I haven’t written much here about my passion for using Twitter with the Track feature, mostly because we talk about it on NewsGang Live all the time.

Track opens the conversation in real time on important topics, from the earthquake in China, to the election, to the recent iPhone release. It permits discovery of new voices with fresh thoughts and releases us from the echo chamber.

For about six weeks, Twitter has disabled their track feature, leaving us to use Summize for tracking important topics. It works reasonably well, but as a standalone site couldn’t be integrated into much other than a cobbled together GTalk application called Twitterspy.

With the acquisition of Summize by Twitter, I hope it can be integrated into the API, and the gateway to IM services opened again with Track enabled. That would be the logical next step — let’s see if they go there. At the very least, they should be able to integrate it into the API so that Twhirl and other standalone applications can access it.

There is an online petition set up for Julie Amero, appealing to the state and local prosecutors to withdraw all charges against her and end the nightmare that has been the last 3 1/2 years of her life. Click here to sign it.

Even though it’s been 13 months since Judge Strackbein set aside the verdict against her, it’s not enough. She should be completely exonerated of the charges, and the only way for that to happen is for the prosecutors to formally drop all charges against her. If they don’t go on record with this, Julie will suffer the way she did earlier this year, when she was fired by her employer after someone left a copy of Rick Green’s New Year’s editorial on her supervisor’s desk, and others pressured her employer to fire the woman who “showed porn to kids”.

This is the stigma she lives with, despite concrete, irrefutable evidence that she was the victim of sloppy network maintenance and multiple malware infestations. Please, sign the petition, and tell these prosecutors the time has come to give Julie Amero the justice she deserves.

It’s been a full year since I’ve written any updates about Julie Amero. Actually, more than a full year. This is because I and many others, including her legal and forensic team, have been waiting to see whether the charges would be dropped after the judge set aside the verdict and ordered a new trial.

Sometimes netroots activism can create a negative environment for the ones with power to do the right thing. Because the goal is for Julie Amero to be free of this millstone around her neck, I’ve fallen silent and waited.

And waited.

I’m still waiting. It has been 13 months since Julie’s verdict was set aside. There is no doubt whatsoever that Julie Amero is as innocent as Michael Fiola was. There is no doubt that the viruses, trojans and malware that were on the computer in the classroom where she was substituting that day were the cause of the popup pornography displayed on that computer.

There is no question that a pregnant substitute teacher who loved kids was absolutely not sitting back in a classroom surfing pornography.

Even the judge agreed that there also was no question that the evidence presented in court was so flawed that Julie Amero received an unfair trial. The judge was so convinced that she set aside a jury verdict, something that rarely occurs in our justice system. Kudos to Judge Strackbein for her wisdom.

Why isn’t Julie free? She isn’t free because prosecutors have not made a decision on whether to retry her or drop all charges. Rick Green of the Hartford Courant tried to get status updates, only to be met with a solid brick wall.

I tried to find out what plans the state has for this poor woman, who was charged, arrested and convicted on false information, shoddy police work and an unwillingness by anyone — from Norwich school officials to state prosecutors — to admit that they had made a mistake.

Michael Regan, state’s attorney for the New London district, reminded me that there is a backlog of serious criminal cases in southeastern Connecticut. The Amero case “is not a high priority for us. We have other cases down here that are much more important.”

Well, maybe it’s not a high priority for Michael Regan, but it sure as hell is for Julie Amero. Since Judge Strackbein’s decision, Julie has lost a job, been hospitalized for stress, and let’s not forget that she lost her baby during the trial, too.

She was arrested 3 1/2 years ago. She was finally tried in January, 2007. That verdict was set aside because of “erroneous testimony” and “false information”.

Yet, her name still appears on the active trial list, so for now, Julie Amero is facing a new trial on charges that should not have been brought in the first place.

I’ll just end with this quote from today’s editorial from the Hartford Courant:

By burying her case in paperwork, delaying decisions and denying her justice, prosecutors are treating Ms. Amero almost as if she were a Guantanamo detainee. It’s past time to end the agony.

Even Guantanamo detainees are finally getting their day in court, or being freed after the court has determined they’ve been unlawfully detained. When will Julie’s prosecutor decide that she, too, deserves liberty and justice? She is an American citizen, an INNOCENT American citizen, who lives her life each day wondering when she is included in the “ALL” that ends our Pledge of Allegiance.

…with liberty, and justice for all.

Rest in peace, George Carlin. We paid tribute today on Newsgang Live in the most fitting way we could imagine.

Listen .

It teaches sportsmanship? Not so much.

Of course, parents set the precedent for this stuff, pundits and politicians reinforce it (there’s all sorts of ways to deliver a sucker punch), so I’m cynically unsurprised when kids do it. Just sad, is all.

According to Liz, Wendy Portillo has been reassigned. She also has a great post up with much more constructive suggestions to voice your opinion and protest than my rant does.

You can also find a listing of posts at Whitterer on Autism in support of Alex and his family.

I’m still at a loss to understand how any right-thinking teacher could have not only allowed, but engineered this.

Update: 7:19PM From the comments, you can find a more complete list of bloggers here, and you can sign a petition here to request this teacher’s termination.

Lori Drew has been indicted on one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers for her role in Megan Meier’s suicide.

Wow, after spending most of my adult life criticizing the Los Angeles District Attorney, I am now applauding with hands, feet, voice and everything else that makes noise. While these charges are peripheral to the outcome of her actions, they still send a clear message to anyone who would brutalize another, especially a CHILD, online.

Kudos, and I’ll be watching for the trial.

Technorati Tags: Lori Drew, MySpace, suicide, Megan Meier