Links Roundup

1. I have been doing some thinking about Genetically Modified Organisms lately. It remains a serious source of frustration that the issues surround GMOs creep along behind the scenes of public awareness. It seems like it’s easy to track recent developments in the war or judicial nominations, but when it comes to something as important [...]

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President’s Day Yay

I’m feeling super lazy because it’s a holiday. I’m home, enjoying the lack of working. As such, I’ll compile a fairly lazy blog post, but maybe one that you can still enjoy until we get back into the groove tomorrow.
I’ve been thinking some about the Bush presidency. Unfortunately, NARA can’t assure us that we’ll have [...]

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Chip, Chip, Chip Away

As if the Fourth Amendment needed to be further brutalized, we’ve got the Roberts Court handing down the Pearson case which is summarized here. Add to this the recent holding in Herring, which deals a major blow to the exclusionary rule, and we have a healthy dose of realism to combat any lingering euphoria you [...]

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Trucking into ‘09

Last year, we welcomed 2008 with a duo of posts. It was sort of an “eight wishes for ‘08″ theme. In the first, Kate linked to a great MSNBC video (surprisingly still up) about a woman who found a rock that she claimed looked like both George Washington and Jesus. It also had a link [...]

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Checkpoints and Border Birthing

Welcome to freedom loss in the name of safety, residents of Mobile, Alabama.
If you live in Roger Williams Homes, a public housing neighborhood presumably named after a theologian who promoted freedom and independence, you have now been informed that public housing ID cards are now required. The head of this Mobile housing operation seems like [...]

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The Time May Be Ripe…

From Bruce Schneier:
Imagine you’re in charge of infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. The year is 1983, and the proliferation of identity databases is making it increasingly difficult to create fake credentials. Ten years ago, someone could have just shown up in the country and gotten a driver’s license, Social Security card and bank [...]

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It’s Worse Than You Think

Usually it seems like civil liberties are first eroded among the least popular members of society: those convicted of crimes. Since the folks on the wrong end of guilty verdicts are usually not very popular, nobody is really likely to speak up in their defense. Even if you run the risk of the awful label, [...]

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Hoosier Big Brother

Ah, the University of Indiana. An institution of higher learning, devoted to the ideals of free inquiry, snooping onto your computer in a freakish Orwellian anti-file-sharing campaign. I mean, hell, at least they are advertising it so everyone knows that the Freedom Loving people of Indiana have become crypto-fascists. John Cougar would be ashamed.
There are [...]

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