Archive for the ‘Activism’ Category

After a few months of bloody wolf killing a federal court ruled against the Bush/Cheney administrations proposal to remove wolves from the Endangered Species Act. In response the administration withdrew that proposal a few weeks ago. I do not know what the administration has against wolves but they are once more attacking them with a proposal that would lead to two thirds of the population being slaughtered. Please take action now to insure this does not happen by contacting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They are only accepting public comments until November 28th. Speak up now as they can not speak for themselves. We as a people own the land they are on and need to have the wilderness preserved.

The time for elocution is over and we are down to the brass tacks. Election day is upon us and everyone should be heading off to the polls. Our family went to Slater Marietta Elementary, our local polling location, and let our voices be heard by casting our ballots for president, local officials, 3 constitutional amendments and senate. Bob Inglis ran unopposed for congress. I have heard of long lines and long waits but we didn’t see either of them. The line was a little longer than usual but we have seen it longer at later hours in the past. It was my daughters first time to vote and she was excited. Plus it made her feel grown up for the first time she said. She has been 18 for less than a month and is still in school. It doesn’t seem so long ago that she was my little princess toddling around. I talked to my niece and she had about the same time in line waiting as us, forty five minutes give or take. She has moved out of our district and now votes at the police station in Travelers Rest.
I also talked to one of the poll workers and she told me they had a very long line waiting on them to open up the doors at 7 am this morning. I didn’t think to count the voting machines but apparently they had enough as we moved right along. We use touch screen machines and I am no fan of those as I am sure you know. Plus they had portable machines to carry curbside to anyone who was not able to come in and vote. I don’t know how the long the lines will be when workers get off work and come vote in the afternoon. It can get long then in a normal election, and this one may be a record setter for turnout, but everyone who is in line at 7 pm will get to vote they say. Well I have done all I can do voting my conscious. I hope all of you get out and do the same.

Tomorrow is the election finally. I will let you know how it goes at the polling place for us. We will be going as a family tomorrow with our eighteen year old daughter who will be voting for the first time. The only one missing is our son who will be voting in New Jersey. I urge you one and all to get out and vote. This election is too important not to.
I found this video and I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

A US Army intelligence report has identified the popular blogging tool Twitter as a potential terrorist tool. It along with GPS and possibly voice changing software are at the heart of this intelligence report. The report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion examines a number of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants. The report is posted on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website. Parts of the report mention how activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements and Twitter members got out the news of the earthquake in Los Angeles in July faster than news outlets. Now lets see what happens when they discover chat rooms and email.

Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, has done us all a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It’s like Cliff notes of Bev’s 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook great information to get us actively involved in our democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that somethings up with those voting machines that leave no paper trail or any other real evidence of the vote. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary ‘Hacking Democracy.’ I’ve been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out.

The Security Group at the University of California in Santa Barbara has released a video that shows attacks carried out against the Sequoia voting system. The video shows an attack where a virus-like software spreads across the voting system. The coolest part of the video is the one that shows how the ‘brainwashed’ voting terminals can use different techniques to change the votes even when a paper audit trail is used. Pretty scary stuff. The video is proof that these types of attacks are indeed feasible and not just a conspiracy theory. Also, the part that shows how the ‘tamperproof’ seals can be completely bypassed in seconds is very funny (and quite disturbing at the same time)



Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, has done us all a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It’s like Cliff notes of Bev’s 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook great information to get us actively involved in our democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that somethings up with those voting machines that leave no paper trail or any other real evidence of the vote. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary ‘Hacking Democracy.’ I’ve been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out.

In a ruling last week a federal appeals court has ruled that Beef exporters are banned from testing their cattle for mad cow disease without the approval from the USDA (United States Agriculture Department). Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wanted to test 100% of their beef so they can assure their customers in Japan and South Korea that their beef is safe. Once again we have another instance of the government interfering in a business decision. They should have the right to test as much as they want to but big meat packers are afraid of being forced to test more than 1% of their meat and the USDA sided with them. This not only has an effect on Creekstone Farms but it has the potential to reach all of us who eat beef. The appeals court ruled, 2 to 1, that under a 1913 law, test kits that are used only after an animal is killed still constitute “diagnosis” and “treatment” ? this for a disease that has no treatment and is 100% fatal ? and therefore fall under the USDA’s authority to regulate. Just how crazy is that?

Creekstone?s case is not entirely over. The appeals court remanded to the U.S. District Court to resolve whether the USDA?s refusal to let Creekstone test its cattle is arbitrary and capricious.

A tiny bit of good news on the electronic voting horizon. Barbara Simons, an accomplished computer scientist and e-voting expert, was recently appointed to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisers. The EAC is the U.S. Federal body responsible for voting technology standards, among other things. In actuality there are supposed to be 4 positions out of the 37 member board that are supposed to be professionals in the field of science and technology. Only four on?the board sounds a little low to me but at least we are finally getting someone with actual computer knowledge into a position to set standards and perhaps put a little faith back into disillusioned voters. You can count me as one of them as I feel that e-voting as it stands today would be too simple to hack and change the results of an election and no one could ever prove it differently. Of the 37 members 4 are to be selected by the majority and minority leaders in the House and the Senate. Of these 4 members only the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid placed a genuine expert in the field to the board. I take my hat off to Mr Reid, thank you. Hopefully as vacancies pop up they will be replaced by other experts in the field and not just political appointments.

Louisiana recently lost their case in front of the Supreme Court and therefore denied them from executing child rapists. Personally I feel they do not deserve to breath the same air anyone else does and felt that the death penalty was not too harsh in child rape cases. Indeed if there were a worse method of killing them I would be happy to see that done. Give me a rock and I’ll throw the first stone.

Well anyhow apparently the lawyers for the state of Louisiana overlooked a law on the books for the military that calls for the death penalty for child rapists. Their request to reopen the case in front of the Supreme Court is based on the failure of anyone involved in the case – lawyers on both sides as well as the justices – to take account of this law when the case was heard and the decision handed down.

The court almost never reopens a case once ruled upon but the 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy relied in part on what Kennedy called a “national consensus” against executing convicted rapists. We do not know if the case will be reopened as it takes five justices, a majority, to?reconsider a ruling.

The ruling in June struck down laws in Louisiana and five other states and spared the lives of two Louisiana men convicted of raping girls 5 and 8. I hope this case is overturned and the death penalty is once again applied to these sicko’s. I feel anyone that sick does not deserve to take another breath and should be killed ASAP.