Steve Benen informs us that no less than four Republican Presidential candidates have embraced torture as a viable option when dealing with terror suspects, not that they use the word "torture" or anything. Jeb Bush, naturally, parrots his brother's it's-not-torture-if-I-say-so line of dung, but Mr. Benen is right to point out that if President Obama had prosecuted torturers during his Administration, Republicans wouldn't be as quick to embrace torture as they are.
Scott Klinger at the Center for Effective Government reminds us that ag-gag laws violate the First Amendment. You don't need to be a vegan to think so, either -- especially not if you already know that laws against libel, slander, and destruction of property already exist. What could the big ag corporations be so afraid of?
The title of this article, "The Dystopian Danger of Police Body Cameras," turns out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch: the "dystopian danger" turns out to be from using body cameras in other, obviously less appropriate ways, like to spy on students, but these are boundaries civilized people have to draw, every day. From there we move on to surveillance methods that are not body cameras; I was really hoping to at least be challenged on my support of body cameras, but I wasn't.
FCC rules that satellite TV corporation Dish can't apply some $3.3 billion in small business credits toward its purchase of government airwaves. You should be hitching on the notion that Dish could have received small business credits; apparently its subsidiaries have received the credits. Just as it occurs to me that a small business shouldn't have more than 50 employees (let alone the 500 employees the Small Business Administration uses as its cutoff), it also occurs to me that a small business shouldn't be owned by a big corporation.
Finally, we learn that one of the fellows guarding a "Muslim-free" gun shop in Oklahoma accidentally shot himself in the arm after dropping his gun on Tuesday. It's nice to know that some people who can't think straight also can't shoot straight, I guess, but it's still not a thing to count on.
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