Category: Uncategorized

Baton Rouge, LA – WBRZ-TV reporter Brett Buffington was arrested on Thursday morning for attempting to take photos of a crime scene, and then later “mouthing off” to officer on the scene.
Buffington was charged with interfering with an officer and intimidating a public official. The police claim that Buffington “interfered” with a burglary investigation around 2:30 in the early morning on Thursday.
However, according to the police department’s version of events, Buffington was simply doing his job as a journalist and attempting to investigate a crime just as the police allegedly were.
The police report stated that Buffington disobeyed police officers when …read more

Seattle holds city council elections this year. Washington state election law says that candidates get on the ballot by filing fee, or by petition in lieu of filing fee. The Seattle filing fee for city council is $1,199.76; or candidates can submit 1,200 valid signatures.
Amanda Helmick chose to submit a petition instead of a filing fee. She submitted 1,318 signatures, but only 1,195 were considered valid. She was willing to pay $5 filing fee to make up for the 5 missing signatures, but Washington state law does not allow candidates to submit a mixture of signatures …read more

Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorized warrantless spying on Americans.

On Monday, however, it will NO LONGER BE IN FORCE.

That’s why the Senate will meet on Sunday to consider passing…
a bill to renew Section 215, or…
the USA Freedom Act, which renews Section 215 with some reforms, or…
a compromise bill

But the House, which has already passed USA Freedom, won’t return until MONDAY. Meaning…

Either the Senate passes the USA Freedom Act WITHOUT AMENDMENTS, and Obama signs it into law by midnight Sunday, or…
Section 215 EXPIRES!

If that happens…
On Monday morning, a …read more

This story in the Los Angeles Times suggests that the future U.S. Supreme Court decision Evenwel v Abbott, 14-940, might cause California and Texas to lose seats in the U.S. House. One must read the entire article to realize it isn’t true. At the very end, election law professor Rick Hasen points out that the Constitution says, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
Evenwel v Abbott has nothing to do with how many Representatives each state gets. It …read more

This story says Roger Stone has expressed an intent to be the Florida Libertarian Party’s U.S. Senate candidate in 2016. The story includes Stone’s announcement. …read more

Coinbase HQ was buzzing with energy and creativity last week as we launched our first ever 24-hour internal hackathon, No Sleep ‘Til Bitcoin.

We’re big believers in hackathons; many members of our team are hackathon veterans, and we recently launched BitHack v2, an external online hackathon which is currently in progress. However, we’d never run one internally. Would it make sense to launch an internal hackathon when everyone was already busy with other projects? Would people want to pause their existing projects to feverishly work through the night?

Coinbase strives to entrust team members with a high level of autonomy, and …read more

The Defense Department wants broad, new, and unnecessary exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act. An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that provides these exemptions will likely be introduced in the Senate.
That’s why DownsizeDC.org is part of a coalition of 24 groups that sent a letter to Senate leaders urging them to oppose such an amendment.
See the letter here. …read more

Today the New York Stock Exchange launched the NYSE Bitcoin Index (NYXBT), a benchmark for the daily price of bitcoin. NYXBT represents the U.S. Dollar value of one bitcoin, based on transactions occurring on Coinbase Exchange and other select bitcoin exchanges.

The New York Stock Exchange administers some of the world’s most important indices, including gold and LIBOR. The creation of NYXBT represent a significant step forward in the continued adoption of Bitcoin and related payment technologies into the financial system. Earlier this year, the NYSE along with Spanish bank BBVA, USAA, and former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit participated in Coinbase’s …read more

New York City, N.Y. – In a testament to the “trigger-happy” nature of NYPD cops, the city Housing Authority has ordered all workers fixing elevators in NYC housing projects to wear construction orange vests.
New policies were enacted by the Housing Authority after officers pulled a gun on a maintenance crew and fatally shot an unarmed man in a stairwell in a separate incident.
According to a New York Post report:
“[The elevator workers] were basically told the reason was because of recent incidents where cops had pulled a gun on a caretaker and a supervisor on the roof of a housing project,” …read more

New York City, New York – 22-year-old Ramsey Orta, the young man who filmed the NYPD killing Eric Garner, was arrested shortly after on trumped up charges and held in jail until a grassroots effort was able to raise his bail money. His imprisonment became national news when it came to light that food in the prison was tainted with rat poison, and Orta was refusing to eat as a result.
For the past two months, Orta was free, but today he is due back in court to face the charges against him. Orta was constantly harassed by police after …read more