Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Your Home’s Router is Spying on You
It must be spy on American’s week given posts on law enforcement asking for your cell data and how the NSA is going to expand its spying on Americans on a massive scale. Now we have this: Cisco Systems told users of its new high-end home routers — in a roundabout way — they couldn’t…
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NSA to Spy on Everyone… Everyone.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as…
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Cell Carriers Asked for Your Data
In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations. The cellphone carriers’ reports, which come in response to a Congressional inquiry, document…
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Dick Morris on Obama’s Motivations
There’s something too this: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdTyUvY66Mw?rel=0] There is a similar situation going on with gun control in the states. The argument is always”we need the federal government to control all guns because they travel from state to state.” This is a common theme with people on the “Left.” They realize that their policies are horrible…
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Gotta Love American Ingenuity (& Tax Avoidance)
So I’m reading two stories (here and here) about a new law that will effectively outlaw Roll-Your-Own tobacco stores. It’s something I kinda follow because I always thought it was a decent business model (until the government outlaws your business) and another fine example of what steps people will go through to avoid taxes. In…
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More And More Americans Are Leaving
Last year, nearly 1,800 Americans surrendered their citizenship. In a nation of 300 million folks, 1,800 émigrés is hardly a rush for the exits. But the recent trend is, nevertheless, intriguing. … Who knows the exact reason why 1,800 Americans chose to leave last year — nine times as many as left four years earlier.…
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Give a Lamb a Gun
Herman Cain has a new website complete with video. My first as so far favorite video is entitled Give a Lamb a Gun. It’s a priceless quote from Benjamin Franklin. The video is under 2 minutes… go check it out.
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Less Cops = Less (Reported) Crime
In the city’s most violent districts, police officers say, they may be assigned half a dozen jobs or more—covering everything from traffic accidents to assaults—at the start of a shift. Their watches are spent racing from call to call, while anything that requires investigation stacks up. Officers describe having to weigh whether to make an…
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CPS To Raise Property Taxes The Maximum
For the second year in a row, Chicago Public School officials under Mayor Rahm Emanuel will raise property taxes for schools to the maximum allowed by law, yielding the cash-strapped system $41 million. The 1.5 percent increase should cost the average homeowner $28 a year, school officials said Wednesday. via Chicago Sun-Times. Well isn’t this…
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Obama Must Speak Out on Chicago Carnage
Headline: Obama Must Speak Out on Chicago Carnage That Kills Too Many Kids via The Daily Beast. The story in generally not worth reading. But my comment is: Chicago has the most restrictive gun control laws in the country. What’s needed is not any new laws but enforcement of the current laws. Find me one…
Got any book recommendations?