AddieStan

A bad day for the Bill of Rights While yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on a patient's right to sue HMOs ( nil, natch ) got the big play on page A1 of the New York Times , it was the piece on the jump page that sent a real chill: Supreme Court Upholds State Law Requiring Citizens to Identify Themselves to Police . What next? National identity cards? Where are your papers? In her customarily thorough way, Linda Greenhouse's piece on page A12 (the A1 piece on the HMO decision was hers, as well) detailed the case of a Nevada man who had been arrested and fined under a state statute for refusing to give his name to a police officer. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy opined, "answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances." One can only imagine what a court in the next Bush Administration might find similarly "insignificant". A ...

Peace! That's the greeting of choice among the hundreds of young folks who attended this week's National Hip Hop Political Convention in Newark, New Jersey. But don't mistake them for passive peaceniks. These are highly motivated folks who are plenty pissed off--about the war, about the "prison-industrial complex", about lack of economic opportunity, about the predatory practices of street-level check-cashing outfits and credit scams. In order to participate as delegates to the convention, attendees had to have registered 50 people to vote in the November election. Delegates put together an issues agenda to which they plan to hold the presidential candidates accountable. For the first time in a long time, your aging blogger felt a glimmer of hope for the future. To find so many smart, funny, thoughtful, angry, we're-gonna-do-somethin'-aboudit kind of twentysomethings--well, it reminded one of a generation that stopped a war. Let's h...