Fighting the Surveillance State in My Own Back Yard: Interview with Scott Horton
"Scott and I talked about the city's lawsuit against me in an effort to keep "mobile surveillance cameras" secret and my recent second-round victory in court."
The Constitution and War Powers: Jefferson vs the Barbary Pirates
Some people want you to believe that Thomas Jefferson waged war on the Barbary pirates without congressional approval – but they’re either ignorant or lying.
After extracting $1 billion bribe from ZTE, Commerce Dept. partially lifts ban
"The Commerce Department’s order should allow ZTE to at least partially resume operations, though it appears to be narrowly targeted to really only allow for maintenance and the benefit of customers, and not deployment of new products. By and large, the trade ban is still in place."
New Zealand: U.S. can extradite Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom
"The six-year legal saga is widely seen as a test for how far the United States can reach globally to apply U.S. firms' intellectual property rights."
European link tax, compulsory copyright scanning sent back to the drawing board
"The law will now be sent for a full reconsideration and debate inside the parliament, during which activists will try and remove the controversial Article 11 and 13. Article 11 has been referred to by campaigners as instituting a 'link tax', by forcing tech companies like Google and Facebook to pay to use snippets of content on their own sites. Article 13 adds rules that make tech companies responsible for ensuring any copyrighted material is not spread over their platforms. Those rules could force technology companies to scan through everything their users post and check it doesn't include copyrighted material."
Post Office to pay sculptor $3.5 million for using wrong Statue of Liberty
"Unused stamps accounted for more than $70 million in Post Office revenue during the three years Davidson's image was used. The court awarded Davidson a five percent royalty for those unused stamps."
Now in Effect: North Carolina Law Takes First Step to Legalize Raw Milk
RALEIGH, N.C. (July 5, 2018) – Last week, the North Carolina legislature overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a farm bill that includes provisions legalizing limited raw milk for human consumption in the state. This takes a first step towards nullifying a federal prohibition scheme in practice. I bipartisan coalition of three sponsors and three cosponsors introduced…
The Struggle for American Independence: The Intolerable Acts
As the British seek vengeance upon Boston, they hope that their policies would do much to isolate patriot sentiments in Boston from the other colonies, preventing interference from other places. However, this episode expresses why such a plan backfired in a monumental way.
Growing Public Employee Benefits Forcing School Cuts
"Taxpaying families are paying more for public school employees but getting less public education for their children in return."
College students are investing in bitcoin with financial aid money
"More than 20 percent of college students use their financial aid money to invest in cryptocurrencies, according to new findings by The Student Loan Report, a website for student loan information."