Category: Uncategorized

If You’re Making Exceptions, You’re NOT Principled

Las Vegas, NV — The Department of Veterans Affairs still has a massive backlog of nearly 900,000 healthcare applications ‒ including more than 300,000 from veterans who died waiting for their benefits to be approved.

The VA’s internal watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, released a report last year that looked into a whistleblower’s claims of extensive, persistent problems in the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Health Eligibility Center enrollment records.
The OIG found that the VHA’s enrollment system had about 867,000 pending records as of September 30, 2014. On top of that, at least 307,000 applications ‒ or about 35 percent …read more

On February 24, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in Susan B. Anthony List v Driehaus, 14-4008. The opinion agrees with the U.S. District Court that Ohio’s law, making it a crime to knowingly make a false statement about a candidate, violates the First Amendment.
The Sixth Circuit had upheld this law back in 1991, but the new opinion overrides that precedent, based on intervening decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court on free speech. There had also been many other attempts to strike down the law in the 2000’s decade, but they always resulted in a decision that the …read more

Nashville, TN — Creative protest has its value: a man showed up at the Nashville International Airport buck naked on Sunday, in an apparent protest of the TSA.
Stark naked 53-year-old Eric Cherry was photographed by traveler Tod Brilliant from California in the American Airlines queue. Brilliant assumed Cherry, who was later identified, chose to forego clothing as an act of protest against strict security practices.
“I walked up to him and said ‘You’re amazing.’ He replied ‘Thanks.’ Then they came for him,” said Brilliant in a Facebook post about the incident.

Brilliant managed to snap photos of the naked man before police …read more

On February 24, U.S. District Court Judge Andrea Wood issued this twelve-page opinion, explaining why the Illinois full-slate law is unconstitutional. The case is Libertarian Party of Illinois v Illinois State Board of Elections, n.d., 1:12cv-2511. …read more

Batteries, batteries, batteries. I don’t think people realize just how revolutionary the portable battery has been since its inception decades ago. I also don’t think people realize just how little advancement was made in the battery space up until the advent of the modern (post-2007) smartphone. Before then, most batteries all had a very similar charging cycle, and the all had a very similar capacity and ability based upon size.
While the capacity end of things still does rely much on size in what can be done, the charging cycle…ohhh-ho-ho the charging cycle…that is starting to see some serious advancement. Qualcomm …read more

This story describes the Indiana legislature’s deliberations on SB 352, a bill to revamp the election system for choosing state court trial judges in Indianapolis. The old system was held unconstitutional last year. The old system was technically a partisan election, but no party was permitted to run nominees for more than half the seats. Because only the Democratic and Republican Parties usually nominated judicial candidates, effectively the voters had no choice. The candidates named on the November ballot couldn’t be defeated, unless a very strong write-in candidate emerged. …read more

We have another strategic opportunity to file an amicus brief in a crucial case — Wikimedia v. NSA. It is being considered by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

We almost passed on this case because we (both staff and supporters) are overwhelmed. A lot has already happened in this young year. But we just couldn’t let this one go. We had to try. Wikimedia v. NSA builds on work into which DC Downsizers have already invested.
——————–Yesterday, our sister organization, the Downsize DC Foundation, delivered this same message to its “Zero Aggression” subscribers. We, at DownsizeDC.org, are, as usual, going to …read more

According to documents published by Wikileaks this week, the NSA spied on multiple world leaders on behalf of oil companies. The documents revealed that the NSA spied on the private meetings of world leaders such as UN chief Ban Ki-Moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and other European politicians.
The discussion between Ban Ki-Moon and Merkel was involving environmental pollution and the impact that fossil fuels had on the environment, and according to the WikiLeaks release, the NSA was listening in for the purpose of collecting information for oil companies.
“Today we showed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s private meetings over how …read more

Dogs are now benefiting from cannabidiol, or CBD, to treat everything from pain and hip dysplasia to cancer and epilepsy — even though the product absurdly remains classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic.
“Most of the pet owners that are using the product are using it for separation anxiety, things like hip dysplasia and arthritis, mobility pain, ageing — a lot of ageing dogs are using the product — and then we have some dogs that have epilepsy that use the product with great success, some dogs with cancer … so it’s a pretty wide range of conditions that can be …read more