Urban fantasy writer, journalism student, geek, political junky.
Politics
Including discussions of the current political climate, various politicians, policy, the war, the current administration, and all the crap caused by the stuff listed previously.
I’m still sussing out what happened here, so if you have any other links to good information, leave them in the comments.
The ACLU is looking at whether or not private emails, text messages, Twitter messages, and etc are being read by federal agents, without those agents having gotten warrants to do so. At some point, the ACLU issued an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act request) to the Justice Department for for information relating to text messages, and the Justice Department turned over an entirely redacted document in response.
I found this via Reason.com, but I’m not sure how trustworthy or biased a source they might be, since I’ve never read them before. Also, their little blurb links to this article at the ACLU’s website, which doesn’t seem to mention text messages or completely redacted documents at all.
President Barack Obama expressed his unequivocal support for the science industry in a public address Monday, saying the nation cannot afford to make sweeping budget cuts that threaten to stall the depth and pace of research.
Most politicians are so ignorant and so sadly out of touch in these two arenas, and so heavily influenced by lobbyists who have an interest in seeing things done one way or another, they they don’t have any business trying to make laws about the industries. Bias and ignorance have led to bans on stem cell research and legislation like SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, ACTA and more. It’s led to the archaic copyright laws we’re stuck with and the poor state of alternative fuel discovery and development. It’s impacted on dozens of facets of our lives. Read more >>
CISPA, which zipped through the House last week while most of us were busy being appalled and horrified over the Boston bombings, is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act and would allow private companies to quickly share users’ personal information with the government in the event of cyberattacks, and vice-versa. If it sounds familiar, that’s because the Senate gave this thing the Congressional double-tap just last year. Read more >>
The Washington Post has a pretty kickass article up listing the state-by-state effects of the sequester. You can check it out right here. Clicking through the appified article will eventually get you to the detailed effects in .pdf form. Here’s the .pdf on Michigan and Oregon.
Hover on the image for links to each state’s breakdown. (Click through for a larger version of the image.)
The White House released a 44-second video trailer for the State of the Union address on YouTube. The trailer had a dubstep soundtrack.
There is no part of the preceding two sentences that doesn’t blow my mind. I love that this is a thing that happens now. The future is weird and awesome, y’all.
I’m still sussing out what happened here, so if you have any other links to good information, leave them in the comments.