You know how I had issues with the whole FISA vote? Way back when?

Yeah. 

Not sorry I voted for Obama. But this position is not OK.

Monday I and 11 of my peers judged a man guilty on all counts. The vote was split 10-2, but when it was over, he was guilty, and we walked away.

The man was charged with theft, burglary, and criminal mischief, for a crime committed in July ‘07.

I am not exactly sure how I felt about this case. It was very, very difficult to put aside biases and give this person the benefit of the doubt, so I am not sure that I did that perfectly. I certainly tried.

On the other hand, the defendant’s alibi was utter shit. Vague recollections, conflicting information, unsubstantiated proof, and worst the request for me believe an “amazing coincidences happened to make me look bad”, excuse. And I don’t buy into that; amazing coincidences thing. Not that it couldn’t happen, but how often does it happen?

Perhaps most damning, though, was the behavior of the defendant himself. This was not a man who appeared to be worried about the outcome, concerned that his fate was in the hands of strangers. This was not someone who appeared convinced of his own innocence.

And if he couldn’t believe it, how could I?

That said; the State is supposed to convince beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, the definition the judge had us use was that a reasonable doubt was ‘an honest uncertainty’. At this point, I suppose I ought to just admit that I am uncertain about almost everything when pressed, and more than once I was impressed that I was going to fuck up someone’s life by deciding his guilt or innocence.

There’s just no way for me to know that I made the right decision and that’s bothersome. There’s plenty of blame for this; the actions of the police, who probably could’ve solved this case within a week if they’d followed up properly: instead it took four months. The arguments of the DA who often circled the same argument over and over, without giving me something new to chew on. The defense attorney who couldn’t attack the angles that needed to be hit, or show a defendant who could provide a consistent alibi.

It was not easy. I think I made the right choice, but it’s not one that I feel easily convinced of.

When it was all over though, the case was going to be about me. If I had voted not guilty (and I certainly thought I might) then I’d be admitting that the alibi, which felt like bullshit, was OK. That’s a weird thing to realize; that my ego played a role in this. However, I have to live with my decision too, and so I suppose that makes sense.

This was shown in schools in the 90s, but alas, I’m too old to have had the privilege.

You may have missed this while you were watching American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, but last Thursday, the US Senate voted to repeal the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, Habeas Corpus, the Magna Carta, and 900 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence. S3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, explicitly gives the President power to decide who is considered an “enemy combatant,” and to seize these people – whether foreign or American – and hold them indefinitely without trial, and with no recourse whatsoever to challenge the legality of their imprisonment. Moreover, while not explicitly denying the Geneva Conventions, it gives the President the power to decide what torture techniques are and aren’t illegal under those Conventions. None of these vast new powers are subject to any kind of overview, either from the courts or from Congress.

Simply put, torture and permanent detention are now legal in the United States of America. And, just in case you think a change in Congressional leadership this year would make any kind of difference at all, keep dreaming: while the administration’s Republican lickspittles in the Senate rammed this bill through, the Democrats did absolutely nothing to stop it. No flilbuster, nothing. (Hell, 12 of ‘em even voted for it.)

Maybe you’re counting on the American public to rise up against this affront to democracy and basic human rights? Puh-lease. Turns out, 60% of us are actually in favor of torture. Yeee haaa! When do we break out the iron maiden?
(all preceding links via Badtux )

How did we get here? How did it all go so deeply, seriously wrong in just five short years? How did 9/11 change us into a nation of snivelling cowards, willing to sacrifice all of our freedoms, responsibilities, and morals in exchange for an illusion of safety and mindless escape via the latest idiotic soma spewing from the lobotomy box?

And how is it that I can barely feel any outrage over this, only a sense of weary contempt? The transformation of America from a republic into an empire has been so shockingly swift, and accomplished with so little public outcry, that I feel numbed.

Maybe it’s time to just give up.

(Lazily cross-posted over at my blog.)

As previously stated, I don’t pay nearly as much attention to library-related issues and news as I used to. Part of this is due to the fact that I now work in a private, school library instead of a public one, and am thus insulated from either dealing with the public or paying attention to issues that affect how the public is served. The other main reason is my firm belief that I simply can’t summon the energy to fake any interest in pointless, meaningless marketing terms that serve no purpose other than to voice a desperate wish (never to be fulfilled) on the part of librarians to appear hip.

But I digress. Every once in awhile, an issue comes along that manages to pierce even my mighty protective wall of self-interest, and as usual with these things, it was the always helpful Notorious BCK who brought it to my attention. The oh-so-appropriately named DOPA, the more cruel and idiotic inbred cousin to 2003’s CIPA, passed the US House on July 27th by a vote of 410-15. While CIPA forced libraries to install filters as a condition of retaining their E-Rate funding, DOPA goes even further, forcing libraries to block access to chat rooms and social networking sites such as blogs, MySpace, and Flickr. Further, it explicitly places the FCC in charge of screening and evaluating wholly lawful internet content.

Since the furor over the passage of this mindbendingly idiotic bill has been swift, widespread, and severe, I won’t bother rehashing it. (Click the links if you are actually unsure just what kind of Orwellian clusterfuck the House has just voted to foist upon us.) Besides, for my money, the ZenFormation Professional most succinctly summed up the entire debate, and in one sentence, no less:

Now this is some truly scary “let’s get those seniors and soccer moms all paranoid before the midterm elections” shit.

This atrocious bill has not yet become the law of the land; it still needs to pass the Senate before that happens. However, lest any of you out there are clinging to the desperate hope that the Senate might conceivably exercise a modicum of sanity that the House so clearly lacks, please keep in mind that the committee in charge of regulating the internet is run by this guy.

(Cross-posted on my blog)

I’ve obviously been out of the loop way out here on the Left Coast, but apparently my home state is at the epicenter of the latest blogosphere furor over freedom of speech. It seems that a Maine-based blogger was criticizing the state’s Department of Tourism over the shoddy, half-assed campaign they were running to drum up interest in tourism, the state’s only number one industry. Since taxpayer money is used to fund these advertising campaigns, it’s perfectly proper for a taxpayer and citizen of the state to critique how effectively his government is spending his money.

Well, apparently not everyone saw it that way, because the advertising firm handling the campaign, Warren Kremer Paino Advertising, filed a multimillion dollar defamation suit against the blogger in a ham-fisted attempt to shut him up.

Never let it be said that the blogosphere doesn’t defend their own, however. WKPA’s Big Brother tactics produced an immediate reaction around the internets, which eventually crossed into the mainstream media and contributed to a tidal wave of horrendous publicity for the firm. Now a state legislator is calling for an investigation of the firm’s tactics and the immediate suspension of their contract with the state. Take that, corporate thugs!

I am curious as to your thoughts.
First: we have this story about a judge ordering Google to turn over records of what people have searched for. The good news: the gov’t has substancially ‘narrowed’ their request parameters. The bad news: it still might friggin’ happen.

I view this as an invasion of privacy. The internet is, amongst other things, a giant libarary, and nobody should be able to find out what I’m reading or researching unless I want to tell them. This whole movement by the Chimperor’s people is being done ‘for the children’ of course; the gov’t insists they want to hunt down child pornographers-which I’m all for. However, I don’t want them using drift nets to do it.

I go into the Fark thread because it’s good to get different perspectives. There’s the usual: ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear’ bullshit that is always spouted by white boys who have never had the system turn on them, and then there was a comment about how Google was stupid for keeping records in the first place.

I don’t necessarily agree with this; I could see how this information might be used in a business sense, a way for Google to basically pay the bills, but I can’t get that clear in my head. Perhaps the audience will have thoughts? Nonetheless, since the internet isn’t run by the public, like libraries are (if you take my meaning), some data is going to have to be collected soas to turn a profit.

Slightly downthread, however, was a posting for Clusty, a search engine that has a privacy statement. Which I think is pretty cool. (Whether or not they actually follow that statement is another matter, but for the time being, let’s assume they do.) The question is; can it really equal Google’s searching power? Because that’s really what it’s about; finding what you want in a short period of time.

I must ask though, does it even matter? Doesn’t Google have such a meme-presence now that people will just use Google even if they shouldn’t because that’s what they’ve always used? It certainly feels like that.

Then again, I’m a Mac user, so there’s obviously room in any given market for some kind of competition. In addition, it doesn’t seem like Google is taking this lawsuit lying down; I honestly believe it will go to the Supreme Court. However, given the Supreme Court’s makeup these days, I have little faith that a right to privacy would be protected there. Even former SCJ’s feel the things have shifted in a bad way.

Thoughts?

Each time your persons, house, papers or effects are subject to an unreasonable search and/or seizure, remind whatever government agency that is searching and/or seizing your persons, house, papers, or effects, that (in the seminal words of Twisted Sister) you’re not gonna take it.  By making use of this handy dandy packaging tape emblazoned with the Fourth Amendment.

That was the hugest run-on followed directly by a retarded sentence fragment. Oh, well. Worse things have happened. I hope everyone is winning the day.

love, mel

(I posted this a couple of days ago on my own blog, and peeps seemed interested, so I thought I’d repost it here.)

In the latest salvo of their World Domination Death Match with Google, Microsoft is testing a beta of Local Live, a mapping site suspiciously familiar in design to Google Maps…with one major difference. The Microsoft site, in addition to the now-familiar street maps and satellite photos that zoom in to alarmingly close range on individual buildings, features something called a “Bird’s Eye” map. This shows photos of addresses and residences that, judging by the clarity and angle, were not taken by a satellite, but rather look suspiciously like they were snapped from a plane flying roughly 50 feet over your house.

You think I’m exaggerating, but try it! I punched in the address of the school where I work, and could actually pick out my own car in the parking lot. (Note: Bird’s Eye doesn’t appear to be available for a lot of rural addresses. Try bigger cities.)

You have to hand it to Microsoft. Given recent news, I didn’t think anyone could “out-Orwell” our friends at Google, but the Redmond Borg Collective is making a valiant effort.