Category Archives: Politics and Society

Sex Offenders Banned from Social Networks in Illinois

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This is an odd piece reporting on new legislation in Illinois.

A week ago, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a bill, HB 1314, making it illegal for convicted sex offenders to access a “social networking website,” defined as:

“an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.” So, if you get on the sex offenders list in Illinois there is a bevy of sites you cannot so much as visit. And it’s not just the usual suspects of Facebook and MySpace. LinkedIn, Focus, YouTube, and Twitter would all be off limits as well.

I am not sure what to make of all this.  These days online social networking is essential for career development, and that is what sites like LinkedIn are for.  Sites like Twitter are increasingly working themselves into the mainstream of our social fabric so that you need to be subscribed to them in order to have access to information about everything from what is going on at your church to what is on sale at the mall.
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And then there is the matter of who is a “sex offender.”  It is hard to have much sympathy for people who abuse children, sexually assault women, or perpetrate sexual violence against of their fellow human beings, and we all want to be protected from them.  But apparently when you ask for the sex offenders registry of those living near you, you may not just be getting those people.

It’s surprisingly easy to get on the sex offenders’ registry of many states: visiting a prostitute, streaking, and urinating in public can all get you marked for life; though, to be fair, none of these are qualifying offenses in Illinois.

via Out of the Frying Pan and into the Mildly Uncomfortable Sauna: The Not-So-Bad-But-Still-Unconstitutional Social Networking Ban | Citizen Media Law Project.

The View from Over There: US Healthcare Hysteria (from The Herald )

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These are the first two paragraphs from an editorial of a UK newspaper on the health care reform debate.  The article is a must read, and it’s sarcasm is kind of fun, so click on the link when you get to the end to continue reading or just click on this link now and start on their sitewww.

America’s Democrats have never been adept at dealing with the emotional terrorism of the Republican right. The proposition Lincoln overlooked – that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time – always takes so-called liberals by surprise. They convince themselves that conservatives have a hot-line to the heartland, even when, as in the case of abortion rights, the connection is mythical. First Democrats become defensive, then they turn tail.

President Obama has not yet begun to retreat over health care, but he is ducking for cover. Facts that seem compelling to a rational man are being disputed, denied, or transformed into tests of patriotic loyalty. Obama’s popularity is declining. According to Gallup, opponents of reform outnumber supporters by 49% to 43%. And the right is howling triumphantly.

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via Obama Pays Price For Us Healthcare Hysteria (from The Herald ).

Alex Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, talks about how “the news of verification…is being supplanted by the news of assertion.”  I think he is right, at least in many media outlets.  Facts aren’t checked, another guest is simply called on to refute them and whoever has the argument with the most emotional resonance wins.  Right now, opponents of reform are winning.

Fox News: The New Liberals? The Jon Stewart Proof

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Leave it to Jon to point out the hypocrisy of the pundits.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Fox News: The New Liberals
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Healthcare Protests

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A Few Thoughts on Mercy, and an Item for Today’s News

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The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.

Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Matthew 5:6-8

Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.
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Victor Hugo

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Abraham Lincoln

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

Robert Frost

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Scotland freed the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds Thursday, allowing the terminally ill man to die in his homeland of Libya and rejecting American pleas for justice in the attack that killed 270 people.

The White House said it “deeply regrets” the Scottish decision, and U.S. family members immediately expressed outrage.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who had served only eight years of his life sentence, was recently given only months to live after being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said although al-Megrahi had not shown compassion to his victims — many of whom were American college students flying home to New York for Christmas — MacAskill was motivated by Scottish values to show mercy.

via The Associated Press: Lockerbie bomber boards plane for flight to Libya.

New Poll Shows That People Like Expressing Opinions in Polls

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Here is yet another funny post from the Indecision Forever blog.  But it’s laughter to keep from crying.  Because the statistic below isn’t part of the joke.  It’s real.

39% of voters think government should stay out of Medicare, compared to 46% who disagree. Among Republicans, 62% say the government should stay out of Medicare, compared to only 24% of Democrats and 31% of independents who agree.

Yes, 39% of voters do actually believe government should stay out of a federally funded, federally administered program.  And lest we liberals get smug, it may be more than six out of ten Republicans who believe this, but it’s almost one in four Democrats, too.  That’s no great shakes, either.

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New Poll Shows That People Like Expressing Opinions in Polls | Indecision Forever | Comedy Central.

Facebook Deleted the Fanpage of the Exiled Hammas Leader Khaled Meshaal

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After deleting the fanpage of Esmail Haneea the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority from The Islamic Resistances Movement (HAMAS.) (Haneea is now the acting prime minister of the government in besieged Gaza strip only, as the occupied West When Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream,” it was his passion and conviction cheap cialis no prescription that have kept those words so alive for over forty years. Depending on the location of the fracture and its extent, the commander levitra treatment will vary. When erection issues start to occur at frequent intervals, it is best online cialis advisable to visit your doctor. However, ordering cialis from canada the number and quality of the medicine is also right up there with the very best. bank territories are under the Palestinian President Abbas’ own government), now Facebook deleted the fanpage of Khaled Meshaal the political leader of Hamas who currently lives in Syria. (map)

via Facebook Deleted the Fanpage of the Exiled Hammas Leader Khaled Meshaal.

Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels

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This is another good article from FactCheck.org that traces the origins of the “death squad” term and how it has been argued between Obama and Palin.

Like many disagreements in the digital age, it all started with a post on Facebook. Last Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a note to her Facebook page and introduced a new term to the health care debate:

Palin, Aug. 7: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care.

Unsurprisingly, the phrase “death panel” does not appear in the health care bill that passed House committees last month. And Palin’s post did not make entirely clear what she might interpret as a “death panel.” Nonetheless, the phrase stuck…

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via Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels | FactCheck.org.

It’s amazing how blatant falsehoods are defining the terms of the debate over one of the most important issues of our time.  And virtually no one is talking substantively about the issues.  The arguments are partisan, ad hominem, purely rhetorical, and completely devoid of substance.  Check everything you hear on this issue before you decide on anything.

There are falsehoods and stretches of the truth on both sides, by the way. Check out this excellent article, “Seven Falsehoods About Health Care.” But it has to be said, that it is the opposition to health care that is making the more outrageous claims, tossing around words like “death panels” and “socialism.”

Pakistanis See the US as the Biggest Threat

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The Al Jazeera network has commissioned a public opinion survey in Pakistan that has yielded some disturbing and surprising results.  The poll, conducted by Gallup Pakistan, showed that 59% of Pakistani’s believe that the United States is the biggest threat to Pakistan.

That many Pakistanis see the US as a threat is entirely surprising, but the margins are.  Tensions between India and Pakistan are legendary and longstanding and the Taliban is a brutal militant Islamist regime.   Think about that for a moment.  A major source of the resentment seems to be the drone attacks against Taliban and Al Qaeda targets.

(W)hen asked if they support or oppose the US military’s drone attacks against what Washington claims are Taliban and al-Qaeda targets, only nine per cent of respondents reacted favourably.

A massive 67 per cent say they oppose US military operations on Pakistani soil.

Forty-one per cent of Pakistanis say they support the offensive against the Taliban

“This is a fact that the hatred against the US is growing very quickly, mainly because of these drone attacks,” Makhdoom Babar, the editor-in-chief of Pakistan’s The Daily Mail newspaper, said.

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A senior US official told Al Jazeera he was not surprised by the poll’s findings.

The US has a considerable amount of work to do to make itself better understood to the Muslim world, he said.

And it would take not only educational and economic work to win over the Pakistani people but also a concerted effort to help the Pakistani government deal with “extremist elements” that are trying to disrupt security within Pakistan, he added.

via Al Jazeera English – CENTRAL/S. ASIA – Pakistanis see US as biggest threat.

Complete survey results are at this link.

Old Lady Impersonates Obama for Unknown Reasons. Tiny Dog Not Fooled

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An online guide to following the health care legislation

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“Health Care Reform: An Online Guide” by Timothy Noah, is a very useful, regularly updated to a continually unfolding story.

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There are links to the relevant Congressional committees, bloggers and media resources, lobbying groups, academic groups and think tanks and other sources.  It should help sort through some of the hyperbolic fear-mongering and unwarranted attacks from both sides.