-
Oh nohz!!! What hav teh scientists done now????!!!!
Archive for August, 2006
links for 2006-08-28
-
Leave it to those muckracking liberuhls down in Ehn-Zed to notice constitutional shenanigans over the special election in CA-50 ( Ol’ DUke Cunningham’s seat).
links for 2006-08-27
-
Geist suggests that the government of Canada adjust the legal deposit law to mandate that deposited media must be DRM free.
-
Held in a 2×3 meter locked basement room under a garage for 8 years (since she was 10), she finally escaped when her captor left the door unlocked. A few hours later he threw himself in front of a train.
-
Umm, what? Yeah. In 2006. “Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.”
-
Democrat presidents do a better job. Lower unemployment, higher growth rates. Even adjusted for lag.
-
Hilarious video
A joke
Pádraig is walking along the beach when he finds a battered oil lamp. He rubs it an a genie appears, offering to grant him three wishes. “I’d like a bottle of Guinness that never runs out!” says Pat. The genie claps his hands and a bottle appears. Pat tips it upside-down and for a few minutes watches in delight as the stout pours endlessly from the bottle onto the beach. “That’s fantastic!” he says. “I’ll have two more of these, please.”
links for 2006-08-26
-
Accused of a crime, evidence confiscated, acquitted, sued to retrieve property, shafted by the NH State Supreme Court.
-
A burger joint. 4 kinds of meat. 1/3, 2/3, 1lb options. 10 cheeses. 27 topping options in addition to lettuce or mixed greens. 17 sauced. 3 kinds of bun. Sigh.
links for 2006-08-22
-
Read the link. Tax-payer dollars at work. Here I was thinking that the standard was “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
7th of January, 2007
Mark off the day in your calendars. The significance? 1347 days since the 1st of May, 2003. The significance of that? On that day, the number of days after “the end of major comabt operations in Iraq” will equal the number of days the US was involved in World War II, from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day. I wonder if they will still be there.
Hat tip to the Kossacks.
links for 2006-08-20
-
A la Chuck Norris, but about security specialist Bruce Schneier and the facts are cryptoliciously geeky. “Bruce Schneier knows Alice and Bob’s shared secret.”
-
Another ultimate 80s song list. With links to youtube for the video.
-
$3.50 if you can figure out the stuff they do.
Oh nothing, certainly not state secrets!
So in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, a US federal judge in Michigan has ruled that the NSA program of warrantless wiretapping of US citizens is unconstitutional and must be halted. Reading the actual ruling, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor reviews a large number of cases where the government has asserted what is known as the “State Secrets Privilege.” This is a common law legal doctrine that allows a government to ask for evidence to be ruled inadmissible in court if the revelation of the evidence would be harmful to the state. There is a wikipedia article on state secrets. Judge Taylor’s ruling cites cases going back as far as 1875: “The seminal decision in this line of cases is Totten v. United States 92 U.S. 105 (1875)” – a US civil war spying case. Judge Taylor quotes the imporant 1953 US Supreme Court ruling in United States vs Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953)
The privilege belongs to the Government and must be asserted by it; it can neither be claimed nor waived by a private party. It is not to be lightly invoked. There must be formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has control over the matter, after actual personal consideration by that officer. The court itself must determine whether the circumstances are appropriate for the claim of privilege, and yet do so without forcing a disclosure of the very thing the privilege is designed to protect. Reynolds, 345 U.S. at 8.
The Chief Justice further wrote:
In each case, the showing of necessity which is made will determine how far the court should probe in satisfying itself that the occasion for invoking the privilege is appropriate. Where there is a strong showing of necessity, the claim of privilege should not be lightly accepted, but even the most compelling necessity cannot overcome the claim of privilege if the court is ultimately satisfied that military secrets are at stake. Reynolds, 345 U.S. at 11.
A quick glance through the Canadian and U.S. constitutions shows a distinct lack of any mention of the phrases “National Security” and “State Secrets” but there appear to be a large number of people who don’t think the ideas are abhorrent and reprehensible so I guess they are unlikely to go away any time soon. Right. Given that they are going to be around, I think their use needs to be made more difficult and high profile. I personally think that any attempt to use them in a legal sense should require a document approving the use, signed by the elected head of government, the leader of the opposition, and at least one member of a group of judges who are cleared to see anything relating to the use of such a tool.
