NIH director says "we probably would have had" an ebola vaccine by now if federal funding hadn't been so stagnant over the last decade. Well, that's OK, because surely the free market will provide! Wait, what do you mean there's no money in curing poor Africans? Well, now that First Worlders are getting it, perhaps the big corporations will step up.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns us against ComputerCOP, a piece of software that purports to protect children from internet predators -- but actually functions as spyware, exposing a family's private information to predators. And the corporation that makes ComputerCOP often sells it to police departments, which then distribute it to families, who wind up exposing their personal info even when they connect to secure websites! I think ComputerCOP's creators conceived of the software merely as a way to fleece police departments, but if you think it's a way for governments and corporations to spy on you, I don't blame you.
Ho hum, here's more evidence -- a lot of it -- that a higher minimum wage wouldn't kill jobs. It'd be nice if some enterprising member of our "liberal" media would challenge fools like John Boehner whenever they act like it's so obvious the minimum wage kills jobs. But that would require courage.
A corporation developing a Noah's Ark theme park in Kentucky claims it has a First Amendment right to take state money and discriminate in its hiring practices. Because, you know, religious beliefs. Easy to defend against: if you take public money you have to follow public rules, and your right to exercise your beliefs ends when it tramples on other people's rights. I wish I had more confidence that our Supreme Court would also see it that way.
Finally, I've come to understand that I was far too kind to South Dakota independent Senate candidate (and former three-term Republican Senator) Larry Pressler -- millionaire income surtax and minimum wage hike yay, but not at the expense of means-testing Medicare and raising the Social Security retirement age and tort "reform." I was also wrong, apparently, about his chances -- he's been tumbling in polls lately, and almost exclusively to the benefit of the Democratic candidate, Rick Weiland. I'd noticed Mr. Weiland's progressive noises before, even approved of them; I just didn't believe them because they came from a fellow who used to work for the Architect of Capitulation, Tom Daschle. But I'd be happy to be wrong about that, too.
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