HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Study Reveals Bleak Reality of Long-Term Unemployed: Only 11% in any given month had found work a year later.
Archive for 2014
March 23, 2014
FIND OUT WHAT YOUR GADGETS ARE WORTH at Amazon Trade-In.
Also, Deals on Top Gift Ideas.
WHENEVER I SEE THIS TERM, I’M READY TO RESORT TO SOME OLD-FASHIONED MACRO-AGGRESSION: David Harsanyi on Micro-Aggressions.
PUTIN VS. OBAMA: Victor Davis Hanson: Of Pre- and Postmodern Poseurs. “Rarely on the world stage have we suffered through two such extremes as an erstwhile community organizer theorizing against a former KGB agent. If only Putin were a run-of-the-mill college president, then Obama might order a takeover of the faculty lounge. Or if Putin were a local bank president, Obama, the SEIU, and Acorn might yell on his lawn about lending more money to the inner city. Alas, even Chicago is not Russia.”
IT’S CALLED, “LET’S SEE HOW MUCH I CAN GET AWAY WITH.” Roger Kimball: What Game Is Putin Playing?
FAKE AGENTS: Beware Massive IRS Phone Scam: Fake agents demand immediate payment. “If an Internal Revenue Service agent calls you up threatening dire consequences if unpaid taxes aren’t settled immediately, don’t pay up—that’s not an IRS agent on the other end.”
MY USA TODAY COLUMN notes that in Bill Quick’s new disaster novel, the most destructive atomic bomb is the one that doesn’t land on Washington, DC.
THIS WEEKEND’S DISCUSSION OF MEDIA/GOVERNMENT INCEST REMINDS ME OF THIS: Top CBS, ABC, CNN execs all have relatives working as advisors for White House.
LETS, HELPS, WHATEVER: Washington Examiner: Harry Reid lets Obama, Eric Holder cover up IRS scandal.
HUMAN NOSE CAN RECOGNIZE more than a trillion scents. “Our olfactory system evolved…to discriminate very similar smells, like my baby from my neighbor’s baby, milk that’s still good from milk that turned bad. So those are very similar smells that only differ in a few components. So we evolved to be able to make those discriminations. And as a side effect of that we can discriminate all those other odors too.” Most people underestimate how good their sense of smell is. Richard Feynman used to take advantage of that with some clever parlor tricks.
LAW: Why Moderating Comments Doesn’t Remove Section 230 Protection, And Why More Lawyers Need To Understand This. “I can understand why parties miffed about comments or forum posts might make the mistake of singling out site owners in their hurry to hold someone, anyone responsible for their ruffled feathers and hurt feelings. But what’s not excusable is legal representation making that same mistake for them. They’re paid to know the applicable laws and if they’re not clear on the subject, they should do a little research.”
YES, BUT WILL MICHAEL MANN VOLUNTEER AS A SUBJECT? Stanford University To Open A Center For Studying Bad Science.
‘TIS THE SEASON: We Test 8 Top Front-Drive Lawnmowers.
IN THE MAIL: Slow Death in the Fast Lane: A Brendan O’Brian Legal Thriller.
Also, today only at Amazon: M*A*S*H: The Complete Series and Movie, $74.99 (77% off).
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 318.
WEEKEND INTERVIEW: The Drone That Shot Down the Feds: How a 29-year-old Austrian buzzed the Statue of Liberty, built a business, and beat U.S. regulators in court.
Jeff Bezos at Amazon hasn’t done it. Nor has Fred Smith at FedEx FDX +0.21% or Scott Davis at UPS. No American CEO has persuaded Washington to relax its chokehold on commercial drone use in the United States. But this month a 29-year-old Austrian entrepreneur living here in Asia broke Washington’s drone monopoly, winning a court case that may clear the way for drones to deliver packages to your doorstep.
Overseas and at home, the U.S. government has pioneered the use of drones for military, intelligence and law-enforcement purposes. But while other countries have applied drones—usually smaller, simpler, cheaper ones—to everything from package delivery to film-making, mining, agriculture and environmental protection, the U.S. has blocked their use by private entities. At least until March 6, when Raphael Pirker won in federal court.
Mr. Pirker’s legal journey began innocently enough, when he became involved in the small but intense world of hobbyists who use radio-controlled drones to record the most stunning bird’s-eye video of Earth’s landmarks. In late 2010, he flew a small drone around the Statue of Liberty’s crown, more than 200 feet above Liberty Island. The video went viral online and Mr. Pirker realized that he could turn his hobby into a business.
Soon trouble came. In 2011 the Federal Aviation Administration slapped him with an unprecedented $10,000 fine after he used a drone to record a promotional video of the University of Virginia campus. The FAA charged that he had operated without a license and flown recklessly close to buildings, cars in a tunnel and pedestrians.
In his defense, Mr. Pirker noted that his drone—a five-pound Styrofoam model airplane—caused no injury or damage. More significantly, he argued that the U.S. government was acting lawlessly, prohibiting commercial drone use based only on model-airplane guidelines from 1981 that were explicitly “voluntary” and never carried the force of law.
The Feds seem unconcerned with the niceties of rulemaking and statutory authority these days. I’m glad the courts are bringing them up short.
KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Rand Paul’s Problem: America Hates Libertarians. Yeah, those nasty libertarians. They want to take over the government — and then leave you alone!
A REVEALING LOOK INTO AN OFFICIAL WORLDVIEW: Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in L.A. Are Under Investigation.
Do you drive a car in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area? According to the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff’s Department, your car is part of a vast criminal investigation.
The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week’s worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that “All [license plate] data is investigatory.” The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn’t matter.
This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under “general warrants” that targeted no specific person or place and never expired.
ALPR systems operate in just this way. The cameras are not triggered by any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; instead, they automatically and indiscriminately photograph all license plates (and cars) that come into view. This happens without an officer targeting a specific vehicle and without any level of criminal suspicion. The ALPR system immediately extracts the key data from the image—the plate number and time, date and location where it was captured—and runs that data against various hotlists. At the instant the plate is photographed not even the computer system itself—let alone the officer in the squad car—knows whether the plate is linked to criminal activity.
Taken to an extreme, the agencies’ arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime at some previously undetermined date in the future.
Well, that’s the dream.
BY ITS FRUIT, THE TREE IS KNOWN: No accident that jobs, economy grow more under GOP governors.
IT ONLY APPLIES TO “COVERED JOURNALISTS:” Schumer: Senate has votes for media shield law.
My thoughts on this approach are here.