I just returned from a conference. The guy sitting next to me on the plane had with him a laptop computer, an iPad, an iPod, and a phone. Yep, four “portable electronic devices.” I figured the guy was probably a terrorist. Because they keep announcing it to potential terrorists on aircraft, I know that...
Read More »

The newest round of WikiLeaks revelations unearths troubling facts about the U.S. prison facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Operating for more than nine years now, the prison camp was originally said to be holding “the worst of the worst”—terrorists of the same moral plane and dangerousness as those who committed the attacks of 9/11....
Read More »

This Thursday, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in a case brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) against the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) use of body scanners. The case asserts “that the federal agency’s controversial program violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy Act, the...
Read More »

I am frequently stopped on the street and asked for directions. In my volunteer stints I quickly establish an easy rapport with the diverse people with whom I come in contact. I get warm returning smiles in shops and restaurants. In short: most people apparently view me as non-threatening. It has thus been surprising...
Read More »

The New York Times now reports that exactly contrary to its earlier claims, the Obama administration is now quietly seeking to sneak back in by regulation the provision of “end-of-life planning” (“death panels”) that were dropped from the Obamacare bill that was signed into law. The Times article reports that the regulations have been...
Read More »

Today marks the 55th anniversary of Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus. As she explained in her book, Quiet Strength: Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it. Institutionalized by racist laws and upheld by racist governments, especially across the American South, such humiliations were...
Read More »

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disclosed the panel that will hear the appeal of Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. The panel will be: Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt—perhaps the most left-leaning judge on the federal bench; Judge Michael Hawkins—a very liberal judge; and Judge N. Randy Smith—a moderate compared...
Read More »

The government has announced that total spending on “intelligence activities” in fiscal year 2010 was $80.1 billion. According to a report in the Washington Post, The National Intelligence Program, run by the CIA and other agencies that report to the Director of National Intelligence, cost $53.1 billion in fiscal 2010, which ended Sept. 30,...
Read More »

Michael Roberts, a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, stood up for his constitutional rights when he refused to pass through the TSA’s new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machine that, as he says, amounts to “virtual strip searching,” and then when offered the alternative of being frisked by a TSA agent, also declined the alternative secondary...
Read More »