Privacy

2008 started "off" to say the least, for The New York Times. First it was the hiring of Bill Krystol as an Op/Ed columnist. Then it was their craptacular endorsement of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Yet, if we're going to cast aspersions, let's not forget the embarrassment and disgrace Judith Miller's aiding and abetting of the Bush Administration brought to the paper's credibility not so long ago.

So it's just amazing that they'll come out with a hit job against John McCain. In an allegedly "investigative" report of John McCain's ethics, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk is a thinly vield gossip piece about whether he was lobbied hard, really really hard, by a woman called Vicki Iseman.

I am of two minds about this. Let me start with the deep and ponderous one first :

Look, anybody who has been married ought to never take anybody else's private life as a barometer of their professional shortcomings. Especially when you have someone like Hillary Clinton in the running.

Today an appeals court in California handed a bunch of NASA scientists a victory that is a victory for the civil liberties of all Federal employees and contractors. At stake was the privacy of all NASA scientists and contractors and potentially all Federal employees and contractors. It all stems from a reasonable attempt by Homeland Security to standardize the procedure for obtaining ID cards that allow access to Federal facilities (Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12). The method of implementation required even low-risk employees and contractors (including my wife, a grad student studying climate) to sign a blanket waiver giving the Federal government permission to investigate all aspects of a person's private life, including finiancial and medical records, or risk losing the right to enter their place of employment with the government.

One of the first places where this was aggressively implemented was NASA. Just as my wife, working in a NASA facility where no sensitive research is done, was informed she will have to sign away her rights to get an ID, NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab filed a lawsuit to block implementation of the directive. Today that lawsuit bore fruit. Please read on.

Some of you may have been following the long story of a threat to my wife's civil liberties thanks to Homeland Security. The original diaries (which got LOTS of attention, being picked up by the Huffington Post and boosting the morale of some NASA scientists involved) can be found here:

The Republican Party, the party that used to want to "get government off our backs" has led America to becoming one of the most intrusive governments in the world. We now rank right down with China and Russia as leading the world for surveillance of civilians, according to Privacy International. I should note that the study does not cover every nation, merely the EU and 20 non-EU nations including America.

Privacy International, based in London, was formed in 1990 by more than 100 human rights organizations to defend personal privacy. Here's what they have to say for themselves:

For almost twenty years Privacy International (PI) has vigorously defended personal privacy. We have campaigned across the world to protect people against intrusion by governments and corporations that seek to erode this fragile right. We believe that privacy forms part of the bedrock of freedoms, and our goal has always been to use every means to preserve it. Our campaigns are often controversial, but they always respect the primacy of truth and principle.

PI is the oldest surviving privacy advocacy group in the world, and was the first organisation to campaign at an international level on privacy issues. Its antecedents stretch back to 1987, at which time the organisation’s founders started to build an international network in response to mounting concern across the world over the changing nature and magnitude of privacy violations.

Crossposted at The Unapologetic Mexican, Jesus' General, and Corrente.

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I come, not to bury the decision, but to praise it.

I also come to mourn for the young women, those under the age of 18, who for whatever reason—fear, for example—cannot tell their parents that they need an abortion and thus suffer unreasonably.

Parental consent laws are a hot-button issue. Many, many on the left support abortion rights, and yet, when it comes to the fate of those under the age of 18, there seems to be a "NMD" (not my daughter) attitude that consumes them. They argue, and I know because I've argued against them, that no person under the age of 18 should be allowed to make their own medical decisions.

This is what I wrote a few months back:

I want to talk about parental consent laws, and why I have a problem with them. I'm not condemning anyone for feeling different than I do; I already know that there are people here, people I respect, who believe that parental consent laws are a good idea. So, I want to offer this in the spirit of discussion, and not in the spirit of rancor.

OK folks, I offer a chance to be heard and influence the conversation.

In today’s world we have some difficult energy related circumstances. In the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning business, the Engineers who work behind the scenes to design build and maintain our buildings and energy infrastructure are working hard to ensure a safe, healthful and sustainable future for us to enjoy.

HVAC for our air conditioning is a major if not dominant portion of the load on our electrical grid. The grid for purpose defined as both Electrical Generation and Distribution. The sad fact is very few new power plants have been built in the last decades, so while electrical demand has increased greatly, the legacy generation base has aged with no significant replacement of these generating resources. On top of that the distribution systems that include high tension cables, transformer stations, local transformers and all the relays sensors and automated controls that go into making it all flow are also aging. Coupled with that is the regular mundane maintenance of clearing trees and brush along the power lines which although manageable, costs a fair amount of money. We should make note that part of the root cause of the Great East Coast / Midwest Blackout (just a name I invented) was caused by lack of proper tree maintenance.

We should also not forget the California draconian regulation that led to the rise and fall of Enron, and the rolling blackouts of the not to distant past.

Okay. I admit it. I don't often go over to the Concerned Women for America web site expecting to read good news. I go over there to see what the latest spin is on the organization's goals for complete gender subjugation and reproductive slavery for women. Because you know, what we women want really, is to smell the leather of the boot that's holding our faces down.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

Sylvia Plath Daddy

I go to CWFA to read the longings by mostly white, mostly middle class women to be released of the burden of independence. How easy it would be to surrender everything--one's thoughts, one's body, one's soul--to a man who promised to love one forever and forever and ever as long as we always did what he said.

So, imagine my utter delight to read that CWFA is pissed. At Democrats. Who flip-flopped. The irony is killing me.


The good news from last week, which most of us missed in our rage over the other bullshit, is that Senate Bill 403, the one that would have thrown people in jail for transporting minors over state lines to get an abortion, failed. The Democrats killed it.

And, what makes it all the sweeter, is that eight Democrats, who had previously supported the Anti-Choice legislation, voted this time against it.

Meet the eight Democratic senators who flip-flopped on their vote to protect pregnant minors last weekend, causing the single most important piece of pro-life legislation in the 109th Congress – the Child Custody Protection Act (CCPA) (S.403) – to  die on the Senate floor barely hours before Congress recessed.

Evan Bayh (Indiana)

You Must Have the Body.

Habeas Corpus.

One of the tenets of our judicial system.

But we live in a culture that increasingly denies the body. It denies it pleasure. It denies it autonomy. It offers to it suffering.

What if God had a body that could suffer?

In West Virginia thre is a cohabitation law, which makes it a misdemeanor for unmarried people to "lewdly and lasciviously associate" and live together. This law is being challenged by a lawsuit, filed by the ACLU on behalf of an inmate whose parole was delayed because of his plan to cohabit with his fiance.

Well, I have lewdly and lasciviously associated and lived together with women before I was married. And enjoyed it very much, thank you. And I considered it none of the government's business that I did so. However, I always had the option of marrying who ever I wanted to lewdly and lasciviously associate with.

Since gays are not allowed the same right to marry eachother that I have, this cohabitation law seems to clearly discriminate against gays, preventing them from lewdly and lasciviously associating with eachother legally.

But really, the fundamental question here is what business is it of the government to care who lewdly and lasciviously associates with who? When will we get the governmemt out of our bedrooms? Oh, yeah. When we get rid of Republican control over our government.