"Representative Hugo Velasquez Jaramillo, who proposed the bill, explained that although the cultivation of plants would be legal under the new legislation, the processing and trafficking of drugs would remain subject to criminal sentencing."

"The proposed settlement bars Facebook from making any further deceptive privacy claims, requires that the company get consumers' approval before it changes the way it shares their data, and requires that it obtain periodic assessments of its privacy practices by independent, third-party auditors for the next 20 years."

"...for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

"Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not"

"While canoeing on the Rifle River in Michigan, Boomer fell overboard letting forth a fuck or two. As if his day wasn't bad enough, the nearby sheriff gave him a ticket ... for violating an 1897 statute forbidding cursing within earshot of women and children. Then he was convicted.

"Amazed that this could happen in the twenty-first century, my curiosity about the legal implications of fuck was rekindled. I decided to dedicate one of my research assistants to exploring the area."

"It is heard to believe, yet a true story. A pregnant woman in Iowa (USA) had been jailed for "attempted feticide" because she told hospital staff that she once thought about having an abortion."

"In Berlin alone, hundreds of complaints are made each year about noise levels in kindergartens and children's playgrounds. Some day-care facilities have even been forced to close after local residents have gone to court in search of a quiet life. Now Berlin's local government, the senate, has passed a law giving children the right to be noisy, the first law of its kind in Germany."

"It is hard to imagine a better resurrection for a country that has been devastated by financial corruption than to turn facilitating transparency and justice into a business model."

"Many countries are debating whether they should have population policies. Here are two – very different – examples of nations that rapidly reduced their birth rates."

"Data generated from this simulation suggest that the current system combining patent and open source protection for inventions generates significantly lower rates of innovation (p<0.05), productivity (p<0.001), and societal utility (p<0.002) than does a commons system. Further, the empirical data generated using PatentSim suggests that commons systems can generate significantly greater amounts of innovation, productivity, and social utility than currently predominating patent systems that combine both patent and open source protection for inventions."

"I'll give you an example: repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn't exist," Atkinson said on the air. "That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary."

This morning, AdelaideNow took great delight in posting a picture of Fornarino posing with a Mac and his young daughter. He's a second-year law student who moved to the area last year and "lives in a flat on Port Rd, about 500m from Mr. Atkinson's electorate office."

"Mr. Cooper starts to make a point - that allowing same sex couples marriage equality would also entitle opposite sex couples to domestic partnership equality - but he can't actually say what would be wrong with this, just that nobody can prove that it *wouldn't* be harmful so maybe it would. The judge doesn't buy it. You don't have to prove that same sex marriage is harmless any more than you have to prove that freedom of speech or the press is harmless, which it sometimes isn't.

(Aside: I didn't realize that the Prop 8 people want to discriminate against gays *and* straights. It's not just important that gays can't have marriage; straights also shouldn't have civil unions.)"

"We’ve been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can't be embedded on websites, and in certain countries can't be seen at all. And we want you to know: we hear you, and we’re sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago."

"My subject line said (in full), 'meep.' The body said (in full), 'Meep.' Yesterday I received a reply email from Assistant Principal Mark Strout, which said (in full) "Your E-mail has been forwarded to the Danvers Police Department."

"The most common response I am seeing to the Maine referendum is, "How dare they think they can vote on my civil right to marry whom I please?!" Here's the thing: you don't have a civil right to gay marriage. We want to think of civil rights as forces of nature, but they are compacts within society. And gay marriage has not been defined as a civil right by the U.S. government..."

"Fathers will be able to take six months' paternity leave, the government has announced. The move will allow mothers to decide to return to work after six months and fathers to stay at home for the rest of the 12 months off allowed by law."

"There is a war being fought between customers and many of the firms they have to deal with. It is an asymmetric conflict - the little man versus the faceless, bad customer service monoliths."

On the little man's side there are only newspaper consumer pages and a rather handy selection of laws.

"The church has already held religious blessings for same-sex couples who have had a civil partnership ceremony. But agreeing to perform gay marriages, which are currently not allowed under civil law, could bring the Quakers into conflict with the government."

"The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146 million. ... [estimated that] between 80% and 85% of gold farmers are based in China."

"Married Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen have come under fire for claiming thousands of pounds on a second home near Parliament, while their designated main home is only 10 miles away. Now a group of men have taken direct action by squatting in the main home they say has been left unoccupied."

"'The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics. ...I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation."

"the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, a group headed by three former presidents—Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico—published a report arguing that the violent crime and corruption generated by drug prohibition is undermining democracy and that the drug war has “failed”. They called for a public debate on alternatives, including treating drug use as an issue of public health rather than criminal law, and decriminalising marijuana."

"Last.fm didn’t hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it."

"Since September 11, photographers have been stopped, harassed, and intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were photographing subjects that made other people uncomfortable, such as ship locks, trains, buildings, bridges, and bus stations. ... In the event you’re stopped by overzealous law enforcement or security officials attempting to enforce fictitious laws, I’ve designed these fictitious and official-looking Photographer’s Licenses."

"A human rights group is calling on Abu Dhabi to take urgent action against the head of state's brother after video emerged of him torturing another man. ... The victim is seen being beaten, given electric shocks and crushed by a car.

"By taking LongPen instead of an airplane to this event, Conrad Black will save 1,764 lbs. of CO2 emissions," stated a LongPen poster. In reality, as a LongPen press release delicately put it, "legal complications" made it impossible for Black to appear in person."

"When Helmsley died in 2007 it was widely reported that she wanted her $8bn fortune spent only on canines. She was dubbed the "Queen of Mean" during a trial in 1989 for tax evasion. Manhattan probate court judge Troy Webber ruled that Helmsley's legal documents allowed the trustees to 'apply trust funds for such charitable purposes and in such amounts as they may, in their sole discretion, determine'"

"We always knew the ASA was just another tool of the politically-correct secularist establishment, but here's the proof."

"In a number of cases, the negative effect of the Civil Union Act on the physical and mental health of same-sex couples and their children is striking, largely because a number of employers and hospitals do not recognise the rights and benefits of marriage for civil union couples."

Mike Godwin (General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation) provides an interesting afterword on the recent Internet Watch Foundation's blocking of a Wikipedia article.

"Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry: his brother, just behind him, had been struck. Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket. He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote."

"It began with a few pilot projects, and apparently these have been so successful that the Russian government has now decided to make it the standard for *all* schools."

"The majority of the panel agrees that genetically modified plants are ok, “as long as their independence, i.e., reproductive ability and adaptive ability, are ensured.” In other words, no forced sterility and terminator genes."

"A man who fathered a child for a lesbian couple angrily confronted a group of Fathers 4 Justice protesters today as they demonstrated with a banner against 'Lesbo Dads'"

"The most senior judge in Saudi Arabia has said it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes."

""They showed me the footage from the helicopter and I couldn't believe it. They said if I hadn't been in they would have broken the door down to get in. ... If there's nothing wrong with our house how come we've been raided by the police?"

"Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. ... He then said, "I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan" and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered."

"Religious people could have the legal entitlement to discriminate on conscientious grounds against gay people after an employment tribunal ruled in favour of a Christian council worker."

Essays on the basics of and rationals behind constitutionalism.

"The article, calling for decriminalization of all file sharing, has started a loud debate in Swedish media."

"Contact your Councillors, MP, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs for free."

"In a recent office action, the USPTO has rejected the claims of the Amazon.com one-click patent following the re-examination request that I filed on 16 February 2006."

"...But the decay and death of old laws can be just as important, even when they're unobserved. The story of our obscenity laws highlights where, exactly, American laws go to die."

Linden Labs on getafirstlife.com; "In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected."

"Sunderland University lecturer Phillip Tann, 45, was told mobile speed officers recorded him speeding in a 30mph zone in the city last November. But Dr Tann, from South Shields, had data from a satellite tracking device, showing him travelling at 29.18mp

"Allowing hype to build about an early election was a "massive error of judgment" by Gordon Brown, he said."

"She then made perhaps the most startling comment of the day. Saying that the record labels have spent "millions" on the lawsuits, she then said that "we've lost money on this program.""

"A new constitution is being prepared to replace the current one, introduced after the military coup of 1980. The document describes women as a vulnerable group needing protection."

"In a ruling released earlier today, a federal judge held that two sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amended under the Patriot Act are unconstitutional."

"There are several non-governmental organizations that publish and maintain assessments of the state of freedom in the world and rank countries as being free, partly free, or unfree using various measures of freedom, including political rights, economic r

Granted, sites like The Pirate Bay are still the major source for Bittorrent traffic. But legitimate platforms offer enough video goodies to clog your tubes for days. Here are 10 great places to get started

"The picture of 16-year-old Chang flashing a peace sign was taken in April by Alison's youth counsellor, who posted it that day on his Flickr page, according to Alison's brother, Damon. In the ad, Virgin Mobile printed one of its campaign slogans, "Dump y

“There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Korean young people in major cities including Chungjin, as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,”

"So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringem

"In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission."

"Town attorney Ted Ayo said the ordinance expands on the existing state indecent exposure law by adding underwear to the list of forbidden exposures."

"More than a year after the BBC story was first published ... it got more than 100,000 page views for five successive days. Over time, it has received several million hits - making it historically one of the biggest-hitting stories the BBC News website ha

"GLORIFYING TERRORISM (Rackstraw Press) is, technically, illegal - because every SF/F story in this anthology breaks the current UK law that bans the glorification of terrorism. Whatever that is, of course."

"Getting frisky in the plane toilet could be a criminal offence, says travel lawyer Philip Banks, from the firm Irwin Mitchell. A person has committed an offence if they have sex in a lavatory to which the public has access, under section 71 of the Sexual

"In fact, there are over a quarter of a million [shelters] in Switzerland, because, 17 years after the end of the Cold War, the policy of providing them for the entire population still stands."

"The sooner we move towards a secular society the sooner words like homophobia will start becoming anachronistic."

"But this is BAD NEWS because it's GOVERNMENT CONTROL which is EVIL because the FREE MARKET would produce the BEST RESULT for the CONSUMERS!"

"Yup. You can sleep a lot better knowing that you had nothing to do with furthering the problems..."

A social contract for sex.

"29. No pirate shall ever drive a minivan, unless he drives the minivan into a tavern, for the purposes of looting barrels of rum from said tavern. Upon completion of this task, the minivan is to be burned. No exceptions."

"A collaborative document of experiences with agreements in the digital age as they are designed and encountered." i.e., bitching about EULAs.

An article regarding the potential bannind of certain types of porn.

Go Cory!

Docu-drama on the legalisation of drugs.

"It's often forgotten, but seven states of the Union still define atheists, secular humanists, and other freethinkers as second-class citizens."