Illegal Raid Over Twitter Postings (from Pharyngula)

I sure have less readers than PZ Myers, but I bet I have some that are at least different...

So if I can do a little to take this story to more people, I'll do it.

(Edit: Also from Pharyngula, people get life in jail for torture, when they are civilians. If they are soldiers, they get away with a nothing, or with a medal).

Wired magazine has a story on the CNN website about the federal government raiding the home of a writer and seizing enormous amounts of "evidence" for the crime of twittering during the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh.
An anarchist social worker raided by the feds wants his computers, manuscripts and pick axes back. He argues that authorities violated the U.S. Constitution and the rights of his mentally ill clients while searching for evidence that he broke an anti-rioting law on Twitter.
In a guns-drawn raid on October 1, FBI agents and police seized boxes of dubious "evidence" from the Queens, New York, home of Elliott Madison. A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn has set a Monday deadline to rule on the legality of the search, and in the meantime has ordered the government to refrain from examining the material taken in the 6 a.m. search.
Here's why they raided his house:

Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September's G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops -- an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.
A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison's house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters -- all purportedly evidence that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.
But a closer look at the court documents leaves the unmistakable impression that Elliott Madison is yet another casualty of the government's nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security.
Madison, his wife and his lawyer Martin Stolar say the search violates the Constitution's protections against general searches and prosecution for political speech. The police also seized mobile phones, citizen emergency kits, manuscripts, posters and even the couple's marriage license...
If Madison were an Iranian using Twitter to coordinate government protests, he'd likely be considered a hero in the West. Instead, the self-identified anarchist -- who volunteered in Louisiana after Katrina -- is now facing up to five years in prison for each count a grand jury cares to indict him on.
Interestingly, they are charged with violations of the same law that was used against the Chicago 7 during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Those convictions were all thrown out.

Un muppet sería mejor economista

Y sin embargo, en mi tierra tenemos pedazos de carne dirigiendo la "recuperación" de nuestro país.

Hay pérdidas de empleo, y quieren incrementar impuestos al consumo generalizados que afectan a los más pobres.

Hay empresas que evaden el fisco pero aumentan impuestos sobre los ingresos que afectan a los profesionistas y no solo a empresas e industrias.

Y la justificación es un impuesto de "combate" a la pobreza, cuando la pobreza no es una persona ni una entidad. Es un concepto abstracto que representa, en la práctica, la falta de una redistribución adecuada de la riqueza... O sea, el que unos pocos ganan casi todo y los demás mueran de hambre. Y es que prefieren tirar un poco de dinero en programas existentes de "combate a la pobreza", en lugar de cambiar la forma en la que se distribuye la riqueza (cobrando más a los que más tienen, y creando medidas verdaderamente de ayuda y protección a los pobres (que no es lo mismo que "combatir a la pobreza" (como seguros de desempleo, sistema de salud gratuito con fondos suficientes, fondo de creación de viviendas, bancos de alimentos, pagar a los mas pobres por que estudien educación básica y técnica, etcétera).

¿Qué diablos pasa con este país? el Fecal no pudo ser peor presidente salvo usando el ejército en las ciudades... ¡Esperen! ¡Ya lo hizo! Ahora sólo le falta atacar a civiles.

Overview: What's on my Browser right now?

Let's say for a moment than listing what is there on our internet browser tabs can help some people get an idea on where's our mind currently. In a way, it tells us about what are we looking for.

Well.. here we go with my Firefox tabs right now:
Is Brain Damage a good Alibi for Violent Behavior? That's a video on Youtube intresting, brief, and to the point.

10-year-old bride forced back to her 80-year-old husband. A note on Austin Cline's Atheist Blog. Very scary, and a source of anger.

Protecting the powerful is a feature, not a bug. Courtesy of Bad Science, the blog from Ben Goldacre who also writes for the British newspaper The Guardian. This article is also scary and worriesome, as most stuff from Goldacre: It's all about the absurd libel laws in Britain, and their extraterritorial influence.

There is also a very funny cartoon about babies and lobsters at Hemant Mehta's Friendly Atheist blog. A great blog, often a mixture of light and heavy topics.

PZ Myers, the Flail of the Faithful and the Polls, is talking at Pharyngula about the worries of fundamentalist and Christians, and how they are not so bad. For us. Sadly for me, I can't comment on Pharyngula right now.


Congregation Embraces Transgender Minister, reads the headline over ABCNews. A Methodist minister gave his congregation the sermon of his life. And they're still his congretation. If only most folks were like that...

Also, from The Guardian. A piece from a dumbass who is mad with the banning on tobacco. Poor dude does not understand the real health impact of smoking near others, nor the fact that in public health there is a point where democracy is not an option, and you have to suck-it-up.

And well, excluding my own DevArt page (because adding it here is like self-advertising myself), that's all there is in my blog right now. Quite varied, I hope...