Some crazy shit has been going down over the weekend and yesterday in Minnesota. The police (and the FBI, and who knows who else) have been arresting protesters (and anyone else swept up) en masse; even more ominously, they've been targeting people there to document their excesses. Over the weekend, they conducted preemptive raids and seizures of ( Read more... )

Dammit!

What the hell is wrong with these people?

If you'll excuse me, I'll be off in the corner muttering about how we used to have a Bill of Rights.

Senator Kennedy just pointed out that Bush says FISA must be changed to save American lives. But Bush also says he will veto any FISA bill without immunity.

Kennedy:
"No immunity -- no FISA bill. If we take the President at his word, HE IS WILLING TO LET AMERICANS DIE TO PROTECT THE PHONE COMPANY!"

ETA: Here's a flowchart of what has/could ( Read more... )

The vote for cloture (ending debate) was 76-10.

Infuriating and anti-climactic. Welcome to the "Democratic majority."

ETA 1:46pm EST: Speeches ongoing in support of/against an amendment removing immunity from the bill. But I shan't be around to see it, so update in comments if anything changes ( Read more... )

Harry Reid is going to bring to the floor of the Senate a bill that would grant retroactive immunity to telecoms for spying on Americans without warrants since 2001 -- before 9-11.

The Honorable Senator Christopher Dodd is going to filibuster that bill. Kennedy and Feingold are on board, (they can ask questions up to twenty minutes long so Dodd ( Read more... )

Heathrow Airport has started conducting trials of biometric security:

Travellers will be able to bypass long queues if they have their fingerprints biometrically scanned, while face and eye scans will be introduced soon.
Goody! If you're not a criminal, why do you care if the authorities have your fingerprints? I can't imagine anything going ( Read more... )

I know I shouldn't be suprirsed... but... DAMMIT!

From Yahoo's AP story:

President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday ( Read more... )

Via the San Francisco Chronicle: AT&T to customers: We PWN you.

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday ( Read more... )

Published in the New York Times [requires registration]:
The Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee said today that he believed the Bush administration had violated the law with its warrantless surveillance program and that its legal justifications for the program were "strained and unrealistic ( Read more... )

A Pennsylvania judge - appointed by W., no less - not only said they can't mandate the reading of their "evolution is just a theory and Intelligent Design is another theory!" disclaimer in biology classes, he said that the record shows that Intelligent Design is simply creationism in disguise, and not science. And he smacked them about with ( Read more... )