Archives for October 2011

 Frank Housh We live a world of unparalleled scientific innovation; it’s a good thing, too, because we are wholly dependent on the scientific process to resolve the issues related to feeding the 7 billion people on the planet without destroying the earth in the process. Despite the crisis confronting us, political discourse in the United States in the last decade has seen a reactionary pullback from science and reason, as manifested in the decline of science journalism and the prideful ignorance …

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Mark Wilson  I’m writing this from Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), the San Francisco Bay Area subway system. As I write, the Oakland City Center/12th Street station is closed due to a “civil disturbance” arising out of the Occupy Oakland protest. Early Tuesday morning, Oakland police raided Occupy Oakland’s tent city in Frank Ogawa Plaza, the heart of Oakland’s city government. The protest — now a sort of meta-protest — continues, which means my train won’t stop at 12th Street station. Oakland …

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Marshall Thompson  Anonymous, one of the foremost hacktivist groups around, decided to clean up the Internet a bit last week by attacking websites and servers that either distribute or support the distribution of child porn. The loosely organized group of hackers has always had a soft spot for vulnerable groups of people and a feeling that they own the Internet, so this latest target makes sense. In the past Anonymous has grabbed headlines for hacking Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, the U.S. …

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Jeremy Kreisberg The HLS American Constitution Society was honored to be joined by Chief Judge Lippman of the New York Court of Appeals today.  Chief Judge Lippman spoke about New York’s efforts to fund civil legal services for low-income New Yorkers who are at risk of losing the essentials of life, including but not limited to housing, health care, and employment income.  He began his remarks by laying out the steep problems faced by a growing population of impoverished New Yorkers and …

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Najah Farley On October 22, 2011, the New York Times published “The Paradox of the New Elite.” In the opinion article, Alexander Stille, a professor of international journalism, discussed the paradox of the fact that as formerly oppressed groups, such as women, blacks and gays, have been accepted into the mainstream, economic inequality has increased. Stille posited that as these groups have been accepted into the mainstream, economic inequality has become more palatable, because the general …

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Jessica Jackson  When Officer Ornelas pulled over Malaika Brooks, seven months pregnant at the time, for speeding in November of 2004, neither of them had any idea that the next hour of their lives would eventually be scrutinized by half the judges of the Ninth Circuit. Ms. Brooks, who denied having sped and believed that Ornelas had clocked the car in front of her, declined to sign the speeding citation he presented to her. The situation escalated when Ornelas announced that Ms. Brooks was …

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