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Showing posts from June 22, 2004
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