Legal and Legislative News

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You'll Never Guess the Latest Business to Be Cited for Not Serving an LGBT Person

reason.com

by Scott Shackford

August 5, 2014

A Denver bar has been cited by the state's Division of Civil Rights for discrimination because it refused to let a gay man dressed in drag enter.

The bar is the Denver Wrangler, and despite what its name might suggest, it is not some Country Western joint. It is, in fact, a gay bar. So the state has determined that a gay bar has discriminated against a gay person. What happened last summer is that a gay man named Vito Marzano, dressed in drag from a fundraiser elsewhere, wanted to enter the Wrangler. He was denied entry. The bar claims it wasn't because he was cross-dressing but because his image didn't match his driver's license. The bar had been previously cited for serving somebody underage and were now being extra cautious. For those not in the know, gay bars have a history of being targets of scrutiny by authorities looking for excuses to raid them and shut them down.

You're Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist

cato-at-liberty.org

by Jim Harper

August 10, 2012

It got a lot of attention this morning when I tweeted, "You're Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist." It's been quickly retweeted dozens of times, indicating that the idea is interesting to many people.

So let's discuss it in more than 140 characters. In case it needs saying: Police officers are unlike terrorists in almost all respects. Crucially, the goal of the former, in their vastest majority, is to have a stable, peaceful, safe, law-abiding society, which is a goal we all share. The goal of the latter is ... well, it's complicated. I've cited my favorite expert on that, Audrey Kurth Cronin, here and here and here. Needless to say, the goal of terrorists is not that peaceful, safe, stable society. I picked up the statistic from a blog post called: "Fear of Terror Makes People Stupid," which in turn cites the National Safety Council for this and lots of other numbers reflecting likelihoods of dying from various causes. So dispute the number(s) with them, if you care to.

Young Black Panther Supporter Warns He Could 'Exercise' His Second Amendment Right

theblaze.com

September 26, 2011

Here's the irony about the Constitution: it doesn't matter if you believe in it or fully accept it, it still protects you. That's the case with one Black Panther supporter at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

During an exchange with a Constitution-loving student on campus on Sept. 16, the Black Panther supporter said that he could "exercise" his 2nd Amendment right against his fellow student while also admitting later that he doesn't actually believe in the Constitution. It all happened while Phil Cleary was passing out Constitutions in honor of Constitution Day. Campusreform.org (which calls Cleary a "conservative) reports he had a table of literature promoting Western Civilization (and his group Youth for Western Civilization) and was engaging students and faculty on the topic. While doing that he had conversation with someone the site identifies as Blair Jordan Moses, the young man with a soft spot for the Black Panthers. And Cleary got it on video.

Young Man Dies in Prison as Guards Ignore his Pleas to See the Nurse

thefreethoughtproject.com

November 9, 2013

Michael Saffioti suffered from an extreme dairy allergy. On July 3rd, 2012 Mr. Saffioti ate something in prison that set this allergy off.

He tried to tell the guards about his negative reaction but they refused to take action. He pleaded with guards to see the nurse, but instead was told to go to his cell. Saffioti, knowing that this reaction could kill him was jumping up and down in his cell pleading with the guards to bring him to the nurse. He was ignored. Thirty minutes later he was found unconscious in his cell, and pronounced dead shortly after. This neglect by the guards is criminal. Ignoring a man as he dies in his cell takes a special kind of sicko.

Young offenders get an alternative to custody

The Guardian

by Amelia Gentleman

April 29, 2009

Daily life for 15-year-old Stuart is governed by a complex system of incentives and points that seems to have more in common with a television gameshow than a custodial sentence.

As a participant in an experimental youth justice initiative, he is working out a nine-month sentence for aggravated burglary as a guest in the home of a warmly sympathetic foster parent, instead of being locked up in a young offenders institution (YOI).

Young Ron Paul supporters express support for Gary Johnson, say Romney, Obama the same

redalertpolitics.com

September 15, 2012

Mitt Romney is just not going to cut it for many of Ron Paul's devoted legion of young followers.

Most of the Ron Paul supporters approached by Red Alert Politics Friday night at the Liberty Political Action Conference in Chantilly, Va., said they could not see many differences between Romney and President Obama. Their general consensus was that Romney is a weak candidate who has not effectively made his case. Libertarian candidate Gov. Gary Johnson seemed to be the choice of many. They seemed undeterred by suggestions that a vote for anyone other than Romney equals a vote for Obama as they exited the ballroom where Paul had just finished speaking.

Young voters not so hot for Obama now?

Hot Air

by Jazz Shaw

December 31, 2011

Ever since I was a young(er) man, I've heard about the coming wave of young voters who were ready to "rock the vote" and change the world.

Sadly, while this was predicted every four years, it rarely happened. The youth vote tended to raise their voices loudly for the media but failed to deliver on election day. That changed to a certain extent in 2008, though, when they turned out in fairly impressive numbers for Barack Obama. So are they gearing up for a similar showing in the coming year? At least according to one analysis, not so much.

Your Cellphone Is Spying on You

reason.com

by Ronald Bailey

December 17, 2012

How the surveillance state co-opted personal technology

Big Brother has been outsourced. The police can find out where you are, where you've been, even where you're going. All thanks to that handy little human tracking device in your pocket: your cellphone. There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions-about 20 million more than there are residents-in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult Americans carry at least one phone. The phones communicate via a nationwide network of nearly 300,000 cell towers and 600,000 micro sites, which perform the same function as towers. When they are turned on, they ping these nodes once every seven seconds or so, registering their locations, usually within a radius of 150 feet. By 2018 new Federal Communications Commission regulations will require that cellphone location information be even more precise: within 50 feet. Newer cellphones also are equipped with GPS technology, which uses satellites to locate the user more precisely than tower signals can. Cellphone companies retain location data for at least a year. AT&T has information going all the way back to 2008.

Your child's data is stored in the cloud

money.cnn.com

by Erica Fink and Laurie Segall

June 28, 2013

Your child's school knows just about everything about your kid. Now, many school districts are storing all that information in the cloud. InBloom, a cloud-based database system for schools, is storing students' data on their servers.

Non-profit inBloom offers an Internet database service that allows schools to store, track and analyze data on schoolchildren. If you think about it, that information is more than just test scores. It's whether kids receive free lunch -- a telling indicator of the family's finances. It's the time a student got into a fight in the schoolyard. And it could be a child's prescription medication. The upshot of storing all that data in one location is that it can be used to tailor specific curricula to each child. If Johnny's data suggests that he's a tactile learner and he's failing math, inBloom's analytic engine might suggest a particular teaching approach.

Your Domestic Drone News: Boeing Tested a Drone Capable of Staying in Flight For Four Days and the EPA is Using Drones to Observe Cattle (Hopefully)

bastiatinstitute.org

June 4, 2012

The Los Angeles Times notes that Boeing Co. recently tested a new kind of hydrogen-propelled drone capable of staying in flight for four days. Currently most drones can stay aloft for about 30 hours, which is obviously already superior to manned aircraft.

There's obviously nothing inherently scary about this sort of thing - technology, freedom, etc. It would be nice if this just meant a cool new piece of technology that humans are having fun with. But considering the still-shaky status of drones and safety and not crashing, not to mention the domestic repercussions for technology that can let this baby hang out in the air for four days...It's a bit unnerving. Until we all have our drones and nobody has any privacy, of course.

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