Civil Liberties
mikethemadbiologist | December 2, 2010"Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine---too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better."
-Stewart Brand
Many pundits have been discussing what Wikileaks means for either…
mikethemadbiologist | November 21, 2010It's not that some Texas Republicans are anti-Semitic, it's just that they need a Christian in charge. A bunch of angry Texan evangelical Republicans are trying to replace House Speaker Joe Strauss, and aren't having much success. So:
And, not surprisingly, the effort has started to take on religious overtones:
[A] handful of outside socially conservative groups are running a fairly deceitful but noisy campaign trying to pressure lawmakers who actually like the speaker's management style to vote against him.
They blame him for the failure of the sonogram bill but the pro-life Texans for…
mikethemadbiologist | October 30, 2010There's been a lot of chortling about Republican Senate candidate and Tea Buggerer Christine O'Donnell's recent misunderstanding of the First Amendment. But it actually reveals a lot about the mindset of movement conservatives (and, remember, everything you need to know about how they operate can be understood by observing creationists). ScienceBlogling Ed Brayton sets the stage:
The debate was actually held at Widener Law School, which probably explains why the audience literally bursts into laughter when she she says:
"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?"
The…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2010But she's probably not a real American, so this is ok:
This is kind of like freedom, except for the physical violence
Real American values apparently involve stomping on women's heads:
As the candidates arrived, a group of [Republican congressional candidate Rand] Paul supporters pulled a female MoveOn member to the ground and held her there as another Paul supporter stomped on the back of her head and neck.
According to the Louisville Courier Journal, "Lauren Valle of MoveOn.org approached Paul and tried to give him an "employee of the month award" from Republicorp...a fake business MoveOn…
mikethemadbiologist | October 17, 2010Update: Thanks to everyone visiting. I worked really hard on this post too, and it's also kinda important and about kids too, so please stop by that one too.
Dan Savage has exactly the right approach to dealing with the sanctimony of the theopolitical right. In response to an interview Savage gave about the "It Gets Better" campaign to combat anti-gay hatred directed at teenagers, a Christian who describes himself as "someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage" writes to Savage:
If your message is that we should not judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you…
mikethemadbiologist | August 26, 2010Marc Ambinder reports that Ken Mehlman has admitted to friends and family that he is gay (did anyone really not know?):
"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2010Or bigotry. Because union carpenters are the new Muslim. Or something. Here's a refreshing exchange of free speech (italics mine):
...at an anti-Mosque demonstration down in Lower Manhattan, when a black man walking through the crowd was... mistaken for a Muslim by the crowd -- angrily.
The video, shot by amateur YouTube videographer "lefthandedart," opens with chants of "No Mosque Here!" as it traces a black man wearing a white cap walking through the crowd. It's not clear where he's coming from or why the videographer had decided to film him, but the man seems to be trailed by a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2010Or I suppose I could have used a monosyllabic word, such as lies. I realize Glenn Beck lying, to children no less, is hardly news, but it is worth knocking down one ludicrous claim:
"I learned on your show that Thomas Jefferson actually signed a lot of his documents 'in Christ,' but a lot of people say that he was a deist, so is he a Christian or a deist?"
Well, Jefferson did sign many government documents 'in Christ' because he was legally required to do so (italics mine):
Barton bases this lie on only one document -- a document that was nothing more than a preprinted form required to be…
mikethemadbiologist | August 10, 2010Apparently, the Obama Administration is very upset with the "professional left":
"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."
Actually, when it comes to the expansion of presidential power, Obama has been worse than Bush. After all, never claimed he had the right to assassinate U.S. citizens at will. Seriously, between that and Obama's muddling on gay rights, Obama is to constitutional scholar as Newt Gingrich is to historian (Or intellectual. Or decent human being).
Moving on:
The press secretary dismissed…
mikethemadbiologist | August 6, 2010So much for that "Don't Be Evil" Google bullshit:
Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content's creators are willing to pay for the privilege.
This issue has been quite the rage in the lefty and righty blogosphere for the simple reason that most grassroots organizations won't be able to afford the high-price superhighway, but, instead, be stuck on the slow road to oblivion. I've never thought the opposition to net neutrality is political in…
mikethemadbiologist | July 24, 2010Someone tell me why we didn't nationalize BP assets in the U.S., fire the board of directors and other high-level managers, and then use the assets to fix all of the problems--including the unemployment caused by the spill. Because this sounds like the clarion calls of freedom and liberty to me (italics mine):
In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal…
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2010I've read through the Washington Post article on our bloated, inefficient national security-surveillance apparatus--what Atrios characterizes as a system "to transfer money and power to elites while cementing the existence of a giant and extremely opaque patronage system. One with surveillance capabilities." This caught my eye as it sounds like a serious security risk (italics mine):
Among the most important people inside the SCIFs [sensitive compartmented information facilities] are the low-paid employees carrying their lunches to work to save money. They are the analysts, the 20- and 30-…
mikethemadbiologist | July 6, 2010BP: not only trashing our oceans, but the First Amendment too! From Raw Story:
Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.
It's a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure."
The Coast Guard order states that "vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming…
mikethemadbiologist | June 24, 2010The Texas GOP--from the same state party that gives Representative Joe "I'm sorry" Barton--has gone out of its mind. Someone over at Media Matters, who clearly needs to be given hazard pay, looked through the Texas Republican Party platform. While there is so much stupid in there, for me, this one takes the cake:
Further, we urge Congress to withhold Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, religious freedom, and the Bill of Rights.
Um, then what should the Court do? Argue over whether blacks get three-fifths of a vote? This is insane, and it's the only way people like…
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2010Remember last year, when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested by the Cambridge Police (charges were dropped). We all sat around, had a beer, and discussed race. Well, there's been a review of the Cambridge police's arrest behavior from 2004 to 2009.
At the time, I thought it had nothing to do with race, but challenging police authority, and an atypical response based on Gates' class:
But I actually don't think this is about race, but a challenge to police authority. Basically, once Gates' challenged the officer's authority--and mind you, he had already shown the officer…
revere | April 15, 2010When CBS-TV decided to run an anti-abortion ad during the Superbowl there was a lot of talk about the propriety of airing highly polarizing advocacy advertising in such a highly visible media slot. There has been less talk about the content of the ad beyond the obvious fact it was making an implied argument against abortion. Since I wrote a pro abortion post yesterday I was thinking about the issue and thought I'd revisit the ad from a different point of view, the weird (but common) anti-abortion counterfactual argument.
First a brief summary of the ad. Tim Tebow is a talented college…
revere | March 9, 2010I'm not sure I completely understand the legal adage, "bad facts make bad law," but the Supreme Court may be about to give us all an object lesson in its meaning. If I do understand it, is that sometimes there are situations -- "bad facts" -- that are so unusual or so horrifying or both -- that they force jurists to make legal decisions in line with what any normal person would consider to be just but with unintended side effects that make "bad law," that is, bad legal precedent. An example is a Texas case where a drunk driver hit a car carrying a pregnant woman whose fetus was seriously…
revere | January 18, 2010Martin Luther King's birthday is an official holiday in the US, but King's example of non-violent resistance is not a US idea. So once again we have decided this non-traditional version of We Shall Overcome is appropriate. I've heard and sung this in churches, union halls, in the streets and in concerts for four decades and it inspires wherever and whenever it is sung. This 1996 version features Diana Ross in full concert hall regalia, backed by a symphony orchestra. The venue is Budapest, Hungary and more than one member of the orchestra and the audience were undoubtedly thinking of their…
mikethemadbiologist | December 20, 2009...but who is a rabbi? A recent British High Court decision making it illegal for a Jewish school that favors Jewish applicants to base its admissions policy on whether one's mother is Jewish, while correct in outcome, completely misunderstands the entire controversy:
"One thing is clear about the matrilineal test; it is a test of ethnic origin," Lord Phillips, president of the court, said in his majority opinion. Under the law, he said, "by definition, discrimination that is based upon that test is discrimination on racial grounds."
The decision, by Britain's highest court, brings an end to…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2009I have no doubt that the Catholic ecclesiarchy supports the Stupak-Mills amendment out of a genuine desire to regulate vaginaspreserve the fetus, which they believe is a person. But the financial incentives for Catholic Church-owned hospital systems are enormous:
...consider that there are 60 some Catholic-affiliated hospital systems in all 50 states -- representing 13 percent of the nation's entire in-patient health care system. That's easily tens of billions of dollars flowing through the business arm of the Catholic church that continues to grow through mergers with private and other…