The Atlantic: “A legal case involving a famous solitary elephant poses a fundamental question about animals’ rights…Until recently, the idea of elephant personhood would have struck legal observers as a joke. Just a few decades ago, most states still treated animal cruelty as a misdemeanor, like public intoxication or driving without insurance. But an increasing… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Congress
House Democrats scoop up lawyers to power Trump investigations
CNN Politics: “A recent committee job posting reviewed by CNN asked for legislative counsels with a variety of expertise: “criminal law, immigration law, constitutional law, intellectual property law, commercial and administrative law (including antitrust and bankruptcy), or oversight work.”The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee needs lawyers, too, posting jobs for “executive branch investigative counsel.”… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues December 2018
Before the end of 2018, please take some time to catch-up with the cyber related updates provided by Pete Weiss every week on LLRX. Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational… Continue Reading
Can a Statute Have More Than One Meaning?
Doerfler, Ryan, Can a Statute Have More Than One Meaning? (December 12, 2018). New York University Law Review, Vol. 94, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3300262 “What statutory language means can vary from statute to statute, or even provision to provision. But what about from case to case? The conventional wisdom is that the same language… Continue Reading
Female Prisoners Could Benefit From Criminal Justice Measure
NPR: “David Greene talks to Topeka K. Sam, who spent more than 3 years in prison and is a leading voice on overhauling the criminal justice system. She played a pivotal role in a landmark Senate bill. DAVID GREENE, HOST: A bipartisan criminal justice bill is close to becoming law. The Senate passed the measure… Continue Reading
The Fresno Bee and the War on Local News
GQ: “Local newspapers like The Fresno Bee have long been an endangered institution in America, and that was before California Rep. Devin Nunes began waging a public campaign against his hometown paper. Zach Baron spent time with the reporters fighting to keep news alive in an age when the forces they cover are working equally… Continue Reading
Merry Christmas – DOJ issues reg banning Bump Stocks
CNN – “The Trump administration rolled out a new federal regulation Tuesday officially banning bump-fire stocks: “Those who possess the devices, which make it easier to fire rounds from a semi-automatic weapon by harnessing the gun’s recoil to “bump” the trigger faster, will have 90 days to turn in or otherwise destroy them from the… Continue Reading
Essay – It’s Time for a Bill of Data Rights
“This essay argues that “data ownership” is a flawed, counterproductive way of thinking about data. It not only does not fix existing problems; it creates new ones. Instead, we need a framework that gives people rights to stipulate how their data is used without requiring them to take ownership of it themselves. The Data Care Act, a bill introduced… Continue Reading
Why the US Needs a National AI Strategy and What It Should Look Like
Joshua New, senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation – “The United States is the global leader in developing and using artificial intelligence (AI), but it may not be for long. Succeeding in AI requires more than just having leading companies make investments. It requires a healthy ecosystem of AI companies, robust AI… Continue Reading
Computational Propaganda Project Report on Russia’s Internet Research Agency
The Computational Propaganda Project – Algorithms, Automation and Digital Politics. Philip N. Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly & Camille François, “The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018.” Working Paper 2018.2. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk. 46 pp. “Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack… Continue Reading
The Disinformation Report – Russia’s social media propaganda war
New Knowledge: “For years, Russia has leveraged social media to wage a propaganda war with operations that initially targeted their own citizens and sphere of influence. In 2014, they broadened those operations to include the United States and ran a multi-year campaign to manipulate and influence Americans, exploiting social and political divisions. The scale was… Continue Reading
A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump and Russia Investigations
Wired: “…After three weeks of back-to-back-to-back-to-back bombshells by federal prosecutors and special counsel Robert Mueller, it’s increasingly clear that as 2018 winds down, Donald Trump faces a legal assault unlike anything previously seen by any president—a total of at least 17 distinct court cases stemming from at least seven different sets of prosecutors and investigators.… Continue Reading
