Linkfest: Sunday Updates
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Time to clean out the aggregator —
ITEM: The Department of Defense has announced that ten more detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay. Which is odd, given that the military has repeatedly insisted that absolutely everyone detained at Guantanamo is unarguably guilty.
ITEM: I blogged previously, and recently made a YouTube video, about the "War on Sniffles" — the idiotic de jure restriction (and de facto ban) of decongestants containing pseudoephedine — in a warm-fuzzy-feeling attempt by activist legislators to create the illusion of fighting the War on Meth. Now it turns out that the War on Sniffles may also have been instigated by the Politics of Pull:
ITEM: A new insider account of the discussions leading up to President Bush's first veto, blocking federal funding of stem cell research, asserts that the president was specifically concerned about the potential rise of fictional reproductive technologies posited in the dystopic novel Brave New World. For better or for worse, at least the president was invoking the correct nightmare — unlike Mitt Romney, who illiterately called stem cell research "Orwellian." (Via Wired Science Blog.)
ITEM: The sex offender mania has jumped yet another shark — New Jersey has enacted a law prohibiting some convicted sex offenders from any and all use of the Internet (except work-related). "We live in scary times," said Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey. Indeed.
ITEM: A lawsuit is working its way through a federal court alleging illegal gender-based discrimination by New York City recreational establishments. (Translation: Another "Ladies Night" lawsuit.) As I blogged previously, sometimes it's not the anti-discrimination lawsuit that is "frivolous," but the anti-discrimination law itself, which in some jurisdictions explicitly authorizes and even encourages such litigation.
ITEM: The Department of Defense has announced that ten more detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay. Which is odd, given that the military has repeatedly insisted that absolutely everyone detained at Guantanamo is unarguably guilty.
ITEM: I blogged previously, and recently made a YouTube video, about the "War on Sniffles" — the idiotic de jure restriction (and de facto ban) of decongestants containing pseudoephedine — in a warm-fuzzy-feeling attempt by activist legislators to create the illusion of fighting the War on Meth. Now it turns out that the War on Sniffles may also have been instigated by the Politics of Pull:
The main company that stands to benefit from a law — passed in the name of the patriotic war on drugs — that effectively marginalizes [its] main competition and gives a boost to its inferior product spent millions in lobbying and campaign donations in the very year that the law was passed.The company is Boehringer Ingelheim; its "inferior product" (and my experience definitely confirms that) is phenylephrine (i.e., the "PE" in "Sudafed PE"); the details are here (cf., Merck buying a compulsory vaccination law from Texas governor Rick Perry).
ITEM: A new insider account of the discussions leading up to President Bush's first veto, blocking federal funding of stem cell research, asserts that the president was specifically concerned about the potential rise of fictional reproductive technologies posited in the dystopic novel Brave New World. For better or for worse, at least the president was invoking the correct nightmare — unlike Mitt Romney, who illiterately called stem cell research "Orwellian." (Via Wired Science Blog.)
ITEM: The sex offender mania has jumped yet another shark — New Jersey has enacted a law prohibiting some convicted sex offenders from any and all use of the Internet (except work-related). "We live in scary times," said Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey. Indeed.
ITEM: A lawsuit is working its way through a federal court alleging illegal gender-based discrimination by New York City recreational establishments. (Translation: Another "Ladies Night" lawsuit.) As I blogged previously, sometimes it's not the anti-discrimination lawsuit that is "frivolous," but the anti-discrimination law itself, which in some jurisdictions explicitly authorizes and even encourages such litigation.
Posted by Kip on
30 December 2007
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