UPDATE: Potentially as important as the Apollo missions

I cried at about 9:30 when the Falcon 9 achieved orbit. And listen to the cheers when both solar areas deploy at about 10:45.

We are into a new era of our exploration of space. For the first time a private organization – not a government – has launched a rocket into space, with a cargo that not only achieved orbit but is on course to set further milestones.

No private group has ever put into orbit a capsule capable of resupplying the International Space Station. On Friday, if all goes well, they will become the first such group to actually resupply the ISS.

The capsule will be able to carry men in a few more years. The era of relatively inexpensive travel to low Earth orbit has begun.

The exploration of space is now in a new stage, one where NASA can continue to do exploratory work and push the envelope but corporations can provide the development to make it realistic.

UPDATE: And supposedly James Doohan’s (Star Trek’s Scotty) ashes were on this rocket to be scattered into space. Gordon Cooper was also included in the remains of 307 people.

The rapid drop in intelligent Congressional speech

The changing complexity of congressional speech
[Via Sunlight Foundation]

Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.

[More]

The Constitution is written at 17.8 grade level. The Declaration of INdependence is at 15.1. Even the Gettysburg Address is at 11.2.

Congress now speaks at a 10.6 grade level.

In 2005, Republicans were the most eloquent speakers in Congress, as they had been for years. Their speeches were greater than the 11.6 grade level, better than the Democrats.

Within 4 years there was a tremendous drop in the GOP speech patterns. They had dropped to below 10.6 levels.

The Democrats stayed close to their normal patterns, not dropping below 11 until 2011.

The Republicans went from the highest grade levels in Congress to the lowest in just 4 years. Of the 20 lowest by grade level, 18 are Republicans.

Of course, what does the data actually mean? In the US, the average American reads at between an 8th and 9th grade level.

So are the legislators dumbing down their words  because they are dumber or are they trying to be better communicators?

I imagine only history will be able to separate out those two possibilities. I go for better communication because many are now having their words heard directly rather than filtered through the media and dumbed down there.

Why police hate being photographed – it reveals that they lie and do so often

 

by conner395

Citizen Video Evidence Helps Two Arrested Photographers Have Their Cases Dropped
[Via Techdirt]

Just as we’ve seen the DOJ come out and scold police for taking away people’s rights by arresting people photographing or videotaping police, we have two separate stories (found via PetaPixel) of photographers who were arrested by police for taking photos of public protests, both of whom had their cases dropped due to videotaped evidence from others that was posted to YouTube.

The two cases were unrelated, but have a similar fact pattern (and one not particularly different than previous stories we’ve seen). One case, in Seattle, involved a photographer named Joshua Garland, who started photographing recent protests in downtown Seattle, and was arrested and charged with third degree assault supposedly for “grabbing a police officer’s hand and twisting his arm.” Garland’s lawyer, Andrea Robertson, went on YouTube and was able to piece together videos of the incident, which she then showed to prosecutors, saying that the video footage made it clear “there was absolutely no way that the officer’s account of events is what actually happened.” Because of that, police dropped the charges.

Meanwhile, dealing with a similar issue in New York, photographer Alexander Arbuckle actually went to trial, where, once again someone else’s YouTube footage helped exonerate him (and show that the police appeared to lie). In this case, he was charged with “disorderly conduct” (which we see a lot in cases where police arrest photographers for photographing or videotaping them. The police officer claimed, under oath in court, that Arbuckle was in the street and blocking traffic, leading to the arrest.

Thankfully (or, if you’re the police, unfortunately), there was a lot of evidence contradicting that statement. This included Arbuckle’s own photos, which were taken from the sidewalk, and (more importantly) a Ustream video from a guy named Tim Pool “showed that not only was Arbuckle on the sidewalk, so were all the other protestors.” As the Village Voice notes, “the only thing blocking traffic on 13th Street that night was the police themselves.” Here’s the video, with the key section being from 31:50 until about 35:00.
As Petapixel points out, this certainly suggests that the police lied under oath.

[More]

Yep, documented evidence that the police lied and did so under oath. In fact, many times their lying has been revealed by ubiquitous cameras.

So no wonder they want to violate the Constitution to stop them. And even then, they have been shown to lie on their reports and to lie on the stand.

And they would have continued to get away with this lying if not for other cameras.

I imagine a lot of cops hate the fact that these cameras now force them to be a little more honest and not lie as much. But that is the only way to keep bullies drunk on authoritarian power in check.

I hope these cops get charged with perjury and fired. Maybe then other cops will focus on doing their job instead of lying.

Financial crises are worse than anyone expected

Could this time have been different? – The Washington Post
[Via The Washington Post]

Christina Romer had traveled to Chicago to perform an unpleasant task: she needed to scare her new boss. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s top political adviser, had been very clear about that. He thought the president-elect needed to know exactly what he would be walking into when he took the oath of office in January. But it fell to Romer to deliver the bad news.

So Romer, a preternaturally cheerful economist whose expertise on the Great Depression made her an obvious choice to head the Council of Economic Advisers, gathered her tables and her charts and, on a snowy day in mid-December, sat down to explain to the next President of the United States of America exactly what sort of mess he was inheriting.

Axelrod had warned her against pulling her punches, and so she didn’t. It was not a pleasant presentation to sit through. Afterward, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s friend from Chicago and Romer’s successor, remarked that “that must be the worst briefing any president-elect has ever had.”

[More]

The data we now have indicate that the numbers being given to Obama in 2009 were way way off, and too optimistic.  They thought that the decrease in the economy during the last quarter of 2008  dropped at an annual rate of 3.8%. They were wrong and working in the dark with estimates that have been shown to be horribly incorrect.

It was not until this year – over 3 years latter – that we know what the real decrease was. Over twice as high at 8,9%

They proposed a stimulus that was not even large enough to make up for a 3.8% drop in the economy. It was tragically much too small for an 8.9% drop.

But the GOP would never stand for that. We now know we needed something closer to a $2.5 trillion stimulus to get us out of this whole. The GOP allowed us t get a $700 billion, with about half in tax cuts rather than direct stimulus.

A better approach would have been to follow some of the ideas from an insightful book “This time it’s different” which looks at a large number of financial crises. Rogoff and Reinhart, the authors, provide some useful points which need to be considered.

Because their work shows that in contrast to economic crises which are usually fixed relatively rapidly, the aftermath of financial crises can take years or decades to fix. In some cases the economy never recovers.

Thy do believe that the stimulus, as small as it was, was instrumental in preventing a second Great Depression. It just failed to recognize how long the slog is after a financial crisis. There are other things that can be done.

One would have been to take longer to use the stimulus. As a Republican economist stated, “The Recovery Act worked. The problem is we didn’t keep our foot on the accelerator.”

Rogoff/Reinhart show that these crises are extended because of the timidity of poltical solutions

Yet the Obama administration did too little. Its team of interventionist Keynesians immersed in the lessons of the Depression and Japan did too little. Everyone does too little, even when they think they’re erring on the side of doing too much. That’s one reason “this time” is almost never different.

The reason ‘This time is different” is never really different is that the politicians never really do enough. Not all of these need to be just stimulus also. Some, like preparing the population for the long slog of a financial crisis recovery, should be easy.

But the biggest thing that needs to be done about a financial crisis is to deal directly with the cause of it – debt. But the right kind of debt. This crisis was not caused by government debt. So lowering government debt will not fix it.

It was caused by the housing debt. The overall cost of housing now is $6 trillion less than in 2006. And this will get worse:

Morgan Stanley estimates there are more than 2.2 million homes sitting vacant, and 7.5 million more facing foreclosure. It is housing debt that has weakened the banks, and mortgage debt that is keeping consumers from spending.

But we have not dealt with this debt at all.  It is still there. In fact McCain actually proposed dealing directly with this debt – the government buy up the troubled mortgages and let people refinance. This was shot down so hard by his own party that Obama did not even try.

Because there is no way our politicians will allow people to be helped if it hurts banks. The banks pay for their election campaigns.

We will not really solve this financial crisis until there is a workable housing policy. I have yet to hear either candidate propose such a thing.

What is obvious form this article is that Obama’s policies were not as effective as they could have been. But the GOP’s policies would have been much,much worse. And nothing they are proposing will do much to ovecome the sorts of crises seen by Rogoff-Reinhart.

A few more charts to consider – I wish we had just done what Reagan did

Public-sector job losses: An unprecedented drag on the recovery | Economic Policy Institute
[Via Economic Policy Institute]

Since the recovery from the Great Recession officially began in June 2009, private-sector jobs are up by 2.8 million, but public-sector jobs (the combined employment in federal, state, and local governments) are down by 584,000. The figure below compares trends in public-sector employment in the last four recoveries. The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months.

[More]

This chart is telling:

Funny how recessions dealt with by Republicans see increases in public employee employment at a rate to decrease the overall unemployment levels.

But in this recession, the GOP has made sure that we continue to see large numbers of public employees put out of work. The rhetoric of their leadership continues to demonize any public employee.

They have made sure there is no recovery seen by public employees only for this recession. In the ones overseen by Reagan and Bush they made sure the recovery of public jobs rapidly returned to previous levels.

Funny how politics is more important  today than helping Americans. At least when it is a Democrat in the White House.

If they had just allowed the same rates of employment as Reagan did, there would be about 1.7 million more jobs today.

This would have reduced the unemployment rate 1.5 points to below 7. That is where we would be if everyone cared about jobs in the same non-partisan manner they did in 1981.

And I’d rather the GOP today just followed the government spending pathway that Reagan oversaw:

Yep, the socialist Obama is seeing much less government spending than that spendthrift Reagan.

More government spending, more public employees and lower unemployment if we had just done what Reagan did.

It seems that Reagan would be too liberal for the current GOP. Wow!

Charts everyone should look at

Chart Book: The Legacy of the Great Recession —
[Via Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]

The United States went through its longest, and by most measures worst economic recession since the Great Depression between December 2007 and June 2009. This chartbook will document the course of the economy following that recession against the background of how deep a hole the recession created – and how much deeper that hole would have been without the financial stabilization and fiscal stimulus policies enacted in late 2008 and early 2009.

[More]

The data tell a mighty tale. Such as change in GDP:

Obama took over in the first quarter 2009. There has been an increase in GDP every quarter since.

The Recovery Act was passed in February 2009. Since then we see increasing employment in the private sector – 4.2 million jobs added or 163,000 a month. While the previous 12 months were all job losses. Real jobs have been created.

This one shows just how bad the job situation was. The previous recessions mostly reached bottom within 18 months. This one went out to 2.5 years.

But it would have been much worse without the stimulus. That stimulus, as small as it was, may be the thing that prevents a seconds recession, one that much of Europe is now experiencing.

The TSA could have killed her

by gyro2

Savannah Barry, Diabetic Teen, Blames TSA For Broken Insulin Pump (VIDEO)
[Via Huffington Post]

Savannah Barry, a 16-year-old diabetic, is criticizing the TSA after an agent incorrectly instructed her to walk through a body scanner despite the fact she was wearing an expensive insulin pump. The pump stopped working shortly after the security check.

[More]

The pump is not supposed to be put through the body scanner because it can stop working – a life threatening event.

But the TSA officer told her it was safe to do so. Idiot. And not trained properly.

The report said the TSA went  off the deep end when they saw her carry on with needles and juice containers.

Putting 18 month olds on the no fly list and destroying important medical devices. All part of the TSA.

And of course this shows that those body scanners are not totally safe for everyone, at the very least.

Will this 18-month kid ever be able to fly like an regular person?

TSA Removes 18-Month Old Baby From Plane
[Via American Times]

The new face of terror. Or something.

You have to hand it to the TSA.

When they discovered that eighteen-month-old Riyanna was on the no-fly list (or at least someone with the same name was) they didn’t bat an eye. They didn’t stop and think about whether a one-and-a-half year old posed a security threat, or whether it could possibly be a case of mistaken identity. There’s no time to think in these tense situations.

No sir, the TSA agents at Ft. Lauderdale airport did what needed to be done and pulled that terror-baby off the plane.

[More]

Apparently once on the no-fly list you can not get off. If so, this poor little girl will never be able to fly without being hassled by the TSA.

We used to watch in horror when a movie showed a Nazi asking a person for their papers in order to board a train. At least the Nazis did provide papers that allowed an individual to move about. If you had your papers, you at least had some comfort.

We now pull babies off of planes without the benefit of any paper at all. The TSA has become the closest thing we have to fascism in the US.

Bet that gets me on a no-fly list.

They have not stopped trying to spy on our computers

Stop Cyber Spying
[Via EFF]

[More]

Please read the whole thing. This is another attempt to label file sharers ‘cyber terrorists’. Then the government can sy on you without any recourse and share that information with private companies.

They claim the bill is needed to fight cyberterrorism from CHina. But it actually allows the Federal government to spy on Americans and to give that information to private organizations.

I am sure that will not be abused /snark.

The ACLU has a nice description of the bill’s problems. And the Obama Administration is not happy with it either.

It is still possible to get this stopped. COntact your Representative.

Perhaps why authorities feel comfortable using illegal and extralegal means

by Michiel2005

George W. Bush and torture: America’s highest officials are responsible for the “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners. –
[Via Slate Magazine]

It began with one document. On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush sent a 12-page Memorandum of Notification to his National Security Council. That memorandum, we know now, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to set up and run secret prisons. We still don’t know exactly what it says: CIA attorneys have told a judge the document is so off-limits to the courts and the American people that even the font is classified. But we do know what it did: It literally opened a space for torture.

[More]

To answer my title: They do it because the Executive branch not only did it 10 years ago but it continues to do it. It no longer matters who is in charge.

I think the degradation of our legal system began with our torture program, which many people knew was not legal and broke international law. The Executive Branch simply ignored this. And silenced anyone whose views were different.

And it did not end with the previous Administration. Obama has done little to support those who dissent to its clandestine activities or who wish malfeasance to be known. It has tried more people using the espionage act than all the previous Presidents together.

Whistleblowers who leak information about waterboarding to journalists have been charged with espionage. The Obama administration encourages aggressive reporting of other country’s secrets but wil charge and imprison people who do it here.

Some in its administration believe that reporters who print this information should be tried and imprisoned also. Instances of whistleblowing, where the information deals with administrative secrecy, not national security, result in being charged as a spy.

In the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Espionage Act with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers, some of whom were involved in the agency’s interrogation program, which included waterboarding.

Yep, the guys who were involved in breaking international law and torturing people are off scott-free. But anyone who releases that information get charged with espionage. And their life damaged often beyond repair.

How about this case, which started out with frightening jail time and ended up a misdemeanor:

In one of the more remarkable examples of the administration’s aggressive approach, Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year and faced a possible 35 years in prison.

His crime? When his agency was about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a software program bought from the private sector intended to monitor digital data, he spoke with a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He suggested an internally developed program that cost significantly less would be more effective and not violate privacy in the way the product from the vendor would. (He turned out to be right, by the way.)

He was charged with 10 felony counts that accused him of lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Last summer, the case against him collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, of misuse of a government computer.

What he was eventually charged with does not matter to them. What is important is the example.

That is how things have become degraded and why, I think, other legal authorities believe they can simply ignore the law and rewrite their own.

The example is the most important think. Make sure anyone who stands up gets shot down.

It worked before so why not continue. The only people ever punished are those who are those who have some morals, not those whose lack of morals allows them to simply ignore the law.

So now we not only have Federal officials retaliating in sometimes extralegal ways against those they do not like but also see local authorities doing the same thing – hurting people who are acting legally in order to demonstrate who really holds power.

I see absolutely nothing to indicate that either party will change this. Both have too many authoritarian leaders who feel the ends justify the means.

Perhaps in another 20-30 years we will be able to recognize just how twisted this has made us – just as we eventually realized that interning American citizens was not proper.

But I see little to indicate that anything will be done by any political party in the near future. Our Imperial Presidency is still too powerful.

Another incident of authorities flouting the law?

Megaupload founder will likely never go to trial, says US judge
[Via Boing Boing]

Remember earlier this year when the New Zealand government and the US government conspired to send a SWAT team to arrest Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, shut down the service, make 220 people unemployed, seize Dotcom’s assets, and deprive millions of users of access to their files? Well now a US judge says that the trial against Dotcom will probably never proceed, because the US government didn’t ever formally charge Dotcom. This wasn’t a mere oversight, either. They were not legally allowed to charge him. TorrentFreak reports:

“I frankly don’t know that we are ever going to have a trial in this matter,” Judge O’Grady said as reported by the NZ Herald.

Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that Megaupload was never served with criminal charges, which is a requirement to start the trial. The origin of this problem is not merely a matter of oversight. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken says that unlike people, companies can’t be served outside US jurisdiction.

“My understanding as to why they haven’t done that is because they can’t. We don’t believe Megaupload can be served in a criminal matter because it is not located within the jurisdiction of the United States,” Rothken says.

Megaupload’s lawyer adds that he doesn’t understand why the US authorities weren’t aware of this problem before. As a result Judge O’Grady noted that Megaupload is “kind of hanging out there.”

[More]

I hope something is missing here and that US authorities did not act outside the law.

So they arrested him, in another country, without ever formally charging him with a crime? And they could not formally charge him because his company was outside the United States so they had no jurisdiction to go after the company?

How in the world are we allowing government authorities to work outside the law to destory the livelihoods of hundreds of people living in a foreign country.?

“We are refused access to the evidence that clears us, we are refused funds to pay our lawyers, we are refused to pick the lawyers we want to represent us and have any chance for a fair trial,” Dotcom says.

For Megaupload the worst part is that the damage can’t be undone. The site has been completely destroyed as well as the plans to become a publicly traded company.

“We have already been served a death sentence without trial and even if we are found ‘not guilty’ which we will, the damage can never be repaired,” Dotcom says.

So, we have authorities acting outside the law in the US and now we see them apparently acting outside the law outside the US. The ends justify the means I guess. Even as our legal authority becomes more and more degraded.

They destroy his business even if they have to use methods that are not legal. We have demonstrated to everyone in the world that we can destroy their business and their livelihood purely based on our whims, not the law.

ANd I bet the authorities got access to ALL the information on the servers of the company, including huge amounts of private information from its customers.

Hey, if the MPAA does not like your site, they will have it destroyed, no matter where in the world it is or how legal it is.

Sure makes me glad to be an American. I sure hope something is missing here.

And here you can see what these same guys do to destroy an American’s life. It demonstrates just what our justice system is becoming. The worse thing you can do is to simply become the object of attention of the system. If you do, they will find some way to destroy you – legal or illegal.

More lawlessness from police

Wall St. Protesters Lying on Sidewalk Are Arrested
[Via NYTimes.com]

The police arrested a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters who were lying on a sidewalk at the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street on Friday afternoon after one demonstrator announced that the law allowed them to do so as a form of political protest.

[More]

Federal Courts have said that First Amendment rights can apply to people who sit/sleep on sidewalks as long as they do not occupy ore than half the sidewalk.

The NYPD simply ignored this and arrested people. Then they started arresting people who shouted. Then they declared this a sensitive area and arrested people – people they themselves had said could stay.

They then barricaded the protestors into an area and cited anyone who did not move fast enough past that area.

Interestingly, they are doing this at Federal Hall – where the Bill of rights was created. This area is run by the Federal Park Service and they are allowing the protestors to stay.

At least some of them.

Another instance of where the locals break the law and the Feds follow the law.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Looks like everyone broke/ignored the law at UCDavis but the students (UPDATED)

by DonkeyHotey

Sometimes, When “All the Facts are In,” It’s Worse: The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Report
[Via The Infamous Brad ]

You know how every time somebody in law enforcement does something that looks bad, we’re told that we should “wait until the facts are in” before passing judgment? Well, after Lieutenant Pike of the UC Davis Police Department became an internet meme by using high-pressure pepper-spray on peaceful resisters, the campus hired an independent consulting firm to interview everybody they could find, review all the videos and other evidence, review the relevant policies and laws, and issue a final fact-finding report to the university. The university just released that report, along with their summary (PDF link), and the final report is even worse than the news accounts made it seem.

[More]

Yep, the administration and police violated the law. Not only did they ignore the law, they were happy to tell people how great it was to do illegal things to the students.

The students – they had checked with campus lawyers regarding what they could do. They did what we would expect – find out was they could legally do and what they could not. Turns out everything they did was legal and virtually everything the authorities did was illegal.

A major conclusion of the report states:

In a democratic society, police are controlled by the law. It is the law, primarily Constitutional and criminal law, which gives police the authority and power to take action. Here, there is a fundamental question as to which law gave police the authority to take down the tents and arrest those who opposed them. Without the legal authority to demand that the tents be removed, the police lose the legal authority for much of what subsequently transpired on November 18, including the issuance of an order to disperse and the declaration of an unlawful assembly.

There was no definitive law that the students were breaking and none that gave the police the authority to do what they did. The authorities simply made up their own laws – no camping on campus – without any reference to legal statutes.

Let me say that again – The authorities simply made up their own laws. And then used illegal means to defend those laws.

The students were lawfully assembled and the authorities illegally dispersed them using possibly illegal approaches.

But before it even came to that point, the student protesters had, with the help of Legal Services, gone over all the relevant state laws, city ordinances, campus ordinances, and campus regulations and concluded that no matter what the Chancellor thought, it was entirely legal for them to set up that camp. When the university’s legal department found out that Chancellor Katehi was going to order the camp removed, they thought they made it clear to her that the students were right.

But she did not follow what her lawyers said. The police chief did not follow what she said. The police did not follow what the chief said. Look at this incompetence :

Chief Spicuzza “thought she made it clear” more than once that no riot gear was to be worn and no clubs or pepper sprayers were to be carried. What Lieutenant Pike said back to her, each time, was, “Well, I hear you say that you don’t want us to, but we’re going to.” And they did, including that now-infamous Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer that he used. Oh, funny thing about that particular model of pepper-sprayer? It’s illegal for California cops to possess or use. It turns out that the relevant law only permits the use of up to Mk-4 pepper sprayers. The consultants were unable to find out who authorized the purchase and carrying, but every cop they asked said, “So what? It’s just like the Mk-4 except that it has a higher capacity.” Uh, no. It’s also much, much higher pressure, and specifically designed not to be sprayed directly at any one person, only at crowds, and only from at least six feet away. The manufacturer says so. The person in charge of training California police in pepper spray says that as far as he knows, no California cop has ever received training, from his office or from the manufacturer, in how to safely use a Mk-9 sprayer, presumably because it’s illegal. But Officer Nameless, when he wrote the action plan for these arrests, included all pepper-spray equipment in the equipment list, both the paint-ball rifle pepper balls and the Mk-9 riot-control sprayers.

California law limits pepper spray to 2.5 oz canisters. Mk-9 is 12 oz. No one was trained in the use of a tool for torture. And its use was never authorized.

Ironically, the officer who used the pepper spray inappropriately had been worried about the legal justification for the entire operation. He argued against the timing of the entire operation. It is very likely that he knew he was being given illegal commands to proceed yet he followed those orders. Resulting in the use of unauthorized deterrents.

He used that pepper spray in a cavalier fashion with no training and against the directions of the maker. The manner he used this pepper spray could have resulted in deaths. It did result in hospitalizations.

The officers only stopped using pepper spray because they ran out. Then they mischaracterized many f their actions  in their reports. In fact, much of their reports fail to be substantiated by multiple videos.

They broke the law and should all be punished. They used illegal means to follow an illegal order. The administration should be criminally punished. If there is no criminal punishment, we do not live in a country with laws that matter,

The students followed the law. Laws they had carefully checked out before hand to make sure they were in compliance with. But a totalitarian and illegal authority contravened those laws. They went outside the law and should all be treated as criminals.

There should be criminal action here, not just civil. University authorities broke the law. If we allow civil authorities to so obviously break the law with no repercussions, then we have descended into a society run by outlaws.

This was the response of the students to the lawless actions of the officers as they left the area. This is what they shouted at the officers as they left, after their use of an unauthorized deterrent in a possibly illegal fashion:

We are willing to give you a brief moment of peace. So you may take your weapons and our friends and go. Please do not return. We are giving you a moment of peace. You can go, we will not follow you.

Even after being illegally attacked by inappropriate and unauthorized weapons, the students responded in a peaceful fashion. They recognized the humanity of the officers even after the officers treated the students inhumanely.

Read the report – it is a depressing read with regard to the casual disregard of the law  by officers and of the student’s legal rights – and the sheer incompetence of the University leadership and police. Then wonder about what happens when people follow the law but the authorities decide to simply ignore the law. What do we do then?

UPDATE: Looks like the Campus police chief is taking the fall. The campus administrators are still there.

 

Great idea for civil disobedience approaches to the TSA

Man Strips Naked At Oregon Airport To Protest TSA
[Via American Times]

It was a day like any other for TSA agents at the Portland International Airport. That is, until 50-year-old John E. Brennan showed up.

Brennan, upset by what he called “harassment” by the TSA, decided to go one step further than pat-downs or body scanners.

In an act that can only be described as civil disobedience, Mr. Brennan stripped naked in front of the TSA agents. He was told “numerous times” to put his clothes back on, but refused.

“Mr. Brennan’s actions caused two screening lanes to be closed and while some passengers covered their eyes and their children’s eyes and moved away from the screening area, others stepped out of the screening lanes to look, laugh and take photos of Mr. Brennan,” according to the police report on the incident.

[More]

Patdowns bordering on sexual abuse. Strip searches in private. Invasive pictures. Those are normal and okay for the TSA.

But how would they respond to not one but say a hundred people disrobing in the line?  Seems like a typically American way to protest.

“You want to see if I’m wearing something illegal. Here, I’ll show you.” An interesting tactic.

Augmented reality directy overlaid real reality

Pentagon buys dual-focus contacts
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

Prototype contact lenses designed to offer troops enhanced vision are ordered by the US Department of Defense’s research lab.

[More]

Using the right glasses, true heads up displays at close focus can be overlaid on top of real world vision at far focus.

Here is another report with some useful videos.