Tenacious justification of choice does not equal freedom
I will be turning 30 this year and it seems every time I go to a social function another friend is announcing her belly is full of baby. For me it still seems so grown-up and I still prefer to sit at the kids table during Thanksgiving dinner. A few months ago one of my [...]
...read moreDignity in life
Today a jury awarded a couple 21 million in a wrongful birth case. One in which the doctor failed to inform them the probability of birthing another child with the same genetic disability as their other son: The couple claimed that Dr. Boris Kousseff failed to diagnose their first son’s genetic disorder, called Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, [...]
...read moreWhat a pro-”life” Attorney General can do for you
The Kansas Attorney General’s office was previously under the control of an anti-choice activist. Years of useless, persecutory witch hunts resulting in not only wasted tax dollars but absolute violations of privacy. The former AG is still in a position to prolong his ideological abuse of power with his current position as the District Attorney [...]
...read moreWhat Does a Giant Q-Tip have to do With Your Privacy?
Actually, quite a lot. N.Y. Governor Spitzer announced recently his proposal to greatly expand the use of DNA testing in the New York criminal justice system. Under the current system, DNA is collected (via a mouth swab with a giant Q-tip) from people convicted of only the most serious crimes — rape, murder, burglary. Spitzer’s [...]
...read moreHi, I’m Jill, and law school sleazebags have gone after me, too.
This article in the Washington Post and this post by Ann Althouse, both of which are about students on law school message boards posting pictures and nasty comments about female classmates, struck a nerve — because I’m one of the women they’re talking about, and my pictures have been posted on their site.
...read moreIf this thing gets put into use, I will never fly again.
Pam’s got a post today about a new airport screening device to be put into test by the TSA in Phoenix. The technology, called backscatter, has been around for several years but has not been widely used in the U.S. as an anti-terrorism tool because of privacy concerns. Gee, ya think?
...read moreTagged and tracked
The New York Times had a report on just how secure those tap-them-and-go credit cards are. Not very, as it turns out. The card companies have implied through their marketing that the data is encrypted to make sure that a digital eavesdropper cannot get any intelligible information. American Express has said its cards incorporate “128-bit [...]
...read moreUnconstitutional
Breaking news: A federal judge in Detroit has ruled that the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional. The judge’s ruling is here. A bit about the judge herself: Anna Diggs Taylor was the first black woman appointed as a federal judge in Michigan, and now serves as the first black woman to be Chief [...]
...read moreBecause He’s the Decider, That’s Why
Lovely. Mr. Gonzales also told the senators that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal inquiry into the administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program. “The president of the United States makes the decision,” Mr. Gonzales said, by way of explaining why members of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility were not allowed [...]
...read moreWell, Knock Me Over With a Feather
CIA-Treasury program to monitor bank records to “search for terrorist activity” expands Bush’s power. You know, again. A secret CIA-Treasury program to track financial records of millions of Americans is the latest installment in an expansion of executive authority in the name of fighting terrorism. The administration doesn’t apologize for President Bush’s aggressive take on [...]
...read moreThis Explains So Much
Like Amanda, I’ve noticed a certain uptick in commenters who spew talking points straight out of Wingnut Central. Some are regulars, some are one-offs, but the dynamic is the same: I’ll see an argument made here in the comments repeated somewhere else, nearly verbatim. Or vice versa. Now, I’ve always known that the right wingers [...]
...read moreUse It or Lose It
If you know anything about the way budget allocations work, you know that a governmental or corporate department that is granted a certain amount of money and finds itself with surplus funds when review time comes around will find a way to spend those funds, even creating need where none previously existed. Why? Because many [...]
...read more
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