The Dutch Senate is going paperless, and the iPad is going to get them there. The upper house of parliament for the Netherlands was told two weeks ago it would only have paper to rely on for one more week, after which point, the iPad and a special Senate-specific app would replace documents and printouts (via Reuters).

Dutch Senators are the first in Europe to try such an ambitious project, and two weeks into the experiment, reported being mostly “delighted” with how it’s progressing so far. Some document printing is still permitted, but by and large, reference information, calendars, proposed legislation, correspondence and meeting notes are handled through the special Senate app on iPads.

While the program, including the app development and iPad purchases, cost €150,000 (around $204,150 USD), Dutch Senate Secretary General Geert Jan Hamilton told Reuters it would save the Senate around €140,000 in paper printing costs during the first year alone. After that, upkeep for the program will only be around €35,000 per year, so the Senate will quickly be able to recoup their initial investment and save plenty besides.

The program by the Dutch Senate is only the latest example of a growing push to replace paper workflows and supporting documents with digital equivalents via the iPad. Airlines are also testing similar programs, as are local municipal governments in the U.S., and medical professionals. The iPad’s disruptive effective in government, education and business may eventually become its most financially advantage outcome for Apple. Though it will take longer to materialize than the iPad’s consumer success, since large organizations move at a slower pace than the average gadget-buyer, we could eventually see the iPad become for business what the Dell PC tower once was.

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Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow.

Some political analysts and consultants say Mr. Lazio’s critique of the planned project is designed in significant part to ward off an unexpectedly spirited challenger in Carl Paladino, a wealthy upstate conservative who has spoken out against the project in even blunter language than Mr. Lazio.

In his own commercial, Mr. Paladino vowed that, if elected, he would use the government’s power of eminent domain to force the center’s developers to find a different location.

So a conservative probably who might even be a Tea Bagger wants to exercise government control over private property just because he doesn't agree with the land use in a neighborhood he doesn't live in? That, my friends, is the modern conservatism movement. They don't hate the government; they just want the government to do their bidding in line with their bigoted views.

"There is no denying that alcohol is a problem in India. But banning booze outright has been proven not to work. Apart from converting what could be taxes for the government into profits for bootleggers (as in Gujarat), there is also the problem of illegal brews that often blind or kill their clients ."

While not commenting on the causation-correlation problem that gets alcohol blamed for social ills, banning anything seems to be the solution for everything the government wishes we don't do regardless of their right to do so.

"America’s system of rail freight is the world’s best. High-speed passenger trains could ruin it."

It may be a choice between lower prices thanks to efficient freight transport and reliable & better passenger transport. How willing are we to make the tradeoff?

"How an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade"

Where are the tea parties protesting against this stupid government action? #pb

Wired's Ryan Singel makes a good case in this article that cyberwar hype -- like terrorism hype -- has been fuelled by government contractors who have a product to sell, and who don't give a damn about the consequences to the net or to freedom

Now that's what death panels would really be like. The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

Five Reasons Why Libertarians Shouldn't Hate Government - Reason Magazine

People who consider the federal government the greatest threat ever don't mind working for it

Interactive timeline of secret copyright treaty

more biochemical suits for Grand Forks County, N.D., than the town has police officers to wear them; and $557,400 worth of rescue and communications equipment apparently needed for some 1,500 residents of the town of North Pole, Alaska.

You can't catch terrorists by casting a broad net. You catch terrorists with good police work. You look at networks, suspicious behavior, clues. Ignoring the desperate plea of a father who goes to the CIA with information about his son being radicalized in Yemen, but then patting down 170 million Nigerians ever after, is brain dead.

Which U.S. residents are more likely to do their civic duty and fill out Census forms that are due to land in mailboxes next spring?

Several studies suggest that making it harder for sex offenders to find a home or a job makes them more likely to reoffend. Gwenda Willis and Randolph Grace of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, for example, found that the lack of a place to live was “significantly related to sexual recidivism”.

What a Texas town can teach us about health care.

The daily grind of looking after their children and families, albeit with no remuneration, has led housewives in Kerala to form a trade union, demanding that the government pay them a fixed salary and old-age pension for the services being rendered.

Amendment is added to massive federal stimulus bill that gives U.S. workers job priority

It was a typo faux pas and a Zero made all the difference. A low-cost laptop being developed for educational uses by India's government in tandem with two leading educational and research institutions will actually cost US $100 not US $10

White Paper by India Today

Indicating that it was taking charge of the company for now, the government said it would restrain current directors of Satyam from acting, and appoint 10 of its nominees to Satyam's board.

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS

I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be “banana republic.”

The Los Angeles City Council has passed an ordinance prohibiting construction of new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by 500,000 low-income people.

China, the drumbeat goes, is poised to become the 800-pound gorilla of the international system, ready to dominate the 21st century the way the United States dominated the 20th. Except that it's not.

Hitchens gets waterboarded - now he agrees that it's torture!

When a nation has been the world leader at something as vital as, say, medical research and regulation, and annual funding is flat or declining when it used to go up, then money may matter.

If we teach everyone to be alert for photographers, and terrorists don't take photographs, we've wasted money and effort, and taught people to fear something they shouldn't.

How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

In Manhattan.

"When America declares war on things -- drugs, terror -- usually the subject of that war ends up doing quite well."

from my cold dead hands.

Flip-flopping on party affiliation. What are the odds of all this happening by accident?

Lawrence Lessig made a stunning announcement: he is going to retire from copyfighting and take up a new career, fighting for a new issue.

It is time to look to a future after Bush. Unfortunately, it still looks bleak.

Abstinence-only education programs do little to discourage teens from having sex. Yet the government continues to fund it.

What will the Indian government do next?

Against free-market or not? Make up your minds, lefties

This is at once alarming and unsurprising. Alarming, because if tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens, they seem remarkably sanguine about this fact.