HerringLaw: Civil Rights & Discrimination Law in Iowa

Headed to Denver

Have credentials for the Obama speech Thursday night and will take photos and 'blog' about it at my separate personal blog, Serendipity.

Beloit College & Mindset List

I am a proud graduate of Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. For years it has had a "Mindset" list which is a list of findings about the newest entering class:

This month, almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace. However, the mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.

You can go back to 2002 if you want to check earlier years.

Online Storage Sites

I am doing some research into online sites that will act as storage for whatever you want, such as images, documents etc. Each has different features but I did find some helpful information in two articles, one on ExtremeTech and a chart on Top Ten Reviews. There are no doubt more and ones with other features, but this is a start if you're curious.

Great Tip ref Spotlight

I found an excellent article on how to maximize your Spotlight searches in Leopard at UsingMac

Going to Denver for 8/28 Obama speech

and should be interesting, particularly because I worked for the Democratic Party [Convention] at its 1968 Convention in Chicago. Should be a fascinating contrast. Quite exciting. Denver lodging is full up or else extremely expensive.

Makes you sick

Detainee dies of cancer and no one in the Federal Government holding him in detention cares. New York Times.

"He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 ..., eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons. But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention ... In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement .... his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months."

Fighting Spam - updated

I'm going to start sending my spam/pfishing emails to the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] and let them add them to their database. More information is here.

The email address to use is: SPAM@UCE.GOV

I figure that if there's any way to create problems for spammers and pfishers, the federal government can do it = that's why my taxes go for.

UPDATE: This is odd, I tried to send a spam email, with headers showing [so it could be tracked, I thought] to the email address and received the following: "Couldn't send message; server says "554 Message refused."

I'll try just the regular old email forwarding and see if that works. Nope, it didn't. I'll contact Harkin & Grassley and see what gives.

Holmes on Free Speech in Schwimmer

I listen to podcasts while running/walking and heard this in an Anthony Lewis talk and thought it worth sharing:

The applicant seems to be a woman of superior character and intelligence, obviously more than ordinarily desirable as a citizen of the United States. It is agreed that she is qualified for citizenship except [for her] . . . extreme opinion in favor of pacifism and a statement that she would not bear arms to defend the Constitution. So far as the adequacy of her oath is concerned I hardly can see how that is affected by the statement, inasmuch as she is a woman over fifty years of age, and would not be allowed to bear arms if she wanted to. ... ...The notion that the applicant's optimistic anticipations would make her a worse citizen is sufficiently answered by her examination which seems to me a better argument for her admission than any that I can offer. Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought-not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. I think that we should adhere to that principle with regard to admission into, as well as to life within this country. And recurring to the opinion that bars this applicant's way, I would suggest that the Quakers have done their share to make the country what it is, that many citizens agree with the applicant's belief and that I had not supposed hitherto that we regretted our inability to expel them because they believed more than some of us do in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount

UNITED STATES V. SCHWIMMER, 279 U.S. 644 (1929)

More on Telecommuting

Can't you tell I'm researching the issue? In any event, I found another article by attorneys at Troutman Sanders [Kristina Klein & Ashley Hager] who discuss the various issues involved in working out telecommuting arrangements. This article explains why these issues present themselves; of course, whether something is an issue depends on the employer's needs and the state or federal law which may apply in a situation.

Managing Gender, Pregnancy & Family Responsibilities in the Workplace [08/01/08]

I published for download [in two formats, PDF and QuickTime] a recent seminar presentation for the EEOC training series in the Publications area of this website. [Publications]