Mildred Loving, the Rosa Parks of interracial marriage, passed away last Friday. She and her husband Richard’s Supreme Court case Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia struck down anti-miscegenation laws nationwide on June 12, 1967:
Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed… five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting […]

Update: Only one person recognized the G.W. Bush signature?

Check out this ode to Scrabulous, set to Fergie’s ‘Glamorous‘:

I’m hoping Hasbro resolves their copyright dispute with the Agarwallas sensibly. The Scrabulous developers are either copyright pirates or innovators in the mold of Napster and the movie industry, which landed on the West Coast to escape movie camera patents back east:
Edison and his partners […]

While the Military Commissions Act stripping Gitmo prisoners of the right to challenge their arrest (habeas corpus) is before the Supreme Court, it’s instructive to look at the same issue during Indira’s Emergency:
The case of Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla, popularly known as the Habeas Corpus case, came up for hearing […]

Michael Newdow is back in court again today, fighting a lonely battle for atheists, Hindus, polytheists and non-Abrahamic religions everywhere. He got the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to agree the government should not be in the religion business, only to have the Supreme Court rule he had no standing. Years later, the self-taught lawyer […]

In the newly-released Administration of Torture, ACLU attorneys Amrit Singh (scion of Manmohan) and Jameel Jaffer show that the U.S. tortures widely — not just a couple of bad apples at Abu Ghraib, but rather widespread prisoner abuse in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

… the documents reveal that senior officials endorsed the abuse of prisoners […]

The new movie Rendition is more interesting for what it is than how it runs. It’s the first fictional film about the U.S. kidnapping-and-torture program, which began under Clinton but was expanded massively under Bush. It’s the first mainstream movie I’ve seen which gives Arabs and Arabic large amounts of humanizing screen time (the protagonist […]

A Guantánamo JAG bonded with an Indian-American civil rights lawyer who won a landmark Supreme Court case for detainee rights. A few months later, Matt Díaz, who found jailing people indefinitely without trial to be deeply immoral, mailed Gitanjali Gutiérrez’ organization the names of everyone held at the base. But the civil rights […]

Here’s yet another story of an abritrary U.S. visa denial and deportation. Nalini Ghuman, a Mills College music professor who studied at Berkeley and Oxford, has a Sikh Indian father and a white British mother. She was detained at SFO and turned back to London last year on grounds which her British MP can only […]

Because some terrorists use the Net, the Bombay government wants to install keyloggers at all Internet cafés (via India Uncut). This brilliant idea won’t be protested much, because few Mumbaikars are regular Net users.
I fully support the government’s plan to cc: your email, banking and late-night wankery directly to the servers of the valiant Maharashtran […]

Ever since the success of The Devil Wears Prada, publishers have been tripping over themselves to put out chick lit tell-alls. This weekend, the Nanny Diaries movie takes the roman à clef to the world of Upper East Side au pairs.
Saira Rao has done the same thing with federal clerkships in her novel Chambermaid. Rao […]

Lawyers in the subcontinent are no shrinking violets. In Lahore, lawyers protesting Musharraf’s politically-motivated sacking of Pakistan’s chief justice were roughed up by riot police:

Geo TV and its arch rival Aaj TV… went… off the air for several hours after they declined the instructions from the [Pakistani government] to stop coverage of the bloody […]

Here’s an account by a friend of Bombay gangster taporis hanging out in the Caribbean:
Went to a sketchy Indian restaurant in the Caribbean. It looked like someone’s shoddy living room. The cheapest plates. Run by some southies, but full of Bombaywallahs. Clearly the underworld, they were speaking Bombay gutter and discussing importing hooky DVDs. Lots […]

Crazy Indian uncle in Mass. sues friend for introducing his son to an ugly bride. Writes own complaint (thanks, Anu). Hilarity ensues! We fisk the actual complaint below.

If you’re gonna hand-carry your lady caine to the United Arab Emirates — and really, who doesn’t these days — make sure you’re friends with Benazir Bhutto and Lionel Richie. Like David Hasselhoff, I hear they’re big in Dubai.
… the release of [an American] music producer from a Dubai jail this week, quick on […]

You’ll be happy to know that PETA has gone to bat so that animals can swing their batons. They’re making sure Indian zoo animals get laid at least once a year:
The Supreme Court, on a petition filed by NGO People for Ethical Treatment to Animals, have sought responses from various authorities on why over 500 […]