As of this morning I will be on the road to visit the family in Texas (partially because I haven’t seen them in ages, partially as a maneuver to get the car back in time to pick up a guest from Atlanta), so GT and The Daily Linkroll may be sporadic for a little while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In the meantime, have a ball reading T. Phoebe Reilly’s review and critique of Ghost World from Bitch. I recently saw the film and enjoyed it a great deal; the review does a pretty good job of summing up both what I liked and what worried me throughout.

Hello, I’m here to defend your freedoms!

It vill not be difficult, mein Führer… excuse me… Mr. President.

Today, Mr. Padilla was being held in a high security jail at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina. Bush administration officials said Mr. Padilla had been declared an enemy combatant, a status that makes it easier for the government to detain him without having to bring a criminal charge that would force it disclose sensitive intelligence sources.

There was also some question as to whether there was enough evidence, absent information gathered from intelligence sources, to bring a traditional criminal prosecution that could be won in court. That meant, officials said, that the best and perhaps only realistic alternative was to turn him over to military custody in which he could be held indefinitely.

When I heard the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense cooperated effectively to place an American citizen under indefinite detention without charges in complete violation of the Constitution, I felt much safer from those who hate our freedom. God Bless America.

For further reading:

• Ex parte Merryman decision (1861), under which Executive suspension of habeas corpus during wartime is unconstitutional
• Tom Tomorrow on the convenient timing of the announcement of this month-old arrest
• GT 2001/10/01: Biff’s Back, for a commentary on civil liberties in this time of crisis
• GT 2001/09/17: Fears of Domestic Fascism

The anti-choice movement has been working for years to spread disinformation and harassing counseling on abortion through deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which pose as women’s health clinics. In reality, CPCs generally offer only pregnancy tests and use the results to harass and intimidate women with unplanned pregnancies. Some even serve as commercial adoption brokers, directly profiteering from the anti-choice propaganda that they peddle.

In their latest move, CPCs have begun to move online. A Google search for "abortion" returns paid AdWords for online websites which either are directly connected with CPCs, such as ChooseBirth.com, and front projects for CPCs, such as StandUpGirl.com (where you can hear carefully selected and edited testimonials, get phone numbers for national CPC hotlines, and Take a glimpse into the cool world within the womb via 3-D ultrasound and color e-scopy video.

Google’s AdWords and other new web publicity tools are something that we in the pro-choice movement have to be aware of. The antis are already exploiting them to get their agitprop out to women and girls looking for help. We had better start talking about what we can do to better provide and disseminate pro-choice information against the tide of CPCs and their anti-choice supporters.

OK, as promised, here’s the report from the past few days of cross-state rabble-rousing. The big event was a protest at the DEA offices in Montgomery, as part of a national day of direct action at about 60 DEA offices across the country, fighting back against the federal government’s nation-wide crackdown against medical marijuana dispensaries.

We drove up to Birmingham on Monday night to petition at the primary election polling places to get Dr. Jimmy Blake on the ballot as an independent candidate for Jefferson County Commission in the November general election. The sun was beating down on us all day, and the breeze couldn’t bother itself to blow for more than about five minutes. Nevertheless, the pay was good, and Vestavia Hills was a hopping place for getting signatures. One poll worker said she’d sign the petition because she supported Jimmy Blake, but she didn’t think we should be outside a primary polling place to petition. Well, OK, I thought, and I don’t think you all should be using state funds to subsidize the internal party business of the two major parties. I’d be glad to stop petitioning out front of primary polling places if Demopublicans actually had to go through the same shit to get on the ballot that independents do. But I held my tongue. A signature is a signature.

On Wednesday morning we drove down to Tuscaloosa and began to plan the big event for Thursday 6/6.

Thursday we met Floyd Shackleford in Wetumpka The Montgomery TV press had arrived thanks to the efforts of the media collective assisting ASA, and we got a chance for some great film of Floyd delivering our Cease & Desist order from 73% of the American people to the DEA. We held a banner (DEA: Stop Arresting Patients) and distributed the fake WANTED posters I put together for the event, while Floyd and I talked to the interviewers.

We had prepared Burma-Shave signs which we hoped to hold by the side of the road for passing motorists to see, but we arrived a bit late and all we had time to do was deliver the Cease & Desist order and talk to the press. We had also run off lots of copies of flyers to hand out to passing pedestrians, but the DEA building was off in a office building ghetto a bit off the main streets, so there was no foot traffic for handing out our flyers. I was a bit disappointed that it turned out to be more of a press conference than an actual demonstration. Nevertheless, the newsmedia coverage was a lot more sympathetic than I thought it would be, and it came together pretty well for something we had thrown together in less than a week of active planning. The day was beautiful, the drive home peaceful, and the remainder of the day restful.

Take action! Thanks to the publicity from participating in the national event, we are quickly gaining contacts around the state for future actions toward taking the high ground in the drug war. If you are in Alabama and would like to join the network we are developing of activists who are fighting to end the federal government’s assaults on states’ rights and compassionate care, get in touch and ask me to add you to the contact list.

I have returned from three days trekking around the state–petitioning for an independent candidate in Birmingham, helping the UA Libertarians with a Operation: Politically Homeless in Tuscaloosa, and putting on a protest / press event at the DEA office in Montgomery. More on these events coming up soon.

In the meantime, however, check this out: the folks at The Weblog Review have been kind enough to review Geekery Today, and I received a 4 out of 5. According to my all-too-kind reviewer,

I learned a lot at Geekery Today, and with the amount of information available at this weblog, I could certainly see it turning into a magazine and hitting newstands everywhere.

Add some brain food to your daily dose of surfing and check this site out

Geeze, I think I’m going to blush.