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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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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Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) stepped in front of a group of tech executives in Washington this morning to deliver a caffeinated and surprisingly sharp defense of network neutrality. Pledging to use “every ounce of my energy to protect network neutrality,” Wyden had a message for ISPs who might be pondering new charges for various forms of access: “think twice.” If ISPs start down that road, they might soon find that they lose key legal protections including “safe harbors” and tax freedom.
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Wyden delivered his ultimatum at a Computer & Communications Industry Association conference in DC, where he cast the entire network neutrality debate in terms of a legislative compromise. Years ago, Congress began protecting ISPs from the twin threats of regulation and taxation; in return, ISPs were expected to deliver an unimpeded connection to the Internet. A move away from a neutral ‘Net would undermine the “very philosophical underpinnings of what we fought for for the last 15 years,” according to Wyden. If that happens, he sees no reason for Congress to continue sheltering ISPs.
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By: Scott Canon and Mike Rice
Flying across the country? Leave your pocketknife in the car. Don’t carry more than a few ounces of liquids onto the plane. And don’t forget that ID.
Wait? ID? Turns out travelers don’t need ID on a domestic flight.
Sure enough, leaving it behind will buy you hassle. It will probably annoy those in line behind you as the bottleneck of security slows from crawl to standstill. And it means you’re in for a thorough frisking and a greater likelihood that the possessions you’ve dragged along on your journey will be tested for traces of explosives.
But the Transportation Security Administration concedes you should still be able to board that domestic flight. Consider the travels of Phillip Mocek, a Seattle software developer. A few years ago he read about a court case challenging various U.S. travel rules and decided he didn’t like the idea of having to prove his identity to board a jet.
“I object to what I see as the federal government making a requirement for me to travel around my own country,” Mocek said. “So I started testing the system.”
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