Category: Uncategorized

Many commentators believe that Article Two of the U.S. Constitution, which says the U.S. House chooses the President when no one gets a majority of the electoral college vote, injures independent presidential candidates, or the presidential nominees of new parties. But Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., a member of the Wall Street editorial board and a columnist for that newspaper, writes here that the provision would actually help Michael Bloomberg if he ran for president this year as an independent.
This article at The Moderate Voice discusses Jenkins’ column and quotes extensively from it. …read more

Scotusblog has this explanation about what happens to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that haven’t been issued yet, but in which the initial vote after the oral argument resulted in a tentative 5-4 decision, in which Justice Antonin Scalia was in the majority. As the article explains, such tentative votes don’t count, and there may be many 4-4 decisions. On a U.S. Supreme Court tie, the ruling of the lower court stands.
This article explains the consequences for several high-profile cases.
For election law, the first impact of Scalia’s death may be in Harris v McCrory, 15A809, the North Carolina gerrymandering …read more

Los Angeles, CA – Real Time host Bill Maher took his support for the legalization of marijuana around the U.S. to new highs on Friday, lighting up a joint to make his point. Maher blasted the hypocrisy of marijuana laws in the U.S. during his weekly television segment on Friday.
“Somehow, this is the year that everything from socialism to mass deportation is on the table and voters love the authentic guys who speak their minds, but when it comes time for Congress to consider common-sense pot legislation, it’s like smoking a joint with Woody Harrelson; they just won’t pass it.”
Maher …read more

On February 12, the Socialist Workers Party announced that its 2016 national ticket will be Alyson Kennedy for president, and Osborne Hart for vice-president. This is only the second time that the SWP has nominated a woman for President; the first time was in 1972, when Linda Jenness ran.
The Socialist Workers Party has now nominated a presidential candidate for 18 elections in a row. Besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, the only other U.S. political parties that ever did that were the Prohibition and Socialist Labor Parties.
The 2016 campaign now has four parties with “Socialist”, “Socialism”, or “Workers” …read more

Austin, TX — A video uploaded to Youtube this week shows an ominous precedent being set in America. Offending someone is now grounds for police action.
A preacher near the University of Texas at Austin documented this death blow to the freedom of speech. The preacher was voicing his opinion on anal sex, just outside of the campus when students became ‘offended’ and sought out state force to punish the man for his speech.
When the officer came up to the preacher, he essentially explained to him that the 1st Amendment is irrelevant, “The law says if you offend someone, and they …read more

Even though February 15 is a holiday, North Carolina legislators will start working on new U.S. House districts on February 15. See this story. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link. …read more

If you’ve never read my thoughts about the future of Virtual Reality, I suggest you do so now. But in brief, mobile is “where it’s at”. Any of the hardware troubles presented by doing VR on a mobile platform–as compared to the plenty of horsepower for VR on multi-thousand dollar PCs–are being solved across the board. And manufacturers–even the smaller ones–are pushing VR hard. For example, Alcatel’s new OneTouch Idol 4S is going to ship in packaging that you can instantly fold into Google Cardboard. Obviously, on solving the problem of packaging waste, this is a damned clever idea, but …read more

In January, state legislators from both California and New York introduced bills that would ban the retail sale of smartphones with full-disk encryption – a technology designed to guarantee customers’ digital data stored within a phone is only accessible to the devices owner.
After Edward Snowden’s public disclosures of mass domestic surveillance in the U.S. and abroad, companies such as Google and Apple began to respond to a massive consumer demand for greater digital security.
The bills are intended to allow law enforcement access to the devices of criminals or victims if they are seized as evidence in a criminal investigation.
“The New …read more

West Dundee, IL – In an absolutely shocking display of brutal honesty, a brief video submitted to the Free Thought Project yesterday is demonstrating the undeniably true nature of America’s continued war against Cannabis.
The video, uploaded by a graphic artist who asked only to be identified as Raphael, begins after he has been approached by multiple officers who inform him that they received a report of someone smoking cannabis in a vehicle. However, instead of simply prostrating himself before authoritarians enforcing an immoral law, Raphael proceeds to vocally point out the absolutely ridiculous nature of his detainment, stating:
“Here are some …read more