Home--Historic Jamestowne TYT Network — The Largest Online News Show in the World. Horowitz-Zizek: Episode Two Lessig Blog, v2 On Tuesday, Berkeley City Council adopted unanimously an ordinance inspired by Councilman Max Anderson, and which I and Robert Post helped craft. I was very happy to bat cleanup in an effort that has been underway for years. But there’s some serious misunderstanding about the ordinance and its purpose. No doubt many of the people fighting for the ordinance have a firm belief that non-ionizing radiation presents a significant and underappreciated health risk. Those people believe this for different reasons. These are all people who believe there is a risk that is not yet acknowledged. I am not a scientist. Indeed, as I said in the opening of my testimony, and as Councilmembers Anderson and Kriss Worthington said in their testimony, this ordinance is not about that scientific debate. Because in fact, there are existing safety recommendations for cellphone use. Those safety recommendations advise consumers not to carry their cell phone against their body. This is a very minimal requirement.
Constitution Project Report on Detainee Treatment Concludes U.S. Engaged in Torture Statement of the Task Force This report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment is the result of almost two years of intensive study, investigation and deliberation. The project was undertaken with the belief that it was important to provide an accurate and authoritative account of how the United States treated people its forces held in custody as the nation mobilized to deal with a global terrorist threat. The events examined in this report are unprecedented in U.S. history. In the course of the nation’s many previous conflicts, there is little doubt that some U.S. personnel committed brutal acts against captives, as have armies and governments throughout history. But there is no evidence there had ever before been the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody. In Congress, Sen.
Acronym TV A hidden world, growing beyond control The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine. The investigation's other findings include: * Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. An alternative geography
Latest Column Freedom of the press needed more than ever Fifty years ago this week, the Supreme Court handed down one of its most celebrated defenses of the free press in The New York Times v. Sullivan. Land of the sorta, kinda free In 1964, the United States was viewed as the world’s leading protector of press freedom. New York Times v. Freezing out the most important journalism The Supreme Court saw civil liability as creating a chilling effect on reporters, resulting in self-censorship that is just as stifling as direct censorship. “The imminence and enormity of (the) threat” to press freedom the court warned of in 1964 pales in comparison with today’s threats. Criminal liability and surveillance While courts were highly sympathetic to the news media in reporting on civil rights, that sympathy evaporated when the subject went from figures such as Alabama segregationist Bull Connor to Osama bin Laden. If that seems perfectly Nixonian, it is actually perfectly Obamian. March 3, 2014 Good for economy?
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