Category: Uncategorized

On February 12, U.S. District Court Judge Andrea R. Wood issued a one-page order, granting the Illinois Libertarian Party’s motion for summary judgment that the Illinois full-slate law is unconstitutional. The decision will be issued later. The minute entry says, “For the reasons stated in the Memorandum Opinion and Order to follow, Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is granted and Defendants’ motion for summary judgment is denied.”
The full-slate law was passed in 1931. It was probably passed to thwart the Communist Party, which had a very popular activist named Claude Lightfoot, a leader of Chicago’s African-American community. …read more

Mississippi holds its presidential primary on March 8. Willie Wilson petitioned to get on the ballot, and met the 500-signature requirement. The Democratic Party at first thought the petition needed 100 signatures in each of the old five U.S. House district, so they did not certify his name to the Secretary of State. Then the party became aware that there is no distribution requirement in effect, but by then some ballots had already been printed and mailed to overseas absentee ballots.
On February 10, the Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the mistake should be corrected. …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

#TSA ignoring both the existing law and a court order. Solution? The Write the Laws Act Retweet Do you hate the thought of being visually stripped and ogled by strangers …

Make Congress rein-in bureaucratic anarchy

On February 10, the Arizona House passed HB 2567, which eliminates the presidential primary for years after 2016. The vote was 37-22. Here is the summary of what the bill does. It also requires the national chairperson of each qualified party to inform the Secretary of State by September 1 of the identity of that party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Not every qualified party that nominates presidential candidates actually has a national chairman; there are many one-state political parties in the United States that participate in the presidential election in a single state. …read more

The Green Party of England & Wales has chosen Larry Sanders to be its shadow Minister of Health, which means that he is the party’s spokesperson for health, and that if the Green Party were in power, he would be the Health Minister. Larry Sanders is the older brother of Bernie Sanders.See this story. …read more

Despite the fact that I think most mobile devices are practically indestructible when used normally–instead of wrecked in some ridiculous fit of rage–things still do break, especially over time. iPhones in particular, the favorite of college students (it would appear), are often being broken because, well…college, most likely.
And instead of having mommy and daddy hash out another $800 for an iPhone, or for themselves being unable to hash out $800, they’ll often pay some enterprising fellow student a small fee to do the repairs (and of course all of this could happen at work, no college or college students required, …read more

Corn and soybeans from the United States will no longer be allowed to enter Russia as of February 15, because those foods failed to meet the country’s biological standards, announced Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s food and safety watchdog, on Wednesday.
According to RT, Rosselkhoznadzor discovered dry rot in U.S. corn, and weed seeds mixed with the U.S. soy.
“Since the products shipped from the United States pose a real threat to Russia, and the U.S. guarantees are not valid,” said the group’s spokesperson, Aleksey Alekseenko, “we reserve the right to introduce temporary restrictions on imports of U.S. corn and soybeans.”
U.S. officials have reportedly explained …read more

Los Angeles, CA — Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca shocked everyone Wednesday when he pled guilty to lying to federal investigators — reversing years of insistence he had been unaware of the corruption and civil rights abuses which were once rampant throughout the county jail system he headed for 15 years.
In return for an agreement with prosecutors that they would not seek a prison sentence longer than six months, Baca admitted he had willfully made a number of false statements during the corruption probe and agreed not to contest a number of other allegations against him.
“Today’s charge …read more