Jacob Sullum has a nice post about one Circuit Court that tries to keep perspective and limit the power of the Federal Government, as the Constitution intended.

The now famous, reasonable and correct decision in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court this week is sending conservatives into hissy fits trying to explain their opposition to it. If conservatives want the government out of people's personal lives (a noble claim), then they'd either have to be against state sponsored marriage completely or want it for everybody. They'd also have to applaud the US Supreme Court's ruling on sodomy that got the government out of the bedroom. But conservatives' tortured "logic" (here's one example) makes their lies plain.

More on the placelessness of the cellular world (this one via metafilter). A previously posted article on the same subject from the excellent Hermenaut.

Wal-Mart, babies, and hate. In an arrangement you might not expect.

Some ideas on states and their budget crises through Parkinson and his laws.
1. "Expenditure rises to meet income." Pork barrel supreme!
2. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." NYS Legislature anyone?
3. "The matters most debated in a deliberative body tend to be the minor ones where everybody understands the issues."

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Richter got kicked out of school Monday morning for a stick-figure drawing that another student thought was a violent threat.
Schools like this (which are all over the country) - part of why I am glad to no longer be a teen.

More on the " schools into prisions" trend - cops raid a South Carolina school with guns drawn, looking for drugs and force the kids to the floor.
Oh, no drugs were found. (site also has a link to video footage)

A Flordia man will be going to prison for refusing to keep his yard tidy enough. Yep.

In September 2002, I was with my wife and children, and her family, vacationing in Tunis.
I got an e-mail from the MathWorks saying that they might need me soon to assess a potential consulting work for one of their customers.
I said goodbye to my wife and family, and headed back home to prepare for work.
I was using my air-miles to travel, and the best flight I could get went from Tunis, to Zurich, to New York, to Montreal.
My flight arrived in New York at 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2002. I had a few hours to wait until my connecting flight to Montreal.
This is when my nightmare began.

Pain is good, treating it is bad--the DEA has been prosecuting medical doctors for their prescription habits:

"'They're unable to take down the real drug lords, so they're coming after doctors using the same tactics,' one pain physician tells the Voice. For an agency keen to justify its massive budget, doctors provide an easy target."

Ah, here we go--the FDA is thinking about forcing restaurants to add nutritional labels to their menus. While it sounds like a nice option--dieters armed with their latest get slim guidebook can check-off unsuitable entrees--shouldn't it be a voluntary choice for the restaurant? You can't blame the producer of a product that's perfectly safe when the consumer misuses it.

And think about this--how much freedom of the chef are we taking away here? What if an unusual, fresh but rare element becomes available at the last minute--will the chef be unable to make a new dish to delight her costumers with because no government-approved nutritional information was available? Will the chefs have to start weighing out their portions to conform to the menu rather than for taste? A fine way to ruin what could have been a fine meal at a fine restaurant.

Seriously, nobody becomes obese by accident; nobody becomes obese from one meal. Take some responsibility for yourselves, you so called adults.

Global Warming--whether you believe it is happening, or just distant threat, this NY Times article explains the need for developing a course of action now. The technological challenge and financial challenges for creating a new energy economy require immediate investment--even if we set a 50 year goal for the end of the carbon-energy system. (NYTimes; login: opensewer; password: iswatching.)

"...a Senate panel approved a measure last week aimed at reducing obesity and improving the way people eat in the United States." (M)

A good series on the loss of civil liberties during the war on terrorism, much of which may be familiar to you, but certainly not all.

More good parenting ideas from America - feed those infants french fries and soda pop!

"Neuromarketers" - nueroscientists scanning the brain to enhance marketing - is the kind of vaguely scary thing that we in the high tech west are having to deal with.
Meanwhile, back in the jungle...
Psychological warfare of a vastly different character in the Congo.

The overweight suburban shopper; the underpaid elderly greeter; the overworked, underaged Chinese laborer; the illegal immigrant cleaning crew--all part of that smilin' face that is Wal-Mart.

An endless succession of vacated spaces, a present without color, the creation of fear, implied revelations...in Keri Mortimer's paintings, the viewer tells the story with the simple icons put forth.

I thought the government wasn't Soviet-style anymore in Moscow...

The comparison between Iraq and the Philippines may be more accurate than the one between Iraq and West Germany, but it is hardly more comforting. In fact, it is so discomfiting—it implies such a dismal forecast for America's occupation in Iraq over the next several years (for that matter, the next few decades)—that it's hard to imagine Bush would have made such a remark if he'd understood its full implications.

Meet the person who might become the world's most famous saint...

"Markets make a great servant but a bad master and a worse religion. Markets produce value, but only communities and families produce values. And a society that tries to substitute markets for politics, ethics, or faith is seriously adrift." OK -- all those in favor of eating all the food all at once, raise your paws. (M)

The US Supreme Court affirms doctors' First Amendment rights and protects their ability to speak freely with their patients.

This is common sense, but I wonder how many would consider it radical: Oregon posts reward for driving less. "PAYD is an innovative approach to insurance that rewards motorists for driving less by selling insurance on a per-mile rate instead of a fixed rate. ... Essentially, pay-as-you-drive makes buying car insurance more like buying gasoline: The less you drive, the less you pay."

(Identical) letters claiming to be from U.S. troops in Iraq and hailing the Army's accomplishments there have cropped up in newspapers across the country - although some of the troops say they either didn't sign them or were forced to by a superior. (Thanks to hit and run.)

The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington this week.

And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

Supervisors of a hospital in Abington, PA complied with the demand of a pregnant patient's husband that no black employees assist in the delivery of his child.

The skeletons of hundreds of African slaves have been returned to New York City for solemn re-burial.

Predicting the future is no problem, as long as you realize that your predictions will be wrong close to 100% of the time. (M)

Race-based social inequity in health care: "In one comprehensive study of 1.7 million patients, African Americans received major therapeutic procedures less often than whites in 37 of 77 conditions, according to the report. In contrast, minority patients underwent limb amputations in greater proportions and were given anti-psychotic medications more often."