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http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/alan goldstein/STORY.e9bc7d3f61.b0.af.0.a4.afa49.html

Judge Kozinski --

I read your WSJ editorial online after it was posted to Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org, "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."), and while I must say that I agree with your sentiments about workplace monitoring, your ire is perhaps indicative of why mere mortals see all government employees, and ones in dark robes especially, as disconnected from the citizenry they serve.

While your points about how inappropriate workplace monitoring is in the federal judiciary are well taken, and while I agree with them in principle, I can only shake my head and say, welcome to the real world, Your Honor.

Workplace monitoring of the sort you decry in your editorial is a fact of life for most Americans, and has been for many years. Some private-sector employers are more fanatical about it than others, but it remains extremely common that an employee checks his rights at the door. Random drug screens (even for employees who do not perform hazardous jobs like driving or operating heavy machinery), keystroke monitoring (how many keys per hour do you punch), email scanning, phone monitoring, and even log-in log-out to track your bathroom usage are common.

Frequently, signing away any rights you might have to protest such treatment is a condition of employment. Especially in light of today's slowing economy (the Dallas Morning News [ed: which requires nasty registration to see anything off the front page] last Sunday reported on a well-qualified computer professional who has taken to holding a sign at the street corner to ask for work), employees typically sign such monsterous documents simply to get a paycheck rolling in.

In addition, courts typically uphold the rights of employers to perform these kinds of searches, especially in states where employee rights are weak, such as Texas, where you can be fired for sneezing too much. (In Texas, employers can even require you to sign away your right to sue over Workman's Compensation claims, as a condition of employment. Many do, and courts uphold these waivers when employees get hurt and employers then do not pony up the money.)

Just as public school students and prisoners check their rights at the door (despite courts' protestations to the contrary in a littany of cases I could cite), employees do as well. It's been a fact of life for many years, and will continue to be so. That it's been so slow in coming to the federal judiciary is not surprising to me, if only because of the public perception that the judicial process is slow, unwieldy, and expensively out of reach of your average citizen.

[Signature omitted. Use Slashdot to contact me.]

His response is reprinted below in its entirety.

Dear Mr. [censored]:

I agree with your entirely. In fact, one of my major concerns in this matter is that if we adopt the most intrusive policy for our employees, we're more likely to approve it for others as well, when the issue arises in cases before us. Check out the attached article, as well as

http://www.tnr.com/091001/rosen091001.html

If you wish to help in this struggle, please check out

http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010831_eff_judicial_mo nitoring_alert.html [hotlink omitted because Slashdot wouldn't unscrew it.]

Sending a letter as suggested there, and copying in relevant members of congress, would be a big help.

Once again, many thanx.

Ciao. AK

A grand jury has supeanoed records.. full details are here .

It's actually There ought to be limits to freedom, not free speech

He did worse than that. He used a stolen document from the Carter campaign to help Reagan prepare for the debate. Juanita Lozano is facing jail time with hardened criminals for a similar theft from the Bush campaign last year.

HAHAH.

i read your post, and then i read this

seems that BankOne, the owner of wingspanbank.com, decided to close it because it wasn't making enough money.

maybe you should change banks again.

Anthropology in the News has links to a lot more news stories on these findings. The BBC story is very short, but noteworthy for including a little bit of information on the dating methods used in the Australian case.

Anthropology in the News updates a lot and doesn't keep stuff on its front page for very long, so for the sake of Slashdot's archives, I'm copying the links here.

• New Evidence in Extinction Whodunnit BBC (6/7/01)
• Humans Linked to Animal Extinction New York Times (6/7/01)
• Humans Linked to Animal Extinction Yahoo (6/7/01)
• Human Hunters Spelled Doom for Ice Age Behemoths Yahoo (6/7/01)
• Humans Blamed for Ancient Extinctions MSNBC (6/7/01)
• Planet Was Too Small for Man and Beasts, Study Finds Dallas Morning News (6/8/01)
• Humans Hunted Mammals to Extinction in North America Eureka Alert (6/7/01)

I am well aware of the argument that they are legally responsible to their stockholders, as appalling as this concept is for the future of the world. This does not change the fact that a previous poster made that they are not making money in SA anyway. It would be fabulous if an industry based on helping people stay healthy actually cared about poeple and not only about profits, eh?

This is the sort of story that should be turned into a mass mailing to your local and national news outlets.

Here's a few addresses:

letters@nytimes.com

letters@sjmercury.com

dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters

AP Bureaus by State

(I get a kick out of their triple-bank rolodex logo. Someone needs to add one of those to Aqua.)

--Blair

President Bush, who outlined his educational initiatives this week without once even mentioning computers or technology.

Thus claims Katz. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: Bush explicitly asked for increased funding for school computers and other technology. Show some responsibility and check your facts before clogging the /. pages with your leftist bullshit.

Here's a look at Graham from a different perspective.

Clarence Brandley, a janitor at a Texas school, was convicted in 1980 of the rape and murder of a young [White] girl. When police arrived at the high school, according to a 1998 report in Playboy, an officer told the janitors who had found the body: "One of you two is going to hang for this." Looking at Brandley, the cop continued, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected."

Six years later - nine days before Brandley was slated to die - another janitor revealed that two [White] coworkers had committed the murder. Evidence showed prosecutors had suppressed evidence and witnesses had lied. It took another four years, but Brandley finally won his freedom. Rest of article

Mr. Brandley was freed five days before his death chamber date after 10 years on death row. He had been sentenced to death for the rape and strangling death of a 16-year-old [White] high school girl north of Houston, despite the reddish-blond hair and type-A blood investigators found. Mr. Brandley has brown hair and type-O blood. Rest of article

is neatly expressed in this letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News.

See second letter - Horror story

The reason the section says "RESERVED" is because of the text of the repeal document, which specifically stated that 14 CFR 1211.100-108 would be "removed and reserved." It is common practice to do this, since if the section were not reserved, laws below it would need to be renumbered in keeping with the CFR's layout.

FWIW: This law was probably passed as a security measure in case we did find anything and ticked them off badly. I suppose the government thought the only way they could get the people who were "contacted" to come in for examination was by brute force.

--------------------

Well, I've cleaned spilled coffee off keyboards. I've cleaned spilled Diet Coke off keyboards. I've even cleaned spilled Pinot Grigio off keyboards (and picked out wine glass shards from between the keys with a tweezer). Now I gotta figure out how to clean HURL off a keyboard.

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