Justice Department Avoids Decision On Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Justice Department Avoids Decision On Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Whether the government needs a warrant will depend on which judge is on duty. This is not how the justice system is supposed to work.

The Justice Department persists in its strategy of not appealing cell tracking losses even though lower court judges have practically begged for the government to do so. Way back in 2005, a judge expressed “the full expectation and hope that the government will seek appropriate review by higher courts so that authoritative guidance will be given the magistrate judges who are called upon to rule on these applications on a daily basis.” Other judges have issued similar calls more recently, but to no avail. (The sole time the government did appeal a loss, the results were decidedly mixed.)

The American people deserve better. The government tracks cell phones all the time and all over the country, and whether it can do so without a warrant is a crucial Fourth Amendment question.

Related???

Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors and other health professionals for promoting their drugs. But 12 companies have begun publicizing the information, some because of legal settlements. ProPublica pulled their disclosures into a database so patients can search for their doctor. Accepting payments isn’t necessarily wrong, but it can raise ethical issues:

VS

Emergency department visits related to misuse of prescription or over-the-counter drugs doubled from 500,000 in 2004 to 1 million in 2008, said the report, based on estimates from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Drug Abuse Warning Network. DAWN generated the estimates by reviewing data and medical charts submitted by 231 U.S. emergency departments.
Illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin were involved in 1 million ED trips annually, a figure that stayed flat over the time period.

Grant Hill responds to Jalen Rose uncle Tom comments

I love it! I don't even know who this Rose character is. I'm assuming that Fab five refers to the Michigan team that Chris Webber was a part of. I do know who Grant Hill is, even though I don't follow basketball at any level. If memory serves, they all left school to go to the NBA. I wonder if they went back and got their degrees, especially Rose.

Principal blames black students for school's low scores

A principal at an East Texas middle school has been reprimanded for blaming the school’s poor test scores on Black students.

Now, this story doesn't give me all the details, but if he called the entire black population down and they weren't universally on the bottom of the entire school's scores, well he's a dumb ass. If he called every student in the bottom x percent, and they happened to be black, that's one thing. But to lay the blame down on black kids is reckless and counter to solving the problems.

Since he was reprimanded, I'm going to guess he didn't give himself that political cover. Although I could be wrong.

Hello! Friends, Romans, countrymen.

It's good to see that we are still playing nicely together. I am once again burning the candles at both ends for a while, bit I thought I'd try to get back to posting. I'll try to respond to comments too. But there is great joy to be had just watching you guys mix it up. Right now I've just got a few email services that send me headlines ( which I mostly delete before I get a chance to read but I've got a few that have piqued my ire, curiosity, or interest. So, without further ado...