Something to be thankful for

I'm glad I don't look at porn or use p2p applications, and always use the 'safe search' setting on google search because I would hate to end up in the same situation as the guy in CA who might do from 3.5-20 years in prison for some images buried "deep within the hard drive".

In other news, Republicans are mad at Al Franken since people have 'attacked' the ones who voted no on his legislation to mandate court access to federal contractor employees who are sexual assault victims. My favorite quote from the article:

“I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. “I think hopefully he’ll settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that’s important to Minnesota.”

Al Franken, forced arbitration

Al Franken got his first amendment passed! It requires federal contractors to allow employess to bring sexual assault complaints to court rather than force arbitration. Forced or mandatory arbitration has become ubiquitous in both consumer contracts and employment contracts. Even small business entrepreneurs are finding themselves cornered and ripped off by it. Mandatory arbitration is antithetical to any precept of fairness or justice. The courts have been starting to challenge forced arbitration requirements and perhaps capital hill will continue doing so as well.

After 7 months, the votes are tallied

Today the MN Supreme Court ruled that Al Franken won the senate election there. I can't help but wonder what might have happened if Bush v Gore were allowed even half this much scrutiny. The thing I find most ironic about the ordeal is that the day after the election, when the small difference in vote counts mandated a recount by state law, Coleman was calling on Franken to move on and concede. Then he proceeded to drag the process out 7 months to the MN supreme court.

Al Franken Wins

The MN canvassing board certified it today.