George W. Bush

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President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with the requirements of the new statutes.

Which paraphrased means he broke the law again.

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A scandal with the FBI showed that they had been abusing their power, breaking rules, and now are being accused of breaking the law (which is totally inline with all government agencies in the Bush regime).

Considering their recent track record, maybe approving their massive new data mining project would be a little premature…

George W. Bush

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One of the scariest developments of the Bush reign was the power to take any citizen, declare them an enemy combatant, and jail them indefinitely with no trial or evidence. That practice has been recently (finally) overturned.

"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians . . . would have disastrous consequences for the constitution -- and the country," U.S. Circuit Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority.

Let me say this again, the problem is that Bush has declared that he alone gets to decide who the terrorists are and what laws to follow and which to ignore.

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Today, I read an article that takes a look at the members of congress who are speaking loudly about copyright issues and noticing that most of them have had fairly significant campaign contributions from the RIAA and the MPAA (both well know organizations who attack individuals for alleged copyright infringement and supporters of the much hated DRM technology).

George W. Bush

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No stranger to using doctored data, Bush painted a rosy picture of the efforts of the US to slow greenhouse gas emissions that was totally false.

George W. Bush

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A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public does not learn who has been meeting with top officials in the Bush administration.

According to Crooks and Liars.com, they've changed the rules so that they're directly responsible for visitors which prevents the Secret Service from having to publicize the lists when served with FOIA requests.

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This is an interesting story: An Iraq War veteran is making trouble by being a very loud and media-covered opponent of the war.

They seem to have found an angle to attack him because he put on a uniform for a protest (though by stripping all the major labels from it, I don't see how that's any different than a costume store uniform). They plan to reactivate him so they can discharge him again only this time "dishonorable discharge" instead of "honorable".

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Someone has finally sued second life for "seizing" his assets. Linden shut down his account and removed the rights to his property.

Considering that Linden sells virtual property in online auctions for real money, this would seem like a fairly strong case on the part of the player… if it wasn't for the fact that the guy got the property through cheating the auction site.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how this plays out. One thing's for sure, if this guy wins, virtual land will become solidly a real-world asset. I'm not looking forward to the IRS taxing game playing.

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What is the point of a federal regulatory agency that won't do it's job?

The issue landed in court after Creekstone Farms offended the USDA by constructing a state of the art facility to test for mad cow. The USDA fears that testing will reveal too many 'false positives,' scaring the hell out of consumers and threatening the financial health of the nation's meat industry.

Since when was the regulatory agency in the business of social control rather than industry regulation?

They must be taking pointers from the FDA and the FTC.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

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When the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was caught violating the law, he was charged with two misdemeanors. When the former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) was convicted on corruption charges, he was sentenced to death.

I don't know. I'm thinking that the Chinese version makes the next guy a little more responsible…