Supreme Court Says Strip Searching Teen Illegal

The tragic deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson have eclipsed what might have otherwise been a very big story -- a US Supreme Court decision that strip searching a teen is illegal. THANK GOODNESS!

The Supreme Court said Thursday school officials acted illegally when they strip-searched an Arizona teenage girl looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches when they ordered Savana Redding to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear.

Redding was 13 when Safford Middle School officials in rural eastern Arizona conducted the search. They were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.

The school's search of Redding's backpack and outer clothes was permissible, the court said. But the justices said that officials went too far when they asked to search her underwear. [...]

"What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion. "We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."

Justice Souter's opinion is what a reasonable person would assume -- and then there is Clarence Thomas.

I have a wicked vision that I simply can't get out of my mind, that of Justice Thomas reading the case in hand, with his other hand firmly planted under his robe. He is such a jack-ass.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas found the search legal and said the court previously had given school officials "considerable leeway" under the Fourth Amendment in school settings.

Officials had searched the girl's backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. "It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place she thought no one would look," Thomas said.

No one except Clarence Thomas, the jerk.

Obama Cruising for Votes?

cruising Informal
a. to go about on the streets or in public areas in search of a sexual partner.
b. to make sexual overtures to; attempt to arouse the sexual interest of.

According to Maureen Dowd he is, and as an Obama supporter she should know! Right?

Dowd has made it pretty clear that she does not like Sen. Clinton, but in a recent column she pointed out that Obama has learned a lot from the Senator from New York.

Without Hillary, he never would have learned to be a good debater.

But in the same column Dowd went on to say:

Hillary has clearly raised Obama’s consciousness about the importance of courting the ladies. Touring a manufacturing plant in Allentown, Pa., Tuesday, he was flirtatious, winking and grinning at the women working there, calling one “Sweetie,” telling another she was “beautiful,” and imitating his daughters’ dance moves by twirling around.

Later, at a Scranton town hall, he went up to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore wearing a Hillary button. “What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he charmed, before promising: “I’ll give you a kiss.”

If this is true is he promoting sexual harassment? And for that matter, is Dowd?

Do either of them believe this kind of behavior will win Obama votes? Have Dowd and Obama forgotten the lessons learned from the whole Dan Quayle thing -- that women will NOT vote for someone just because Republican consultants think he is too cute for women to resist?

I will say this ... if Obama ever suggested that he would give me a kiss for my vote I'd suggest that he "kiss my ass!"

File Under: 'It's About Time" - Changes at Wal-Mart

It's about time that Wal-Mart addressed lack of health care coverage for its employees.

For much of the last decade, the retailing behemoth Wal-Mart Stores has been associated with stingy health care as much as low prices.

Across the country, politicians and labor groups derided the company’s health plans for their high expense and bare-bones coverage. Two states, California and Maryland, even passed laws demanding, in effect, that the company spend more on employee health benefits.

“We want this giant to behave itself,” one Maryland legislator, Anne Healey, said at the time.

The giant, it turns out, was listening. All the criticism was hurting its reputation and its ability to expand. So now, after spending two years seeking advice from everyone from Bill Clinton to executives at Starbucks, Wal-Mart is overhauling its health plans.

The company, according to data available for the first time, is offering better coverage to a greater number of workers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, provides insurance to 100,000 more workers than it did just three years ago — and it is now easier for many to sign up for health care at Wal-Mart than at its rival, Target, whose reputation glows in comparison.

Wal-Mart has hardly become a standard-bearer for corporate America: it still insures fewer than half its 1.4 million employees in the United States.

Better, but not good enough! How many Walton billionaires does one family need before it will begin to offer health coverage for ALL its employees?

And while we are on the subject of Wal-Mart ... what about the sex discrimination and sexual harassment claims?

Baby steps just won't cut it anymore.

ANITA HILL: setting the record straight

"... I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me."

Today's New York Times op-ed by Anita Hill is a must read!

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee ... A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.

Justice Thomas’s characterization of me is also hobbled by blatant inconsistencies. He claims, for instance, that I was a mediocre employee who had a job in the federal government only because he had “given it” to me. He ignores the reality: I was fully qualified to work in the government, having graduated from Yale Law School (his alma mater, which he calls one of the finest in the country), and passed the District of Columbia Bar exam, one of the toughest in the nation.

Clearly, it is Justice Thomas who is "a mediocre employee" In his time on the Court he has contributed virtually nothing. Of the two, the country would be much better served had Anita Hill been confirmed instead!