Paul Schwartz quoted in The New York Times, January 5, 2014
“They made a pretty good facial claim that the government violated the ‘no disclosure without consent’ rule,” said Paul M. Schwartz.
El Salvador mother and daughter meet 29 years after civil war abduction
Cristián Orrego Benavente quoted in The Guardian, December 29, 2013
Cristián Orrego Benavente, director of the forensic programme at the Human Rights Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, who has worked with Pro Búsqueda since 2003, said: “El Salvador is moving into a significant new phase after a long history of total impunity. This provoked the odious and dangerous attempt to destroy them, but its carefully gathered evidence will be presented in Salvadoran courts when the new era of justice begins.”
New judge, new ruling on spying
John Yoo quoted in Los Angeles Times, December 28, 2013
John Yoo … said Pauley had followed the Supreme Court’s previous rulings about what sorts of information the Fourth Amendment protects. By contrast, “Judge Leon tried to escape” what the high court had previously ruled, Yoo said in an email. “It is up to the Supreme Court, not a trial judge, to decide whether to overrule” its previous case, he said. “The conflicting decisions,” he added, “seem guaranteed to send the issue to the Supreme Court for the last word” unless the D.C. Circuit overrules Leon’s decision.
Fracking: The Bay Delta Conservation Plan would provide water for mining
Michael Kiparsky quoted in San Jose Mercury News, December 27, 2013
According to Michael Kiparsky … fracking puts water supplies at risk, especially when developers drill through aquifers en route to gas reserves in shale. Frack water is so contaminated, water cannot be recovered, and the chemicals are left in the ground.
Judge rules against brain-dead girl’s family
Marjorie Shultz quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, December 24, 2013
There remains “a lot of turmoil about the definition of death and whether the brain is or is not functioning,” said Marjorie Shultz … who had her own harrowing encounter with the system 18 years ago, when her 19-year-old son’s car was struck head-on by a wrong-way driver….
“We were told over and over there was no hope for him,” Shultz said. She insisted on continuing his medical care, and her son now lives on his own and has bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she said…. But if doctors, using established criteria, make a finding of brain death, she said, “the law takes the position that there isn’t anything to argue about, that the person is dead.”
Morning report: Dog whistle politics
Ian Haney-López book reviewed in the Arkansas Times, December 23, 2013
From Wallace to Nixon and Reagan and beyond, the book describes the transformation of Southern politics and the Republican Party, helped mightily by racism, though a more gentle form than the violent white supremacist variety.
Dog whistle politics: How the GOP became the “white man’s party”
Ian Haney-López writes for Salon.com, December 22, 2013
Wallace was far from the only Southern politician to veer to the right on race in the 1950s. The mounting pressure for black equality destabilized a quiescent political culture that had assumed white supremacy was unassailable, putting pressure on all public persons to stake out their position for or against integration.
Commerce department holds meeting to discuss Internet task force green paper
Peter Menell quoted in Bloomberg BNA, December 20, 2013 (registration required)
Peter Menell…. urged stakeholders to keep the big picture in mind and to think about how the current statutory damages provisions help or inhibit enforcement efforts…. “In the Internet age, we want a copyright system that garners public approval,” Menell said. “And I think that is something that has been lost, and statutory damages played a very significant role” in the erosion of public support, he said.
Gascón push to reduce most nonviolent crimes to misdemeanors
Barry Krisberg quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 2013 (registration required)
Krisberg said the ballot measure, if enacted, would result in “significant declines in the number of people in state prison….” “There appears to be tremendous support for the ideas in this proposal,” said Krisberg. “The question is, can they get it on the ballot? Collecting signatures takes a lot of money. But if it was on the ballot, based on the polling data I have seen, it would pass overwhelmingly.”
The upside of a Boston snowstorm: Meeting your neighbors
Victoria Plaut paper cited in the Christian Science Monitor, December 19, 2013
Victoria Plaut … published a paper last December describing Boston as having a “pattern of stronger associations … with education, finance, community and family.” She argues that Bostonians not only value these aspects of society, but that our happiness is directly related to them.