June 18, 2008 - By: David Gutierrez - From: Natural News
A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.
The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.
Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device.
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The Texas Court of Appeals has finally restored order to one tiny corner of the universe. It has ordered the return of the Texas Polygamist Children to their parents holding that there was an almost complete failure of proof to justify such an action. You can read the opinion here.
The removal of the children at th Texas Polygamist Compound is the latest example of knee jerk panic leading to mass violations of human and constitutional rights.
I am braced for all the outrage comments but The Texas Court Of Appeal did the right thing in returning the Texas Polygamist Children to their parents. What happened here was nothing more than a an attempt to use the court system to kidnap children because we panicked. This was a “legal lynch mob”. Not legal in the sense that what was done was legitimate, legal in the sense that it was a judicial lynching.
I am not saying there are children who were not in legitimate danger. I frankly agree that they may have been. What I am saying is this is not Communist China or North Korea. Those parents had and have rights. You can not mass bypass the rights of all these parents by doing it tecnically[sic] right for a few and using “panicked supposition” for the rest.
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Sometime soon, drunken driving suspects in Kane County will have a new choice: Get your blood-alcohol level measured in a breath, blood or urine test, or have your blood drawn involuntarily.
On No Refusal Weekend the option of refusing to take a test will not be available. At least not to drivers arrested by St. Charles, Batavia and Geneva police and Kane County sheriff’s deputies.
Kane County State’s Attorney John Barsanti announced the proposal Wednesday. He refused to say what weekend the program will be instituted. The idea was brought to his attention by First Assistant State’s Attorney Clint Hull, who read about its use in other states.
Illinois law requires people suspected of DUI to submit to testing. Prosecutors are frustrated by advice given by defense lawyers, many of whom recommend on their Web sites that people refuse to take a test if they think they are legally impaired. A case without blood-alcohol evidence is hard to get a conviction on, Barsanti said.
Currently, if you are a first-time misdemeanor DUI arrestee older than 21 and you refuse to take a test, the state will immediately suspend your driver’s license six months. If you take a test and are over the limit, you typically have your license immediately suspended for three months and, if convicted, receive a one-year suspension.
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May 16, 2008 - By: Harvey Rice - From: Houston Chronicle
A six-member jury on Wednesday acquitted photographer Nick Adams on charges he interfered with police while photographing an arrest during Mardi Gras on Feb. 10, 2007, said Anthony Griffin, hired by the Daily News to represent Adams.
Adams was hurled to the ground, and both of his $4,000 cameras were damaged.
“It’s a victory for the First Amendment,” Daily News Editor Heber Taylor said. “We just cannot understand why the photographs that were taken that would have shown Nick’s relationship to that police line … disappeared and why those were the only images that disappeared.”
Taylor said the newspaper was not asking for special consideration, but defending the right of anyone to take photographs in a public place.
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NEW YORK - May 7 - The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) supports the New York Civil Liberties Union’s decision to join in the fight to end racial profiling and illegal stop-and-frisk practices by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) with the filing of their new federal stop and frisk lawsuit, Blair v. City of New York, et al.
CCR filed a class action stop-and-frisk lawsuit on April 16, 2008 that charges the NYPD with engaging in racial profiling and suspicion less stops and frisks of law abiding New York City residents. According to CCR attorneys, the named plaintiffs in CCR’s case, Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. – David Floyd, Lalit Clarkson, and Deion Dennis – represent the thousands of New Yorkers who have been stopped without any cause on their way to work, in front of their home, or just walking down the street, primarily because they were men of color. CCR’s plaintiffs filed their case because they are tired of having their rights violated; it is likely the same for the plaintiff in NYCLU’s case.
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