Two updates on some important civil liberties issues:

• The American Law Institute, a group which created much of the intellectual framework for the death penalty as used in the United States has abandonded the cause:

  ...the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."
  
  That last sentence contains some pretty dense lawyer talk, but it can be untangled. What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.

  Hat tip Feministe



• FWD/Forward provides an important perspective on the international moves towards the use of full-body scanners (aka electronic strip-search) in airports. While the civil liberties concerns for able-bodied individuals are in the media forefront, lauredhel explores the implications for individuals with various disabilities.
  
  Hat Tip Shapely Prose.