Going Backwards: U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Plans Draw Scrutiny. >180 signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty are critical of U.S. plans to refurbish and upgrade more than 6,000 deployed strategic warheads and decisions to maintain an “inactive reserve” of weapons withdrawn from deployment due to weapons reductions negotiated in disarmament treaties. [Washington Post]

Send a free fax from the

ACLU website to your Senators, in opposition to the proposed “Victims’ Rights Amendment” to the Constitution.

This week’s Senate vote is expected to be

close as proponents have already lined up more than 40 co-sponsors. More than 20 senators still have not

indicated how they will vote on the proposed amendment.

Why on earth oppose victims’ rights?? In my opinion, as that of the ACLU, although victims should be heard and protected in

the criminal justice system, this proposed amendment would jeopardize the

principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trail.

Amending the Constitution to allow victims to voice their opinions at every

step of a prosecution could undermine the foundation of our justice system

and the ability of the courts to operate in an impartial and fair manner.

In addition to Wendy Kaminer and other leading columnists, the amendment

has drawn the opposition of domestic violence groups and other victims

advocates, hundreds of law school professors, editorial boards from across

the country and more than 8,000 civil liberties activists.

Drugging Elián: Was there a tranquilizer behind the blissful picture of Elian reunited with his father? Will Elian fall prey to the Soviet-style machinations of Cuban psychiatrists and be “brainwashed” into the desireability of Cuban life? Are U.S. psychiatrists their moral equivalents, having already started the process? [Slate] And here’s more discussion of the sensationalized photographs, by William Saletan.

Swap meat: Salon profiles

David Schisgall’s “The

Lifestyle: Group Sex in the Suburbs,” a new documentary that

“explores the huge, secret, all-American world of suburban

swingers and finds that it does not resemble a ’70s porn movie

in the least.”

In-Eliánable Rights: Slate reviews the European press’ reactions to the Elian affair. There seems to be a remarkable consistency behind sentiments like this:

In the Observer, Hugh O’Shaughnessy…described Cuban-American activists as “one

of the most unattractive group of voters on the US electoral

roll short of the Ku Klux Klan” and said that by teaming up

with “nationalist extremists such as Senator Jesse Helms in

Congress, the exiles have screamed and shouted and

flourished their voting power so that most US politicians have

quailed at the thought of crossing them….I certainly would not

want the six-year-old Elian—or indeed any of my own

grandchildren—to be constrained to grow up amid the

sickening lawlessness of South Florida.”

Death notice pinned on door: Coroner’s policy distresses mother. ‘But as Mary Sprague stood near her front door April 5, she wondered the same thing she

wonders now: “Is this how they do it? Is this how they tell you that your only son is dead?”‘ [Sacramento Bee

Radio station’s egg promotion poses a taxing problem at post offices. _It was a raw sort of idea whose time was not now ‘Philadelphia radio station managers and personalities have egg on their faces after promoting a contest that

asked listeners to mail raw eggs to the station in a letter-size envelope…. the first person to

successfully mail an unblemished and properly packaged egg in a No. 10 envelope was to win $1,000.’