From now on, if you plan on saying anything annoying online, you’d better do it under your real name: Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. This seems like a ridiculous violation of the first amendment, and it’s […]
Four-year-olds may often be terrors, but do we really need to be concerned that they may be terrorists? Edward Allen’s reaction to being on the government’s “no-fly” list should have been the tip-off that he is no terrorist. “I don’t want to be on the list. I want to fly and see my grandma,” the […]
Wednesday, the newly-elected Dover Area school board nixed their predecessors’ Intelligent Design policy: On a voice vote, and with no discussion beforehand, the newly elected Dover Area School Board unanimously rescinded the policy. Two weeks earlier, a judge ruled the policy unconstitutional. “This is it,” new school board president Bernadette Reinking said Tuesday, indicating the […]
MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s blogging service, has been helping the Chinese government suppress dissenting voices by monitoring and censoring Chinese blogs that use the MSN service. According to Rebecca MacKinnon, they’re getting more aggressive and have even shut down one popular, outspoken blogger. I never liked MSN Spaces anyway – they list comments in reverse-chronological order. […]
This is coming a little late, since I was away when the ruling was announced in the Kitzmiller case, but I wanted to make a brief comment on it anyway. Of the possible decisions that could have been made, Judge Jones made a pretty strong ruling. Rather than confining himself to merely saying that the […]
The alleged War on Christmas, touted by many conservatives, is a myth. There are no legions of Liberals frothing at the mouth when they hear the phrase “Merry Christmas”. Similarly, the “War on Christianity”, and the portrayal of the ACLU as the enemy of all that is good and decent are also two ideas with […]
The Associated Press had an article this week about consumer boycotts of retailers for various causes. Some groups, such as the American Family Association, advocate boycotts on retailers who they feel haven’t sufficiently displayed the word “Christmas”: This year’s high-profile targets include retailers Sears and Target. In the eyes of some conservative activists, the companies […]
David Boyd says that a terrorist is a terrorist. But what about an Iraqi who doesn’t want the U.S. in his country, and is targeting U.S. troops? Is he a terrorist as well? According to a report by the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), between September 2003 and October 2004 there were an estimated […]
Over the past few days I’ve been involved in a couple of discussions over at the News and Record’s Letters to the Editor blog that relate to some topics recently discussed here at Plead the First. The first takes place on the letter entitled “A Higher Standard?” The letter writer, questioning a previous letter writer […]
A Washington Monthly article takes a look at some of the lies told by the past four Presidents, and has a panel of judges rate their seriousness. George W. Bush leads the pack slightly, but the article was written in 2003, so he may have pulled even further ahead in the last two years. Of […]
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