Help! The Government is Going to Steal my Baby!
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Legal Junk
Have you ever heard of the “Mothers Act?” I first heard about this on the last No Agenda (episode #91). Apparently, it is an act that passed the House of Representatives back in 2006 and went to the Senate, although I can’t find any information on what happened to it after the fact, that was back during the 109th Congress, and we are now in the 111th. What this act accomplishes is that it requires every new mother in this country (United States, in case you forgot) would have to fill out a questionaire in order to determine if they are mentally fit to take the baby home.
Well, I have two issues with this concept. First, we already have this questionaire, it’s that form where you actually name the child. If you name your child something like ESPN instead of a normal name like Justin or Jennifer, you are unfit to be a parent. The next problem I have is, if this wonder questionaire determines that someone is unfit to be a mother, what happens next? Does the Government just take the baby away from the parents? Put them in the reliable hands of the nation’s social services system? Thats right Mrs. Thomas, you are an unfit mother and we are going to give your child to someone who operates a foster home with a dozen other children and be sentenced to a childhood of caring for the numerous cats who are treated better than the children.
The idea is that new mothers suffer from and that we need to offer education and support to these new mothers so that the American family doesn’t suffer as new life comes into the world. Here’s the thing, it was introduced by Senators Robert Menendez (D, New Jersey) and Richard Durbin (D, Illinois) as found here on Menendez’s site touting how this is such a good idea. Which brings me to my next problem with this whole thing. These two gentlemen, if you can call them gentlemen, are just that, gentlemen. They are guys! What the heck do they know about giving birth? I think we have plumbing issue here if you ask me.
What business is it of our Government to decide who would be a fit mother and who wouldn’t be? The last time I checked, our Government could pick a fit Commerce Secretary, Treasury Secretary, or even a fit Health Secretary. Anyway, here’s a run down from this site called “Dissident Voice” which is a complete outline of why this is a bad idea. We already have a perfectly good working system to weed out the bad mothers from the good.
BitTorrent Dead? Don’t Bet On It
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Legal Junk
If you don’t read Wikinews, you really should start. It’s a collaboration of news sources from around the world combined with the opinions of people from all walks of life. Because if anyone should be reporting the news, it’s people who are smart enough to edit a wiki. I came across this story there today. Apparently, the administrators of The Pirate Bay are in some hot water thanks to the courts in their homeland of Sweden. And it’s not a hot tub full of cute Scandinavian girls, it’s a year in prison and a 30 million Swedish krona or $3.5 million fine. But it was totally worth it to be able to download Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay a week before the DVD release. It wasn’t like I was going to actually buy or rent it or anything.
The RIAA and the MPAA have finally done it, they have killed The Pirate Bay. No more illegal downloading of music and movies or software or…wait, hold on, the Pirate Bay claims that they aren’t going to shut down. In fact, if you read all the news out there, they aren’t going to pay the fine and they are going to appeal the case. Of course, what else would you expect from the guys who poke fun at all of their legal threats in a public forum.
A “spokesman” for The Pirate Bay summed the entire case against them quite well when he said “…nothing will happen to The Pirate Bay, us personally, or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theatre for the media.” Remember how in the 1800s, in classrooms, when a boy misbehaved, the teacher would call them to the front of the class, pull their pants down and paddle them? That’s what companies like Warner Bros. and Columbia want to do to these guys, make an example of them.
It’s like when that poor woman from Minnesota named Jammie Thomas got sued by the RIAA for supposedly sharing 1700 music tracks on a file sharing network. She was found guilty of sharing 24 songs on Kazaa from such bands as Aerosmith and Green Day. The court ordered her to pay $9,250 per song which comes to a grand total of $222,000 worth of pain and misery. Enough to make anyone who runs Kazaa or LimeWire to poop their pants multiple times. That is, unless you are absurdly wealthy in which case, why don’t you just buy the music from iTunes?
It’s the same as the recent story about Roger Friedman, a movie reviewer, being dismissed from Fox News for downloading X-Men Origins: Wolverine and admitting to it on his online review. Heaven forbid that people actually learn that the Internet is useful for something other than text and banner ads. Of course News Corporation who owns Fox News, also owns 20th Century Fox, the same major movie studio who owns distribution rights to (you guessed it) X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It’s too bad they fired him too, according to Wikinews, the review of the movie was pretty positive, unlike the one I’ll be giving when this torrent finishes downloading.