Blog of Rights
Kacie
Wielgus
02/05/2009
Family and Medical Leave Act

Family and Medical Leave Act: Happy Sweet 16

By Kacie Wielgus, Washington Legislative Office at 3:05pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

February 5 is always bittersweet for me. It marks the anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA). That’s the sweet part.

This amazing law allows an employee to take unpaid leave from work to care for family or take medical leave when he or she is unable to work. It also grants leave for adoption or foster care. An employee has up to 12 weeks FMLA leave in any 12-month period.

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07/14/2008

Tell Us About Your Run-In with the Watch List

By Kacie Wielgus, Washington Legislative Office at 4:12pm

More than one million names are now on the terrorist watch list. This is truly mind-boggling. Only the United States government bureaucracy could create a terrorist watch list that affects nuns, war heroes, members of Congress, and persons holding top secret security clearances

Congress spit on this five-alarm blaze by removing Nelson Mandela from the list. What is it going to take for Congress to extinguish this horrific blaze which provides no redress for millions of travelers to be removed from the list who do not have the global presence to ‘merit’ an act of Congress?

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06/18/2008

Time for Congress to Wake Up

By Kacie Wielgus, Washington Legislative Office at 5:03pm

Is Congress winking and nodding at identity thieves? It appears that way, since they have not updated the Privacy Act since 1974. A lot has changed since 1974 and the popularity of e-government has exploded. Many millions of people now pay their taxes and file forms electronically, a number which grows by the day. The ACLU believes the government has no business collecting our personal information if it cannot ensure us it will be protected from identify thieves and other prying eyes. Senators Lieberman and Collins held a hearing to address these concerns today. Let’s hope the rest of Congress wakes up and realizes that our personal information requires far greater security than it did in 1974, the year the pocket calculator was invented. They can begin by updating the Privacy Act of 1974 to require that data obtained by government agencies from commercial data brokers like Accurint, Axciom, and ChoicePoint be subject to the act.

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