Raistlin

Outside of the Egypt fiasco, which everyone is already talking about. I've had some appalling links piling up and needed to rant about them somewhere.

US border agent fired for saying in a casual conversation that legalizing drugs would help stop black market violence. In other words, speaking the truth. People have asked me why I would prefer being a criminal defense attorney to a prosecutor, and they inevitably say that they'd have a terrible moral problem defending a rapist or murderer they thought was guilty. But I point out that those cases are going to be few and far between, whereas as I would have a much bigger moral problem working as a prosecutor where 80% of my caseload is drug cases, most of those for possession. The war on drugs is an atrocity and a catastrophic failure, yet our government struggles to keep that obvious truth from coming out.

Obama's blatant disregard for civil liberties is vindicating Dick Cheney. Can we stop pretending this guy is anything but just another political hack? He has currently grasped more power for himself than even Bush had, going even further than Bush did to expand executive power while undermining civil liberties. I would still consider Bush a worse President (and one of the worst ever) for starting those precedents, but Obama at this point is not far behind.

13% of US high school biology teachers support creationism. And a majority (60%) try to mention evolution as little as possible. A mere 28% actually take effort to teach evolution correctly. No wonder science education in this country sucks -- a good chunk of the teachers don't have even a basic understanding about the fact and significance of evolution, and many of those that do are too afraid of the consequences of teaching it.

The 12 worst colleges for free speech (not including those private schools that explicitly sanction on a certain set of ideas). Some of these stories are really terrible, and it is just further proof that the sole requirement to be a school administrator is to be retarded.

Court orders restitution to someone taped in child porn. Why does that piss me off? Because the restitution was ordered to someone who had no part in abusing the child and merely possessed the video years later after finding it on the internet. Child abuse is a horrible crime, especially what this girl was put through (recorded rape). But that in no way makes the simple viewing of that conduct an additional harm to the victim (unless you think the police and AUSAs who must have watched at least part of the video should also pay restitution). It would be one thing if the defendant in this case had purchased the tape from the father, which could be seen as funding future videos and harm. But the mere possession itself did not cause harm to this girl (though that does not mean possession can't still be a crime -- although I am very iffy about the mere possession of any sort of information being a crime, no matter how grotesque).