After September 11th, I had no clue how to update this page, so I decided to wait out the events and see how they played out. I can say with some irony that my earlier prediction that "politics would be interesting in the next two years" has come true in spades.
Constitutions are living documents, and they never cease changing and adapting to the times. In the last 6 months, I have seen unprecedent power arrogated to the presidency; a congress that is united in war for the first time WWII, even passing education reform as a part of the war effort. The war itself, though, goes well, and Afghanistan is currently working on building its own constitution.
We have abrogated ABM and turned Russia into an ally at the same time; turned the definition of "unlawfull combatant" under the Geneva Convention on it's head (and gotten away with it); almost scared the Canadians out of NAFTA with a timber dumping case, only to have them fight back by claiming that banning MTBE is a government taking.
Meanwhile, the fear of terror has erroded our civil liberties faster than anything since the war on drugs. Random, suspicionless searches are now common in some situations; we are seriously debating public surveilance and national ID systems. Bush's anti-terrorisim statutes are so blatantly unconstitional that I sincerely hope no real terrorist ever gets tried under one as the supreme court will have to free him on about 10 different grounds.
As I've said before, we live in interesting times.
Personal data
Petition to Eliminate Punchcards
Thanks to all those who signed my petition to eliminate punchcard voting: it went to congress in February 2001
