A statistically improbable polymath's views on politics and culture.

 
Woohoo!

But wait a minute. CNN's claiming that only Muslims were complaining about the registration requirements? Our campus chapter of the ACLU had a letter-writing campaign; I sat at a table in the Reynolds Club for an hour trying to get passerby to sign form letters to their senators protesting the law and its enforcement*. This wasn't a Muslim or Arab issue, this was an equality-before-the-law-during-wartime issue.

Oh, wait, there's a mention of the ACLU... two-thirds of the way down. As if we didn't really do anything.

*A sidenote: During a discussion with Geoffery Stone, an expert in civil liberties during wartime, writer of the Korematsu amicus brief, etc., one of us asked about Stone's feelings about registration of aliens in general. Professor Stone here mentioned that during WWII and the Cold War, all aliens in the country who weren't permanent residents had to periodically register with the government--you just went to the post office, kind of like how U.S. citizens get their passports. This seems to me to be a far more sensible solution; terrorists can come from anywhere. And by having all aliens register, it satisfies equality-before-the-law more than the Bush plan did.
posted by Maureen at 2:02 AM