The U.S. Department of Transportation is taking aim at the way
drivers use navigation tools such as Google Maps. A proposed bill would
grant the National Highway Safety Administration the right to issue
guidelines on the functionality of navigation apps that could
potentially be a threat to driver safety and force changes to apps that
don’t comply with the guidelines, the New York Timesreports.
The Department of Transportation has been grappling with the
increased use of technology in the car for the last several years. In
2013 the agency issued
guidelines on the use of in-car navigation systems, advising that no
task on the devices should require more than a two-second glance and 12
seconds total to accomplish. The newly proposed bill, though, would also
apply to smartphone apps, like the popular maps software Google and
Apple develop. Such apps currently reside in a murky area when it comes
to laws that ban calling and texting while driving. A California man
faced a $165 fine for using his phone as a navigation aid because other
uses of a phone, such as talking while driving, are banned in the state.
An appeals court later overturned the decision, according to the Times.
Critics of the proposed measure say it would be impractical for the
government to monitor the vast number of navigation apps and whether
people are using them while driving or not. But with injuries from car
accidents involving a distracted driver on the rise,
it’s likely the National Highway Safety Administration will continue to
seek ways to regulate the ways people use electronics while behind the
wheel. The bill, a wide-ranging piece of legislation regarding transportation, is expected to pass in Congress in some form by the end of the year.
Fantasy football needs to be controlled by the government, at least according to Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ).
Pallone penned a letter
to Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and
Commerce, demanding a hearing to examine “the relationship between
professional sports and fantasy sports to review the legal status of
fantasy sports and sports betting.”
The letter continues:
“Team involvement in daily fantasy sports also raises
questions of whether players or league personnel, who may be able to
affect the outcome of the game, should be allowed to participate in
daily fantasy sports.”
Wait, this sounds familiar…
Pallone is concerned about fantasy football and its potential impact
on society. Along with the request for congressional hearing, Pallone
issued a statement reading:
“Anyone who watched a game this weekend was inundated by
commercials for fantasy sports websites, and it’s only the first week of
the NFL season.”
IJ reached out to Pallone’s congressional office to inquire if he
participates in any fantasy sports leagues. There was no response.
Pallone, a Democrat, is historically a supporter
of legalized gambling. In January, Pallone introduced legislation to
advance the legalization of sports betting at the federal level.
He just wants to regulate it as well
If the U.S. government has its way, the Transportation
Department will have full oversight over apps like Google Maps, Apple
Maps, and Waze.
The Obama administration’s proposed transportation bill
would allow the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to
regulate all types of vehicle navigation aids, including smartphone
apps and smart dashboard systems. The agency could set restrictions and
demand changes if the apps appear to threaten in-car safety, reports the
New York Times.
Some tech firms have loudly protested the pending legislation.
They argue the laws would be impractical to enforce in a rapidly
changing market with tens of thousands of navigation apps.
“How can any regulatory authority hope to effectively police such a
complex environment?” Timothy McGuckin, CEO of road toll payment startup
GeoToll, asked in an op-ed on The Hill.
To mollify tech companies’ concerns, officials clarified that the
Transportation Department wouldn’t seek to review apps before they hit
the market. But it would have the authority to demand changes to an app
it deems dangerous, much like it regulates the mechanical features of
cars.
The government doesn’t have immediate plans to issue a strict set of
rules, however. A variety of proposals could make their way into the
highway bill Congress appears likely to pass in next few months.
Regulators issued a set of voluntary guidelines for in-dashboard
navigation systems last year. They specify that a single interaction
should take no more than 2 seconds. Automakers have largely complied
with the guidelines.
Congratulations, portable air conditioner buyers and sellers. This product now qualifies for… government regulation!
The Department of Energy (DOE) recently determined
that portable air conditioners meet the criteria set under the Energy
Policy Conservation Act (as amended) for efficiency mandates. Like all
other efficiency regulations, mandated appliance standards remove
choices from individuals and empower Washington to override personal
preferences.
DOE concluded that the average household use of electricity for
portable air conditioners exceeds the limit to trigger consideration for
regulation. The energy use threshold for DOE bureaucrats to begin
inspecting and testing an appliance is low.
Any appliance where the average annual energy use exceeds a 100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year receives a visit from the efficiency police. To put that energy figure into context, one kilowatt-hour provides enough electricity to watch TV for 10 hours or vacuum for an hour. Such a low threshold enables government regulators to mandate efficiency requirements for more than 50 different products from televisions, laundry machines, and dishwashers to light bulbs.
Energy efficiency regulations date back to the 1970s as a
government-forced way to reduce energy use. Administrations from both
parties used the framework set in the Energy Policy Conservation Act of
1975 to expand the DOE’s authority to regulate energy use. Proponents
argue that efficiency mandates for businesses and families are win-win.
They save consumers money through lower energy bills and reduce
environmental pollutants.
But regulations on appliances, vehicles, and buildings that mandate
reduced energy use were as bad four decades ago as they are today.
Market forces will appropriately place the right value on energy
savings—as well as the other attributes of appliances and other
regulated products. Individuals may prefer a larger, heavier vehicle for
safety; an incandescent light bulb for the color and heat it emits; or a
dishwasher that uses more water but gets the job done in half the time.
The federal government shouldn’t be placing a higher value on energy
savings over safety, comfort, convenience, time, or any number of
considerations an individual applies when purchasing a good. Suppliers
will meet the market demand for the wide diversity consumers in the
world without any nudging from the government.
Americans live in an age where information is readily available to
consumers. A simple Google search for “portable air conditioners and
energy savings” provides a range of products as well as several
information sites as to why portable air conditioners lower energy bills. Informational sites also exist as to how these air conditioners waste energy.
Consumers even have the choice not to bother with such research. In
every instance, the choice should be driven by the individual.
Milton Friedman superbly said,
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more
urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” In
trying to protect Americans from higher energy bills, the federal
government is making us all worse off.
Russian Counterterror Troops Tackle Training Exercise With One Heck of a Bang
Kyle Mizokami,Popular Mechanics16 hours
From Popular Mechanics
A video of a Russian counterterrorism exercise ends
with terrorists apprehended-and the bus they were riding in completely
trashed.
The video, shot somewhere in Russia likely several years ago, shows Ministry of the Interior OMON
troops-a paramilitary government force stationed in most Russian
cities-performing a training exercise and stopping a bus occupied by
"terrorists" with typical aplomb.
First, a BTR-80 armored personnel carrier cuts the
bus off, forcing it to slow down while firing its 14.5-millimeter heavy
machine gun. The BTR-80 is the support element, firing (hopefully)
blanks in order to intimidate the terrorists.
But in the most nutso move, an OMON agent wearing a heavy Explosive Ordnance Disposal bomb suit
catches up to the bus and whacks it with an explosive charge. The
charge trashes the bus, blowing out the glass and leaving a huge scorch
mark on the side. The explosion is so big the OMON agent disappears in
the cloud of debris.
Who knows why OMON would use such a ridiculously
powerful explosion to stop the bus, but some possibilities are to damage
the bus axle, forcing it to a stop, or to disable an even more
dangerous explosive device the terrorists might have. The men
onboard-probably OMON troopers unfortunately singled out to play the
role of terrorists-appear stunned but otherwise unharmed by the
explosion. Just another day at work.
LISTEN HERE
Newly discovered audio recordings of Hillary Clinton from the early
1980s include the former first lady’s frank and detailed assessment of
the most significant criminal case of her legal career: defending a man
accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.
In 1975, the same year she married Bill, Hillary Clinton agreed to
serve as the court-appointed attorney for Thomas Alfred Taylor, a
41-year-old accused of raping the child after luring her into a car. The recordings, which date from
1983-1987 and have never before been reported, include Clinton’s
suggestion that she knew Taylor was guilty at the time. She says she
used a legal technicality to plead her client, who faced 30 years to
life in prison, down to a lesser charge. The recording and transcript,
along with court documents pertaining to the case, are embedded below.
The full story of the Taylor defense calls into question Clinton’s
narrative of her early years as a devoted women and children’s advocate
in Arkansas—a narrative the 2016 presidential frontrunner continues to
promote on her current book tour.
Her comments on the rape trial are part of more than five hours of
unpublished interviews conducted by Arkansas reporter Roy Reed with
then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife in the mid-1980s.
The interviews, archived at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, were intended for an Esquire magazine
profile that was never published, and offer a rare personal glimpse of
the couple during a pivotal moment in their political careers.
But Hillary Clinton’s most revealing comments—and those most likely to inflame critics—concern the decades-old rape case.
‘The Prosecutor Had Evidence’
The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
Twenty-seven-year-old Hillary Rodham had just moved to Fayetteville,
and was running the University of Arkansas’ newly-formed legal aid
clinic, when she received a call from prosecutor Mahlon Gibson.
“The prosecutor called me a few years ago, he said he had a guy who
had been accused of rape, and the guy wanted a woman lawyer,” said
Clinton in the interview. “Would I do it as a favor for him?”
The case was not easy. In the early hours of May 10, 1975, the
Springdale, Arkansas police department received a call from a nearby
hospital. It was treating a 12-year-old girl who said she had been
raped.
The suspect was identified as Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old factory worker and friend of the girl’s family.
And though the former first lady mentioned the ethical difficulties of the case in Living History, her written account some three decades later is short on details and has a far different tone than the tapes.
“It was a fascinating case, it was a very interesting case,” Clinton
says in the recording. “This guy was accused of raping a 12-year-old.
Course he claimed that he didn’t, and all this stuff” (LISTEN HERE).
Describing the events almost a decade after they had occurred,
Clinton’s struck a casual and complacent attitude toward her client and
the trial for rape of a minor.
“I had him take a polygraph, which he passed – which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” she added with a laugh.
Clinton can also be heard laughing at several points when discussing
the crime lab’s accidental destruction of DNA evidence that tied Taylor
to the crime.
From a legal ethics perspective, once she agreed to take the case,
Clinton was required to defend her client to the fullest even if she did
believe he was guilty.
“We’re hired guns,” Ronald D. Rotunda, a professor of legal ethics at Chapman University, told the Washington Free Beacon.
“We don’t have to believe the client is innocent…our job is to
represent the client in the best way we can within the bounds of the
law.”
However, Rotunda said, for a lawyer to disclose the results of a
client’s polygraph and guilt is a potential violation of attorney-client
privilege.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “Unless the client says: ‘You’re free
to tell people that you really think I’m a scumbag, and the only reason I
got a lighter sentence is because you’re a really clever lawyer.’” Clinton was suspended from the Arkansas bar in March of 2002 for failing to keep up with continuing legal education requirements, according to Arkansas judicial records.
Public records provide few details of what happened on the night in
question. The Washington County Sherriff’s Office, which investigated
the case after the Springdale Police Department handled the initial
arrest, said it was unable to provide an incident report since many
records from that time were not maintained and others were destroyed in a
flood.
A lengthy yet largely overlooked 2008 Newsday story focused on Clinton’s legal strategy of attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim.
The girl had joined Taylor and two male acquaintances, including one
15-year-old boy she had a crush on, on a late-night trip to the bowling
alley, according to Newsday.
Taylor drove the group around in his truck, pouring the girl whisky and coke on the way.
The group later drove to a “weedy ravine” near the highway where Taylor raped the 12-year-old.
Around 4 a.m., the girl and her mother went to the hospital, where
she was given medical tests and reported that she had been assaulted.
Taylor was arrested on May 13, 1975. The court initially appointed
public defender John Barry Baker to serve as his attorney. But Taylor
insisted he wanted a female lawyer.
The lawyer he would end up with: Hillary Rodham.
According to court documents, the prosecution’s case was based on
testimony from the 12-year-old girl and the two male witnesses as well
as on a “pair of men’s undershorts taken from the defendant herein.” In a July 28, 1975, court
affidavit, Clinton wrote that she had been informed the young girl was
“emotionally unstable” and had a “tendency to seek out older men and
engage in fantasizing.”
“I have also been told by an expert in child psychology that children
in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual
experiences and that adolescents in disorganized families, such as the
complainant’s, are even more prone to exaggerate behavior,” Clinton
said.
Clinton said the child had “in the past made false accusations about
persons, claiming they had attacked her body” and that the girl
“exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her
way.”
But the interview reveals that an error by the prosecution would
render unnecessary these attacks on the credibility of a 12-year-old
rape victim.
‘We had a lot of fun with Maupin’
Hillary Clinton 2016 Facebook
“You know, what was sad about it,” Clinton told Reed, “was that the
prosecutor had evidence, among which was [Taylor’s] underwear, which was
bloody.”
Clinton wrote in Living History that she was able to win a
plea deal for her client after she obtained forensic testimony that
“cast doubt on the evidentiary value of semen and blood samples
collected by the sheriff’s office.”
She did that by seizing on a missing link in the chain of evidence.
According to Clinton’s interview, the prosecution lost track of its own
forensic evidence after the testing was complete.
“The crime lab took the pair of underpants, neatly cut out the part
that they were gonna test, tested it, came back with the result of what
kind of blood it was what was mixed in with it – then sent the pants
back with the hole in it to evidence,” said Clinton (LISTEN HERE). “Of course the crime lab had thrown away the piece they had cut out.” Clinton said she got permission
from the court to take the underwear to a renowned forensics expert in
New York City to see if he could confirm that the evidence had been
invalidated.
“The story through the grape vine was that if you could get [this
investigator] interested in the case then you had the foremost expert in
the world willing to testify, so maybe it came out the way you wanted
it to come out,” she said.
She said the investigator examined the cut-up underwear and told her there was not enough blood left on it to test.
When Clinton returned to Arkansas, she said she gave the prosecutor a
clipping of the New York forensic investigator’s “Who’s Who.”
“I handed it to Gibson, and I said, ‘Well this guy’s ready to come up
from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice,’” said Clinton,
breaking into laughter.
“So we were gonna plea bargain,” she continued.
When she went before Judge Cummings to present the plea, he asked her
to leave the room while he interrogated her client, she said.
“I said, ‘Judge I can’t leave the room, I’m his lawyer,’” said
Clinton, laughing. “He said, ‘I know but I don’t want to talk about this
in front of you.’”
“So that was Maupin [Cummings], we had a lot of fun with Maupin,” Clinton added.
Reed asked what happened to the rapist.
“Oh, he plea bargained. Got him off with time served in the county
jail, he’d been in the county jail for about two months,” said Clinton.
When asked why Taylor wanted a female lawyer, Clinton responded, “Who knows. Probably saw a TV show. He just wanted one.”
Taylor, who pleaded to unlawful fondling of a chid, was sentenced to
one year in prison, with two months reduced for time served. He died in
1992.
‘Is This About That Rape of Me?’
Hillary and Bill, 1982 / Ready for Hillary Facebook
Neither Reed nor a spokesman for Hillary Clinton returned a request for comment.
The Taylor case was a minor episode in the lengthy career of Clinton, who writes in Living History, before moving on to other topics, that the trial inspired her co-founding of the first rape crisis hotline in Fayetteville.
Clinton and her supporters highlight her decades of advocacy on
behalf of women and children, from her legal work at the Children’s
Defense Fund to her women’s rights initiatives at the Bill, Hillary, and
Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
And yet there are parallels between the tactics Clinton employed to
defend Taylor and the tactics she, her husband, and their allies have
used to defend themselves against accusations of wrongdoing over the
course of their three decades in public life.
In the interview with Reed, Clinton does not mention the hotline, nor
does she discuss the plight of the 12-year-old girl who had been
attacked.
Now 52, the victim resides in the same town where she was born.
Divorced and living alone, she blames her troubled life on the
attack. She was in prison for check forgery to pay for her prior
addiction to methamphetamines when Newsday interviewed her in 2008. The story says she harbored no ill will toward Clinton.
According to her, that is not the case.
“Is this about that rape of me?” she asked when a Free Beacon reporter knocked on her door and requested an interview.
Declining an interview, she nevertheless expressed deep and abiding hostility toward the Newsday reporter who spoke to her in 2008—and toward her assailant’s defender, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Christians Are Still Persecuted Around the World. Here's Where.
Last
Sunday's Easter bombing in Pakistan targeting Christians should come as
no surprise—Christians are persecuted around the globe.
A
tragic Easter evening at a crowded park in Lahore, Pakistan, is the
latest reminder that outside of the Western world, Christianity is
increasingly a targeted minority.
The
Taliban faction, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the
suicide attack that killed more than 70 and wounded hundreds, mostly
children. More than 5,000 militants were rounded up in Pakistan and all but approximately 200 were released during the government’s investigation.
Attacks against Christians are a pattern in Pakistan in recent years. In March of 2015,
for example, 14 people were killed and more than 70 injured after
suicide bombers targeted two churches in Lahore, and at least 80 were
killed in a church bomb attack in 2013 in the city of Peshawar.
Human rights organizations have an uphill battle when it comes to raising Western awareness of incidents like these. David Curry,
CEO of Open Doors U.S.A., part of an international organization that
tracks and brings awareness of Christian persecution, sees the Western
focus on persecution in America and Europe as part of the problem.
“I don't believe most Americans have an accurate understanding of the real state of Christian persecution around the world,”says
Curry. News coverage is selected according to consumer demand, he adds.
“But for news consumers to clamor for such coverage, they need to be
aware of the extent of the problem.”
Open Doors reports
a significant increase in attacks against Christians during 2014-2015.
Last year, more than 7,000 Christians were killed for their faith, which
they note is “almost 3,000 more than the previous year.”The
largest areas of growing Christian persecution occur in the Middle
East, Africa, and Central Asia. Those numbers are expected to scale
upward.
The
Center for Inquiry (CFI), an organization whose Campaign for Free
Expression promotes the rights of religious and nonreligious individuals
globally, has seen the same patterns. “We were the sole secular
humanist organization to press the State Department to label ISIS’s
crimes against Muslims and Christians as genocide,”says Paul Fidalgo, the communications director for CFI.
In March, pressures from human rights organizations finally succeeded in getting the U.S. State Department
to apply this genocidal label to the Islamic State. Secretary of State,
John Kerry, provided a laundry list of war crimes by IS that helped to
secure that official condemnation, including the horrific beheading of 49 Egyptian and Ethiopian Coptic Christians in 2015.
The
difficulty in addressing these human rights violations is significantly
stronger, however, when it comes to recognized states. In many
countries, suppression of minority religious groups is codified in legal
systems in the form of blasphemy laws.
These laws serve as a means to justify and prosecute religious and
nonreligious minorities. (The United States still has a few
unenforceable blasphemy laws left on the books.)
A 2012 report from Pew Research shows that 22 percent of “the world’s countries and territories”have
blasphemy laws, and 11 percent penalize apostasy. In many locations,
punishments can result in fines, but in others, blasphemy is on par with
treason and can result in death.
The
safety of individuals in countries with blasphemy laws is difficult to
secure by foreign advocates. Frequently, governments, like Saudi Arabia,
whose human rights record is repeatedly questioned by advocacy groups,
see international pressure to improve human rights as a guise for
challenging their sovereignty. (Saudi Arabia has a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.)
State
responses like these belie the significant individual human cost they
dismiss. In a few individual cases, the end result is freedom. In Sudan,
a 27 year old Christian woman, Meriam Ibrahim, was sentenced to death
for apostasy after converting and was turned in to the authorities by
her brother. Groups like Open Doors and Center for Inquiry both called for her release, and she was eventually allowed to receive asylum in the United States.
Other individuals, like Pakistani Asia Bibi,
a Christian accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, are still
uncertain what the future holds. She’s been on death row since 2010. Her
strongest advocate, Punjab governor Salman Taseer, was assassinated for his support in 2011. She is currently the subject of ongoing protests and threats while her case is appealed.
Even
in countries that boast a form of official secularity and religious
freedom—such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh—the state unofficial
intolerance religious groups, or failure to address social intolerance,
only increases the suppression of religious groups. “Bangladesh is
perhaps the clearest example,” notes Fidalgo, “where you have secular
activists and Christians being murdered, more or less with impunity.”
For
those who are aware of this global situation, calls for change are
growing. Through official statements and social media, many Muslims have
expressed their support and solidarity with those who are persecuted.
For example, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the exiled world head of the Ahmadiyya
Muslim Community—a group also persecuted in Pakistan for their belief in a prophet after Muhammad and which is constitutionally unrecognized by the state as Muslim—released a statement
expressing his sympathies and condolences, condemning the Lahore
attack. “Never can such attacks be justified in any shape or form,”he says, “and so all forms of terrorism and extremism must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
Effective
international solutions, however, are still a long way away and those
engaged in human rights want to see actions with teeth. “Right now few
leaders are offering more than condolences after major attacks on
Christians,”says Curry,
“They need to go to the countries, meet with its leaders and people to
find bipartisan ways to protect Christians and promote religious freedom
to all.”
We have to “look beyond our borders,”adds
Fidalgo. We need to recognize that “people truly are suffering in
unthinkable ways—being beaten by mobs, imprisoned, executed, flogged—for
holding certain beliefs or questioning the majority.”
“And
then we need to start bringing to bear our diplomatic and economic
influence and making serious efforts to make change. Sometimes we are
doing that, but not nearly often enough, nor forcefully enough.”
