RebelINK

There’s not really much to say, except to hope for the best. The government has until 31 August 2007 to respond to the ruling.

WASHINGTON - In an unprecedented order, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has required the U.S. government to respond to a request it received last week by the American Civil Liberties Union for orders and legal papers discussing the scope of the government’s authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans. According to the FISC’s order, the ACLU’s request “warrants further briefing,” and the government must respond to it by August 31. The court has said that any reply by the ACLU must be filed by September 14.

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In the last part of the News Hour’s series on No Child Left Behind (apparently it was three-parts, not two :p), they discussed how teachers felt about the act. The story focused on how teachers feel they are put under tremendous pressure and scrutiny by No Child Left Behind, and how they feel upset that they were not included in the decisions leading to its creation or implementation.

The most important part, which I believe they glossed over, is that teachers are teaching to a multiple-choice test, and that teaching beyond the test can have a negative impact on test scores. As said in the story:

JOHN MERROW: Lynn Riggs ran into a different problem when her fifth-grade students did a project on deep sea vents, underwater volcanoes.

LYNN RIGGS: One of the things that is absolutely fascinating about this fabulous ecosystem that is miles beneath the ocean, there is no sunlight there. What is it that’s driving this ecosystem? What is this chemo-synthesis? How does this work? I’ve got to be able to explain it to fifth-graders.

JOHN MERROW: Riggs says her students love tackling such a difficult subject.

LYNN RIGGS: But the kicker is, this spring, as the kids were preparing for their state tests, one of the questions was about food chains. Of course, the right answer is “the sun.” And I’m thinking, “Great, they’re going to get the question wrong. I’ve taught them too much. They’re going to be thinking, ‘But what about the deep-sea vents, chemosynthesis? There’s no sunlight that deep down in the ocean. It’s dark.’”

In addition, the standardized tests to not adequately measure important skills, such as critical thinking and deductive reasoning. If teachers are forced to spend all of their time teaching to the test, we may have a generation that can not analyze infomation and come to their own conclusions.

The state of Texas is prepared to execute a man who did not commit murder.

Kenneth Foster is scheduled to be executed on August 30 in Texas for the murder of Michael LaHood, despite the fact that Mauriceo Brown, the person who shot LaHood, was executed in 2006. Foster was convicted under a 1974 Texas law under which the distinction between principal actor and accomplice in a crime is abolished and each may be held equally culpable.

KXAN, an Austin, TX television station did a story on his impending execution. An article in The Nation said:

Foster maintains that he did not know that Brown would either rob or kill LaHood. According to an Amnesty International investigation, there is evidence not heard at trial that the murder was an unplanned act committed by Brown, as the latter himself claimed before his execution.In 2005, a federal district judge found a “fundamental constitutional defect in Foster’s sentence” and ruled that Foster’s jury had not been asked to determine if he had any intent to kill LaHood, and that this failure represented a misapplication of the law. However, the state of Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the decision.

You can take action to stop his execution at Amnesty International, or The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The BBC recently announced that it would start using their proprietary iPlayer to distribute media. The iPlayer only works on Microsoft Windows, leaving Mac and Linux users out in the cold.

Defective by Design organized a protest at the BBC in both Manchester and London. Although the BBC claims it is working on broadening the iPlayer to other platforms, they have also said this may take more than two years.

In the second part of their series on “No Child Left Behind,” the News Hour discussed how some San Diego parents used provisions in “No Child Left Behind” to take control of two failing middle schools, changing them into charter schools, and how the San Diego school district retaliated by making superficial changes to lure students away from the charter schools.

While I applaud the parents for taking control of their children’s education, and while I generally approve of the idea of charter schools, I feel that the News Hour’s treatment of “No Child Left Behind” was once again that it would work, if just the local governments would stay out of it.

The News Hour on PBS is doing a two-part series on “No Child Left Behind.” For the first part, they discussed how states are able to manipulate the data to look like they are fulfilling the requirements of “No Child Left Behind.”

There is also an opportunity to discuss “No Child Left Behind” with two U.S. Representatives.

“No Child Left Behind” is a very controversial act, and, although I wonder about the tone of the News Hour’s discussion of the topic (to me it seems to blame the states for the failure of “No Child Left Behind”, although I will wait until tomorrow evening to make a final call.), they do raise some interesting issues.

The press release below sort of explains itself…

* Appeals Court Battle Over NSA Surveillance on August 15

Government Aims to Block Accountability for Illegal Spying
on Americans

San Francisco - In the wake of Congress approving a
dramatic expansion of U.S. warrantless wiretapping powers,
the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments
on the future of two critical lawsuits over illegal
surveillance of Americans. The hearing is set for August 15
at 2 p.m. in San Francisco.

The government is fighting to get the cases thrown out of
court, contending that the litigation jeopardizes state
secrets. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is
representing the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, which
accuses the telecom giant of collaborating with the
National Security Agency (NSA) in illegal electronic
surveillance of millions of AT&T’s customers. The court
will also hear arguments on Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation
v. Bush, a case alleging that the government illegally
wiretapped calls between the charity and its lawyers.

“At issue here is whether the courts have any meaningful
role to play in protecting Americans’ privacy from
Executive branch abuses of its surveillance powers,” said
EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “If the claim of ’state
secrets’ is allowed to shut down litigation, then the
courts will never be able to exercise their Constitutional
duty to hold the White House accountable for illegal and
even unconstitutional abuses of power.”

The court has scheduled one hour of arguments for Hepting
v. AT&T and 40 minutes for Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation
v. Bush. Because of the large number of attendees expected
at Wednesday’s hearing, the court will provide an overflow
room with audio and video of the proceedings for spectators
who cannot get a seat in the courtroom itself.

WHAT:
Hepting v. AT&T
Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush

WHEN:
2 p.m.
Wednesday, August 15

WHERE:
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Courtroom 1, 3rd Floor
95 Seventh Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

For more on EFF’s case against AT&T:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att

See EFF’s page on the NSA’s Warrantless Domestic
Surveillance:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/NSA/

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_08.php#005398

It might come as a surprise to some of you, but believe it or not, Congress rarely ever actually sits down and reads the bills that have been drafted. And they never read the bill in its entirety. Oftentimes, they read excerpts, and decide whether or not the bill should be passed based on the selected passages. In recent years, momentum has been rising for a campaign to force congresspeople to read the bills they pass. Just imagine, if they actually read the laws, would we have a “PATRIOT Act?” Would this recent FISA law have passed? What about the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998)? An organization I’m involved with called DownsizeDC has proposed a law to force congresspeople to read the bills before they vote on them.

Below is text from an email I received from them today, illustrating a pressing need for this legislation by pointing out exactly how many bills were rubberstamped in the last days for Congress before summer recess.

Monday, July 30 was a busy day. The House of Representatives passed 36
bills. Assuming a 9-hour day, a bill would have been read, debated,
and voted on every fifteen minutes. But that couldn’t have happened,
because the House also managed to pass 17 resolutions.

How could the House accomplish so much in one day? By not reading or
even considering the bills and resolutions they passed.

All in all, the House passed 48 bills in the last week before the
August recess, and the Senate passed 32. We normally tell you the
total number of pages of legislation Congress passed, but this week,
we just don’t have the time to add it all up. And we don’t think that
is needed to prove the point: members of Congress can’t possibly have
time to read and understand the bills they pass.

Perhaps Congress needs to pass all these bills to keep Big Government
running. But that’s just the problem. If we want Big Government, we
can’t have truly representative government. Representation means more
than just getting elected. If Congress truly represented the people,
they would be reluctant to infringe on our freedoms and spend our
money. They wouldn’t pass 36 bills in one day. But the more
responsibility we place on the federal government, the less time and
attention Congress can give to any particular issue. So instead of
reading and debating the bills before them, they rush to a vote.
That’s not accountability. That’s not representation. If we want a
truly representative government, we must Downsize DC. And we must
pass the Read the Bills Act.

Another day, another story critical of the FISA decision.

A big “thank fuck you” is in order to every one of you America-hating senators and house representatives who voted for this thing, regardless of when it expires. The fact you wanted to go home more than you wanted to uphold your job of acting as a check and balance against this administration and your failing to protect and uphold the constitution should be considered an act of treason. Your selfishness is allowing the President to continue to run roughshod over our rights and our freedom, but you people couldn’t care less.

Thanks for not doing your jobs, assholes.

What if you or I could secretly commit crimes against our fellow citizens, bury the evidence of the crime by stamping it “TOP SECRET,” refuse to answer questions when we are accused of committing the crime, and then, before we can be prosecuted for the crime, we can make a law that says the crime we committed is no longer a crime. And then call ourselves heroes.

Welcome to the New America.

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Last weekend, AT&T censored a webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. Worse, what was censored was not profanity, but honest political speech.

George Bush, leave this world alone.

George Bush find yourself another home.

Pearl Jam and their fans, have, understandably, not reacted well to this. But none of us should accept this. The consolidation of media under large corporations makes them an even bigger threat to free speech than the government. Currently, our news comes from few sources, and even our local news sources are often owned by large corporations. This has an impact on the news you hear! Even worse, ISPs are wanting to get rid of net-neutrality. They would then be able to adjust the speed of your connection based on the websites you are visiting, and would charge websites, such as Amazon or Google, for faster connections. But this goes beyond Google loading faster than Yahoo!, it would allow them to slow down your connection, or perhaps even block access, to websites the ISP disliked. Want to go to your favorite candidate’s website? If the CEO of your ISP doesn’t like them, the page may not load. And if all the ISPs in your region are owned by people with similar views, good luck!