The Public Expression of Religion Act - H.R. 2679 - provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees.

I found this bill in thomas as the "Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006".

Check out the act description:

To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to prevent the use of the legal system in a manner that extorts money from State and local governments, and the Federal Government, and inhibits such governments' constitutional actions under the first, tenth, and fourteenth amendments.

So protecting constitutional rights is now interpreted as extorting money from the government? This is unbelievable..

Erwin Chemerinsky - Legislating Violations of the Constitution - washingtonpost.com

Name this quote:

"I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether
it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether
he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right
that matters, but victory."

Godwin's Guffaw

"We can be conquered by bombs or subversion; but we can also be conquered by neglect - by ignoring the Constitution and disregarding the principles of limited government." - Barry Goldwater

Goldwater, Leftist (haw haw haw!)

Does encrypting Internet communications create a reasonable expectation of privacy in their contents, triggering Fourth Amendment protection? At first blush, it seems that the answer must be yes: A reasonable person would surely expect that encrypted communications will remain private. In this paper, Professor Kerr explains why this intuitive answer is entirely wrong: Encrypting communications cannot create a reasonable expectation of privacy. The reason is that the Fourth Amendment regulates access, not understanding: no matter how unlikely it is that the government will successfully decrypt ciphertext, the Fourth Amendment offers no protection if it succeeds. As a result, the government does not need a search warrant to decrypt encrypted communications.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Can Encryption create an expectation of privacy

At a law school Supreme Court conference that I attended last fall, there was a panel on “The Rehnquist Court.” No one mentioned Bush v. Gore, the most historic case of William Rehnquist’s time as chief justice, and during the Q. and A. no one asked about it. When I asked a prominent law professor about this strange omission, he told me he had been invited to participate in another Rehnquist retrospective, and was told in advance that Bush v. Gore would not be discussed.

The ruling that stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush is disappearing down the legal world’s version of the memory hole, the slot where, in George Orwell’s “1984,” government workers disposed of politically inconvenient records. The Supreme Court has not cited it once since it was decided, and when Justice Antonin Scalia, who loves to hold forth on court precedents, was asked about it at a forum earlier this year, he snapped, “Come on, get over it.”

Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named? - New York Times

From: Brad Malin
Date: August 9, 2006 1:05:55 PM EDT
To: David Farber
Subject: AOL Case and the EU Data Directive?

Hey Dave - I was wondering... As the AOL fiasco unfolds, the company finds
itself in a bit of a pickle. In its current state, AOL is potentially in
violation of the FTC's deceptive practices policy. This puts them in hot
water in the USA, and apparently a class action lawsuit is about to be
brought to the table.

But there exists the potential for even more concern. Specifically, I'm
wondering if AOL's published data concerns only US citizens? As you know,
several years ago AOL branched out and went international, e.g.,
http://www.aol.co.uk/. And if the published records contain information
gathered via its European branches, then AOL is in violation of the EU Data
Directive in many ways. First, it's in violation of the safe harbor
provision of the directive. Second, it's in violation of the directive
itself for protection mechanisms that must be in place for the secondary
sharing of person-specific data.

So, a question and a challenge:

1) Has AOL stated which population the data corresponds to?

2) If not, I don't have the time to do the re-identification study, but I
propose a challenge to any students or professionals with extra time on
their hands. First, try to categorize the users in the dataset into
countries and/or regions. Second, try to pinpoint individuals from
countries outside of the US.

I'm not trying to take down AOL - but make a point.

-brad

[IP] AOL Case and the EU Data Directive?

Mocked by comedian Jon Stewart for calling the Internet a bunch of tubes, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said on Thursday he is open to going on Stewart's popular "Daily Show" for a rebuttal.

Oh, please.. Let this happen.

If you didn't see the segment, it can be found on YouTube. I also suggest watching this remix.

"I have a letter from a big scientist who said I was absolutely right in using the word 'tubes,"' he told reporters. However, Stevens said he had not been invited to appear on the show to respond.

Well, then.. I wasn't aware of that.. That changes things.. I'm a staunch supporter of big science.

Maybe the problem wasn't Ted's usage of the word "tubes", as much as everything that came out of his mouth made him sound like an idiot. It was hard to come up with something specific to focus on. His staff was sending him "internets" on his personal internet which were taking days to arrive and all that. Everyone knows that the Internet is in fact a collection of "pipes", not "tubes". It's an important difference, so it was easier to focus on. [snicker]

Ted Stevens to go on the Daily Show?

The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure our national policies reflect these values. Our policy and communications efforts are organized around four major objectives:

• developing a long term vision of a progressive America,
• providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals,
• responding effectively and rapidly to conservative proposals and rhetoric with a thoughtful critique and clear alternatives, and
• communicating progressive messages to the American public.

The Center for American Progress is an awesome think tank that runs several sites besides just http://www.americanprogress.org including:

http://www.americanprogressaction.org
http://www.campusprogress.org
http://www.radioprogress.org
http://www.thinkprogress.org

The Center was founded by John Podesta who is Neoteric's new boss.

Center for American Progress

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) turns 40 tomorrow, the day we celebrate our independence. But this anniversary will not be a day of celebration for the right to information in our country. Our government leaders have become increasingly obsessed with secrecy. Obstructionist policies and deficient practices have ensured that many important public documents and official actions remain hidden from our view.

In the United States, we must seek amendments to FOIA to be more in line with emerging international standards, such as covering all branches of government; providing an oversight body to monitor compliance; including sanctions for failure to adhere to the law; and establishing an appeal mechanism that is easy to access, speedy and affordable. We cannot take freedom of information for granted. Our democracy depends on it.

Jimmy Carter chimes in on the culture of secrecy.

We Need Fewer Secrets

Of course, the neoconservatives retain well-known figures like Charles Krauthammer. But when it comes to true depth or originality of thought, Krauthammer and other neoconservatives like Richard Perle might also be described as straw hyenas -- prominent and strikingly vicious features of the American foreign policy ecology, but hardly intellectual lions.

Fukuyama's strongest claim to have pursued for many years a trajectory quite different from the neoconservatives is provided by his best book, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, published in 1996. This work is distinguished not just by its scholarship and sophistication, but by the breadth of its sympathy and understanding for a range of very different cultural, social and economic traditions.

As was said here years ago, and even now, Trust remains his best book.

Truly deep and radical thought in the foreign-policy-oriented sections of US academia and think tanks is deadened both by the hegemony of American civic-nationalist ideology and by the interlacing of these institutions with the organs of government. As a result, too many formally independent American experts in fact tailor their every statement so that it can never be held against them by a possible political patron or at a Senate confirmation hearing.

The training in self-censorship starts, sensibly enough, with risque pictures on MySpace. It produces, decades later, the kind of silence that leads to violent insurgency halfway around the world.

If Fukuyama wants to emerge as the great public figure that his intellect and learning qualify him to be, he needs to gamble: to risk short-term unpopularity and abuse in the belief that events ill eventually vindicate his stance.

Breaking with the neoconservatives is controversial but "safe"; challenging the basic assumptions of the US foreign policy elite on Russia and other key issues is not safe at all.

Western intellectuals and journalists instinctively turn to such liberal intellectuals, rather than either officials or ordinary people, for analysis of their societies. At best, this produces a copulation of illusions, with Westerners and their local interlocutors passionately misconceiving together. At worst, it lays us open to deliberate misinformation and manipulation by a range of would-be Chalabis.

This Anatol Lieven guy has a knack for phrases.

I am compelled here to reference Alan Kay:

If the children are being instructed in the pink plane, can we teach them to think in the blue plane and live in a pink-plane society?

The Two Fukuyamas | The National Interest