by TChris

Although some disagree, many people, including the Secretary of Education, emphasize the importance of teaching science and math so that the United States can continue to compete in technology-driven markets. Just as important to the functioning of a constitutional democracy, however, is an understanding of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Judging by the nation's vast ignorance in that regard, schools need to do better.

What are the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment? Most people just don't know. Here's a clue: driving a car (which wasn't a popular activity when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution) and owning a pet are not among them.

Half of 1,000 Americans randomly surveyed by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum could name at least two of the five members of Fox Television's Simpson family, the stars of the network's long-running show.

But just 28 percent of respondents could name more than one of the five freedoms listed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment -- about the same proportion that could name all five Simpson family members or could recall the three judges on Fox TV's top-rated "American Idol." Just 8 percent could recall three First Amendment freedoms.

The Guantanamo military tribunals are underway. It seems that evidence obtained under torture will be admissible. Why? It has to do with the definition of torture. If it's not akin to putting a red hot needle in the prisoner's eye, it may not be torture. One of the hearing officers said:

Colonel Peter Brownback declined to commit to a blanket ban on evidence obtained as a result of torture. "What you and I mean by torture could be different," Brownback told defense lawyer Major Tom Fleener.

He said "a red-hot needle in the eye" constitutes torture but was not ready to commit to a prohibition in advance of the trial. "My personal belief is that torture is not good," he added. But he said it would depend on the circumstances and how the prosecution presented the evidence.

Two lawyers from Human Rights First are in Guantanamo observing the proceedings and blogging here.

The Katrina tape showing that President Bush and HSA Chief Michael Chertoff were warned about possible massive death tolls in New Orleans speak for themselves.

Six days of footage and transcripts obtained by The Associated Press show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Bush's comment when being told of the likelihood of massive deaths: "We are fully prepared."

Citing humanitarian concerns, Vietnam has commuted the death sentence of an Australian citizen to life imprisonment. The sentence had been imposed after a guilty verdict for trafficking one kilo of heroin.

According to competent authorities, stemming from its humanitarian policy, Vietnam's president has signed a decision to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment for Nguyen Van Chinh."

Why can't Singapore and Bali see the light?

by TChris

Apart from facilitating fraud, websites that circumvent caller ID may make it easier to set up an innocent person for a dangerous encounter with the police.

In one case, SWAT teams surrounded a building in New Brunswick, N.J., last year after police received a call from a woman who said she was being held hostage in an apartment. Caller ID was spoofed to appear to come from the apartment.

by TChris

The government spent more than a billion dollars last year in its international effort to stop drugs from entering the country, money that could have been used to help rebuild New Orleans or to fund medical research. Was it money well spent?

[P]erhaps the most important measure of the programs' efficacy was issued just a few weeks ago, when the White House drug-policy office reported that "cocaine is widely available throughout most of the nation." The office offered similar assessments for heroin and marijuana.

by TChris

Adam Liptak is doing a wonderful job of covering significant criminal justice issues (like this one) that are overlooked by other reporters. Today he tells the distressing story of female prisoners who are kept in leg shackles as they're giving birth.

Despite sporadic complaints and occasional lawsuits, the practice of shackling prisoners in labor continues to be relatively common, state legislators and a human rights group said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding the practice. The New York Legislature is considering a similar bill.

Prison officials argue that felons are dangerous escape risks, but it's difficult to understand how a woman in labor could flee from a prison guard. Shackling isn't just an indignity; it creates health risks for both the inmate and the newborn child.

by TChris

Mark Hunter, former chief of police in the Township of Columbia, Michigan, was a busy man.

Hunter has already pleaded guilty in Jackson County Circuit Court to electronic eavesdropping and embezzlement charges. He was accused of secretly video taping himself having sex with a female employee in the police department offices in Brooklyn and with selling the department's firearms.

For those crimes, Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in jail. But investigators discovered evidence of other crimes when they searched Hunter's home. Hunter faces additional charges of possession of child pornography and possession of heroin.

by TChris

They didn't quite apologize, but the members of Washington's state legislature passed a resolution expressing their "deepest sympathy" to the descendents of Louie Sam for a lynching that occurred 122 years ago.

Sam, who belonged to the Sto:lo First Nation whose homelands lie in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, was falsely accused in the 1884 murder of a shopkeeper near Sumas, Wash.

A mob rode across the border, snatched Sam from Canadian police custody and hung him from a tree.

Canadian investigators later determined that he never committed the crime and was framed by two white Americans who stirred up the mob.

by TChris

Let's hope Walter Cronkite, writing for Huffington Post, can persuade the country to accept the obvious: the war on drugs is a failure.

The federal government has fought terminally ill patients whose doctors say medical marijuana could provide a modicum of relief from their suffering - as though a cancer patient who uses marijuana to relieve the wrenching nausea caused by chemotherapy is somehow a criminal who threatens the public.

People who do genuinely have a problem with drugs, meanwhile, are being imprisoned when what they really need is treatment.

And what is the impact of this policy?

It surely hasn't made our streets safer. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of people...disproportionately people of color...who have caused little or no harm to others - wasting resources that could be used for counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime, or catching white-collar criminals.

Where's Osama? No one knows, but Bush is confident he'll get him.

"It's not a matter of if they're captured and brought to justice," Bush said at a news conference with Karzai at the war-battered presidential palace. "It's when they're brought to justice."

Maybe if he hadn't used so many of our military resources for an unnecessary war in Iraq, we'd have found him by now. I hope someone does a poll on how many Americans believe this lastest statement. I'd be it's fewer than the 34% who approve of his performance.

The New York Observer has an article about discrepencies between Nancy Grace's version of her fiance's murder and the version told by the documents and trial participants.

I'm all for criticizing Nancy Grace's point of view and her "fry 'em" mentality and even her sometimes overly melodramatic delivery style, but I have to say, aside from misrepresenting, perhaps unknowingly, the prior record of the man who killed her fiance, there's very little here.

I'd much rather see an article that takes her to task for her program format, the show's failure to journalistically inform and her one-sidedness in favor of victims, than for minor details in how her fiance got murdered, even if she does claim it was the hook in deciding to go to law school and become a prosecutor.

The real problem is that guilt sells in this country while innocence doesn't. Grace takes advantage of that phenomenon to the utmost, but then so do many other tv personalities.