[I]n certain limited circumstances, the Governments need to discover such latent or hidden conditions, or to prevent their development, is sufficiently compelling to justify the intrusion on privacy entailed by conducting such searches without any measure of individualized suspicion."

From the dissent:

"It is a sad irony that the petitioning School District seeks to justify its edict here by trumpeting the schools custodial and tutelary responsibility for children. In regulating an athletic program or endeavoring to combat an exploding drug epidemic, a schools custodial obligations may permit searches that would otherwise unacceptably abridge students rights. When custodial duties are not ascendant, however, schools tutelary obligations to their students require them to teach by example by avoiding symbolic measures that diminish constitutional protections. That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes. "

Precrime has arrived, Thank you Supremes...

The court stopped short of allowing random tests for any student, whether or not involved in extracurricular activities, but several justices have indicated they are interested in answering that question at some point. "

I just don't get it. If you can test a subset of the student body based on this reasoning, then you can test the whole student body. If you can test the whole student body, then you can test the whole town. If you can test the whole town for drugs, you can search the whole town for other criminal behaviour as well. There is no fourth amendment any more. The consitution was just declared unconsitutional.

CNN.com - High court approves random drug tests in public schools - June 27, 2002

"SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag cannot be recited in public schools because the phrase "under God" endorses religion. "

Wow, this is going to be messy. Of course, the article notes:

"The 9th Circuit is the most liberal and the most overturned appeals court in the country."

CNN.com - Court rules Pledge of Allegiance 'unconstitutional' - June 26, 2002

"Copyright holders would receive carte blanche to use aggressive tactics to stop the illegal distribution of their works on online services like Morpheus and Kazaa under legislation outlined today by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.). "

This is an extremely bad idea because it undermines the rule of law. Would the copyright industries really be held liable if they did this right now? Absolutely not. A goverment stamp of approval means this sort of behavior is "OK." The government should never advocate that citizens take the law into their own hands.

This is also an extremely bad idea because this sort of pressure is only going to cause the pirates to develop more mature technologies. The copyright holders cannot out-tech the pirates in the long term. The result will be that copyright law will go from being very difficult to enforce to being absolutely impossible to enforce.

If you are a pirate, you can read all of this as good news, essentially.

Proposal to allow pro-copyright vigilanti squads...

"Webcasters worried that Internet radio would be wiped out by outrageously high royalty rates found little solace on Thursday despite a ruling that slashed a controversial licensing fee in half."

What they did is say that webcasters shouldn't pay more then AM/FM broadcasters when they webcast. I honestly don't know why they were to begin with. However, Soma FM claims this will cost them $500 a day. Many online webcasters claim they can't cover it.

Honestly, they could get everybody to shut up if they made the fees a function of REVENUE rather then LISTENERS, like the BMI/ASCAP fees (which no one complains about). This allows you to build your business without paying out like a big boy when you are still small change. But that would be just too damn easy, now wouldn't it... One wonders if the RIAA doesn't benefit financially from an environment where there are a smaller number of popular artists and wants to tune things that way.

Webcasters' Fees Slashed in Half, no one happy...

"Privacyactivism and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are proud to release version 1.0 of the Carabella video game. This interactive video game highlights the ways that consumers' privacy and fair use rights are being whittled away by digital rights management technologies, online spyware and data profiling services. "

This is strange, but it does a fairly good job of explaining the situation to old men in suits, if those old men bother to play it.

EFF Presents The Carabella Game: The Quest for Tunes

"turning on a gene to make a protein while the DNA is still lodged inside the body--or in the nucleus of a cell in a laboratory dish--would allow someone to avoid infringing a patent. "

Scientific American: Legal Circumvention

"It's not punitive, it's just purely prevention to stop him from attacking us. He's going to stay in the can until we're through with al-Qaida."

Padilla to Be Held Indefinitely

"Unless you’ve been held incommunicado by U.S. military forces and missed the previews running every five minutes on television, you probably know that Steven Spielberg’s soon-to-be-released Minority Report is about a futurist police agency called “Precrime.” The agency is responsible for identifying and arresting murderers before they commit their crimes."

A good quick summary of the general truth behind the articles I recommended yesterday.

Department of Precrime

"Anthony Clark Arend, professor of International Law at Georgetown University, was online Monday, June 10 at 1 p.m. EDT, to discuss the arrest and what comes next from a legal standpoint."

More questions the answers here, but at least the questions are framed.

Legal discussion of Padilla arrest