Civil Rights

Isn't the whole premise of the War on Some Drugs that you should only use drugs for a medical condition, not just for fun or convenience? Well, then, how about this?

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

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Such episodes are among more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 -- the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security's new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

A few weeks ago my brother invited us to come out and see him play at a popular country & western steakhouse called "San Tan Flat". San Tan Flat is a fun, family place. There is a large outdoor area where you can sit and have dinner, and where the band plays. There's also a small, circular dance floor in front of the stage.

Now, Mrs. Inscrutable and I like to cut a rug now and then, and I was excited to be able to dance with her this time. "Man," I said to my brother, "It's been a while since we've been able to come out and see you play! It'll be fun to dance!"

"You can't dance there," said Mike. "It's against the law."

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Via BoingBoing, news of just how vigilant they are in Detroit to make sure you read the label of any beverage you are served:

Boy, 7, taken from family after drink mixup at Tigers game

The sign above the Comerica Park concession stand said: "Mike's Lemonade 7.00.''

So when Christopher Ratte of Ann Arbor ordered one for his 7-year-old son at the April 5 Detroit Tigers game, he had no idea he was purchasing an alcoholic beverage.

Or that his son would end up spending three days and two nights in the custody of Children's Protective Services.

A park security guard spotted 7-year-old Leo Ratte drinking the Mike's Hard Lemonade, confiscated the bottle and took the family in for questioning.

Man, I love the UK, particularly Wales. Have been there half a dozen times, and enjoyed it every time.

But I have to admit, the whole creeping and creepy 1984 mindset about CCTV there drives me nuts. The Brits are well on their way to being a true surveillance society. As I have written recently:

I am constantly dismayed by just how much Great Britain has become a surveillance society, to the point where it is a dis-incentive to want to travel there. In almost all towns of any real size, you are constantly within sight of multiple CCTV cameras, and there is increasing use of biometrics (such as fingerprint ID) as a general practice for even routine domestic travel.

If you know me at all, from personal experience or just from my writings, you might be a bit surprised to know that when I was a kid I was considered bookish, uninterested in athletics, a bit nerdy. I distinctly remember being pushed to close whatever book I was quietly reading, and to go outside and play 'like a real boy'.

Ah, great - the military has a new techno gizmo to use in the Global War on Terror: a hand-held lie detector! From the article:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. - The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

One of our favorite guys, Rob Sherman, testified before the Illinois House State Government Administration Committee on Wednesday related to Gov. Rod Blagojevich's proposed $1 million grant intended for Pilgrim Baptist Church, and was blindsided by wackjob theocrat Rep. Monique Davis who seems to think that atheists don't have any right to exist, and that we are "dangerous to children".

[link] Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?

I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!

Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---

Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

You can listen to the whole sordid thing here.

(Tip of the ballcap to Twitter and Hemant!)

I find myself conflicted. I have no ready resolution to my problem. As it says in my introduction on the sidebar, I'm a liberal libertarian with conservative leanings. What that really means is that I'm a registered Independant who doesn't concur with the party platform of the Republicans and Democrats. I am, with caveats, an Objectivist. I may address the hows and whys of those tenents at another time. I promised my conundrum though, and here it is.

These parents allowed their child to die because of their religious beliefs. They allowed a sentient being, a person with their whole life ahead of them, to perish because they believed that if their daughter was worthy, or their prayers fervent enough, she'd be healed by their magic sky fairy. They have murdered their daughter. I use that term, murder, intentionally. They have willfully denied their daughter medical care and because of that she is no more. This is especially tragic to me given that I'm an atheist. Without an afterlife to "live" for, or to transit to post-death, this result, death, is the worst outcome possible in my view. The parents failure to obtain proper medical care for a perfectly treatable condition is a travesty of both life and liberty.

The "State" is not necessary for many things. We are an over-regulated people in America. We have laws governing many of our behaviours. Of these laws, I believe most to be at best unnecessary, at worst intrusive. My conundrum lies in the straight fact that I'd like what these parents have done to be illegal. I WANT state intervention because I can't think of another way to handle such a case. This couple's daughter should be alive today. I'm not feeling my libertarian edge right at this moment and I'd like it back. Help?

A Christian theocracy in our country? How can you say that? You civil libertarians are all crazy!

[link] Witnesses said the presiding judge, Covington County Circuit Judge M. Ashley McKathan, told some 100 people, including members of the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church and other spectators and officials gathered for a conference regarding the church records case, to join hands in a circle as he prayed.

At one point, witnesses said, the judge fell to his knees.

Pfft. What's the big deal? A judge orders more than a hundred people in a state courtroom to gather in a prayer circle while he falls to his knees and prays. Who cares? What, are you some sort of atheist commie pinko?

One of the things that I predict for my novel is that over time we will introduce personal 'experts' - advanced Expert Systems or Artificial Intelligence - which will act as a buffer between the individual and a technological world. We will enter into a trade-off: allow our 'expert' to function as an old-fashioned butler, knowing all of our secrets but guarding them closely, in order to then interact with the rest of the world. So, your expert would know your preferences on entertainment and books, handle your communications and banking, maintain some minimal privacy for you by being a "black box" which negotiates with other people and machines on your behalf.

Why do I think that this will happen? Why will it be necessary?

Because increasingly, in the name of 'convenience', both government and industry are seeking to become more intrusive in our lives, all the way down to the level of what happens inside our homes. People want the convenience, but are starting to become increasingly aware of what the price of the trade-off will be. The latest example:

SPRINGDALE - Hour after hour, for four full days, Adriana Torres-Flores was locked away and forgotten in 8 1/2-by-9 1/2-foot cell in the Washington County Courthouse, with only a metal table, two benches and a light bulb that never went out. She had nothing to eat or drink. There was no toilet. Thursday passed. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday - although Torres-Flores had no watch to tell the time. She slept on the floor with her head on a shoe.

She drank her own urine, she said.

Panicked and afraid she would die, Torres-Flores pounded on the steel door with her hands and feet, and yelled. No one heard her. The threat of snow had thinned the courthouse staff Friday.

The building was closed all weekend.

It was Monday morning before the bailiff who had put her in the holding cell, intending to have her taken to jail, opened the door and realized his mistake.

Can you say "oops?"

So, what did Ms. Torres-Flores do to deserve such treatment?

Hello, I'm reeling with a lot of new ideas gathered from you people, and this is a rewrite of my first blog entry which basically sucked.

Here's one of the main reasons I came here.

My brain was altered by the Methodists' "dogmagicians" starting when I was almost 6 years old.

Before then, my agnostic dad kept religion out of my life and off my back, but my mother couldn't live with herself, let alone anyone else, so she split and I got moved into her parents' home and church.

Something has to give, when the people you love and trust tell you with a straight face that a guy was killed and then a few days later, he woke up and walked out of the tomb and flew up to heaven where he's been hanging out ever since, waiting for the big day.

So what exactly is it that gives?

Kids in the cult I was forced into get the dogma drill around 5 or 6, by which time they've begun to feel good about their ability to figure things out for themselves.

Teen Says TSA Screener Opened Sterile Equipment, Put Life In Danger

James Hoyne, 14, has a feeding tube in his stomach and carries a back-up in a sealed clear plastic bag. Hoyne said two weeks ago a TSA officer insisted on opening the sterile equipment, contaminating his back-up feeding up tube which he later needed.

"I said 'Please don't open it' and she said 'I have to open it whether you like it or not. If I can't open it, I can't let you on the plane,'" Hoyne said of his conversation with the TSA screener.

TSA officials apologized to James and said they're looking into the incident to see what corrective steps need to be taken.

Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the AU have filed a lawsuit against the town of Greece, NY for it's unconstitutional practice of offering explicitly sectarian Christian prayers as an official part of their town meetings.

[link] Khan said that of 44 Greece meeting prayers reviewed by her group, only one was offered by a non-Christian. And, she said, the review showed that the vast majority of prayers delivered before meetings since 2004 were explicitly sectarian.

The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that governmental bodies may open their sessions with prayer, but only if the prayer is nonsectarian and does not reference a particular deity or the language and symbols specific to one religion.

The Americans United lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of Greece residents Linda Stephens and Susan Galloway, seeks to have the court declare that Greece's current practice violates the Constitution and issue an injunction prohibiting sectarian prayer before the board meetings.

The citizen's reactions are what concern me the most:

[link] Please understand that the real issue is getting publicity for people and their anti-Christian agenda. I attend Faith Temple Church in Brighton and this is no different from when they didn't want the new expanded Christian based church expanding in THEIR town. I appreciate that the Jewish and atheiest can come together for something! The funny thing is they're both nonbelievers in Christ. I get that, but when people around you are believers and they are in power please respect YOUR place. When I come to Brighton I understand MY place as a Christian male. You need to realize in Greece we don't accept atheism or Judaism as the guiding faith in our town. We have predominately Christian places of worship throughout the town. Respect it or leave it. I am sick of this crap, we aren't Holland or Londonistan or any other place where Christians are made to feel dirty for their religion, this is America! We were founded by a country of white protestant Christian males, and as such are guided by that. I didn't complain all the time I had to spend in SS class learning about the holocaust ad nauseam. I respect what happened and hope it never happens again, BUT I don't call the ACLU and complain my children have to learn it and I am offended or whatever. Find these women and find out what they're real problem is and lets solve it, but it isn't prayer.

In other words, "Sit down, shut up, and get to the back of the bus while your betters run this town, you filthy, second-class, non-Christian scum." And what's the deal with the scary "find these women and find out what their real problem is" threatening comment? Find them and what? Beat them until they acknowledge that Christians are more human then they are? Find them and terrorize their families? What a despicable thing to say.

This is a depressingly familiar refrain from bigoted Christians in our country who have no clue what the Constitution actually says, and who would seem to be arguing for a Christian theocracy in a "might makes right" or "majority rules" sense.

What they don't understand is the fact that our First Amendment concept of the separation of church and state protects them too. Tyranny of the majority should be a real and valid concern for all Americans, not just the minorities - because one day you too could become a minority.

Kudos to the AU for fighting this very important fight to save our civil liberties from the absolute morons who want to strip them away.

The Christian Taliban are at it again. Yesterday, there was a protest held in front of ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. The kooks are upset over Dana Jacobson's jokes at a roast and anchor Chris Berman's use of the words "Jesus Christ" and "goddamn" in the workplace.

The Christian Defense Coalition accuses ESPN of having a "lack of sensitivity to persons of faith and a culture of religious intolerance." Un-freakin-believable. They want to sensor my speech now?

The latest attempt to drum up outrage centers around another video, of course. It's a video of Chris Berman going ballistic over incompetent co-workers in the studio. An important thing to note is that this is not part of a broadcast. It's a video of what happened before a show actually started. Berman might be a bit of jerk, but in all fairness, we don't know the circumstances and this is besides the point.

Rather than stating this in the comments of the post, I think a response to Brent's opening paragraphs in his latest review of Vox Day's book warrant a full post.

Brent, unsurprisingly, I agree with you.

Kind of.

Sort of.

Mostly.

Here's what I agree with you about:

I have my own opinions, political views, and values. I have my own, personal, rational for being a person in whom god-belief is absent (an atheist). I recognize no "atheist leaders" or spokesmen, and I endorse no one who claims to speak for me, or insinuates that they speak for me in any way.

Here's where our opinions may part:

I have lately (within the last few years) come to believe that the entire social and political "atheist movement", as it nominally exists, is a big, fat exercise in futility. Atheists are not, in any way, shape, or form, a "group" in the same sense that Methodists, Shriners, or Republicans are a group. The atheists who organize activist marches, set agendas and identify themselves as part of this "atheist movement" group seem to be lying to themselves. There is no cohesive atheist political movement.

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Let's say you're a junior majoring in biology and behavioral health at Penn State. You are anxious to write a scathing letter to the editor of the university's student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, because you disagree with the way that a recent lawsuit concerning religious messages on bricks has been settled, and you wish for your voice to be heard by your peers about this matter.

How to begin your letter? Should you be respectful? Should you lay on the sarcasm, the fiery rhetoric? Should you start it off with a bang, or attempt to be coolly rational throughout the whole 300 words?

Wait a minute... How about if you act exactly like a stereotypical parody of an "angry atheist" instead! That's GENIUS!

Let me begin by mentioning that I'm an atheist, giving praise to one book only: Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species.

*sigh*

I really think that Adam Schrenzel, the letter-writing junior at PSU in question, meant well. However, he is 100% wrong about this one. PSU screwed up when they rejected alumni James Pursley's personal religious message on a brick that he purchased for the PSU Alumni Walk. They discriminated against his religious views, pure and simple, while allowing other alumnus religious views. This is a clear-cut civil rights violation - and PSU realized that and set things right, which is why the lawsuit was thrown out.

Via my buddy Jerry, a couple of tales to warm the heart.

First up, this gem from Wyoming:

Police in Laramie, Wyo., cite teenage girls who threw french fries for 'hurling missiles'

LARAMIE, Wyo. - Three 13-year-old girls accused of throwing french fries during lunchtime at their school were cited for "hurling missiles," an adult infraction covered by city ordinances.

The principal of Laramie Junior High and a police officer had warned students during an assembly the day before the french fries' launch that if they threw food, they had to suffer the consequences, Police Chief Bob Deutsch said. The warning came after school officials had heard rumors of an impending food fight.

Oh Noes! A food fight!! Call out the SWAT Team!!!

Now, some observers are saying police and school officials went overboard, and even the American Civil Liberties Union weighed in.

"It certainly seems that this was an overreaction to a situation that could have been handled differently," said Linda Burt, Wyoming director of the ACLU.

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Sure you do. And now you can post those comments on the TSA's own blog: Evolution of Security - with the motto "Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part."

Well, at least some part of our government still believes in evolution.

So, what's the deal with this blog? From the 'about':

This blog is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process.

They promise that they'll allow any comments that aren't profane, abusive or political. Depending on how they want to define those terms, that would keep out about 97% of what I would want to post there. But maybe that's just me.

And of course keep in mind that anything you say may be used against you. (Well, OF COURSE I'm kidding about that. I'm sure the fine people at the TSA would never abuse their power in any way, shape or form, and have nothing but our best interests and happiness at heart. Seriously.)

Check it out, if you're brave enough.

Jim Downey

Try to wrap your head around this:

NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers

Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.