Gun rights case

For those of you who are interested, the oral arguments in DC v Heller, the Second Amendment case over DC's nearly complete ban on personal, functioning guns, has now been posted at Oyez. Don't expect a decision in the case before the last week of the term in June.

Copyright violation

Is this video a copyright violation? Should the existence of this clip be forbidden?

What's so funny about... wiretapping

There was a good, brief summary of past abuses of wiretapping power in yesterday's LA Times. For a detailed, documented account see David Cole and James X. Dempsey's Terrorism and the Constitution.

From Julian Sanchez in the LA Times op-ed section:

But focusing on the privacy of the average Joe in this way obscures the deeper threat that warrantless wiretaps poses to a democratic society. Without meaningful oversight, presidents and intelligence agencies can -- and repeatedly have -- abused their surveillance authority to spy on political enemies and dissenters.

The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts -- and the presidents they served -- had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices -- even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Church Committee reports painstakingly documented how the information obtained was often "collected and disseminated in order to serve the purely political interests of an intelligence agency or the administration, and to influence social policy and political action."

Science education and religion

Would a bill like the "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act" be constitutional? Which cases are most relevant to this law? Which principles? Are the potential consequences of such a law for students in Oklahoma relevant to the constitutional question?

The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized. If a student's religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student's incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this bill.

The school would be required to reward the student with a good grade, or be considered in violation of the law. Even simple, factual information such as the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the student's belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious belief, the school would have to credit it as correct.

Net neutrality

I promised a post to explain why net neutrality is an issue. You can watch Tuesday's (March 11, 2008) Congressional hearing on this subject here (about 2 hours) On the other hand, I don't know if I can do better than John Hodgman on this score, so here he is.



This is a live issue, there are hearings in Congress and we will likely see legislative activity in the near future. The financial stakes for the big companies who use the internet are high, and the stakes for citizens as consumers and as participants in the political community (two different things) are even greater.

For more information, see Save the Internet (advocacy organization supported by a politically diverse coalition in favor of net neutrality).

Washington Monthly on Torture

The Washington Monthly has just published a special issue on torture. While TWM is a liberal opinion journal, the writers are political figures and academics from across the political spectrum, all of whom oppose the use of torture.

In a related note, the House failed to override Bush's veto of the intelligence authorization bill which included a ban on torture, requiring all interrogations to meet the Army's published standards on interrogations.

Loyalty oaths and religion

Headline from the San Francisco Chronicle "Quaker Teacher Fired for Changing Loyalty Oath."

Updated 3/10/08: And now she has been rehired with a clarification that the oath does not require part time math teachers to use violence in defense of the US and California constitutions.