I just found this great Citizen’s Guide to Refusing New York Subway Searches at FlexYourRights.org. They have all kinds of info about surviving encounters with law enforcement with your rights intact.
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Author: Ruby Sinreich
Stop Slick Rick
Watch this video footage of our nation’s leading elected homophobe* Senator Rick Santorum saying that states should be able to legally deny birth control to anyone for no reason. Then do what you can to help Pennsylvania Dump Santorum.
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Talkin’ ’bout BlogHerCon
I have been really excited about the idea of a BloggerCon for/about women and it’s finally happening this weekend! If course, BlogHerCon is happening 2,786 miles away, so I won’t be there in person.
When I go to good conferences, I blog them there and then so that folks who aren’t there can get an idea of what’s going on. So I have been counting on the techie nature of this conference to provide pretty close-to-live output from the event online.
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Live from Minneapolis
Today I will be virtually checking in on the International Symposium on Local E-Democracy. They are streaming live audio and video and have an open IRC chat going on. So far the video and audio are both very choppy and hard to follow. 🙁
Brian is there in person, and will be on a panel at 3:15 eastern time.
As you can imagine, I am very interested in this conference – especially as it relates to OrangePolitics and online political organizing in general.
Blogs and business, feh
I’m a little disappointed that my favorite open source blogging software is a “platinum sponsor” of this Blog Business Summit. They’re just one step behind Micro$oft who is a “diamond sponsor.”
WordPress is offering $300 off the price of registration for their users, which sounds like a good deal until you find out the whole thing costs $895!
I’m not saying people shouldn’t blog for profit if they want to, I’m just wondering what WordPress is doing hanging out with these corporate-types.
Stop Bush from stacking the Supreme Court
Roberts has a history of being a Bush partisan, arguing that Roe should be overturned, and working as a corporate lawyer to fight workers and environmentalists. And that’s just the stuff we know so far! Tell your Senators not to confirm John Roberts
RSS spam?
Today Brian and I both noticed a feed called “Cardinal phone card” in our Bloglines accounts that we did not subscribe to. In my case it was sort of merged with a legitimate subscription and had combined a real entry with their ad for phone cards! The URL was cardinal-phone-card[dot]pushline[dot]com (I don’t want to help them by linking).
Has anyone else seen this? WTF?
Failed murderer could be free in 12 years
In 2004, Mark Wade Gentry was having a fight with his girlfriend at their home near Hillsborough. “That night it escalated. He admitted he went and got his gun that was loaded. He admitted he threatened her, but he claims he didn’t intend to shoot her” says DA Jim Woodall in the Chapel Hill Herald. But Gentry did pull the phone out of the wall when she tried to call 911, and he was heard (by her 8-year-old son) to say “I’m going to kill you” several times. That doesn’t sound like an accident.
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Gangsta clowns are no joke
This Boondocks comic about gangsta clown Ronald McDonald is closer to reality than you think! Last week, I saw an amazing documentary called Rize, about a “clown dancing” movement in the ghettos of LA. It started with one guy, Tommy the Clown, who did kids parties around South Central but who also really got down.
Tommy had a whole posse of kids painting their faces and developing on his dance style in the streets as an alternative to hanging out in gangs. Eventually rival clown groups got started, each establishing their own style and holding friendly competitions in the streets. The dancing style was very powerful and innately, maybe even unconsciously, African.
Continue reading “Gangsta clowns are no joke”
Feeling PATRIOTic?
It’s not that I’m not interested in observing Bush’s attempt to replace Rove with Roberts in the headlines, but meanwhile… government is happening, Congress is strengthening the goddamn Patriot Act, we may not have any rights left to quibble over by the time we have yet another white male on the Supreme Court.
Yesterday I wrote a letter to Wonkette about this. I doubt she’s going to publish it or pay attention to my request, so I’m sharing it here with the rest of the world (er, the three people that read my blog).
Dear Wonkstress,
Not only is congress discussing the reauthorization of the Patriot Act as you noticed today (“• Administration advocates extension of Patriot Act as Congress tackles issue today”). They are in fact trying to strengthen it and make it permanent! Even Republicans hate these proposals (see http://checksbalances.org).
I know it seems dull compared to watching volleys in the match over whether Rove or Roberts gets the headlines, but this may well have more serious long-term implications than all the damage both of them can do. Plus there are so many great jokes you can make about tough-guy Republicans being more afraid of milquetoast lefties than of subway bombers.
In case you need material (unlikely) I have helped the ACLU set-up a blog where you can get very current information: http://blog.reformthepatriotact.org . Wonk on…
= Ruby