Exercising a Heckler's Veto...

...or the fear of loss of power?

"...do we want them to proceed ploddingly from one standardized test to the next, concerned only with dining on the reheated and prefabricated meals that schools put before them, never dabbling in anything that might offend or cause controversy or headlines? Of course, young people who explore and learn and engage and write on their own are independent in ways that might not please people whose power depends upon them acting like junior stenographers."

Ken makes some really fine observations in this story of a bright, skeptical 17-year-old, his treatment by some small-minded individuals, poor decisions by school administrators, and a society's loss of direction.

Pop on over to Popehat to read the rest of the article.

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Getting hard to tell

Try your hand at this. It ain't as easy as it looks. Click on the cert and see how well you do.

Cop or Soldier? » Free online quiz software

Compliments of EMB (heh heh)

The party platform

Depending upon which pile of bodies one is standing, this dramatized reproduction of Eric Arthur Blair's final warning could be applied to a wide list of actors.

It could be the 99% or the 1%; the Tea Party or the Kenyan socialist; Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann; the christians or the muslims; Al Gore or George Bush; the Packers or the Saints...

In one way or another all of our boogiemen have been sold to us by Orwell's Big Brother. The sales techniques are simple, age old, and well practiced - hatred, fear and power lust. 

If the video circulating the intertoob represents a true event, I'm finding it very difficult to understand our collective reaction. Since the dawn of recorded history Big Brother has sold us on the necessity of war by convincing us that our enemies are evil. Our opponents are dehumanized in the minds of our warriors by subtle indoctrination. Otherwise how could sane, rational humans kill, mutilate, and yes... even urinate upon other humans? 

It does not seem so far fetched to imagine much the same happening in any  of the wars of the past. Consider the videos of how the bodies of the Japanese were treated following the landing at Iwo Jima. Also consider the treatment of Americans and Filipinos POW's following the battle of Bataan. Going back a little further in our history, consider the Trail of Tears?

In each of these examples the enemy was sold by Big Brother as being sub-human and evil... unworthy of human compassion... worthy only of disrespect and destruction.... of being pissed on. 

Right now the Republican party is seeking domination by demonizing the Democrats... in particular our President. They are preaching the mantra of fear of foreign religions... hatred of immigrants... distrust of "socialists... all the while selling the myth of Jesus. This has worked before and it may well work again.

On the other end we have liberal Democrats preaching a mantra of hatred for the oligarchs and plutocrats... demonizing industry without seemingly caring about compromise. They want it all and they want it now.

As we watch the evening news... listen to Bill Maher, Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson, David Packman, or Pam Geller... when you witness the callous evil of American troops not only urinating on the corpses of our enemy, but actually memorializing the act in video... picture Orwell's boot.

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Book banning

The title of this article from a New Zealand news website is Banned book seized from Wellington shop.

The first line of the article reads, “[a]n ‘indecent’ book banned in 1971 has been seized from a Wellington bookstore by government officials.”

That should be enough to tickle the freethinking curiosity, but for good measure let me quote some other key phrases from this story, including a description of a government agency as “the now defunct Indecent Publications Tribunal;” reference to a government official known as “the Chief Censor;” this snip of a comment from a NZ bookseller, “just that concept of banning a book [it's the] state's invasion of the sharing of thoughts and ideas;” and in the closing of the article, that warning that an offender could be “sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison” for possessing a “banned book.”

What is chilling about this is that it occurred just three weeks ago, and in a supposed western, eurocentric democracy.

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Back the blue? Back the red?

This is going to be an analogy stretch, but let me ask a strange question… What do America’s cops have in common with America’s Republicans?

Answer?

Both are noble institutions that have developed malignancies. The difference is that the cancer in the Republican Party is much more advanced and is threatening the life of the host. Democrats experienced similar phenomena in the 70’s, but managed to recognize the disease and worked to eliminate or marginalize the bad actors.

Cops, on the other hand, have a chance. If those guys will simply recognize that there are bad actors within the ranks and do something about it, they can possibly salvage the host. To some degree they do just that… but not in this case.

The following story from the Orange County Register tells a tale of cops gone wrong, and as a sidebar it also provides more evidence of why cops should not be allowed the use of Tasers. (Are you still reading, RM?)

The evil that was inflicted on Kelly Thomas by some of Orange County’s finest was not detected and corrected from within by fellow officer; it was determined to be a heinous violation of law and human rights by those on the outside looking in. The Blue closed ranks to defend one of their own from the indefensible …

Orange County prosecutors charged a Fullerton police officer with murder on Wednesday, saying he launched a lethal assault on a homeless man with the words: “My fists … are getting ready to F*** you up.”

There are lessons to be learned here.

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More evidence that the Right is wrong

The previous couple of blogs were intended to illustrate that the Religious Right of this country are hypocrites. This article from the Wall of Separation blog is just another log on the fire. The Religious Right Christian conservatives of this country would more appropriately be named… the Christian Taliban.

Those consistently sticking with the Republicans are simply enabling the Dominionists. You want fiscal conservatism, I understand. Perhaps to a degree we have common ground, but there is no way I can condone this kind of authoritarianism.

If you stomach such... then "drinking the Kool-Aid" is a term that applies and I defy you to justify such blindness. You claim to love our Constitution, yet you continually partner with a bastard cult that has vowed to destroy it.

The Christ of the Bible would not recognize these so-called christians.

Yielding To Censorship: Mo. School Board Bans Books that are ‘Contrary to the Bible’

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five is considered a modern classic. That doesn’t mean it’s a particularly easy read. Indeed, it deals with some fairly heady topics. When I first encountered it in high school, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But it sure made me think, which, in my view, is what a good novel should do.

Funny thing about that thinking – some people see it as dangerous. And a few of those people sit on the school board in Republic, Mo.

The board voted 4-0 recently to ban Slaughterhouse-Five and another book, Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer, after a local resident complained that the books teach ideas contrary to the Bible.

Wesley Scroggins had originally targeted three books, but the board voted to keep one, Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning Speak, on the shelves. According to the Springfield News-Leader, Scroggins “challenged the use of the books and lesson plans in Republic schools, arguing they teach principles contrary to the Bible.”

After the vote, which removes the books from the curriculum and the school library, Scroggins said, “I congratulate them for doing what’s right and removing the two books. It’s unfortunate they chose to keep the other book.”

Actually, what’s unfortunate it that the school board didn’t stand up for church-state separation and the freedom to learn. And it’s unfortunate that the education of students at Republic High School is being held hostage by such narrow-minded people.

It might also be unconstitutional. In 1982, the Supreme Court struck down a book censorship plan at a New York school district. Members of the school board in Island Trees had banned eight books, including Slaughterhouse-Five, after a statewide right-wing pressure group started a campaign against them. Board members agreed, calling the books “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy.

Justice William Brennan led a court plurality in striking down the censorship scheme.

Brennan wrote, “In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’ Such purposes stand inescapably condemned by our precedents.”

In 1993, a school board in Olathe, Kan., ordered the removal of the book Annie on My Mind from a school library because it deals with homosexuality. Parents who supported the novel sued and won. A federal court ruled that public schools may not ban books “based on their personal social, political and moral views.”

It sounds like the school board in Republic did exactly that. One fundamentalist complained that the books offended his interpretation of the Bible – so out went the books.

If there’s any silver lining in this sorry incident, it’s this: Telling young people that they can’t or shouldn’t read a certain book or listen to a certain CD almost always causes a run on that book or CD. After all, it’s imperative to find out what it is that the adults don’t want you to see or hear.

So I say to the students of Republic High: Get your hands on a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s worth your time. And if you’re having trouble finding a copy around town, drop me a line. I know a source at a used-book store who can round up as many as you need.

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Governor Goodhair sure has Helen stirred up

And well she should be. Every Texan should be stirred up. The crap this Governor has elevated to emergency status is beyond imagination. 

Texas is facing a $27 billion budget shortfall, the balancing of which will inevitably cripple public schools, post secondary education, the ability of nursing homes to care for the elderly, and even of the highway department's ability to repair roads. The first budget proposal calls for cutting 9,600 state jobs, and will undoubtably to the loss of thousands more due to collateral damage to private sector industries and support services.

But this is not an emergency, according to Rick Perry. He just kind of brushes it aside and gives another speech railing against Washington excesses. Goodhair pretends the true emergencies in Texas don't exist, and that he and his wingnut cronies are not responsible for anything.

But what does Goodhair call an emergency deserving of the full and undivided attention of our state legislature? ...a bill requiring every woman seeking an abortion to view a sonogram of the fetus.

Helen does not understand. Texas is crumbling around our ears and Goodhair is only concerned with social issues. Read Helen's commentary HERE first, and be sure to read the comments. There are some doozies. Then read HERE where Helen addresses one of those comments. 

Priceless.

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Ignorance makes the best mind control

The British computer news and tech site TechEye.net is reporting on a recent move by the Saudis to clamp down on publishers of Internet news sites, weblogs, forums, and even personal websites originating from within the country.  Site publishers are required, among other things, to be of good conduct and behavior and hold an appropriate license. The Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information, of course, would issue the license.

TechEye previously reported that China had banned VoIP providers not controlled by the Chinese government, including Skype; the largest and most popular of  the providers.

Keeping the flock in the dark has always been a popular authoritarian tool utilized to maintain order. Where once they burned books, censors around the world have now focused attention on the Internet. Free access to the truth tends to make controlling the flock sometimes very difficult .

Saudi Arabia and China are far from the first to employ censorship as a means of maintaining ignornace. Book burners in this country have been trying it for years, but a little thing called Freedom of Speech has sidetracked them.

Citizens of other countries are not always so fortunate.

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"A greedy government pig covered with some public safety lipstick"

The following was posted March 03, 2009, to the website of Dallas area attorney, Robert Guest.

Why We Don't Fight Red Light Camera Tickets

I hate red light cameras. These automated taxing agents are the wretched offspring of nanny state fascism and government greed. Google has placed my site near the top for red light camera searches. Many of you come here looking for help. I share your disgust for red lights cameras. However, I do not take red light tickets. I want to help, but the numbers don't make sense (for you or me).

This is not an accident. The government designed the system to induce massive give up among defendants. If the government was going to steal a million dollars from one person, you can bet that person would fight the case. It's much easier for the government to steal $1 from a million drivers.

Most red light ticket are between $50-$150. To fight a red light ticket case you have to waste at least one whole day at court in front of a unaccountable administrative judge whose primary duty is to raise money for the city. This judge is going to find you guilty even if you hire OJ's defense team. After your hearing (no jury trials allowed) you may have some limited right of appeal, but that takes more time and another court appearance. Can you afford to miss a day of work to save $100? How about two days?

I can't try a case for $100. I certainly can't appeal a case for that much. There are attorneys who offer discount ticket defense, but that requires a volume practice. I am allergic to massive amounts of cases.

The simple equation for most drivers is Cost of Paying Ticket < ticket=" Pay">

Throw in the fact that most red light tickets are not reported to DPS and do not result in any "points" or a DL suspension and you have a system designed for large scale petty theft. The penalties involved are not high enough for defendants to hire a lawyer or spend the time and energy required to assert their rights. Taking time away from work and obligations to fight the government in a ticket case is not an option.

If red light cameras are allowed to exist in Texas then defendants should have the protections afforded other defendants in ticket cases (jury trial etc). If this is really about "public safety" and not taxation, than a little due process won't hurt.

My advise to the public; find a traffic ticket lawyer to fight your case and vote against

the morons who allowed these cameras to invade our communities.

I couldn't agree more with Mr. Guest's description of the purpose of these bullshit cameras, but fighting them is nigh on to impossible even if you are part of City Hall.

The cities love the cameras because the $75 civil citations sent by mail to the registered owner of the car are virtually impossible to fight, as the burden has been shifted from the state to the citizen to prove he or she didn't run the light. At unmonitored intersections, running a traffic light is a Class C misdemeanor meaning the burden is on the prosecution to prove the citizen ran the light.

A City of Houston commissioned study intended to prove the cameras improved safety, did just the opposite. During the period studied, the number of rear-end collisions increased at camera-controlled intersections from 55 to 90, the number of side collisions increased from 220 to 427 and the number of sideswipe collisions increased from 72 to 167 (click graphic to gigantisize).

The Washington Post did a study that showed the number of accidents at monitored intersections in Washington, D.C., between 1999-2005, increased at a higher rate than at non-monitored intersections.

In spite of Police Department data proving that the number of accidents in the city has decreased every year since 2004, City of Houston camera apologists still claim that the cameras prevent accidents, and swear that the increased number of accidents at those intersections is not due to the cameras but, instead, to the increased number of accidents in the city.

The purpose of the cameras is increasing city revenues, not safety, and this latest data pretty much proves that. Between September 2006 and the end of 2008, more than 387,000 citations were issued and the city raked in over $20 million in fines.

Yet the accidents keep going up.

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Unconstitutional

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) calls the recently passed healthcare reform bill “the most unconstitutional thing I have ever seen.”

Really? The most unconstitutional you have ever seen? Either you have a short memory or you are fond of rose colored shades, Mr. Boehner.

Congress has done far worse. For reference I would point to HR 3172, enacted by the 107th Congress on September 19, 2001, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The Patriot Act was a true bipartisan effort, with the House voting 357-66 in favor of the measure, and 98-1 in the Senate.

The USA Patriot Act of 2001, a contrived acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorists,” is the most blatantly unconstitutional legislation to stumble through Congress since the Alien and Sedition acts of 1789. Before recent revisions, the Patriot Act violated Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution by suspending the Habeas Corpus and Bill of Attainder provisions, and it all but vacated the protections of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments.

Eight years have passed since Patriot became law. Stories of abuse still surface in tales of government lies and extravagances, with U.S. citizens delivered into a byzantine morass of legal entanglement on flimsy, sometimes contrived evidence. Reading the stories and listening to the court cases makes one think of the old Soviet Union.

As an example, take the sad case of Brandon Mayfield, an attorney and citizen of the U.S.A. Mayfield was jailed and held in federal lockup for 19 days… as a material witness against himself. His house was searched and bugged, computer files (even those pertaining to clients, which violated attorney client privilege) were downloaded and seized, and the children’s homework copied. It was Mayfield’s daughter’s Spanish homework, combined with a misidentified fingerprint, which convinced the FBI that Mayfield was involved in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings.

When the FBI’s “evidence” was finally presented to a judge, the case was tossed on its ear. The FBI had utilized the now infamous Section 215 to make unlawful entry into the Mayfield home, plant listening devices, download computer files, and seize evidence to support what turned out to be a bogus charge that even the Spanish authorities scoffed at.

Section 215 grants the FBI the power to seize a vast array of sensitive personal information and belongings, including medical, library and business records, using a secret intelligence court that does not require any suspicion of individual criminal activity. Although a court order is required to obtain these records, judges are compelled to issue them, making judicial review in this process nothing more than a rubber stamp.

Patriot amended 15 different federal laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA)of 1986, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. The act authorized roving wiretaps and the so-called “sneak and peek” warrants, obliterated the wall between foreign and domestic intelligence, and amended the definition of domestic terrorism.

Robert Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, has written that the Patriot Act represents "the looming sacrifice of civil liberties at the altar of national security." The Mayfield family learned the truth of this all too well, and their case is but one of hundreds.

You want unconstitutional? Look no further than the truly bipartisan Patriot Act. The healthcare boondoggle doesn’t hold a candle to that. Mr. Boehner’s pomposity is nothing more than clownish, but standard right wing fare. The Democrats have behaved similarly in the past, so I don’t pretend to give them a pass, but this crop of Republicans is definitely pushing the limits of the legitimate.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, writing in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928), said it best. “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

I’m old enough to remember a time when all of the Congress didn’t suck all of the time, and there were at least a few rational members on both sides of the aisle. Those days, it seems, are long gone.

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For further reading, try Section 505 and the National Security Letter and the related cases, Doe v. Ashcroft (2004) and Doe v. Gonzales (2005). Other Patriot related cases include Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor v. Ashcroft (2006), Humanitarian Law Project v. Ashcroft and the associated Humanitarian Law Project v. Reno, which was an earlier challenge to Bill Clinton’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty (AEDPA) Act.
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What is it about Individual Rights that is so difficult to understand?

Osama bin Adams is again trying to put his thumb on women. He tried this last year too.

An Ohio lawmaker has introduced a bill that would prevent a woman from having an abortion unless she gets written consent from the biological father.

Assaulted from the right... assaulted from the left.. The rights of Man have little respite.

Read the whole story...

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1984 …or Fahrenheit 451?

Yesterday SLATE published an article by Farhad Manjoo titled Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four. Subtitled: How Amazon's remote deletion of e-books from the Kindle paves the way for book-banning's digital future. The article details how Amazon has reached out and touched some Kindle owners by remotely erasing some book purchases. When I checked this morning I found 267 queries to Amazon relating to the remote erasure of Orwell’s 1984, and Animal Farm, for which Amazon refunded the purchase price.

I could maybe understand Ayn Rand… but Orwell? That’s bizarrely ironic, isn’t it?

But wait a minute… It seems Amazon erased Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead…

… and Harry Potter too!

For their part, Amazon claims the Kindle versions of all these books were bootlegged, illegal copies uploaded to their system using the Kindle Store's self-publishing system. By zapping ebooks purchased by Kindle users, Amazon was only protecting the publishers' intellectual property. Apparently Kindle users have raised such a stink that Amazon has tucked their tail and promised not to do it any more. We’ll see. As Manjoo states in the SLATE article:

Don't put too much stock in that promise. The worst thing about this story isn't Amazon's conduct; it's the company's technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That's an awesome power, and Amazon's justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1's and 0's, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Too true, and Manjoo’s raises several interesting points. Such as the fact that the Apple iPhone is tethered in a fashion similar to the Kindle, and that Apple can remotely check the apps you have downloaded, then remove or disable anything objectionable. That means that the $500 you shelled out for that 3g only bought you the use of the device… not control.

Jonathan Zittrain, in his book The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, discusses the 2001 Playmedia v. AOL and the 2004 TiVo v. Dish Network cases. Zittrain contends that "tethered" devices give the government unprecedented power to reach into our homes and change how our devices function, and indeed, by judicial order, have done just that in these two lawsuits.

Manjoo wraps up his article with an ominous prediction, and a call for some kind of legal protections for owners/users of these tethered devices:

Amazon's promise to do better next time is going to be pretty hard to keep. The company says it won't delete any more books—but it hasn't said what it will do when someone alleges that one of its titles is libelous or violates someone else's copyright. This is bound to happen sooner or later, and the company might find itself deleting books once more. To solve this problem, what we really need are new laws.

Perhaps new laws should not be the only answer considered, but certainly we need to look at existing law in light of emerging technologies. Neither the burning of books, nor big-brotherish electronic zapping of data is anything a free and democratic society should tolerate.
~~