<cue circus music>
So, when the Supreme Court is through pretending it’s a probate court and has finally decided whether Anne Nicole Smith gets the $563.5M USD that a federal bankrupcy court awarded to her when her 60+ year-old stepson declared bankrupcy, will the papers put it under news and legal where they put other Supreme Court decisions or will this be the first time a Supreme Court decision leads the entertainment pages?
Reference:
ABC News
The Washington Post
Human beings are funny creatures: we crave acceptance practically from birth. High school is an exercise in conforming non-conformity where we all do our best to be unique while trying to fit in and be popular.
When we apply for the job we want to get hired. When we apply for the loan we want to be approved. Usually, if we’ve bothered with the third date we want to get called with for a fourth.
Jury duty is the one arena in which we court rejection, begging to be told “No, you are not desirable. Be gone.”
Three weeks of federal jury service for which I’m going to have to call every single day to find out if I need to show up and my biggest question is not how can I make the system function well (or better).
No, my biggest question is: who do I have to blow to get the 10am call?
I should have just written on the form that until I was fully franchised as a DC resident I declined to participate. Of course, in this political climate that probably would have bought me a one-way ticket to Guantanemo Bay.
Of little notice to many amid the late-night comedians’ delight over Dick Cheney mistaking a 78 year-old man for a ground dwelling fowl was this article in The New York Times, almost a mere blurb in and of itself:
Blair Wins Parliament Vote Criminalizing ‘Glorification’ of Terror
by ALAN COWELL
Published: February 16, 2006LONDON, Feb. 15 — After a series of bruising parliamentary duels, Prime Minister Tony Blair secured victory in the House of Commons on Wednesday in a vote to expand counterterrorism laws by making “glorification” of terrorism a criminal offense.
Legislators voted 315 to 277 in a ballot that pitted Mr. Blair’s Labor Party against the Conservative and Liberal Democratic opposition. Seventeen Labor dissidents voted against the measure.
Mr. Blair’s critics said the vote, one of three crucial parliamentary tests in as many days, was as much a display of political maneuvering as a strengthening of British laws, which already include prohibitions like those used last week to prosecute Abu Hamza al-Masri, a firebrand Muslim cleric. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for soliciting to murder and promoting racial hatred.
Opponents had said the term “glorification” was legally vague and unnecessary. “The existing law is quite adequate to the problem,” said Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats. (Full article)
And while the BBC published a questions and answers style article detailing exactly what this means (what constitutes “glorification” of terror, how the politics of it broke down), they skirted the basic issue: when do security measures cross the line between security and prohibition? Or, more to the point, why is this not the same as an anti-sedition law?
The answer to that question may be in the definition of sedition which AskOxford.com defines as “conduct or speech inciting rebellion against the authority of a state or monarch.”
As late as 1918, the U.S. was using anti-sedition laws to suppress protest against wartime conduct by the government. Indeed, Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison and stripped of his civil rights permanently for criticizing the 1917 Espionage Act.
And while the BBC writes:
What is glorification?
The government says it wants to act against people who “praise or celebrate” terrorism in a way that makes people think they should emulate such attacks. Home Secretary Charles Clarke says people should not, for example, be allowed to glorify the 7 July attacks, or the bombers themselves, as it could encourage impressionable young men to think they should commit similar atrocities.
It’s not hard to see how a law like this might, in this day and age of making a distinction between lying and “not telling the truth,” be stretched to prohibit anti-war protests of any kind.
So, where do we draw the line between free speech and security?
It’s really pretty if you don’t have to leave the house. And even though they were wrong about when, the WeatherGuessers got the amount right.
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Nothing puts me down faster than having the power plant all out of whack. If I’m off my feed, it’s all over. Fitting, then, that this was today’s Frazz
