Dane County's response to the lawsuit filed by the parents of the murdered UW-Madison student, Brittany Zimmermann, is mystifying: the U.S. Constitution "does not require municipalities to rescue persons in distress."

The suit will likely get tossed, but so what?

A young woman was killed, and Dane County failed her.

Settle the suit, and help put this tragedy behind the grieving family. There may not be a constitutional right mandating that our community protects our citizens, but there is an uncontroversial public policy imperative.

Ed Treleven in the Wisconsin State Journal reports:

In a few short minutes you can watch this and easily understand how Congress today shredded the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

If you don't know how important this is, for godsakes, click the link above and watch the video below.

The bottom line is that the government, with the help of telecommunication corporations, will be able to spy on Americans accused of no crime. Your email, your cell phone messages ... and there's no oversight to know how they're using the information. Will it be used against political enemies? Who knows!

This IS NOT tinfoil hat stuff, folks. 

UPDATE: The folks who will be doing the spying aren't equipped to keep classified information classified. Great! Now the government gives a more robust assist to identity theft on all U.S. citizens! Love it!

Democrats in Congress who voted against immunity for the telecommunication companies in March, then flipped their votes this month and now do not support prosecution for illegally eavesdropping on Americans, received more money from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, than those who did not change their votes.

None of the 94 Democrats who changed their vote are from Wisconsin, thankfully - and a big shout out of support to Russ Feingold for attempts to lead a filibuster of the bill - but there are many fellow Midwesterners who did flip.

Were contributions to their coffers the reason? It looks like those who voted to give immunity received double the money from the telco PACs, than those who did not.

Here's the list, courtesy a great organization, MapLight.org.

It's been 24 hours now that gay people have been able to marry each other in California.

What's going to happen if this goes nationwide? How will we know what to do if the government doesn't tell us who we can love and who we can't?!

Maybe I should give it more time, but the unhappily married heterosexuals in my family are still unhappy and married.

The happily married heteros are still married and happy.

The divorced and single heteros are still on the hunt.

I thought gay marriage was going to have a bigger impact. It's even been described as a terrorist threat. Huh, go figure.

The comments and e-mails of right-wing readers are often revealing of the authoritarian mind and its views on government and liberty generally.

In response to the piece "Jose Padilla and America’s Descent into Fascism," one reader concludes that calling for the U.S. government’s observance of Constitutional protections of American citizens (Padilla in this instance) and recognition of the Geneva Convention's codification of human rights is to be equated with an endorsement of Padilla’s ideology (whatever that may be) and my sentiment that Padilla is some kind of freedom fighter.

"I'm really happy your 'freedom fighter' Jose Padilla is gonna rot in prison for the rest of his miserable life," writes one reader.

I have no interest in Padilla’s ideology, but an abiding interest in his rights.