Law

Secret Trials

This entry was posted in bush CAPPS II Constitution Democracy Domestic Terrorism Judiciary Law Libertarianism Patriot Act War on Terrorism on by

What is the justice department hiding? It is inconceivable to me that there is anything that justifies completely hiding a legal proceding from public scrutiny:

Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist – and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?

Dan Gilmour argues:

If the Supreme Court rules, as I suspect it will, that the White House is free to tear up the Bill of Rights under the guise of fighting terrorism (or fighting illegal drugs, the pretext that was used to basically destroy the 4th Amendment under previous administrations), then no one is safe from the predations of a rogue government in the future

Hmmmm, what about a rogue government in the present?
Via Secrecy News.

Who are the Terrorists?

This entry was posted in ashcroft bush Constitution Domestic Terrorism Law Libertarianism Patriot Act on by

Leah Roffman, a freshman at Tufts University closes an essay on the Patriot Act with this:

Americans fear a terrorist takeover because terrorists would repeal our rights, threaten our safety, and disregard accountability to citizens. But our current government is doing all of those things right now. I might even become a victim of the USA governmental spying team just for saying so.

’nuff said.

AOL Violates User’s Computers

This entry was posted in Economics Intellectual Property Law Microsoft Spam Technology on by

I couldn’t disagree more with this guy:

Russ Cooper, a security expert with TruSecure Corp., said anyone who needs the Windows messaging function that AOL disabled ought to be smart enough to know how to reactivate it.
“I hope more and more providers do this type of proactive security,” he said, “and that we don’t condemn them for things we wish everybody would do for themselves.”

He is talking about AOL which has made changes to the system settings of more then 15,000,000 of their user’s Microsoft Window based systems without those users prior consent.

(more…)

Wal-Mart Illegals

This entry was posted in Constitution Domestic Terrorism Economics Immigration Law on by

Surely no one is really surprised by this:

Federal officials are sweeping Wal-Mart stores across the United States as part of an effort to arrest some 300 illegal workers by Thursday evening…..
Officials say investigators are concerned about a pattern of Wal-Mart using contractors who employ illegal aliens and that Wal-Mart has, in fact, continued to use contractors who have been convicted of hiring aliens in the past.

Or that Wal-Mart would try to hide behind the ‘contractor’s employees’ argument:

“They arrested a number of members of the floor cleaning crews.” Williams emphasized the workers are employed by contractors, saying, “they’re not Wal-Mart associates.”

If Wal-Mart really did not know then there are some management types who need to be fired for failure to do due diligence in hiring the contractors.

Disregarding Bad Laws

This entry was posted in Law on by

Glenn Reynolds argues that there are too many laws on the books:

There are too many laws � many of them contradictory or obscure � for any person to actually avoid breaking the law completely.

and that breaking some of them may not be a bad thing:

And given that many laws are dumb, actually following all of them would probably bring society to a standstill,
….
Sometimes � not often, but sometimes � the best way to get a law changed is for people to ignore it. As, I suspect, they ignored the one about oral sex in Georgia.. . .

Which leads me to wonder 1) why there are not madatory sunset laws at all legislative and regulatory levels and 2) when we are going to start electing folks based on the laws they will eliminate instead of the special interests that they will bolster.
Via Talkleft.