buckdata – news and views for an unquiet age

Once again, a scant majority in the country’s highest court has handed down a decision on a subject the justices know too little about. They have decided what a person is. It turns out a legal filing– not a jolt of electricity in some Central Europe lab– can shock a stitched-together bundle [...]

[Read more →]

There is heated debate in Washington these days over what to do about our country’s recent unsavory dabbling in torture as an information-gathering strategy.
As with many other instances during the George W. Bush administration in which legitimate duties of government (such as statesmanship) became conflated with and ultimately displaced by punishment, pure and simple, we [...]

[Read more →]

Friends, family, and acquaintances are raising questions about whether President Obama  can accomplish  what we helped elect him to do. Will the wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will clean energy really be funded? Will Bush-era wiretap and other privacy violations be sufficiently curtailed?  Will single payer health care get endorsed or merely sidelined? Will [...]

[Read more →]

The sight of candidate Sarah Palin blinking and winking as she uttered buzzwords and previously-owned soundbites at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with Senator Joe Biden was not a reassuring one. It has set off another round of blog commentary, this time discussing what her Oct. 2 performance might foretell about a possible McCain [...]

[Read more →]

I don’t know much about Alaska, but–riot police activities in St. Paul during the GOP convention notwithstanding– I have heard that Minnesota is a progressive, child-friendly state.
And the federal government is sort of progressive, too, when it comes to protecting children. For example, it is against the Mann Act to bring a minor across state [...]

[Read more →]