Does something seem askew with this picture? China is criticizing the U.S. for its human rights policy.

China accused the United States on Thursday of using a double standard to judge human rights in other countries, adding to a list of nations suggesting that the government that produced the Abu Ghraib prison abuses has no business commenting on what happens elsewhere.

"No country should exclude itself from the international human rights development process or view itself as the incarnation of human rights that can reign over other countries and give orders to the others," Premier Wen Jiabao's cabinet declared, three days after the State Department criticized China in its annual human rights report.

China isn't the only country expressing its criticism of the U.S.

Human Rights First has begun a five day campaign to alert people to the dangers of the Rep. Sensenbrenner's Real ID Act which has passed the House and now moves on to the Senate.

This bill puts refugees at risk. It will:

• Make it much harder for refugees to prove that they qualify for asylum; and

• Bar a U.S. federal court from prohibiting a refugee’s deportation to the country where she fears harm while her asylum case is pending before that court.

The bill (H.R. 418) was passed with a 261-161 vote margin by the House of Representatives on February 10, 2005. Human Rights First, together with a diverse group of faith-based, human rights, and refugee assistance organizations, opposes this bill because it would harm refugees and undermine this country’s commitment to protecting those who flee from persecution.

This ought to make women uncomfortable. Kansas law enforcement officials apparently obtained a court order to obtain tissue samples taken for a pap smear from the accused BTK killer's daughter and used the samples for comparison with DNA the BTK perpetrator left at the scene of some of the crimes. Without her knowledge, of course.

The agents' strategy was to use a DNA sample from the daughter to see whether it would link her father to DNA left at BTK's crime scenes. The agents went to prosecutors in the Sedgwick County district attorney's office, and a judge in Sedgwick County issued a subpoena for the 26-year-old daughter's medical records in Kansas, a source said. It wasn't clear where in Kansas the records and the tissue sample had been held. DNA was extracted from the daughter's tissue sample, and it was processed within the week before Rader's arrest, the source said.

Federal privacy law restricts access to medical records. Among the exceptions is when law enforcement needs medical records for investigations, Wichita lawyer Chuck Millsap said. The principle is that the need to conduct an investigation outweighs a need for privacy, he said.

What kind of tissue tied to a woman's medical records could be kept on file at a lab?

Homeland Security is requiring immigrants in 8 cities who are in the process of applying for residency to wear electronic monitoring ankle bracelets 24/7.

These people have never been accused of a crime. There are 1,700 of them to date. Homeland Security says monitoring will prevent those ordered deported from running and hiding. But, a 2003 Justice Department report (pdf) blamed inadequate record keeping by immigration officials as the reason for problems deporting non-detained aliens.

And a three year pilot program has found:

....supervision -- regular phone calls from program workers, reminders about court dates, referrals to legal representatives and other such measures -- is more cost effective than detention and almost doubles the rate of compliance.

Why are Americans so apathetic about this?

Update: A blog named Outside the Beltway claims that our post is misleading because the 1,700 detained have been ordered deported. Totally false. Had the blogger bothered to read the source article linked in this post, it would have learned that, as I said, the program under which 1,700 are wearing ankle bracelets is being applied to immigrants who are applying to remain in the country--not, as he claims, those who have been ordered deported and refused to go. [They are lawfully appealing orders of deportation or denial of their applications for residency.]

Grits for Breakfast (via CrimLaw) reports on a British study and its findings that surveillance cameras do not reduce crime.

Home Office researchers who studied 14 schemes across Britain found that only one had brought a clear fall in the local crime rate. While there was strong public support for CCTV before it was installed, opinion began to shift when people realised the cameras made little difference.

But they do make a difference, because they invade our privacy. They are just another measure that fails to make us safer, only less free.

Scott at Grits for Breakfast, the blog devoted to Texas criminal (in)justice, which also won a well-deserved Koufax award this year for Best Single Issues blog, provides a breakdown and analysis of the new report released this week on profiling during Texas traffic stops.

All eyes should be on the Monday print edition of the Boulder Daily Camera. 200 professors have paid $1600.00 for a full-page ad demanding the University cease its investigation into Professor Ward Churchill's writings:

The ad says the review of the professor, expected to complete by the middle of March, should be stopped immediately. The ad says the inquiry is the result of political pressure and not based on "any prior formal complaint of specific professional or academic misconduct on his part."

The 200 faculty members' statement defends Churchill's "right to speak what he believes to be the truth" based on academic freedom rules designed to prevent faculty members from being fired for unpopular views.

by TChris

The founder of Amnesty International, one of the world's great organizations devoted to human rights, died at the age of 83.

[Peter] Benenson founded the organisation after reading an article about the arrest and imprisonment of two students in a cafe in Lisbon, Portugal who had drunk a toast to liberty.

Irene Khan, secretary general of AI, summed up Benenson's life with eloquence.

"He brought light into the darkness of prisons, the horror of torture chambers and tragedy of death camps around the world. This was a man whose conscience shone in a cruel and terrifying world, who believed in the power of ordinary people to bring about extraordinary change and, by creating Amnesty International, he gave each of us the opportunity to make a difference."

Rest in peace, Peter Benenson. You were a true champion of liberty.

The Nation has a new article, Shameless in Colorado, available free online, that follows up on the Boulder mortuary that gave fetal ashes to a Catholic Church for public burial as a lament to the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Beleagured Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill suffers another indignation at the hands of MSM (mainstream media for those of you just joining the conversation.) The Honolulu Star Bulletin yesterday quoted Churchill as saying he was not a Native American. Confronted with the audio and video of his speech, the paper has retracted its claim.

"In fact, he said the exact opposite," [Professor]Stannard said. "It's all over the place now (on the Internet). How do you put it back in a bottle? This gives strength to his argument that he is being misrepresented by the media."

.... Star-Bulletin reporter Craig Gima said he was standing at the back of the room and may have misheard Churchill....after a day-long search for a tape, and an evening spent listening, Star-Bulletin city editor Ed Lynch said the paper would be publishing a correction today. "He said, 'Lets cut to the chase on that,"' Lynch said. "We're going to have to publish a retraction."

Here's what Churchill actually said, according to today's Star Bulletin:

Governor Owens just can't stay quiet about C.U. Professor Ward Churchill. Showing his complete disregard for principles of academic freedom and the spirit of the First Amendment, he sent this letter (pdf) to a Denver citizen last week (we've blocked the name and address to protect his privacy.)

Governor Owens will be out of office in 2006. The recipient of the letter hopes he will be out of politics by then as well.

An emergency stay has been granted pending a hearing tomorrow in the Terry Schiavo "right to die" case. Her feeding tube was scheduled to be removed today.

In somewhat related news, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenge to Oregon's assisted suicide law.