Today’s link goes to Mano Singham’s post, The Obama administration considers constitutional rights to be dangerous. The administration is correct: constitutional rights are dangerous, at least to those who are exploiting others from positions of privilege and power. But the absence of rights is far more dangerous, in terms of the scope and extent of …
Category Archive: Civil Rights
Sep 18 2012
Fire brigades
Thanks to the Atheism+ debate, I’m getting to learn about something called “equity feminism” versus “gender feminism.” The difference seems to revolve around the degree of activism required. I’m new to this particular debate, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I thought I’d put my initial impressions out there so …
Sep 05 2012
Bishops call religious liberty a threat to religious liberty
Washington state’s four Catholic bishops have released a statement warning that if non-Christians are allowed to engage in non-Christian forms of marriage, religious liberty will suffer. The bishops’ statement, issued Tuesday by the Washington State Catholic Conference, came as Washington-based Expedia became the latest major employer to come out in support of same-sex marriage. In …
Aug 19 2012
Heroes that actually deserve the name
There are relatively few people in this world today who impress me enough for me to call them heroes. But they exist. Belatedly, imperfectly, incompletely, I would like to thank them for inspiring me and encouraging me to expect more and better things. Here, in no particular order, are some of them. Please help me …
Aug 14 2012
White House pulls plug on popular petition (or does it?)
The Electronic Privacy Information Center reports a disturbing but sadly unsurprising development in the struggle to recover our civil liberties. At approximately 11:30 am EDT, the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House “We the People” website. About 22,500 of the 25,000 signatures necessary for a response …
Aug 09 2012
Dawkins and Mormons (follow-up)
Looking over the comments from yesterday’s post, it seems that some people understood my point about Dawkins’ Mormon quote, and others didn’t. It’s an important point, though, so I want to follow up and try to make it clear for everyone. The problem I see is not that Dr. Dawkins is impugning the sanity of …
Aug 08 2012
Well darn.
PZ Myers has a post up that has my feelings a bit mixed. It’s a quote attributed to Richard Dawkins: Yes, America STILL manages to reach Mars despite half the country preparing to elect a man who believes he’ll get a planet when he dies. It is all the more to the credit of the …
Aug 08 2012
4th Amendment protections officially moot
Wired magazine reports the depressing news that we now officially have fewer constitutional rights than we did under Bill Clinton. The federal government may spy on Americans’ communications without warrants and without fear of being sued, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a decision reversing the first and only case that successfully challenged President …
Jul 18 2012
Two sides to every story
This looked like an interesting First Amendment story: “Attorney for Pastor jailed in Arizona speaks out” (capitalization as in the original). Last week we brought you a story about Michael Salman, a Pastor in Arizona who surrendered himself to authorities to face two months in prison. His crime? Holding bible studies in his home. Mr. …
Jul 17 2012
On-again, off-again Target stores to sell gay wedding cards
If you’ve got a gay friend who’s getting married, you’ll soon be able to buy them a congratulatory card at Target. That’s a good thing: the more businesses who realize that gays spend money too, the more completely gays will be integrated into our consumerist society (and more importantly into the pervasive marketing and product …
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