Politics USA: Politics, the Government, etc.

While yes, rather silly I can see the point.

There are many sexual encounters that are one night stands and many times neither party is prepared to be protected, which is the truth regardless of your views on the matter. By making men carry condoms at all times, then they are at least putting into place a system where theoretically there should be practically no un safe sexual acts practiced. Will this work and will people follow it? That's yet to be seen and I do tend to be rather skeptical.

I think a better sexual education (without focusing on abstinence only) is probably a better way to go. But it would be interesting to see how this played out.
the thing with abstainence education, especially in the US, is that it's more scare tactics rather than education. what do you think about Fr. Velasqeuz's analogy that this is just like selling guns to everyone in the community to deter crimes?
 
the thing with abstainence education, especially in the US, is that it's more scare tactics rather than education. what do you think about Fr. Velasqeuz's analogy that this is just like selling guns to everyone in the community to deter crimes?


Trust me, as someone who was only taught abstainence in my health classes throughout my secondary education, I know exactly how it is taught. By just teaching abstainence you aren't giving students a proper education on ways to protect themselves, when it is well known that teenagers have sex.

I don't think that analogy is comparable in this situation. Having every male over 14 carry a condom isn't potentially harmful or unsafe, in my eyes. Giving everyone and their brother a gun is.
 
Trust me, as someone who was only taught abstainence in my health classes throughout my secondary education, I know exactly how it is taught. By just teaching abstainence you aren't giving students a proper education on ways to protect themselves, when it is well known that teenagers have sex.

I don't think that analogy is comparable in this situation. Having every male over 14 carry a condom isn't potentially harmful or unsafe, in my eyes. Giving everyone and their brother a gun is.
i wasnt disagreeing with you on the abstainence thing. i was just elaborating.

i think we need more info about the availability of condoms in this Colombian town. is it something that everyone can afford? will they be handed out for free if this law passes? will it go so far as to encourage more sexual activity among teenagers now that they know they are guaranteed condoms? the more i think about it, the more i realize we need more background info.
 
the thing with abstainence education, especially in the US, is that it's more scare tactics rather than education. what do you think about Fr. Velasqeuz's analogy that this is just like selling guns to everyone in the community to deter crimes?

I think it's a silly analogy. Guns and condoms aren't QUITE the same.

I agree with you about abstinance only education - scare tactics indeed. And it doesn't work.
 
i think we need more info about the availability of condoms in this Colombian town. is it something that everyone can afford? will they be handed out for free if this law passes? will it go so far as to encourage more sexual activity among teenagers now that they know they are guaranteed condoms? the more i think about it, the more i realize we need more background info.


We definitely need more info. I would imagine (and this is just me) that Colombia would have to supply condoms to these men for free. I don't see how you could force these people to buy them. I also think it would be important to know the percentage of teenagers who are having sex. If it's a significantly small number (which I do doubt) then maybe the starting age should be increased. But if a large number of 14 year olds are sexually active then I could see where this would be potentially beneficial.

As of now they haven't formally proposed what they plan on doing, so we'll just have to wait and see.
 
No it doesn't. People need to realize that all you can really do is provide protection.
i have to disagree a bit because by providing protection, you are polarizing it towards the end of the spectrum saying that everyone should have sex while abstainence only education promotes nobody should be having sex outside of wedlock. i still have to say that sex ed with both protection and abstainence as options is the best way to go. this way, people are informed when making decisions.
 
If you have not heard the president is being parnoid again...he wants to cut down on kiddy porn which i have no proble with i think its a good idea but how are u gonna check if ppl are looken at kiddy porn. you got to look at what everyone is looken at. That to me is wrong I know it has a great point behind it but really if you look up anything illegal they can bust you for it. Personally I don't care because I don't look up anything wrong. I don't even look at porn sites so I have nothing to hide but it still wrong. But i don't know if the gov't knows about proxys its a way to get to anysite without someone able to tell what you are looken at. hmmm that goes against what the gov't want doesn't it.

well since i like you guys i will supply u with a proxy.

www.ghostclick.com/proxy.cgi

type this and i'm pretty sure the gov't won't know about it! enjoy only use it for something legal!

Mel
 
i don't know about any sites that block government monitoring, but seeing as how this topic was about the government and the internet, i thought it was appropriate to place this article in this thread:

In Case About Google's Secrets, Yours Are Safe
By ADAM LIPTAK

The Justice Department went to court last week to try to force Google, by far the world's largest Internet search engine, to turn over an entire week's worth of searches. The move, which Google is fighting, has alarmed its users, enraged privacy advocates, changed some people's Internet search habits and set off a debate about how much privacy one can expect on the Web.

But the case itself, according to people involved in it and scholars who are following it, has almost nothing to do with privacy. It will turn, instead, on serious but relatively routine questions about trade secrets and civil procedure.

The privacy debate prompted by the case may thus be an instance of the right answer to the wrong question. As recently demonstrated by disclosures of surveillance by the National Security Agency and secret inquiries under the USA Patriot Act, the government is aggressively collecting information to combat terror. And even in ordinary criminal prosecutions and in civil lawsuits, Internet companies including Google routinely turn over authentically private information in response to focused warrants and subpoenas from prosecutors and litigants.

But "this particular subpoena does not raise serious privacy issues," said Timothy Wu, a law professor at Columbia. "These records are completely disconnected. They're just strings of words."

In its only extended discussion of its reasons for fighting the subpoena, a Google lawyer told the Justice Department in October that complying would be bad for business. "Google objects," the lawyer, Ashok Ramani, wrote, "because to comply with the request could endanger its crown-jewel trade secrets."

Mr. Ramani's five-page letter mentioned privacy only once, at the bottom of the fourth page, and then primarily in the context of perception rather than reality.

"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services," he wrote. "This is not a perception that Google can accept."

Even Google's allies are shying away from legal arguments based on privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, said it planned to file papers supporting Google. But not on privacy grounds. "We will probably not be making that argument," said Aden J. Fine, a lawyer with the civil liberties union.

The issues raised by the new subpoena, while substantial, are fairly technical, according to Professor Wu. "The legal point here is what is the relevancy standard for subpoenas?" he said. "That is interesting to procedure scholars but to no one else."

Other Internet search engine companies, including Yahoo, America Online and MSN, have complied with the same Justice Department subpoena, which also sought a random sample of a million Web addresses. The companies all said there were no privacy issues involved.

A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, agreed. "We specifically stated in our requests," he said, "that we did not want the names, or any other information, regarding the users of Google."

None of this is to say that subpoenas for search records linked to individuals are inconceivable. Google maintains information that could be used that way, and a subpoena could ask for it. But the recent subpoena does not.

The problem with the subpoena, Mr. Fine said, is more general. "This is another instance of government overreaching," he said.

The government says it needs Google's information to defend a challenge from the civil liberties union to a 1998 law, the Child Online Protection Act, which makes it a crime to make "material that is harmful to minors" commercially available on the Web. The law was enjoined by a federal court in Philadelphia before it became effective, and it has never been enforced.

In 2004, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the injunction, ruling that filtering devices may work as well or better than criminal prosecutions in achieving the law's aims of keeping some offensive materials away from children, and it sent the case back for a trial to explore that question.

At a trial scheduled to start in October, the government will try to prove that filters are ineffective. Philip B. Stark, an expert retained by the government and a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a court filing that the Web addresses and search terms sought from Google and other Internet companies would help him "to measure the effectiveness of content filters."

The government apparently wants to show that real-world searches will pull up offensive materials that filters will not catch. Why it needs Google to do that is unclear, and Professor Stark declined a request for an interview, citing the pending litigation.

Google has not yet filed a response in court, and it has not discussed the case publicly beyond a brief statement citing government overreaching. Its fullest explanation of its position was in Mr. Ramani's letter in October.

Google objected, Mr. Ramani said, because the fit between what the government seeks and what it seeks to prove is poor. He also said that collecting and providing the information was burdensome and that the government could find it elsewhere.

Mr. Ramani did say that "one could envision scenarios" where Internet searches alone could reveal private information, but he provided no examples. But Google's main argument was that its "highly proprietary" trade secrets could be jeopardized.

Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group that has frequently been critical of Google, said the trade-secrets argument was a serious one.

In other contexts, Google and other Internet companies say they are serious about protecting privacy. But their privacy policies acknowledge that they will comply with valid requests from the government and private litigants. Google's policy, for instance, says it may share users' personal information if it has "a good faith belief" that disclosure "is reasonably necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable government request." Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, said in an interview that the company "complies with valid legal process."

According to a 2004 decision of a federal court in Virginia, America Online alone responds to about 1,000 criminal warrants each month. AOL, Google and other Internet companies also receive subpoenas in divorce, libel, fraud and other types of civil cases. With limited exceptions, they are required by law to comply.

Ms. Wong said Google tried to notify users so they could object in court before the company turned over information about them. But the law forbids such notification in some criminal cases.

Even notification can be small comfort. It means a user must quickly and often at considerable expense find a lawyer and try to persuade a court to quash the subpoena. But the law often offers very limited protection for personal information held by third parties.

That approach no longer makes sense, said Daniel J. Solove, a law professor at George Washington University. "In the information age," he said, "so much of our information is in the hands of third parties."

Mr. Rotenberg said Internet search records, if collected and linked to individuals, could give rise to a particularly profound invasion of privacy. "It's kind of the shadow of the thoughts within your head — your interests, your desires, your hobbies, your fears," he said.

The situation is more complicated outside the United States. Internet companies have complied with local laws, as they must to do business abroad. Yahoo, for instance, provided information that helped China send a journalist there to prison for 10 years on charges of leaking state secrets to a foreign Web site.

Still, the current subpoena to Google, legal experts said, has given rise to an important debate, whether the facts of the case are apt or not.

"It allows us to have a national dialogue about whether current privacy protections are adequate," said Susan P. Crawford, a specialist in Internet law at the Cardozo Law School. Even if the Justice Department is not seeking private information now, she said, "the next subpoena could ask for that kind of data."

taken from The New York Times
 
Pharmacists Sue Over Birth Control Policy

Sat Jan 28, 7:07 AM ET

Four pharmacists who refused to sign a pledge promising to dispense the morning-after birth-control pill sued Walgreen drug stores Friday, alleging they were illegally fired.

The lawsuits accuse Walgreen Co. of violating the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. The pharmacists were being represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, a public-interest group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson.

A new state rule requires pharmacies that sell federally approved contraceptives to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control "without delay" if they have the medication in stock. The rule is being challenged in federal court.

In response to the rule, Deerfield-based Walgreen asked pharmacists to pledge in writing that they would fill prescriptions for contraceptives such as the morning-after pill. The plaintiffs were suspended indefinitely without pay when they refused to sign the pledge in November.

"It couldn't be any clearer," said ACLJ senior counsel Francis J. Manion. "In punishing these pharmacists for asserting a right protected by the Conscience Act, Walgreens broke the law."

Walgreen spokesman Michael Polzin said the company needed to ensure that its stores would comply with the new regulations regarding the dispensing of emergency contraceptives.

"We are required to follow the law. We don't have a choice in the matter," he said.
 
I think this is getting out of control...but i don't really care...i don't go on to any inapporate web sites that could get me into trouble. I however did look up the affects of crystal meth but that was for a project in school so if Bush has a problem with that all well!

Mel
 
I think this is getting out of control...but i don't really care...i don't go on to any inapporate web sites that could get me into trouble. I however did look up the affects of crystal meth but that was for a project in school so if Bush has a problem with that all well!

Mel


I think the issue here, and the issue that google is worried about isn't the fact that people who look at illegal material might be exposed. It's that there aren't any boundaries. Your information, regardless of what your looking at could potentially be given to the government. That's quite worrisome. You might not be looking at illegal material but perhaps are visiting certain political websites that could make you a target for some reason.

What google is saying basically is that the feel uncomfortable handing over information when there aren't any boundaries.
 
I think the issue here, and the issue that google is worried about isn't the fact that people who look at illegal material might be exposed. It's that there aren't any boundaries. Your information, regardless of what your looking at could potentially be given to the government. That's quite worrisome. You might not be looking at illegal material but perhaps are visiting certain political websites that could make you a target for some reason.

What google is saying basically is that the feel uncomfortable handing over information when there aren't any boundaries.
The daily show did a great segment on this last night :D
 
Should it really be called sex education, when you tell people abstinence is a good thing? People have the right to have a sex life, I don't see why abstinence should be a solution. The people who teach have opinions, fine, but they have to forget their opinions when they teach sex.

Has the birth control pill been passed?
edit: my bad I meant bill of course!! 😆
 
The pharmacist thing has always bothered me. Their job is to provide prescriptions to people who need it based on their doctor's reccomendations. It is absolutely none of their business to analyze why a woman needs birth control or the morning after pill. They supply men with Viagra, yet don't seem to have a problem with that (and we all know what Viagra is for).

If we allow this to go on, then where do we draw the line? Scientologists don't believe in anti-depressants. Would they be allowed to not fill prescriptions for such medications based on their beliefs? That would be absolutely ridiculous.

Would people put up with doctor's refusing to preform services because of their religious beliefs? I cannot imagine people putting up with a doctor refusing to let a woman get her "tubes tied" because that's a means of birth control.

You become a pharmacist knowing that you're going to have to fill prescriptions for all kinds of medications including birth control. If you seriously have a problem with that, then maybe you need to rethink your profession.
 
I think the issue here, and the issue that google is worried about isn't the fact that people who look at illegal material might be exposed. It's that there aren't any boundaries. Your information, regardless of what your looking at could potentially be given to the government. That's quite worrisome. You might not be looking at illegal material but perhaps are visiting certain political websites that could make you a target for some reason.

What google is saying basically is that the feel uncomfortable handing over information when there aren't any boundaries.
exactly.. i'm using a proxy for life.. its slow connection doesnt help but still, it works ;)
 
The government doesn't need to see what google searches are done by going through google. They can go to ISP's to see a complete history of all websites visited.


Now, implying that the government will pursecute those who visit websites which support parties who are not in power is funny. It makes me laugh.
 
Now, implying that the government will pursecute those who visit websites which support parties who are not in power is funny. It makes me laugh.

Last month it was confirmed that the FBI and the Pentagon had files on individuals who had taken part in various peace protests or were involved in different anti-war demonstrations/groups. It is plausible that you could be added to this file by signing up for protests on the web or visiting such websites. I don't want a file made about me just because I've participated in some anti-war conferences and marches around my campus, and visit anti-war websites.

But I am so happy that I made you laugh. :smiley:
 
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