The deceptively titled "Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006" has passed the House. It will result in a vast increase of wide-scale searches of public school students based on even the slightest suspicion that just one student brought drugs to school. The searches could take the form of pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how administrators interpret the law.

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) mandates that any school receiving federal funding -- essentially every public school -- must adopt policies that allow teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at any time, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Simply by claiming that one student is suspected of having drugs in the building could provide officials with authority to search every student.

I'm moved into my new place, Comcast and Qwest just left so I'm finally back online with tv again. I haven't read a paper or watched a news report since Sunday, so I'm quite a bit behind the curve. There are many comments to go through as well as two work days of voice-mail and hundreds of e-mails. I must have 100 boxes to unpack yet and my hands are already raw. It was no different moving down the street than it's been in the past to move across the city. It wasn't even cheaper.

I love my new place though, and I'm thrilled I won't have to go through this again for quite some time.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

From TRex, via Steve Gilliard:

During a news conference last week, [Georgia Republican Governor Sonny] Perdue said, "It is simply unacceptable for people to sneak into this country illegally on Thursday, obtain a government-issued ID on Friday, head for the welfare office on Monday and cast a vote on Tuesday," according to a transcript provided by Perdue's press office.

Richard Hofstadter is right again:

Amid the current dizzy political scene--with its snake-oil preachers, and anti-Darwinian Social Darwinists , and Indian casino rip-off artists, and a president whose friends say he thinks he is ordained by God--Hofstadter's sharpness about the darker follies of American democracy seems more urgently needed than ever.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

It seems almost a made up story, but apparently true:

A Maine couple accused of tying up their 19-year-old daughter, throwing her in their car and driving her out of state to get an abortion were upset because the baby's father is black, a Maine sheriff said Tuesday.

Katelyn Kampf, who is white, told Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion that her mother "was pretty irate at the fact that the child's father was black, and she had made a number of disparaging remarks about that," he said. The Kampfs were apparently taking their daughter to New York to try to force her to get an abortion there, police said.

It seems to me that the pro-choice position could not be exemplified more clearly. A nineteen year old woman (we can quibble about parental notification later) has a right to privacy and liberty. This right includes the control of her own body. The apparent attempt by the Kampfs (no jokes please) to impose their will on Katelyn Kampf is precisely what the right to privacy is about. It is not pro-abortion - it is pro-liberty, pro-choice. It was and is Katelyn Kampf's right to decide about her pregnancy, no one else's. Not the state's. Not the parents. Not the husband/boyfriend. Just hers. If she chooses to carry to term, then her choice must be respected. If she chooses to terminate her pregnancy, that too is her choice. That is her right. Her fundamental right to privacy. Not her fundamental right to have an abortion. Her right is the right make her own private decision and have it be respected. By everyone.

by TChris

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!

Unless you're a senator. If you're in the Senate, you might want to build a fence around the country -- or at least the southern half of the country (or at least 700 miles of the southern border), despite the easier time terrorists would have crossing the northern border. Maybe Robert Frost didn't know any senators.

The idea of building a ridiculously expensive and environmentally harmful 700 mile fence is problematic. Okay, let's be plain: it's just stupid. The concept nonetheless enjoys support among elected officials of both parties. Fortunately, as with the proposed legislation concerning the interrogation and trial of terror suspects, it is Republican squabbling that has so far saved us from a stupid idea.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Hugh Hewitt's replacement blogger appears to believe that Virginia conservatives are antisemitic. How else can you explain this reaction to the George Allen is Jewish story:

[T]he attempt to "tar" Allen as a Jew in a southern state was at the very least disturbing, and I actually consider it sickening.

Tar Allen as a Jew? In a Southern state? Say what? Frankly, Dean Barnett's statements seems pretty overtly anti-semitic to me. Does Hugh Hewitt tolerate this type of stuff? Maybe Hugh should not be handing the keys to someone like Barnett.

More.

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported here, state and federal judges restrained the implementation of successive versions of Georgia's voter ID law. The first version, nullified by the federal judge, was a transparent effort to impose a poll tax designed to make it more burdensome for poor people to vote. The second version, restrained by the state judge, continued to burden disadvantaged voters. The state judge (predictably labeled an "activist" by Republicans because he actively followed the law) yesterday transformed his temporary restraining order into a permanent injunction.

"Nowhere in the Constitution is the legislature authorized to deny a registered voter the right to vote on any other ground, including a possession of a photo ID," he wrote.

These pesky constitutions have a way of foiling Republican plans to achieve a government that will be permanently controlled by Republicans. It's back to the drawing board for Republicans in the Georgia legislature, who will undoubtedly try to cook up another law to disenfranchise voters who might not vote for Republicans.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Attorney General Gonzales appeared before Congress yesterday to urge them to require Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep content longer for child porn investigations. See Gonzales Urges Preserving Internet Records on NYTimes.com. Just in time for the election. It is just a cover for something greater?

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Congress should require Internet providers to preserve customer records, adding that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography. Testifying to a Senate committee, Mr. Gonzales acknowledged concerns that such legislation might be overly intrusive and encroach on privacy rights. But he said the government's lack of access to such information was the biggest obstacle to deterring child pornography.

by TChris

News of a possible compromise between the White House and Republican senators over legislation authorizing military trials and interrogations of detainees is vague. It appears that the administration has given ground, but "few details were available, and it was not clear whether a compromise was imminent or whether the White House had shifted its stance significantly."

The new White House position, sent to Capitol Hill on Monday night, set off intensified negotiations between administration officials and a small group of Republican senators. The senators have blocked President Bush's original proposal for legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques are permissible and to establish trial procedures for terrorism suspects now in United States military custody.

If a compromise bill that satisfies Republicans finally emerges, Democrats will need to scrutinize it to assure that it leaves the Geneva Conventions intact, that it gives detainees a meaningful hearing with the procedural protections that due process requires (no secret evidence or unconfronted hearsay), and that it doesn't immunize government employees or officials from responsibility for past or future violations of human rights. Will enough Democrats be up to the task to assure that the United States stands firmly and finally in support of fair, just, and humane treatment of those it detains?

by TChris

Responding to prosecutors' complaints that the chief judge was "soft on Saddam," Iraq's prime minister removed the judge from Saddam Hussein's trial. But wait, you say. What kind of democratic government allows the executive branch to control the judicial branch, to the point of removing a judge during a trial because prosecutors want a judge who will side with them more often? The kind that has emerged in Iraq. The kind that cares more about assuring convictions than providing fair trials. The kind of government that is, by rational standards, a joke.

The change could revive complaints that the government is interfering in the tribunal trying Saddam and his regime members to ensure a quick guilty verdict.

The judge who presided over Hussein's first trial resigned midway through the trial in response to complaints that he, too, was "soft on Saddam." American prosecutors must envy the power of the Iraqi government to toss out any judge who isn't sufficiently pro-prosecution.

by TChris

Earlier this year, some political speculators predicted an administration push to draw down the number of troops in Iraq before the November elections as proof of "progress" in its nation-building effort. If that was the administration's hope, reality has intruded:

The top American commander in the Middle East said the more than 140,000 soldiers now in Iraq are likely to be needed there at least until next spring because of continuing sectarian violence and the effort to secure Baghdad. "I think that this level probably will have to be sustained through next spring, and then we'll re-evaluate," General John P. Abizaid told reporters at a breakfast roundtable. ...

The surge in violence over the last six months, especially in Baghdad, has forced American commanders to increase troop levels by around 20,000 since last June and scrap plans made by General George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, to reduce the number of combat brigades to 12 by this month.

by TChris

The Republican Senate has exhausted itself with fierce debates about gay marriage, the protection of stem cells, and flag burning amendments, while showing little interest in legislation that might benefit the public. As Republican leaders waste their time ranting about "moral issues," Al Gore unveiled a plan yesterday to combat global warming. Gore recognizes that avoiding the destruction of life on the planet is a greater moral issue than those that motivate the religious right.

"This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue -- it affects the survival of human civilization," Gore said in an hour-long speech at the New York University School of Law. "Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours."

Gore isn't alone. Religious groups are increasingly focusing on stewardship of the environment as a moral issue.