A video showing a King County Sheriff's deputy pummeling a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell was released Friday over the strenuous objections of the officer's attorney.
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Kids think Hitler was German football coach: poll - Yahoo! Canada News
Given a choice of answers, 77 percent of the children aged 9-15 recognised Hitler as leader of the Nazi party, but 13.5 percent thought he invented gravity in 1650 and seven percent thought he coached Germany's football team.
British cops arrest people just to add them to the DNA database, claims inquiry - Boing Boing
Britain's cops have the largest DNA database in the world, and it's full of innocent people who were arrested but not charged, or charged but not convicted (the EU's Court of Human Rights have ordered this practice to stop, but the cops refuse to comply with the law -- their latest dodge is to keep innocents' DNA for six years). Now an inquiry that begins today claims that police are "routinely arresting people" that they know they can't convict of any crime, simply to get their DNA into the database.
Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse. - Boing Boing
The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
'An Open Letter to Bill Maher on Vaccinations' by Michael Shermer - RichardDawkins.net
Bill, please consider the odd juxtaposition of your enthusiastic support for health care reform and government intervention into this aspect of our medical lives, with your skepticism that these same people—when it comes to vaccinations and disease prevention—suddenly lose their sense of morality along with their medical training.
Software patents: there's no "baby" in this "bathwater" - Ars Technica
Bilski v. Doll: it doesn't sound exciting, but when the US Supreme Court hears the cast later this term, patent lawyers and software engineers around the country will scrutinize it closely. It's one of the few patent cases that the justices have taken over the last decade, and it has the potential to put the smackdown on many kinds of "business method" and software patents.
After "Death Panel" Claim, Palin Now Calls For Civility
After making an extraordinary, unsupported and incendiary claim that President Obama's health care plan will result in a "death panel" that is fundamentally "evil," Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is now calling for civility in the debate on health care reform.
Britain's National Portrait Gallery has no claim against Wikipedia for posting its art
London's National Portrait Gallery reported a heist last month, accusing Derrick Coetzee of making off with over 3,000 works in the museum's collection. A volunteer contributor to the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, Mr. Coetzee downloaded images of venerable paintings from the Portrait Gallery's Web site and put copies in a Wikipedia collection of art. The museum's lawyers fired off a letter accusing Wikipedia of violating copyright and contracts; Mr. Coetzee's lawyer responded there can be no prohibition on copying works that are in the public domain.
Lawsuit: Amazon Ate My Homework
On Thursday, a Chicago-based law firm filed a suit in federal court in Seattle against Amazon on behalf of Justin D. Gawronski, a 17-year-old Michigan high school senior. The suit, which seeks class-action status, claims that when the company wirelessly deleted a copy of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from Gawronski's Kindle earlier this month, it also deleted the notes he had taken on the device for his homework.
Labor won't be shifting on gay marriage: Rudd
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said his government welcomes debate on gay marriage but won't support it.
So why debate it if they have already made up their minds that they won't support it? Waste of time.
So why debate it if they have already made up their minds that they won't support it? Waste of time.