“Using military personnel for domestic law enforcement is dangerous and fraught, and any political leader who does it should be held strictly accountable for the consequences. Given the absence of any real need for militarized law enforcement in Chicago, it would be a grave abuse of power for the president to send any troops there on a law-enforcement pretext — as it was when he mobilized the National Guard for law enforcement in Washington, D.C. But for more than one reason, that mobilization in D.C. is easier to defend constitutionally than sending the Texas National Guard to Chicago would be. Justifiably or not, constitutional law treats all of D.C. as an exception to the McCulloch principle: The people of D.C. are, as a general matter, subject to a lawmaking authority — Congress — that they play no part in electing. (That’s why some D.C. license plates bear the protest slogan, “Taxation Without Representation.”) But regardless of whether that exception is justified in D.C., it has absolutely no application in Illinois. Like Nebraskans and Pennsylvanians and Kansans, Illinoisians are constitutionally entitled to be constituents of whatever body governs them.
Any military force is likely to behave with less restraint toward a population to which its leaders are not responsible than toward a population to which its leaders must answer democratically. If the Texas National Guard behaves poorly in Chicago, the locals have no electoral mechanism for holding Texas authorities to account. The governor of Texas never appears on any ballot in Illinois. He has nothing to fear, politically, from the people his National Guard will police. Surely a militarization at the hands of a non-responsible power is no less tyrannical, and no more constitutional, than a tax imposed by one.”
“Interviews with more than a dozen technology executives over the past week revealed that the Trump administration’s announcements of government stakes in companies such as Intel have had a chilling effect, with executives now filtering many decisions through the prism of how the White House might respond.”
The Kirk shooter so far seems to have no connections to anti-facist groups. “right wing” violence kills far more people than “left wing”. Of course, most left wing people and most right wing people have nothing to do with any of this violence.
Designating drug gangs and then domestic organizations as “terrorist” organizations could lead to persecuting political opponents not because they are somehow funding, or a part of, a terrorist organization, but because they are political opponents.
“The Treasury Department will stop issuing paper checks for tax refunds, Social Security payments and most other government programs on Sept. 30 as part of an executive order aimed at modernizing the government.
While experts widely agree that electronic payments are faster to process, and less susceptible to fraud and theft than paper checks, advocates who work with the small percentage of those who still receive checks say the change is being rushed out and worry that some beneficiaries won’t learn of it unless their payment doesn’t show up.”
The hitting of refineries in Russia is creating a gas shortage that may impact civilians. This could eventually weaken Russians’ support for the invasion.
“Some porn websites have complied with the Online Safety Act by requiring U.K. visitors to upload an ID or submit to a facial scan. “But some of the biggest porn sites that disregarded the ‘scan your face’ rule entirely have been rewarded with a flood of traffic,” the Post found. “Some have doubled or even tripled their audiences in August compared with the same time last year.”
When sites do comply with rules like these, they risk putting people’s privacy and cybersecurity at risk. The more times you have to submit a copy of your driver’s license or a picture of your face for identification, the more likely you are to find yourself in a data breach.”