Year: 2013
UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT DEPT.
Bullys Beware!
The town of Monona, Wisconsin has had enough, and from now on, when kids are bullies, police will issues violations to their parents. As far as I know, most anti-bullying laws — even with the current level of moral panic — are directed at forcing school districts to adopt specific disciplinary policies designed to discourage… Read more
LEGAL DEPT.
You No Longer Have the Right To Remain Silent
I’ve seen a number of distressing decisions come out of the Supreme Court, but this may be the most gut-wrenching I’ve seen in a long time. Here’s how criminal defense lawyer Bobby G. Frederick sums it up: In Salinas v. Texas, decided today, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a suspect’s silence may be used… Read more
PRIVACY DEPT.
Edward Snowden’s Leaks Hit a Little Closer to Home
I’m on the record as not having been impressed with Bradley Manning for turning over thousands of classified diplomatic messages to Wikileaks: Then, of course, there’s the anonymous asshole who was trusted with access to all this stuff and decided to leak it. Leaking this stuff might have been justified if it contained the shocking… Read more
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPT.
NSA Surveillance – Some Technical Speculation
The NSA story is still breaking, so almost anything I write may soon be overtaken by new information, but I thought I’d address one aspect that involves an area in which I have some expertise: Although whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that major tech corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have given the NSA… Read more
OPERATIONS DEPT.
In Which I Decline a Prospective Content Partnership
The Popehat folks are far better at this sort of thing, but let me give it a try. I got this email with the subject “Content Partnership”: Hey there Mark, My name is Sladen West and I wanted to discuss the possibility of some sort of content partnership with you and windypundit.com. I do a lot of writing in… Read more