home near Harvard University ended up arresting the man who lives there — Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation's pre-eminent black scholar. ... Ogletree...
December 03, 2008
September 30, 2008
September 13, 2008
That's what this is, evidently, to someone who lives on my block. This week I received from the city a notice that I was in violation of city code for "excessive weeds" and "obstructed sidewalk." Look again at the distressing...
September 02, 2008
There are several stories within the general view of the ineptitude of the coordinated "security" forces outside the RNC. One is about the harassment and abuse of the press. Another the apparent inability of the authorities to discern the difference...
August 30, 2008
Cheeky of people, thinking they have rights....
August 22, 2008
I strongly agree with this. Sham indeed....
July 25, 2008
Then don't criticize the TSA because they will fuck your shit up, and then lie to you about it: "Coincidentally, this all began in May, shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA. Eleven flights...
June 22, 2008
Can you imagine the sheer amount of data? And how tempting it would be to crack the security? And the burden on small business? Washington, DC - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping...
June 15, 2008
From the NYT: Four years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay couples to marry, there have been blissful unions, painful divorces and everything in between. Some same-sex couples say being married has made a big difference, and...
April 25, 2008
I live about a half block from one of the local high schools, and get a fair share of the unhappy consequences: kids sitting on my front steps smoking, tossing cigarette butts in the yard, candy wrappers in the garden,...
April 01, 2008
Our overlords, Fafblog, seems to have returned. In case you were confused, this is good. (Unless this is an April Fools Day Joke, in which case I'll be pissed.)...
March 16, 2008
Everyone else has heard about Rep. Kern, but we've got ugly in our backyard too. Makes me want to break out the brokeback mountaineer shirts I had ready to go when Fr*d Ph%lps was planning a protest here....
February 08, 2008
In a little-reported story yesterday, the Attorney General of the United States argued that if the Justice Department declares something to be legal, it cannot (later) be investigated to see if it is (in fact) legal or not: Testifying before...
November 30, 2007
Bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, afraid of being tortured in the United States: The United States is not a safe country for refugees, the Federal Court said Thursday as it ruled that Canada will no longer...
October 18, 2007
I'm having trouble expressing my level of disdain for the Congressional Democrats in the English language. "Sniveling" might work, but doesn't have enough banal evilness in it. "Evil" gives them to much credit for actually doing something (takes effort to...
August 19, 2007
Clergy response teams, because the bible helps people be calm in a time of crisis: For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is...
August 14, 2007
Well, isn't that special: The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the...
August 13, 2007
There has been quite a bit of attention paid to the recent censoring of Pearl Jam's performance. ATT claims that it was an error related to their policy of editing out profanity, but Pearl Jam and advocates of net neutrality...
August 07, 2007
Re: FISA etc, Atrios wants someone who can to ask: Have the phone and email conversations of any American journalists, US federal officeholders, or federal campaign workers ever been intercepted without a warrant?...
July 03, 2007
Has anyone noticed that Britain's response to the round/wave of bombings is to use the law, arrest people according to the law (technically, they can "hold" them for 28 days before arresting them or letting them go, but the law...
June 29, 2007
I see that the Supreme Court has decided to see if Congress can pass a law that forbids people (granted, non-citizens) from having access to our judicial system. I'll agree that, in theory, this is a question the Court should...
June 17, 2007
Wow. Do you think she could be a little more condescending? Just maybe? Maria Carvajal walks the sweltering streets of Tijuana, Mexico, clutching a photo of her mentally disabled son, who she says went missing after being deported more than...
PZ writes about how the "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs" have combined to be a war against science projects: In the name of child safety, in order to inhibit drug peddlers, because we don't want to make...
June 15, 2007
...or maybe not: An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than...
June 12, 2007
The Sao Paulo Pride Parade may have reached 3 million participants!...
June 02, 2007
He passed this morning. I think I speak for the whole crew here in wishing our thoughts, prayers and/or general good wishes on all those close to him. He ran a very informative and entertaining blog. Godspeed....
April 08, 2007
And he's a retired Marine too: "On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published...
April 04, 2007
...they really are out to get you (emphasis mine): A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political...
March 23, 2007
Reasons to love lawyers: Remember my previous post about an editorial in a student newspaper in Indiana that talked about how people should accept their gay friends when they came out of the closet? Believe it or not, the teacher...
February 28, 2007
The first wounded soldier of the Iraq war too. Marine comes out against 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell': And I can almost hear it now -- "Oh, yeah, he's that gay Marine." I'm okay with that. The truth is, something's wrong...
February 16, 2007
ABC: Many of those interviewed saw atheists as cultural elitists, amoral materialists, or given to criminal behavior or drugs. She states, "Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the...
February 12, 2007
I found this on Ezra Klein's blog. Why this isn't a bigger deal in our society I'll never understand. That people regularly make jokes about it is nauseating. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to...
February 08, 2007
A report of air marshalls bring required to submit a quota of suspects whether they suspect them or not: The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month....
January 31, 2007
She's gone. Far, far too soon: Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment and referred to President Bush as "Shrub," has died after a long battle with breast cancer, the managing editor of...
January 10, 2007
From Mr. Populist at DailyKos, the upshot: This electronic dragnet at Departments of Motor Vehicles in every state was Bush's interpretation of his executive powers under the Patriot Act. This is Bush's idea of fighting domestic terrorism. And the details:...
January 04, 2007
Found via Atrios, this from the NYDN: President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned. The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform...
December 17, 2006
Those are what we need to take to the Department of Homeland Security. Is it really possible that a bureaucracy this young can already stink this much? the Department of Homeland Security, which has opted to bar access to detainees...
December 16, 2006
Right now, where are the legal immigrants that were rounded up in Homeland Security operations this week? Where are they? What's next? Maybe we should start a letter writing campaign, since trying to engage habeus corpus isn't necessarily going to...
December 03, 2006
This time, it's the MPAA, which used its clout to kill a bill that would have protected people from having their private information used and/or stolen. The reason? The MPAA said it would interfere with their investigations into piracy. Excuse...
December 02, 2006
So the last post was a joke, but this one is sadly real. From a CNN video story (no link, sorry) about the data being collected on anyone who travels. Among other pieces of information, including where a person travels...
December 01, 2006
Via Iraq Updates, a Reuters story: Iraq's parliament will bar the media from future sessions and began yesterday by refusing access to reporters and then cutting off television coverage as a debate on mounting sectarian violence became heated. Spokesmen for...
November 30, 2006
Wouldn't you rather your elected officials take an oath on a book in which they believed? I mean, it totally helped Duke Cunningham to swear on the bible, with that eighth commandment and all....
November 18, 2006
This is disturbing - really, really disturbing. The guards would tell us: "This is what you get for protesting." One of them said, "Who gives a shit about janitors making 5 dollars an hour? Lots of people make that much."...
...you might also hit up Amnesty International. It seems they have been calling bullshit on use of tasers and have been threatened by the manufacturers (p. 2). Sounds like they are speaking truth and hitting nerves. Via AmericaBlog...
He was speaking at the Air Force Academy about the August ruling against domestic spying: Gonzales, in remarks prepared for delivery at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said that some see the program as on the...
October 15, 2006
Massachusetts Bay Colony was a loathsome place: freedom of speech - no; freedom of travel - no; freedom of religion - no; freedom from religion - no; execution for believing in your religion - yes....
October 03, 2006
Wait for the last word from Molly Ivins. Found at I Blame the Patriarchy....
September 28, 2006
And so, it becomes official: The United States Senate voted the "compromise" detainee bill out this evening. The House of Representatives voted it out previously. It will become law within a matter of days. The bill establishes a legal foundation...
George Takei and Pink are participating in the Snapshot Project, designed to spark conversations about LGBT equality. You can participate too, and upload your photo to the site for Coming Out Day, October 11....
No? So then why is the left fringe, but not right, mentioned specifically in the NIE? The recently declassified NIE report on terrorism contains an interesting paragraph:"Anti-U.S. and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This...
September 24, 2006
It really depresses me sometimes, that with shit like this , I'm really glad that every day brings me closer to menopause. If my mom is any guide to the timeline, unfortunately, I've got about 20 more years of menstruation...
September 18, 2006
Indeed - Yoo's latest is simply pathetic, on its "ahistorical truthiness" alone.And it's another example of why I think the administration's best friends, not matter what they might say about them, are the mainstream media. Their firm belief in presenting...
September 13, 2006
...Congress is busy working to protect our rights. While refusing to give the president a blank check to prosecute the war on terrorism, Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee kept to the White House's condition that a bill giving legal...
August 21, 2006
They might be holding classified information. Yes, it's the next installment of the re-classification follies! Although it's incorrect to say reclassification, because some of this stuff was never classified in the first place. The Bush administration has begun designating as...
July 30, 2006
Does anyone remember the debates about the numbers of "Level 1" versus "Level 2" Iraqi battalions? You remember, a "Level 1" battalion can stand and fight without US assistance, while a "Level 2" could fight with US support (logistics, air,...
No really. Bush administration asks for US citizens to be denied citizenship rights. U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts...
July 25, 2006
More stupid use of "security" by law enforcement to harass people who don't fit in. Six friends spruced up in fake blood and tattered clothing were arrested in downtown Minneapolis on suspicion of toting "simulated weapons of mass destruction." Police...
July 20, 2006
First it was Quakers, now, college students: A federal Department of Homeland Security agent passed along information about student protests against military recruiters at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, landing the demonstrations on a database tracking foreign terrorism, according...
July 18, 2006
CNN (emphasis mine): President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, administration officials said Tuesday. Bush refused to grant security clearances for department investigators who were looking into...
July 17, 2006
If you don't know, Epstein is one of the most highly respected law professors of the last few decades. As his approach tends to run toward (I mean race toward at the speed of light) an economic libertarianism that would...
July 14, 2006
Are you down with - or down on - the lawn? The delawning was accomplished over Memorial Day weekend by a SWAT team of some 15 recruits who read about the project on Mr. Haeg's Web site. Mr. Haeg arrived...
July 12, 2006
Fetal protectionism is what they're calling it, eh? Here's a hint: if it doesn't really protect fetuses by helping women be healthy, emphasizes punishing women, and has nothing to do with the consequences of male behavior too, it's more likely...
July 10, 2006
Our knickers would be even more twisty if we had half a clue what was going on over there. Including blacklisting reporters who don't toe the government's line on what's happening in Iraq: But the military has started censoring many...
July 04, 2006
Ready and waiting for any excuse?. Emphasis mine. The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court...
June 29, 2006
Fidel Castro's niece (Raul's daughter) is campaigning for an end to homophobia in Cuba. To that end, she championed a telenovela with a bisexual storyline, and is now advocating for free surgery and hormone therapy for transsexuals. Castro said many...
June 28, 2006
Contact your Congresscritter: In terms of the vote, well, we pretty much expected this, though we weren't sure whether we could keep the Dems unified. They held under intense lobbying pressure from the telecoms. I think it's fair to say...
June 27, 2006
I wake this morning to discover, via the New York Times that the august US Senate (the deliberative, thoughtful half of our legislative branch) is within a single vote of amending the US constitution to ban the burning of the...
May 15, 2006
Posted without comment, but what's your opinion? The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company, formed in 1997, called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts. ......
May 13, 2006
Are we really surprised that the big phone companies (but not Qwest) meekly rolled over for the NSA database? Not even condsidering cynical thoughts like quid pro quo over ending Net Neutrality, can you imagine any major corporation that wouldn't...
May 07, 2006
Republican representative forces scientific panel on the failure of abstinence programs to include pro-abstinence speakers and bumps a panelist who was to present on how abstinence campaigns cause STDs to increase: Researchers organizing a federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases...
April 22, 2006
A short flash film on why Congressional steps toward eliminating net neutrality might result in serious restrictions on consumers' access to the internet. The upshot is, net neutrality means that providers can't privilege some content and/or block other content. More...
April 17, 2006
While googling some of our recent visitors, up popped a website called Concealed Position. One thing I have found while keeping track of "interesting" visits is that other people do too. Anyway, from this find, more finds. Guess what? Corporate...
April 15, 2006
...Majikthise reminds us that there is still skulking going on: If you thought CIFA was scary, wait until you here what's up next. MSNBC reports that the Pentagon is trying to merge merge CIFA and the DSS to create a...
April 11, 2006
Photo courtesy of M. Blood....
April 01, 2006
I didn't title this post "More Republican Insanity" mostly out of respect for the few (very few) moderate Republicans who continue to believe in the Constitution, checks and balances, and responsible government. I figure there have to be a few...
March 23, 2006
In Kansas, at roadside stops the police are going to start taking fingerprints? If you are stopped by police in Kansas, don’t be surprised if the officer pulls out a little black box and takes your fingerprints. !!!...
March 19, 2006
It's a few days old, but the first page of this New York Times story on anti-globalization protests in New York City in 2002 is worth reading. Long story short, the police arrested a number of people (the article says...
Our neighboring state - I'm talking to you Ohio - harbors extremists who would prevent the free movement of citizens of the United States, and would give property rights over women's reproductive organs to third parties. No, I am not...
March 16, 2006
Been meaning to post this for a couple of days. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office has seized four computer hard drives from a Lancaster newspaper, the Intelligencer Journal, as part of a grand-jury investigation into leaks to reporters. The state...
Via this Lawyers, Guns, and Money post, I found the comments by the Missouri Republican Party interesting: An attempt to resume state spending on birth control got shot down Wednesday by House members who argued it would have amounted to...
March 09, 2006
I realize I've had my head down recently (dissertation), but I surfaced just long enough to see this NYT story. Last I checked, the Administration was spying on Americans without even a FISA warrant. This violates both FISA and some...
March 08, 2006
Tonight I was listening to Fresh Air, and as Terry Gross interviewed James Thurber about the possibilities of congressional reform on lobbying, he reaffirmed that lobbying was part of our political rights. He went on to say that it is...
March 07, 2006
Let's see, we can't trust women, and we can't trust high school students, and, hmm, who else can't we trust to think for themselves? Wait! I know! soldiers! Unfortunately anonomizers don't work out here (never have). Anyway, I had a...
March 05, 2006
Homeland Security wants to know if you're paying more than your monthly norm: What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way...
February 25, 2006
February 22, 2006
Who knew there was a connection? The actors who star in movie The Road to Guantanamo were questioned by police at Luton airport under anti-terrorism legislation, it has emerged. The men, who play British inmates at the detention camp, were...
February 21, 2006
And unlike the last one, we can blame this one on the Bush administration. Sometimes it’s the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within...
NYT (emphasis mine): In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied...
February 20, 2006
From Jesus' General a hair-raiser of DHS harassment (long, but worth it): "Bottom line: My rights are very dear to me. I served my country to defend them," he says. "And one of the things I was defending was free...
February 16, 2006
David Neiwert excels at unraveling political trends and giving you cold fear in the pit of your stomach. But as much as I agree with Greenwald, I think there is a difference between his argument and mine. Greenwald argues that...
January 30, 2006
Discriminating against a patient on the basis of his or her religious beliefs is religious persecution. The problem is not that health care providers practice a religion that interferes with their profession. The problem is that their patients have a...
January 26, 2006
And we're not talking Faberge eggs. The administration does not need Congress to extend the USA Patriot Act in order to keep using the law's investigative powers against terror suspects. That's from a Boston Globe story about domestic spying, and...
January 19, 2006
* The right to due process* The right to a jury of one's peers* The right to assemble peacefully* The right to distribute religious literature* The right to hold union meetings* The right to travel freely between states Michelle Malkin...