Category: Uncategorized

Android Wear–and really, smartwatches in general–are supposedly the “new hotness”. Of course, smartwatches are nothing new. And in fact, for over 30 years, these things have been in development. There were even smartwatches in the past that could connect to you Commodore 64! How could you not want one of those?
The beauty of these smartwatches of the past was that they didn’t send all of your biometrics and data to Alphabet/Google, and Apple, and others. They gave you the data, and you could track it yourself in whatever way you wished, but there was no Cloud (read: someone’s else’s computer) …read more

Atlanta, GA — A video posted to YouTube this week illustrates the power of holding police accountable with video.
In the last few years, smartphones have become cheaper and more plentiful. According to recent statistics, the number of cellphones in the hands of Americans has been rising steadily every year. It is estimated that 182.6 million Americans will own a smartphone in 2015, an increase from 163.9 million in the previous year.
182 million smartphones means that nearly every adult in the country has a camera in their pocket.
Since the increase in smartphones, there has also been an increase in police brutality …read more

Civil asset forfeiture (CAF) is coming under increased criticism around the country, as the immoral nature of this drug war weapon becomes exposed. New Mexico became the first state to make meaningful reforms, and even law enforcement officers are speaking out against CAF.
CAF amounts to outright theft from innocent people since cash and assets can be taken with no conviction of a crime. It brings millions in revenue to police departments so they can turn around and get more gadgets of oppression.
Case in point—the Electronic Recovery and Access to Data (ERAD) Prepaid Card Reader. This tool, developed by the Department …read more

Cracked.com, a ten-year-old comedy blog with a large readership, has this article about some deficiencies in U.S. election laws. The article includes ballot access laws, and specifically attacks Georgia. The article also illustrates bad examples of gerrymandering.
The information about Georgia is mostly accurate, but not entirely. Everything the article says about U.S. House ballot access is accurate. But the statewide petitions are about 50,000 signatures, not 250,000. Thanks to Andy Craig for the link. …read more

Tom Campbell has this op-ed in the Orange County Register, suggesting that the new lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates, which depends on antitrust law, has merit.
Campbell was once director of the antitrust arm of the Federal Trade Commission. He also has taught antitrust law since 1983. He is now dean of the Fowler School of Law at Chapman University. He is a former member of Congress and was the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate from California in 2000.
The lawsuit is Gary Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, filed on September 28 in U.S. District …read more

Moore, OK — An Oklahoma mom says a Moore police officer went too far when he hit her autistic son for no reason.
The mother, who wishes to remain unnamed, says that every time her son becomes upset at school, he calls her. Last week, she received a call from her son that quickly became nightmarish.
Her son became frustrated as he sat in his desk during computer time and they admit that he was pounding on the keyboard while on the phone with his mother. But an autistic boy pounding on a keyboard certainly did not warrant the following action.
“When I …read more

Responsible for helping cover up the CIA’s torture program, the same judge dismissed a lawsuit on Friday filed by the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Wikipedia, and other organizations accusing the NSA of conducting mass surveillance. Although it is now common knowledge that the NSA can retroactively access phone records, text messages, emails, internet activity, GPS locations, and metadata, the judge dismissed the suit because the NSA refuses to admit that they are incessantly violating our constitutional rights.
“The NSA’s mass surveillance violates our clients’ constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of association, and it poses a …read more

Douglas E. Goodman, a Nevadan who is an advocate of election reform, favors eliminating the primary and simply holding a general election. The general election would use Instant Runoff Voting. Parties would be given the choice to either nominate someone for each office (at their own expense), or else abstain from nominating, thus allowing multiple members of that party to file for the November ballot.
Read Goodman’s proposal here. It is not clear if any legislator has agreed to sponsor this idea, but if the idea is introduced, it would apparently be in 2017. …read more

The United Independent Party of Massachusetts now has 15,083 registered members. As of September 9, 2015, it had 11,213. It is trying to get 40,000 registered members by November 2016, so that it will remain ballot-qualified for 2018. However, if it should run a presidential nominee in 2016 who gets 3% of the vote or more, it would remain qualified even if it doesn’t have enough registrants.
The largest number of registered voters any Massachusetts party (other than the Republican and Democratic Parties) ever had was the Libertarian Party’s November 2004 total of 23,900. …read more