Europeans are upset after learning that, in addition to capturing the email and phone records of Americans, the NSA has been doing the same to them in a global assault on privacy. This includes leaders of allied nations. The United States is now viewed as an international rogue nation with no respect for the law or privacy or even loyalty. Now into this explosive environment has jumped Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers responded directly to the French and said that this is all a “good thing” and the French should really be “applauding and popping champagne corks” for keeping them all under surveillance and destroying any notion of privacy.
You have never really heard Dueling Banjos until you have heard them on Tesla coils.
Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further in the pursuit of the truth.”
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Hymn of the Universe,” (Harper and Row, 1961).
It took the jury fewer than fifteen minutes to convict substitute teacher John Scopes of the crime of teaching evolution to Tennessee public school students in 1925. It was the last victory of Christian fundamentalists in their war against the disciples of Darwin, and a hollow one at that. Although the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law, it reversed the verdict because the trial judge had imposed a $100.00 fine on Mr. Scopes, contrary to a provision in the Tennessee constitution requiring a jury to assess fines exceeding $50.00. In sending the case back, however, the court made the unusual suggestion that further prosecution not be pursued. Scopes v. State, 154 Tenn. 105, 289 SW 363 (1927). It was not.
Fundamentalists were emboldened by the Scopes verdict. In 1928 Mississippi and Arkansas adopted similar laws and in the ensuing years, the subject of evolution was effectively dropped as a topic in many high school science courses, a trend that was not reversed until the Sputnik scare in 1958 led to a revamping of science curricula. It was not until 1968 that the Supreme Court decreed that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools violated the Establishment Clause. Epperson v. Arkansas, 397 U.S. 97 (1968).
With direct bans no longer available, fundamentalists pursued a new strategy, the adoption of “balanced treatment” legislation requiring that teachers provide time for the exploration of the Genesis story of creation as an alternative explanation of biological origins. In 1983 a federal district judge threw out Arkansas’ balanced treatment statute, concluding that creationism is “not science because it depends upon a supernatural intervention which is not guided by natural law. It is not explanatory by reference to natural law, is not testable and is not falsifiable.” McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1267 (E.D. Ark. 1982). Several years later, Louisiana’s balanced treatment statute was also found to violate the Establishment Clause under the Lemon test. Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987).
Efforts to recast creationism as science under the name “intelligent design” were rebuffed in the now famous case of Fitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp.2d 707 (E.D. Pa. 2005), in which the court succinctly stated that “[intelligent design] cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” 400 F. Supp.2d at 765.
But the war is far from over. Creationists are once again in court, and this time they are urging that the teaching of evolution in the public schools is itself a violation of, inter alia, the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses because evolution theory incorporates the “core tenets of Religious (‘secular’) Humanism.” Continue reading “Redefining Religion”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
American poet Stephen Dunn (bio here) reminds us that “all good poems are a victory over something.” For the folks in Rittman , Ohio (pop. 6,491) those words have a decidedly athletic context. The Rittman Indians High School football team was suffering through another miserable season at 1-7 and team morale was plummeting. Like most bad institutions there’s plenty of blame to go around but the school administration thought it had its scapegoat. Junior Defensive End Nick Andre had been tasked with composing a poem about something that made him angry. His English teacher told him anything he wrote about was fine as long as it was authentic and sincere. Not content with such weighty issues as drone strikes or government shutdowns, Nick decided to write about what he knew — the abysmal football team and allegations of nepotism and favoritism that were weighing down the squad.
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
There used to be a program on one of the television sports channels called World of Speed & Beauty. It was about fast, beautiful and graceful machines on the land, water and air. That is what this story is about. These past few weeks have seen enough tales of woe, bigotry, greed, anger and most of the other deadly sins that I thought we needed something to bring a smile to a few faces. Below the fold are two High Definition videos I hope will do just that.
Almost everyone looks up when they hear an airplane go over. The kid who never grew up still lives in most of us.
Continue reading “Speed and Beauty: A Ballet in the Skies of France”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
My daughter always got so excited decorating our house for Halloween when she was young. She loved spooky stories and movies…and Halloween as much as she loved Christmas. When I was teaching elementary school, I really enjoyed reading scary stories to my students as well as sharing and writing Halloween poems with them. Since Halloween is just a few days away, I thought I’d post one of my original witch poems and a collaborative class poem written by my second grade students a few years before I left the classroom.
THERE WAS A WITCH
There was a witch who liked to race
Her supersonic broom through space.
At six o’clock last Friday night
She blasted off at speed of light.
She whizzed past Mercury and Mars…
Then headed off toward distant stars.
Across the galaxy she sped,
A black peaked helmet on her head.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
A recent decision by the Justice Department has opened the doors to a possible test of whether the government’s widespread use of wireless wiretaps is constitutional.
“The Justice Department for the first time has notified a criminal defendant that evidence being used against him came from a warrantless wiretap, a move that is expected to set up a Supreme Court test of whether such eavesdropping is constitutional.” New York Times Continue reading “Criminal Defendants and Wireless Wiretaps: One Small Victory?”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
I’d only planned to write one guest blog this weekend, but this morning on Huffington Post I saw a video from a TED lecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_%28conference%29 The lecture was from Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus who has been studying false memories since the 1970’s. She links what she discovered with one of the failings of our Criminal Justice System, with the false memories reported in court. This is an 18 minute lecture but it is well worth your time and bears directly on the topics we discuss here on the Law Blog. I must note that in it she is critical of certain psychotherapy techniques and I am a psychotherapist. Despite my training and profession I believe her critiques are on point and illustrate one of the problems inherent in some psychotherapies. For any readers that are interested in our legal system and who care about its problems, viewing this will represent time well spent. My technical skills are such that I don’t know how to properly make the video appear in WordPress but if you click on the following link you will be able to see it: Mystery of Memory
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
Last August, this blog had the story of Cocke County, Tennessee child support Magistrate Judge Lu Ann Ballew who arbitrarily ordered parents to change the first name of their seven month old child. Jaleesa Martin and Jawaan McCullough had decided on their child’s first name, but were not able to agree on whether his surname should be that of his mother or his father. It was Judge Ballew who ordered the parents of seven month old Messiah McCullough Martin they had to change the child’s first name and change his birth certificate. Judge Ballew opined, “The word Messiah is a title, and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person, and that one person is Jesus Christ.”
In a rambling interview with local television, Judge Ballew tried to explain her reasoning. The reporter asked her what if the child had been named Jesus, a popular name in the Spanish speaking community. The judge stammered, finally declaring that to be irrelevant. The reporter did not press the issue and ask about the use of Mohammed/Muhammed by many Islamic families. Her answer to that would have been…..interesting. Here is the interview of Magistrate Judge Lu Ann Ballew with a reporter from a local TV station. This is almost painful to watch.
Continue reading “Tennessee Judge Who Renamed Child Now Facing Judicial Misconduct Charges”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
We have previously discussed the unanimous Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones, where the Court ruled that the installation of a GPS device constituted a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. In Jones, the Court did not rule that a search warrant was required to affix a GPS device to a car. In the case of United States v. Katzin, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the installation of a GPS tracking device without a warrant was unconstitutional.
Continue reading “Third Circuit Requires Warrant For GPS Tracking”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
See the blue and green spirals? They’re the same color. See the image below the fold. Continue reading “Same Color”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
We have had a lot of discussions here about the ever growing private prison system in the United States, where our country has become the world leader in imprisoning its citizens. Many blogs have been written discussing our world prison leadership and the fact that it stems from the failed “War on Drugs”, which has tended to focus on people in poverty and/or people of color. The for-profit prison industry has had a growth spurt that can be directly traced to that aspect of the conservative movement that has disparaged government services and at the same time pushed for privatization of government services using the false concept that private industry can do it better and cheaper. It is an ideas that to me seems nonsensical on its face because of the absolute need that private industry turns a profit and in today’s economic scheme that profit has to continually rise as time passes. Business strategy, which by definition, must focus on profit has focused on cutting costs as a means of building profit. Cutting costs then devolves into hiring less skilled workers, cutting down on services provided and in a business like private prisons reducing the quality of care. When ot comes to reduction of services and diminishing of quality of care when it comes to the prison industry, I’m sure that the majority of public opinion would approve of even more draconian measures. After all those convicted of a crime are generally scorned and feared. Muscular fundamentalist philosophy has discarded the Jesus of turn the other cheek into a Jesus of vengeance and so there is even in some circles moral approval of treating prison inmates harshly. There is now a widespread use of solitary confinement as a tool of prison punishment and that confinement has stretched from weeks, too months and too years. We are after all, a society that has a majority of Americans for torture in our post 9/11 era.
In 2008 we saw the opening of a scandal in Pennsylvania where it was discovered that juvenile court judges were sentencing youths to prison for minor offenses because they had received money from sources in the private prison industry. Two judges were convicted in this case and it was seen that many youths were adversely affected and are now suing for unlawful imprisonment. It is this profiting on the imprisonment of youth that I would like to address broadly in this blog. For the most part my reference links will appear at its conclusion. This is a very disturbing problem that I think cuts to the heart of what kind of society we want to live in and I would hope that others find this as disturbing as I do. Continue reading “The Private Prisons Profit on Youth”
Students at the University of Colorado at Boulder have been told this year that some standard costumes are now deemed “offensive” and are unacceptable. This includes costumes as cowboys, indians and anything involving a sombrero. Once again, I am concerned that these rules based on tolerance values are intruding into the speech rights of students and wrongly assumes that all such outfits are derogatory to a particular race or culture.
There could be an interesting conflict brewing in New York where IFC Center in Greenwich Village has declared that it will not impose the NC-17 rating for Abdellatif Kechiche’s three-hour long lesbian drama “Blue Is the Warmest Color”. In other words, it will allow in teenage viewers in violation of the rating. The case could force a confrontation over the voluntary system of ratings. This was a compromise with politicians and some groups that want to regulate films for obscenity or violence or sexual content. If theaters refuse to comply with the ratings, there may be a move to re-introduce legislation imposing direct government regulation — raising obvious free speech issues.
There is a troubling case out of Dallas where David Blair said that he opened the door to his apartment only to be met with a hail of gunfire from police. The Dallas Police Department reportedly told him that he caused the response by shining of flashlight and having a door that made a popping sound. Apparently, you have to either get some WD40 or face a barrage of lead in Texas.