Los Angeles implements magazine confiscation and gets no takers
So... what happens when one of the currently sitting council members lose their seat on the council? Presumably at least one of them owns a gun with a magazine above the now-verboten size limit, and they are no longer immune when they leave office.
When the president says earth science, he means global warming propaganda
Normally, I'm all in favor of funding for NASA. But I want that funding to go towards a Moon base, a Mars base, and so on... not towards global warming propaganda.
On Thanksgiving this year, I find myself with very little to be thankful for. But one of the few things this President has done well is the privatization of space exploration, even if it was mostly by getting out of the way.
It seems the Wisconsin appeals court has struck down a ban on switchblades (in the home, it seems) on Second Amendment grounds. This seems to be like a significant step forward with positive implications for gun rights. Granted, it's only one state.
Knife bans have never made much sense to me. Knives are tools as well as weapons, and AS weapons, they aren't very useful offensively. Before you can hurt someone with a knife, you have to *catch* them. And then catch the next person with a substantial head start. And so on, and so on. If used as a weapon at all, they are much more useful defensively ("If you come within reach, I will hurt you"). The same applies to swords, though with less utility as a tool.
This decision is only the beginning, though. For the next steps in Wisconsin, see the truth about knives on the topic.
It appears Turkey has deliberately and with authorization from the top levels of governmentshot down a Russian military aircraft over Syrian airspace. Forces on the ground shot the pilot after he ejected, and the pilot was dead before he hit the ground.
This is an act of war against Russia.
Turkey is a member of NATO.
If Russia chooses war with Turkey in response, the NATO alliance is likely -- barring some fine print somewhere -- obligated to defend Turkey.
And why did we switch from an effective decongestant sold over the counter to a worthless one sold over the counter and an effective one behind an id-and-address-and-pharmacy door?
What color is the sky of the planet these people live on? Practically by definition "climate change", even if it was real and not a made-up apocalypse fantasy to fuel the religious fervor of those who look with contempt upon traditional religions, is gender neutral. It affects the whole planet. It doesn't care what you've got or haven't got between your legs. The temperature of the planet affects everyone equally because we are all on the same fracking planet.
First, while NOAA may have no influence over operations at Science, we have seen (in the ClimateGate emails) significant evidence of influence and attempted influence of scientific journals by prominent climate scientists seeking to block publication of articles they did not like. Successfully. And get people they did not like removed from the editorial board of those journals. Successfully. So asserting that NOAA has no official influence over a scientific journal is misleading at best, and whether the journal was pressured by scientists at NOAA unofficially is one of the questions Lamar Smith is seeking to answer.
Second, it is quite possible to rush a paper to publication without involving the journal at all. The authors could rush their work instead, without any influence exerted on the journal at all.
Third, there's an interesting little tidbit dropped here. The paper took 50% longer to average to publish and went out to more than the usual three reviewers. From reading the ClimateGate emails, I get the impression that sending a paper to more than the usual number of reviewers means that at least one of the first three reviewers recommended against publication, and rather than reject the paper or possibly make recommended edits, someone made the decision to seek new reviewers instead.
Overall, I find Ars Technica's attempt to defend this study to be potentially significant evidence for the prosecution.
Jeb Bush comes out in favor of internet sales taxes
This is so insane that the only thing I can think of to explain it is that he must be trying to chase down a big donor, probably one with interests in the "brick and mortar" companies he's talking about.
Doesn't matter, though. Calling for a tax on the internet is a disqualifier for a Republican candidate.
Five more foreign nationals arrested in US with criminal tools
An "improper lane change"? Bullshit. The NSA picked up something, put out the license plate number, and the officers made up an excuse to pull them over.
When they vote, they vote for Democrats. Probably several times.
What often escapes the attention of those without the appropriate technical expertise is that encryption represents nothing more than the ability to hold a private conversation. That's a right implicit in the First and Fourth amendments. It is also something that harms no one.
That sounds very familiar to me, because it has happened to me. It's one of the reasons I have my own blog: no one can censor (or "moderate") my own platform.
It's worth noting that the suit appears to be over the "photo" portion of the ID, and he has a non-photo (but legal) identification card. So it's not like he's asking for no ID at all, just ID without a picture.