Shutting Down SOPA and PIPA

These two bills take a sledgehammer to correcting the problem of piracy of intellectual property on the Internet, when actually only a scalpel would be appropriate. So said Andrew Leonard in his Wednesday, January 18, 2012 column at Salon.

I've tried to do my part by signing petitions against it at GOOGLE and CREDO, among other things, and I urge all my readers in the U.S. to oppose these bills actively and as effectively as they can, too.

Protect the Vote TN

The Tennessee legislature recently passed a law ostensibly aimed at preventing voter fraud. However, fraud by impersonation is almost non-existent in Tennessee. In the only court case extant, it was actually the Memphis poll workers themselves who fraudulently cast votes in the name of dead people in order to "stuff the ballot box."

No case of an individual voter's casting a vote, or attempting to cast a vote, in any name but his own legal name is on record.

The effect of the photo ID requirement is to disenfranchise many poor people, including those residing in rural areas, and the elderly and the minority poor.

If you are a Tennessee resident, please go here to sign a petition that the Tennessee legislature pass a bill to repeal this law which has placed a very unnecessary barrier in the path of the poor and of students in Tennessee colleges, when they attempt to exercise their constitutional right to vote in Tennessee elections.

For the New Year

January 2012 slide show of wonderful images by Dierk Haasis.