One can never predict how a court will rule after oral argument. But I do fear that in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment we are on the precipice of getting yet another major copyright decision from the Supreme Court where the words “First Amendment” are not uttered even once—unless, of course, someone like Justice […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, […]
Last week I wrote about how the US Patent and Trademark Office is pushing a rule change that would effectively neuter the inter partes review (IPR) system that reviews already granted patents to make sure they weren’t granted by mistake. Patent tolls and other abusers of the patent system have been screaming about this system […]
For weeks, we’ve been told the threat posed by the trafficking of illegal drugs is indistinguishable from an outright declaration of war on the United States by foreign drug cartels. Trump and his toadies insist traffickers are bringing drugs across the border to “kill” Americans, which would be an entirely self-defeating business plan no self-respecting […]
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It was never enough to simply expel migrants as quickly as possible for the Trump administration. A massive conglomerate of federal officers was incapable of hitting Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s 3,000 arrests per day quota, no matter how many rights it violated. Any pretense of only going after migrants with criminal records was discarded during […]
Not content with just filing baseless lawsuits against media companies who say mean things about our historically unpopular president, the Trump administration has unveiled a new lazy wrinkle in its war on journalism and free speech. The White House unveiled a new section of its website last week that claims to be tracking media outlets […]
A California judge ordered the end of a dragnet law enforcement program that surveilled the electrical smart meter data of thousands of Sacramento residents. The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and police violated a state privacy statute, which bars the disclosure of residents’ electrical usage […]
What a difference a near-decade makes. Back in 2017, the main concerns raised by New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board was that officers were routinely violating the right to record police officers. Sure, there wasn’t nearly as much precedent to rely on then (and we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to make this […]
Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away. It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy […]
Twenty years ago, John Jonik released one of the best political cartoons ever regarding attempts to censor and control the internet. In it, a character dressed up as Uncle Sam is placing a gift box labeled “Control of Internet Speech” on a counter. Behind it, a man dressed in a suit, labeled “Corporate Media” is […]
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The Trump administration just lies and lies and lies. Those in charge assume they can just bluster their way past the system of checks and balances. For everything else, there’s AI generated memes depicting Trump taking a shit on the people he serves. Win-win, I guess. But things haven’t exactly been running smoothly for Trump’s […]
Hoping to repay corporate America’s feckless support of authoritarianism, the Trump administration is once again attempting to illegally ban all state and federal oversight of corporate power. Both via executive order, and by withholding already awarded grants from states that refuse to play along. The Trump administration has already done generational damage to federal consumer […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about how fascism is happening live on TV: Trump’s supporters, like Trump himself, if being honest (ha!) will reply, “I don’t care, I want this to happen.” They’ve never cared about the Constitution except as a weapon to be used […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Portland, Maine passed a facial recognition ban that said the city can fire employees who violate it, which might have been useful in Seattle where a police detective took Clearview for a spin and possibly violated local laws. The FBI pulled another one of its manufacture-a-terrorist schemes, and […]
In all of our conversations surrounding RFK Jr.’s appointment to lead HHS and the legitimization of his anti-vaxxer beliefs as a result, we have understandably been hyper-focused on measles. The reason for that is mostly that this is as stark an example of just how stupid and horrible anti-vaccination misinformation is combined with the horror […]
Until very recently the only member of Congress excused from not having moved to impeach Trump was Rep. Grijalva, because until someone swore her in there was nothing she could officially do. But for everyone else already sworn into this 119th Congress, there was no excuse. There is no excuse. The refusal to act, to […]
Imagine a leading American technology firm, the engine of thousands of jobs and critical innovation, besieged by a patent lawsuit. Typical enough, but this time there is a twist: The plaintiff is a shell company with no assets and no products, yet it litigates with the inexhaustible resources of a global superpower. The American company […]
The abyss. The darkness. The meaningless void that life rebels against. It stares at us. Nietzsche warned about this moment—when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. When the frameworks that make meaning possible collapse, when the principles that make reasoning together conceivable dissolve, when words lose their moorings to […]
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