At the same time that the United States is encouraging the people of countries like Iran to exercise their right to disagree with their government, American technology is being used to prevent freedom of speech in those countries....  In a age when word processors get shipped with restrictions which require them to validate their license with a remote server, it seems to me that software which can be used to limit the liberties of people around the world should be locked down quite a bit tighter....  For more details on the use of American censorship software in other countries, see the OpenNet Initiative at http://www.opennetinitiative.net/.

Funerals are frequently a rallying point for the ideals of the deceased. When else do you have the attention of the country focused and thinking about a single set of values and issues? Nobody is claiming that President Carter said anything that would have gone contrary to the wishes of Correta King. On the contrary, she probably would have been very pleased at the attention those words have received.

It is a truism that it’s much easier to discriminate against a class of people whom you have never met. Justice Powell, prior to ruling in support of an anti-sodomy law, is famously said to have remarked that he didn’t believe he knew any homosexuals, not realizing that his very own law clerk was gay‚ but still in the closet. This issue was a large part of the rationale behind encouraging gays to come out publicly, and it is behind the nascent movement encouraging women to talk about their abortions ( http://abortionandlife.com/ ).

It's not your eyes. . .

https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1151155571757867011

https://twitter.com/takimilxwe/status/1148723019881148416

The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.... I was from Connecticut, whose Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient."... That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

I wrote this in 2006 at Meadowlark Music Camp in Maine. It's a slightly modified version of "House of the Rising Sun", with the focus on the New Orleans flood.

Just a come-on for people to launder money for the Russian Mafia, but I found it amusing.

At the end of 2016 Wired declared it to be the year that we won the battle for encryption. Unfortunately, as we increasingly move towards an authoritarian State, it becomes obvious that was a very short-lived victory.

What do you do when you can’t use an H-1B to hire someone here? You outsource to them there.

Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, a female baby was covered by her father's identity, and then, when she married, by her husband's.

https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/1159055303746424832