SCOTUS Nominee Kagan On Free Speech Issues

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/28/1248253/SCOTUS-Nominee-Kagan-On-Free-Speech-Issues

DesScorp submitted one of a few stories I've seen about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, whose confirmation hearings are supposed to start today (despite being a formality, given that she has the votes pretty much locked up). "SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan hasn't left much of a paper trail during her legal career, which may make gauging her ideas and opinions somewhat difficult. But there are some positions she has made clear statements on, among them, pornography and 'hate speech.' In a 1993 University of Chicago seminar on the subject, Kagan argued that the government wasn't doing enough about the spread of porn or hate speech. She argued that new approaches were needed to fight their spread, as well as taking a fresh look at old approaches, such as obscenity laws. Kagan included herself among 'those of us who favor some form of pornography and hate speech regulation,' and told participants that 'a great deal can be done very usefully' to crack down on such evils."

SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/25/1421202/SCOTUS-Rules-Petiton-Signatures-Are-Public-Record?art_pos=28

Reader SheeEttin reminds us that back in October, the Supreme Court accepted a case testing whether or not petition signers' names could be kept anonymous. (The premise was that the act of signing a petition is covered by free speech, and thus signers are entitled to anonymity, especially to protect them from harassment.) Now the Court has issued its ruling: signatures are part of the public record. "By a strong majority Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a setback for opponents of gay marriage who wanted to keep their identities secret. The justices favored transparency over privacy in a case testing whether signing a petition is a public act. The case began with a bill that the Washington state legislature passed in 2009, expanding the state's domestic partnership law. The new referendum was known as 'everything but marriage' for the enhanced rights it gave same-sex couples. People who opposed the bill gathered 120,000 signatures for a ballot measure asking voters to repeal it. That measure eventually reached Washington voters, who upheld 'everything but marriage.' Those who signed the repeal petition feared that they would be harassed if their names became public, so they went to court challenging Washington's Public Records Act. They argued that signing a petition is speech that is protected from disclosure. But in Thursday's 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed. 'Such disclosure does not, as a general matter, violate the first amendment,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court."

ASCAP Declares War On Free Culture, EFF

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/25/2048216/ASCAP-Declares-War-On-Free-Culture-EFF?art_pos=20

"According to Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid and Cory Doctorow, the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a US organization that aims to collect royalties for its members for the use of their copyrighted works, has begun soliciting donations to fight key organizations of the free culture movement, such as Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. According to a letter received by ASCAP member Mike Rugnetta, 'Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.' (Part 1 and part 2 of the letter.) The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/26/1349247/Creative-Commons-Responds-To-ASCAP-Letter?art_pos=8

"Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid has a followup to the story about ASCAP telling its members that organizations like EFF and Creative Commons are undermining copyright. A spokesperson from Creative Commons said, 'It's very sad that ASCAP is falsely claiming that Creative Commons works to undermine copyright. Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses — plain and simple, without copyright, these tools don't even work.' He also said, 'Many tens of thousands of musicians, including acts like Nine Inch Nails, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Radiohead, and Snoop Dogg, have used Creative Commons licenses to share with the public.' Many ASCAP members are already expressing their disappointment with the ASCAP letter over at Mind the Gap. Sounds like ASCAP will be in damage control for a while."

Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/25/1811204/Pakistan-To-Scour-Google-Yahoo-For-Blasphemy?art_pos=24

"Pakistan will start monitoring seven major websites, including Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, for sacrilegious content, while blocking 17 other, lesser-known sites it deems offensive to Muslims, an official said Friday. The moves follow Pakistan's temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow. ... 'If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website,' [said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spokesman Khurram Mehran]."

 I'm glad that we are past this stuff in western nations.

Oregon Trail Speed Runs

If you've been doing anything for the last week other than play Oregon Trail and sleep then you aren't living the dream.  I on the other hand have achieved a 9485 high score, and a finish date of April 15th (45 days).

Julian Paul Assange

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all

An article about Wikileaks founder Julian Paul Assange.  Along with that article Schneier's blog post (where I go the link), has some interesting stuff in the comments about Wikileaks. 

Traffic Deaths

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/do-we-tolerate-too-many-traffic-deaths/

A bunch of articles on why we tolerate so many traffic deaths while fearing other things less likely to kill us.

The Obama administration and its pundit-defenders

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/21/pundits/index.html

Even in the context of America's wretched civil liberties abuses over the last decade, the case of Mohamed Hassan Odaini stands out.  He was 17 years old in 2001 when his father sent him from Yemen to study at a religious university in Raiwand, Pakistan, and when a campus house in which he was staying there was raided by Pakistani authorities in early 2002, he was turned over to the U.S. and shipped to Guantanamo, where he has remained without charges for the last eight years (he's now 26).  A federal court this month granted his habeas petition for release, finding that the evidence "overwhelmingly supports Odaini's contention that he is unlawfully detained."  Worse, the court described the multiple times over the years -- beginning in 2002 and occurring as recently as 2009 -- when the U.S. Government itself concluded that Odaini was guilty of nothing, was mistakenly detained, and should be released (see here for the court's description of that history).

Despite that, the Obama administration has refused to release him for the past 16 months, and fought vehemently in this habeas proceeding to keep him imprisoned.  As the court put it, the Obama DOJ argued "vehemently" that there was evidence that Odaini was part of Al Qaeda.  In fact, the Obama administration knew this was false.  This Washington Post article this weekend quotes an "administration official" as saying:  "The bottom line is: We don't have anything on this kid."  But after Obama decreed in January that no Yemeni detainees would be released -- even completely innocent ones, and even though the Yemeni government wants their innocent prisoners returned -- Obama DOJ lawyers basically lied to the court by claiming there was substantial evidence to prove that Odaini was part of Al Qaeda even though they know that is false.  In other words, the Obama administration is knowingly imprisoning a completely innocent human being who has been kept in a cage in an island prison, thousands of miles from his home, for the last 8 years, since he's 18 years old, despite having done absolutely nothing wrong.

California Wants To Put E-Ads On License Plates

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/21/026224/California-Wants-To-Put-E-Ads-On-License-Plates?art_pos=22&art_pos=22

"The San Jose Mercury News reports that the California state legislature wants to put electronic advertising on license plates. The plate would display standard plate information when the car is moving, but would also display ads when the car is stopped for more than 4 seconds (say, at a red light). Not distracting or annoying at all! 'The bill has received no formal opposition. It passed unanimously through the Senate last month and is scheduled to be heard Monday by the Assembly Transportation Committee.'"

This story in itself is ridiculous, but in the comments someone brought up this story:
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=15440
In 1974 a man got a $25 fine for covering up NH's "Live Free or Die" motto on his license plate.  The ACLU convinced him to sue because it violated his first amendment rights (and because apparently exquisite irony isn't reason enough).  Eventually the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in his favor.  NH in keeping with the highest "big baby" traditions, refused to pay $21k in legal fees.  A US marshal had to take a court order to a state owned liquor store and demand payment.

Man Stuck In Elevator For 41 Hours

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_bMhNI_TY8

This is a pretty good article, not just about the guy being stuck, but about elevators in general.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all