http://i.gizmodo.com/…

Today, President Obama officially named his nominee for the new position of Chief Technology Officer: Aneesh Chopra, current Secretary of Technology for Virginia. We’ll explain who Chopra is and what his new responsibilities will be.

The CTO position is linked with that of the Chief Information Officer (the recently-named Vivek Kundra), but they are two distinct jobs. The White House explains:

The responsibilities of the CIO are to use information technology to transform the ways in which the government does business. The CTO will develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, reducing administrative costs and medical errors using health IT, and using technology to change the way teachers teach and students learn.

Essentially, the CIO is responsible for the general strategic aim of information technology, whereas the CTO is the one who really gets his hands dirty with the specific architecture. In particular, Obama has listed health care and education in today’s YouTube address as the two areas most requiring the efforts of the CIO and CTO, and we (along with most others) think Chopra is the right guy for the job. Here’s why.

Aneesh Chopra is not a CEO. He’s not a thinker like Negroponte, or a businessman like Gates, or a showrunner like Jobs. He’s a governmental agent. This is important because the CTO is, after all, a government job, and Chopra won’t have to adjust his strategies to work within a governmental system. Right now, he’s the Secretary of Technology for Virginia, and has shown huge success in the field. Last year, Virginia was ranked 1st in Technology Management, a direct reward for Chopra’s work.

Further, he’s made significant achievements in health care and education, which, you remember, is just what Obama wants. He’s gotten the nation’s first open-source textbook approved, initiated competitions for the state’s students to create iPhone apps, and designed a social network for physicians in remote areas.

Most importantly, Chopra’s achievements are forward-looking (Web 2.0, social networking, open source) but fervently grounded in the practical. He’s not pushing for the sake of pushing, he’s using the best tools we have in the best way he can.

“develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, reducing administrative costs and medical errors using health IT, and using technology to change the way teachers teach and students learn.”

So more government distortion of the market, more government chosen technologies sure to be wrong, greater monopolization of products, increased risk of privacy leaks, more redirected resources and more promises regarding education which won’t pan out.

http://rawstory.com/…

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) yet again went against the grain in Congress when he
stood up in the House and argued against a proposal that would tax 90
percent of AIG executive bonuses, saying that it was a “disgrace,” a
“distraction” and an “outrage” that undermined the Constitution.

Despite the protestations of Paul and a few others, the House voted
overwhelmingly to pass the bonus tax legislation Thursday afternoon.

Roll Call reports the vote was 328-93 to impose a 90 percent tax on
employee bonuses at companies that received federal bailout funds.

“While the vote was bipartisan, the GOP was split on the bill, with
Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) voting against it and Minority Whip
Eric Cantor (Va.) voting in favor of it,” reported Roll Call.

CNN notes that the measure, which now heads to the Senate for
consideration, would tax individuals on any bonuses received in 2009 from
companies getting $5 billion or more in money from the Troubled Asset
Relief Program. Those with incomes more than $250,000 would see their
bonuses taxed at the 90 percent rate.

“We can’t have any concept of we’re getting even, but we must have a
concept that we’re trying to show that Congress … cannot tolerate that,”
said Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee
on Wednesday.

Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “We must also protect the American
taxpayer from executives who would use their companies’ second chances as
opportunities for private gain. Because they could not use sound judgment
in the use of taxpayer funds, these AIG executives will pay the Treasury
in the form of this tax.”

It’s just sad. As Paul said it’s just a distraction. They are worrying about a minute amount of money which was unconstitutionally allocated and not earmarked. Then they go and pass this unconstitutional bill of attainer while they sit back and watch as the Federal Reserve System tosses billions of dollars around, debases the currency and further destroys the economy.

Inauguration Day, 2009: A Day of Mourning by Justin Raimondo

When Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated, he sought to dismantle the evolving Federalist tradition of pomp and circumstance. In a ceremonial sense, royalism seemed to have been restored, or so it appeared to him. As this blogger put it, “Dressed in simple attire, Jefferson walked over to the Capitol with a phalanx of riflemen, friends, and fellow citizens from his home state of Virginia.”

In these last days of the American Empire, such austere republicanism would be considered impossibly quaint. Having long ago morphed into Jefferson’s worst nightmare, the closer we get to the end, the more glamorous our inaugurals become. The poorer we are, the more millions we’ll throw at a ceremony that is really the crowning of a monarch – and not just any old king, but an emperor bestriding the globe.
Read More…

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Usually when we hear Google Street View news, it’s over kitty-cat privacy issues or people peeing in the street. But this time around, the mayhem monitor actually helped solve the kidnapping of a young girl.

Police in Massachusetts were trying to track down a missing 9-year-old girl who had allegedly been kidnapped by her grandmother. They had managed to find the girl’s cellphone coordinates and traced it to an intersection in Virginia.

Since they were nowhere near Virginia, the policemen turned to Google Street View to help them round up possible hiding-out locations. They identified a building that looked like a motel, confirmed it was one with a subsequent Google search and then called the Virginia State Police, who visited the motel and found the grandmother and the girl.

The moral of this story is: Police know how to Google now. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

We here were already aware that police knew how to use Google. At least Google Alerts so they can keep track of anyone who talks about them. If these departments are going to use Google services while on the job I’d much rather them be used to solve real crimes (involving actual victims) then monitoring who is saying what about their department. Which when admitted to to someone could be construed as intimidation given their position of authority.

http://www.marketwatch.com/…

A Norfolk, Va., police officer had no choice but to use a stun gun on a brain-injured woman twirling a Hula Hoop in a street median, a city official said.

Norfolk City Attorney Bernard Pishko said Officer Nicholas Parks did not use excessive force when he stunned the woman while responding to an excessive noise complaint as she claims in a lawsuit, the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported Wednesday.

“We’re not defending it as best practice,” Pishko said. “Officer Parks didn’t know he was dealing with a citizen who was brain-injured … . All he knew was she was non-compliant and agitated.”
The woman, 49-year-old Pamela Brown, is suing in Norfolk Circuit Court, seeking $5 million in damages.

The newspaper said Brown suffered a brain injury in 1977 when she was hit by a truck, and she has seizures and short-term memory loss.

Her lawsuit claims Parks disregarded Brown’s repeated statements that her injuries prevented her from putting her arm behind her back, as the officer had ordered. The lawsuit says Parks also ignored Brown’s efforts to tell him about the documents she had with her that described her medical condition.

“The officer misjudged,” Pishko said. “He didn’t realize she was brain-damaged and overreacted.”

He had no choice. Really. You see he has this disease which makes it impossible to hear when non-officers speak and want to harm them. To make matters worse there was a man holding a gun to his back who told him if he didn’t taze the otherwise harmless woman he’d be shot. Honest.

Sad thing is she’s not suing him in civil court. If he’s found guilty of whatever it is she’s claiming the money comes out of the taxpayers pockets directly. The municipality man reduce the local departments money for a year to help account for the costs but it’s unlikely he personally will feel the pain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Starting next year, there will be four new pennies to collect, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The obverse (or heads) part of the coin will stay the same, showing the 16th president facing to the right.

But the reverse (tails) part of the coin will show different times in the life of Lincoln, who is widely considered to be one of the country’s greatest leaders for freeing the slaves and saving the Union during the Civil War.

The designs for the new pennies were shown for the first time yesterday near the Lincoln Memorial.

The first new penny will be available Feb. 12, Lincoln’s 200th birthday. It will show a log cabin to honor his birth and childhood in Kentucky.

The others will show his life as a young man in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois and his presidential years in Washington (when the U.S. Capitol was being built).

The other side of the penny will continue to show the likeness of Lincoln designed by Victor David Brennan. It was introduced on the Lincoln penny 100 years ago.

A Lincoln commemorative silver dollar also will be issued next year.

Abraham Lincoln did not really free the slaves. The 13th Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation said “all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Only those slaves captured by the North by that point were set free. Maryland and Delaware were both slave states and not on of the supposed rebel states. While not recognized by any other government the Confederate States of America was a separate nation with it’s own government defined by their own (though heavily borrowed from the USA) constitution. Therefore from their perspective the Emancipation Proclamation meant as much as if it had come from England. Lincoln also said this of the Corwin Amendment, “[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” which read:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

As for saving the Union… a highly questionable action. Even if ruled unconstitutional there is plenty of evidence that such a claim is incorrect from a legal standpoint. For example: When ratifying the new constitution, Virginia (1788), New York (1788), and Rhode Island (1790) included clauses indicating they were free to leave the new federal government confederation should it become oppressive. It seems obvious that they would not have joined if they believed it was a one way trip. From a moral standpoint its reprehensible. The Declaration of Independence clearly says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Lincoln was in no way a great leader but a statist who put his beliefs in keeping together a union of people who did not wish to be under the same government umbrella above the lives of over 600,000 individuals.

For more information read Thomas DiLorenzo’s books Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Lincoln. Many complain his views are one sided but given the works written in excess of Lincoln’s greatness I think that’s excusable. You can also find a decent interview with DiLorenzo on CSPAN’s Q&A at Google video.