Catholic clergy, obsessed about gay rights, again shoots itself in the foot.

I've known Charlie Robin for many years, so I was deeply saddened to hear that the Catholic Church retaliated against Charlie's partner, Al Fischer immediately after the pair announced that they were traveling to New York this week to get married. Al has done exemplary work as a music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School, a St. Louis grade school. For many years, Al and Charlie have been out in the open as a committed gay couple. When they recently announced that they were getting married, though, it was too much for the St. Louis Diocese. The Administration of the St. Ann Catholic School has been, and remains, supportive of the couple, but must now hire a new music teacher for the children, even though they already had a perfectly good music teacher. I was raised Catholic and I know a huge number of Catholics who are completely in support of gays getting married. The upper clergy are another matter, though. I'm not really angry about Al's firing, because this is the kind of thing I expect of the Catholic Church at this point, and I'm also delighted to see how supportive the local Catholic school has been of the relationship and proposed marriage. The Clergy, on the other hand appear to be engaged in classic groupthink, combined with a willingness to elevate a personal feeling of disgust into a dominant moral principle; and this is combined with a classic reaction formation--I've heard from many sources (including many men who were in the Catholic seminary) that a significant proportion of Catholic clergy are, themselves, gay. What should Catholics do in the meantime? That's certainly not for me to say, since I don't believe in any of the miraculous claims of the Bible. Then again, from my discussions with many Catholics, neither do many Catholics. What they do tend to believe in is coming together as a community to celebrating their community in song and ritual, as well as maintaining an admirable commitment to helping others in need through on-the-ground good works. It is in this context that the Catholic clergy displays its ugly vindictiveness. Perhaps this self-destructive decision by leadership of an ever-dwindling church will become a flashpoint for reform efforts in St. Louis, or even nationally.  Decisions like the firing of Al Fischer, combined with many other salient moral lapses of the Catholic clergy, help explain why one out of every 10 people in the United States (22,725,000) is an ex-Catholic. Not that any of this will sway the Pope, whose constant vitriolic rants against gays strongly suggest to me his own frustrated gayness. I often wonder whether and when large numbers of Catholics will start buying up abandoned Churches, and start their own churches. Then again, this animosity toward gays goes well beyond the Catholic Church. Rick Santorum, one of the front runners for the GOP has indicated that, if elected, he would work hard to pass laws to un-marry the 130,000 gay married couples in the United States. Such are these times . . .

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The right of citizens to record public events

Many people have been arrested for recording public arrests, and many others have had their cameras confiscated, and that's here in American where we have the First Amendment. At Gigaom, Matthew Ingram takes a look at this problem and concludes that the freedom of the press applies to everyone, even bloggers:

University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer, who has written a research paper about the right of citizens to record public events under the First Amendment, told Reason magazine that rulings by three separate federal appeals courts have upheld that right. And one recent appeals court decision specifically referred to the fact that the ability to take photos, video and audio recordings with mobile devices has effectively made everyone a journalist — in practice, if not in name — and therefore deserving of protection.
Ingram's article cites to another well-written article, this one by Rodney Balko, titled, "The War on Cameras." Balko's article discusses the right to privacy of police. Here's an excerpt:
University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer, author of a 2010 paper in the Pennsylvania Law Review about the right to record, says such legal vagueness is a problem. Citing decisions by three federal appeals courts, Kreimer says the First Amendment includes the right to record public events. “The First Amendment doesn’t allow for unbridled discretion” by police, he says, “and it’s particularly concerned with clear rules when free speech rights are at stake. Even if there is a privacy interest here, people have to know when they’re going to be subject to prosecution.”
Here's the article by Seth Kreimer; it's titled: "Pervasive Image Capture and the First Amendment: Memory, Discourse, and the Right to Record."

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Expansion of police powers- now are you upset??

In the years since 9/11, America's police state has been expanding rapidly. The "Patriot Act" gave nominal legal approval to a vastly expanded surveillance and detention authority, but in some startling new cases, police are not even seeking legal justification for working in areas that are clearly illegal and unconstitutional. The latest abuses come courtesy of the New York Police Department. New reports indicate that the NYPD has been surveiling and profiling Jewish and Christian communities and individuals, often in areas that are far outside of NYPD's jurisdiction, including Buffalo, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. As always, the bogeyman of "terrorism" is cited as the justification for these acts. [More . . . ]

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Tainted property

If you buy a house, you have a right to know whether that house was the site of a homicide, a suicide or some other felony, right? Not in Missouri. Section 442.600 RSMo provides that sellers of such "psychologically impacted real property" need not disclose these things to new buyers. Therefore, you don't have a right to know if the husband of the woman selling you the house hanged himself in the room you are about to call your new bedroom. This same statute provides that sellers have no duty to disclose to you that someone with HIV occupied the house. It's a different story if the house was used as a meth lab (BTW, in 2011, Missouri led the nation in the number of meth labs seized). If the seller knows that his or her house was once used as a meth lab, this must be disclosed, regardless of whether those operating the meth lab were convicted of any crime. Section 442.606 RSMo.

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How to protect your electronic data at the border

Electronic Frontier Foundation has a detailed article advising you of your (lack of) rights when you enter and leave the United States (this applies to citizens and non-citizens). Here is some basic advice, but check out the article for lots of good advice regarding encryption, use of clouds, backups and other advice, much of it useful even when you are not traveling:

Border agents have a great deal of discretion to perform searches and make determinations of admissibility at the border. Keep in mind that any traveler, regardless of citizenship status or behavior, can be temporarily detained by border agents for more detailed questioning, a physical search of possessions, or a more extensive physical search. Refusal to cooperate with searches, answer questions, or turn over passwords to let agents access or decrypt data may cause lengthy questioning, seizure of devices for further examination, or, in extreme circumstance, prevent admission to the country. For this reason, it may be best to protect your data in ways that don’t require you to have awkward confrontations with border agents at all.

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