From the Social Science Research Council comes an infographic demonstrating why enlarging the House of Representatives might be desirable:
Category Archives: Law
This $#!+ Just Got Real! – Roswell Flight Test Crew
Everything is a crime:
It’s hard to know where to even begin with this proposal. I’ll just pluck some of the low-hanging fruit to get the ball rolling.
The bill defines a drone as a “an unmanned flying machine that is capable of [among other things] capturing images of objects or people on the ground.” I’d argue that, by this definition, all but the very smallest and lightest indoor RC aircraft are “drones,” because they are “capable” of capturing images – if you attach a small camera to them.
That is something that should have every RC pilot in the state worried. For those of us in the FPV community, it’s much, much worse. The moment this bill becomes law, I become a criminal – guilty of a Class B Misdemeanor. My crime? Possessing multirotor aircraft equipped for FPV flight operations.
That’s right – merely possessing a “drone” is a crime, even if you never fly it. Other Class B Misdemeanors in Oregon? Carrying a concealed switchblade or stealing $50 worth of merchandise.
If you actually fly a drone, that’s a Class A Misdemeanor, equivalent to carrying a concealed firearm without a license or driving drunk.
Let’s forget for the moment about the folks who enjoy flying FPV (or RC) for fun – instead, let’s consider the broader implications of this proposal for Oregon as a whole. I find it astonishing that while business and community leaders are hard at work, trying to get Oregon designated as one of six civilian drone test sites nationwide – because it has the potential to put our state at the forefront of a field that will be a major economic driver for the next several decades – some anonymous neo-luddite in the state senate is trying to slam our borders shut to this industry.
A martyr in the fight for free online access to research – Los Angeles Times
They came from all over Silicon Valley, hundreds packing the pews of an old church to pay their respects to Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old programmer and Internet activist who took his own life this month.
They didn’t just come to mourn a fallen comrade, they said. They came to carry on his fight. The memorial service held last week at the Internet Archive, a nonprofit group that occupies a former church in San Francisco, was as much political rally as solemn tribute.
“Aaron Swartz was not a criminal. He was a citizen and a brave soldier in a war which continues today, a war in which corrupt and venal profiteers try to steal and hoard and starve our public domain for their own private gain,” said Carl Malamud, a technologist and outspoken advocate for open access to information.
In death, Swartz has become a political martyr for the cause he championed in life: making scientific and scholarly research — much of it taxpayer-funded — freely available, not sequestered behind online pay walls out of the reach of the public.
via A martyr in the fight for free online access to research – Los Angeles Times.
Protect Our Gun Rights: Eliminate the ATF | The Truth About Guns
In How to Ban Guns, the dailykos.com lays out the gun control equation: registration > confiscation > civilian disarmament. Agreed, only I put a few more >’s into the equation: registration > confiscation > civilian disarmament > police state > mass murder. Even if we disagree on the eventual outcome, it’s nice when an enemy of freedom puts their cards on the table—instead of wrapping their statist plot against the U.S. Constitution in misdirection, lies and half-truths. And here’s the thing: there’s a federal agency ready, willing and able to make it so: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In fact, they’re already doing it . . .
With all the hysteria over the Sandy Hook slaughter, the mainstream media has completely forgotten about Operation Fast and Furious. The ATF black bag job ran for ten months in 2010. During its course, the Bureau enabled some 2000 gun store firearms sales to known members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.
At least a few of these ATF-enabled firearms ended up in the hands of drug thugs who murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer Jaime Zapata. Hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans have been intimidated, tortured, raped and/or killed by criminals wielding ATF-enabled firearms.
Contrary to the Bureau’s spin, Fast and Furious was not a “botched sting.” No attempts were made to “follow the guns.” No arrests were made until after Terry was murdered and the program was suspended, when the glare of public scrutiny forced the ATF to do something. The few gang members who had their chains yanked received light prison sentences in exchange for their silence.
via Protect Our Gun Rights: Eliminate the ATF | The Truth About Guns.
Teen killed1 week after attending Obama inauguration | FOX 32 News
A week after attending presidential inauguration festivities in the nation’s capital and with dreams of a summer trip to Paris swirling in her 15-year-old imagination, Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon in the South Side’s Kenwood neighborhood.
Police say Hadiya was shot in the back at a neighborhood park about 2:30 p.m. in the 4500 block of South Oakenwald. A teen boy was shot in the leg and taken to Comer’s Children’s Hospital in serious condition.
“As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy . . . He hits the one that hurts the most to lose,” said Chicago Police Officer Damon Stewart, 36, Hadiya ‘s godfather. “I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”
The Truth About Guns: Illinois Concealed Carry Bill Revealed: No Chicago Carve-Out
HB0977 puts the Illinois State Police in charge of the permitting process and turns The Land of Lincoln into a “shall issue” state. To wit: “The Department shall have the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the applicant would pose a danger to the applicant’s self, another, or public safety, or would use a firearm unlawfully, if granted a license to carry a concealed firearm under this Act.” Did Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel just throw up in his mouth a little?
via Illinois Concealed Carry Bill Revealed: No Chicago Carve-Out | The Truth About Guns.
Los Angeles’s School Nightmare: Another Sex-Abuse Scandal – The Daily Beast
The LA school district is probably the most risky place for sexual abuse in the country. What about keeping our kids safe from these teachers?
Fifty-seven-year-old Robert Pimentel, who taught at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary School in Los Angeles, has so far been charged with 15 counts of sexual abuse and lewd acts on a child. Prosecutors allege that he inappropriately touched students under and over their clothing from September 2011 until he left his job in March 2012. Before that time period as well, Pimentel had been the subject of parents’ complaints.
Just last year, in a scandal that set off an avalanche of lawsuits, another veteran teacher of the Los Angeles Unified School District, Mark Berndt, was accused of feeding his students spoonfuls of semen as part of a twisted ritual he called a “tasting game.” He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
“We are stunned here,” LAPD Detective Gus Villanueva tells The Daily Beast in the wake of the latest arrest. “We are dumbfounded. It just doesn’t stop.”
via Los Angeles’s School Nightmare: Another Sex-Abuse Scandal – The Daily Beast.
A waiting period for laws—Glenn Harlan Reynolds – NYPOST.com
So New York’s stringent new gun-control law bans guns or magazines capable of holding more than seven shots. Everybody’s safer now, except that — in the Gov. Cuomo-led rush to pass the bill — nobody thought to exempt the police, making all those Glocks felonious.
The Rolling Stones once sang that “every cop is a criminal,” but even they didn’t mean it as a prescription for legislation.
Yes, Cuomo argues (unpersuasively) that the ban still doesn’t apply to cops, but Albany is amending things just to “clarify.”
Maybe someone might have noticed the problem before the bill passed — if legislators had had time to, you know, read the bill and talk about it and maybe even hold hearings. But Cuomo issued a “message of necessity” to allow skipping the state’s normal “waiting period” before passage of legislation.
Perhaps the governor feared that, if lawmakers took the time for intelligent discussion, the bill might not pass?
Maybe so, but — as they say in the software business — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.
After every tragedy, legislation gets rushed through that’s typically just a bunch of stuff that various folks had long wanted all along, but couldn’t pass before. Then it’s hustled through as a “solution” to the tragedy, even though close inspection usually reveals that the changes wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy, and don’t even have much to do with it.
via A waiting period for laws—Glenn Harlan Reynolds – NYPOST.com.
Hackers take over gov’t website to avenge Swartz – CBS News
I don’t support Anonymous in any way, nor do I approve of their methods. But I will not argue with this. I’ll have more to say about the issue in a future post.
The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide.
The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago “a line was crossed.”
via Hackers take over gov’t website to avenge Swartz – CBS News.
Obama recess appointments unconstitutional – Washington Times
The important difference between this and other recess appointments is that the Senate had not declared they were in recess when Obama made the appointments. This was an abuse of emergency powers to overrule Senate approval of Presidential appointments.
In their ruling the judges said their duty is not to speed up the workings of government, but to hold to constitutional principles.
“If some administrative inefficiency results from our construction of the original meaning of the Constitution, that does not empower us to change what the Constitution commands,” the judges wrote.
The judges said the recess power was created for a time when Congress met only a few months out of the year, and was designed for the president to fill vacancies during the long periods when Congress was not meeting. In modern times, when Congress is almost always capable of meeting, the recess powers should be more circumscribed.
Obama recess appointments unconstitutional – Washington Times.