Law

From CNN: Federal employees charged millions of dollars to government credit or debit cards, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Wednesday. Those charges include Internet dating services, iPods, expensive clothing, a $13,500 dinner and lingerie to be worn during jungle training in Ecuador, the study said. The audit also found that government agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items, which included computer servers, laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras. ...

The Center for Inquiry has released a detailed critique (PDF) of a U.S. history textbook by James Q. Wilson and John Dilulio, Jr., pointing out that it falsely claims that there’s doubt about the very existence of the greenhouse effect, falsely claims that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned prayer in schools (as opposed to teacher-led prayer), falsely claims that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas overturned Texas’s anti-sodomy law on a close 5-4 vote (it was 6-3), falsely claims that the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution were motivated by worries about original sin, and so on. (A summary can be found at the Friendly Atheist blog.) Wilson is Ronald W. Reagan Professor for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute; Dilulio was the first head of George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The problems in this textbook were uncovered by Matthew LaClair of Kearny, NJ, who previously received a lot of press coverage for his exposure of a U.S. history teacher at his school, David Paskiewicz, who was using the classroom as a forum for proselytizing evangelical Christianity. That story broke in the mainstream media only after being publicized on this blog. ...

John Lynch brought my attention this morning to HB 2713, the student religious freedom act, in the Arizona legislature. At first I thought this was like the “academic freedom” bills being pushed by the Discovery Institute (which I believe is also something that the film “Expelled” is being used to push), but those are about defending the ability of teacher to promote nonsense in the classroom, while this bill only defends student-initiated religious expression. There is one serious problem with the bill, however, and that is its conflation of religious and secular viewpoints: “Each public educational institution shall permit religious viewpoints in the same manner and to the same extent as secular viewpoints are permitted on the same subject matter.” If instead, this said merely that if one religious viewpoint is permitted, all religious viewpoints must be permitted, I’d have no problem with it. But this wording has the effect that where you can discuss anything at all, you can also discuss religion. In a science classroom, since science is secular, you can talk about religion. In a math classroom, since math is secular, you can talk about religion. That’s ludicrous. I think the bill will die, if not for the good reason I’ve just given, for the reason that it does also open things up to all religions and to anti-religion. If students are permitted to wear shirts with a Christian message, they must also be permitted to wear shirts promoting an Islamic message, an atheist message, a Satanic message, or a Pastafarian message. Likewise, if students are permitted to use personal viewpoints in writing an essay or giving a presentation to the class, they may use their viewpoints on religious matters as well. Again, atheism would have to be as welcome as Christianity. (And it’s not that atheism is a religion, only that it is a viewpoint on religious matters.) I suspect the authors and sponsors of the bill–State Representatives Clark, Anderson, Barto, Crump, Groe, Pearce, Robson, Tobin, and Yarbrough, and by State Senators Gorman, Gould, L. Gray, Harper, and Johnson–don’t really want that consequence. I think a few supportive emails are in order, thanking them for endorsing the right of students to argue for atheism in the classroom (and Satanism, and Scientology, a religion that Johnson, Gray, Gorman, and Pearce are familiar with, since they’ve previously sponsored bills on behalf of the religion).

Marco Cova looks in some detail at the contents of some phishing scam kits targeting particular banks that were released to the public recently. These sorts of kits, containing web code, are ordinarily sold to scammers, but these were given away free. It wasn’t out of generosity, but part of a larger scam–the code was written using a variety of obfuscation techniques so that the unwary script kiddie who modifies it to send the captured information to their own email address will not receive it. Instead, that information is sent to various email addresses presumably controlled by the distributor of the scammer-scamming phishing kits.

An NPR story on a Hawaiian botanist’s lawsuit against CERN to try to prevent the Large Hadron Collider from being turned on for fear that it will destroy the earth. This is worth listening to in order to hear Rudy Rucker read from one of his novels, Spaceland. Historical Comments Eamon Knight (2008-04-06): There's a James Hogan (spit) novel uses the same idea (only in that case it was a pulsed-implosion fusion reactor). ...

A bill in the Arizona legislature to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage (which failed via initiative petition in 2006, being rejected by voters) died in the state House after it was similarly amended to ban domestic partner benefits. That’s the same reason the initiative, Proposition 107, failed. Historical Comments Tim and Louie (2008-04-07): Hurray!!! Finally some good news for us minority LGBT Arizonans! A far cry from other states' progress on LGBT equality, but progress nonetheless. ...

Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe scored another “own goal” like he did in the Dover trial, this time in the law suit by the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian School against the University of California. ACSI and Calvary were arguing that the UC system was unfairly refusing to accept transfer credits from certain courses taught at Christian schools which used inadequate materials in their curriculum. Behe testified in court on behalf of the plaintiffs that “it is personally abusive and pedagogically damaging to de facto require students to subscribe to an idea . . . . Requiring a student to, effectively, consent to an idea violates [her] personal integrity. Such a wrenching violation [may cause] a terrible educational outcome." The judge cited this reasoning in his decision in favor of the University of California: Yet, the two Christian biology texts at issue commit this “wrenching violation.” For example, Biology for Christian Schools declares on the very first page that: (1) “‘Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,’ is the only [position] a Christian can take . . . ." ...

Clint Bolick, formerly the primary litigator for the Institute for Justice, is taking on some good causes as a litigator for the Goldwater Institute’s new Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation. He’s currently fighting against the City of Phoenix’s unconscionable and unconstitutional multimillion-dollar subsidy to the developers of the CityNorth project, and now he’s taking on popular Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In an article posted today called “Who’s in Charge?", Bolick points out two cases of apparent misuse of funds by Arpaio–using RICO funds to send staff to Honduras, and sending out nearly 200 deputies and “posse” members on “saturation patrols” that appear to be trespassing the jurisdiction of the Phoenix Police Department. Meanwhile, Bolick notes: Whatever the rationale the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had for those actions, both diverted scarce resources away from vital law enforcement duties that fall within the Sheriff’s Office’s core duties: • Unserved warrants, including those for violent offenders, number an estimated 70,000. • Dozens of criminal defendants have missed court appearances because deputies in charge of moving inmates were told to skip shifts due to excessive overtime. • The Sheriff’s Office closed three regional booking facilities in Surprise, Avondale, and Mesa, forcing police officers in all 26 Maricopa County jurisdictions to book criminal suspects at the Fourth Avenue jail in downtown Phoenix. The greatly increased transportation time removes officers from the streets and induces them to simply cite and release criminals.Arpaio has a long history of showy but useless or even counterproductive law enforcement activities, as well as costing the taxpayers millions by getting the MCSO sued repeatedly for wrongful death and injury cases as a result of abuse of inmates. But Maricopa County residents keep voting him back in, because he claims to be tough on crime and is often a good self-promoter. I hope that events like last October’s arrests of the owners of New Times and now Clint Bolick going after him will finally lead to his non-reelection for County Sheriff this year. Dan Saban, who’s running against Arpaio, is saying all the right things about integrity, civil rights, and combating waste, though he also seems to take a hard line on illegal immigration (which is another area where Arpaio has taken a hard line and engaged in some theatrical activities). He looks like a marked improvement to Arpaio. UPDATE (April 2, 2008): Looks like Goldwater lost round one today on CityNorth, a project where the city is giving $97.4 million in taxpayer subsidies to the developers of a shopping mall over the next 11 years, and claiming that it is for the 3,180 parking spaces in the parking garage the project is building, 200 of which are reserved for carpoolers using park and ride city bus services for the next 45 years. If the subsidy is considered to be for those 200 spaces, that comes out to $487,000 per space over the 45-year period, or $10,822.22 per space per year. The average parking space annual lease price in Phoenix is $684, and ASU recently estimated that a parking garage would cost $14,000 per space to build. In other words, if instead of paying nearly $100 million to CityNorth, the city instead had purchased land and built its own parking garage, the construction would have cost less than what the city is paying for the first two years worth of the 45-year lease on the 200 spaces. And that doesn’t count the additional $10,000/week of taxpayer funds that has been spent on lawyers fighting for this subsidy. The Goldwater Institute has announced that it will appeal. UPDATE (April 9, 2008): The New York Times has editorialized that Arpaio should be subpoenaed about his anti-illegal-immigrant sweeps: For months now, Sheriff Joe has been sending squads of officers through Latino neighborhoods, pulling cars over for broken taillights or turn-signal violations, checking drivers’ and passengers’ papers and arresting illegal immigrants by the dozen. Because he sends out press releases beforehand, the sweeps are accompanied by TV crews and protesters — deport-’em-all hard-liners facing off against immigrant advocates. Being Arizona, many of those shouting and jeering are also packing guns. Sheriff Joe, seemingly addicted to the buzz, has been filmed marching down the street shaking hands with adoring Minutemen. ...

A very nice sculpture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has joined other monuments outside a Cumberland County, Tennessee courthouse which is acting in good compliance with the First Amendment. (Apparently NOT an April Fool’s joke–although Wired’s blog posted on April 1, it was announced a day earlier at the official FSM website.)

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars reports on some recent statements by Attorney General Michael Mukasey during a speech about political corruption, in which he lied about FISA’s impact on wiretapping, falsely claiming that FISA law had to be violated because it would require the methods of wiretapping being used to be discussed in open court. The mainstream media seems to be mostly giving him a pass on his falsehoods. UPDATE (April 5, 2008): Glenn Greenwald uncovers more evidence that Mukasey is a liar, fabricating pre-9/11 events that didn’t happen.