please speak clearly into the light switch
wired_27b_6: NSA Bill "Major Disaster"
What started out as Senator Specter wanting to rein in the president's program has turned on its head and is now not just a legislative ratification of the program, but an expansion of warrantless wiretapping of Americans.
It would allow the NSA to turn its vacuum cleaners on even domestic phone calls and emails of citizens.
And -- they do all of this in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion by defining all kinds of categories of surveillance to be not surveillance.
The bill is basically saying that any time you are targeting a foreigner, even if you are collecting calls to us citizens, that's not surveillance.
And anytime you are targeting nobody, but scooping up vast quantities of calls, that's not surveillance.
[...]
"Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee acted as a rubber stamp for the administration's abuse of power," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress has a right and obligation to conduct meaningful oversight on the unlawful actions of the president. But instead of investigating lawbreaking, the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to make it legal. We urge the full Senate to reject any attempts to ratify this illegal program."
Tags: big brother, doomed, security
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PS no fatties
Skinny models banned from catwalk
MADRID, Spain (Reuters) -- The world's first ban on overly thin models at a top-level fashion show in Madrid has caused outrage among modeling agencies and raised the prospect of restrictions at other venues.
Madrid's fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.
Organizers say they want to project an image of beauty and health, rather than a waif-like, or heroin chic look.
"I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer," said Gould, Elite's North America director, adding that the move could harm careers of naturally "gazelle-like" models.
The mayor of Milan, Italy, Letizia Moratti, told an Italian newspaper this week she would seek a similar ban for her city's show unless it could find a solution to "sick" looking models.
The Madrid show is using the body mass index or BMI -- based on weight and height -- to measure models. It has turned away 30 percent of women who took part in the previous event. Medics will be on hand at the September 18-22 show to check models.
