Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• In the case of Berghuis v. Thompkins, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that persons arrested by the police no longer have a right to remain silent. The Court says instead that arrested persons may order the police to end an interrogation, but the Supreme Court in the 2003 case of Chavez v. Martinez declared that people have no right to stop an interrogation.
• The U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arizona law that had granted candidates who agree to campaign limits matching funds if their opponents spend over the limit.
• A lawyer representing Deepwater Horizon workers says that oil rig manager Jimmy Harrell was overheard telling someone that he predicted the rig explosion would happen.
• A British Petroleum worker says that the company is censoring information about the scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
• A Massey Energy coal miner was fired for speaking to the press about poor safety conditions at the Big Branch mine in West Virginia where an explosion killed 29 workers in April.
• Michelle Austin, former chief of staff of Canadian Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, reports that Canada is promoting a version of the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act to appease U.S. pressure.
• The group Physicians for Human Rights has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services against the Central Intelligence Agency regarding allegations of psychological experiments against torture victims.
• A Texas jury fined Advanced Call Center Technologies, a debt collector, $1.5 million in punitive damages for harassing a debtor.
• In 1997, the Trinity Baptist church in Concord, New Hampshire forced a teenage rape victim to apologise to the congregation, threatened her with death, and forced her to move out of the state.
• Jacob Weisberg of Slate sees the U.S. Republican party as split between libertarian federalists and the Christian right wing, with the libertarians ascendant.
• Protesters for Stop Islamization of America, the project of Jihad Watch and Atlas Shrugged, harassed two Coptic Christians who attempted to join SIOA's protest against the building of the Cordoba House mosque in New York. The two Christians had to be rescued by police.
• Carnegie Mellon is opening a behavioural research cafe in Pittsburgh where the service will apparently include messing with customers' heads to see how people work. This brings to mind the old stories of the wisdom of bartenders and taxi drivers.