Rhymes with A Frito
posted in General |My elder daughter, Miss B, turned nine this month. To celebrate the occasion, we took fifteen third-graders ice skating. They were a bundle of energy that I’m still recovering from. Each one of these kids was terrific, awesome. gorgeous, smart and generous.
Watching them skate in circles (and in some cases pull themselves around by the wall), grinning like Jack in the Shining, I can only reflect on one thing; the average tenure of a Supreme Court Justice is about fifteen years. Whomever is placed on the Supreme Court this year, if they’re true to the average, will be sitting on the bench until Miss B is twenty-four and Miss K is seventeen; and their precedences and decisions will have repercussions throughout their life. It scares me that Alito would have control over my daughters’ bodies ( and other rights ) in their blooming adulthood.
This is the judge who said it was ok to strip search a ten year old girl. This is the guy who won’t state his position on RoeV Wade to his confirmation hearings.
Recently, the Bush Administration asked search engines to deliver some of their records; a random sampling of searches, essentially, so they could take a look at these searches and see how much pornography showed up in polls. Under the guise of “protecting our children,” they wanted a random sampling of searches done on the web. Nevermind that a good researcher would find out what sorts of searches kids do, and then do them themselves; the government wanted their work done for them.
The Supreme Court said this was unconstitutional, an invasion of privacy.
Only Google turned down the government. AOL, MSN, Yahoo — they all agreed and handed over their records. Google stood by their belief that the records were private. While I worry about google’s ability to combine and mine your searches, your email, your advertising links you click on, I respect that they stood up to the Justice Department.
But I can’t possibly see Alito standing with Google on this.
