A good post from Marco Ament on why Google killed Google Reader. It’s because of Facebook, and, more generally, the continuing effort to privatize and create a less open Internet. Google Reader allowed information to be too porous and sites to be more interoperable. That’s, apparently, not a long term profit strategy.

I expect the Internet has just so much surface tension to support the weight of these proprietary efforts and, when strained too much, companies will plunge under the water. They’re big, but Facebook seems pretty clearly to be on the decline. (Note to historians 30 years from now when Facebook rules the world: “Hello!”) Google Plus is a failure. Google was able to rise because other major players at that time in the Internet were too heavy handed in trying to lock users into their sites.

I suspect that there are new players about to rise because they’re willing and able to give the people what they want. Guess we’ll see.

I have, surprisingly it seems, managed to miss most of the George Zimmerman coverage. Some folks have asked my opinion, and mostly I have to confess that I don’t have an informed one. What I know or think I know is that George Zimmerman considered himself a self-appointed neighborhood protector. Trayvon Martin was trying to get home. Zimmerman thought he looked suspicious and called it into the police. They told him to stay put. He followed Martin anyway. We don’t know what happened after that, but Martin ended up dead at Zimmerman’s hands.

I don’t know what the Prosecution charged him with but the jury found him not guilty of those charges. Seems to me that Zimmerman was acting recklessly when he pursued Martin, and Martin’s dead because of that. If that’s a crime, I don’t know which one it is or if the Prosecution charged him with the Florida equivalent. As we saw in the O.J. Simpson acquittal and subsequent civil trial where a wrongful death judgment was entered against Simpson, the State has a much heavier burden of proof than a civil Plaintiff. Sounds like maybe the State of Florida didn’t carry its burden — go figure, Florida being incompetent. And, on top of that, juries are always unpredictable.

I assume a wrongful death civil case is probably coming. In that case, the plaintiff would have to show that Zimmerman acted unreasonably toward Martin and that unreasonable behavior caused Martin’s injury or death. Sounds like an easier case to make based on what I think I’ve learned about the case.

Scott Tibbs, writing at Hoosier Access, has a good post about fireworks regulation. He’s a conservative and generally takes a libertarian view of things but recognizes a need for more restrictions on the use of fireworks in Indiana. He cites a Matt Tully column on how such restrictions have become looser rather than stricter over recent years, in part because of the influence of the fireworks lobby in the state.

More restrictions make sense. These are explosives and they are often not well controlled by the people who use them. Even libertarians recognize that your right to swing your arm stops at the tip of my nose. Fireworks usage frequently crosses those boundaries — if nothing else, the noise crosses property lines. But, often enough, the explosive is sent flying off the user’s property, exposing others to risk.

Furthermore, state government has tied the hands of local government; limiting the ability of local communities to make their own decisions about what sort of explosives are appropriate on and around July 4 and New Years.

In honor of the nation’s 237th birthday:

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Maureen Hayden, writing for CNHI, has a good column (h/t Indiana Law Blog) on HJR 6 – reflecting on what lawmakers will tell her in private versus what they feel they must say for public consumption.

Most people know and love someone who is gay. That number is only going to rise as more and more gay people feel comfortable enough to be open about who they are. I think there is a relatively small but hardcore group who very much fear and oppose recognition of gay people as normal people. That’s where the motor for such things as HJR 6 comes from. The text of that proposed Constitutional amendment again:

Only a marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.

Now, keep in mind, gay marriage is already against the law in Indiana. This constitutional amendment seeks to make it double illegal or something. (Actually, it’s pretty clear the motive is to make it tougher for future generations to make their own decision about marriage equality as the consensus continues to shift.) The current law reads:

IC 31-11-1-1
Same sex marriages prohibited
Sec. 1. (a) Only a female may marry a male. Only a male may marry a female.
(b) A marriage between persons of the same gender is void in Indiana even if the marriage is lawful in the place where it is solemnized.

So, it’s not entirely accurate to say that the new Constitutional Amendment does nothing other than cement the eroding consensus against marriage equality. In addition, the amendment throws in a can of passive-voiced worms with that line that “a legal status ‘substantially similar’ to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be recognized (by whom?)”

In any event, Ms. Hayden notes that, many of the lawmakers to whom she has spoken are not the hardcore opponents of normalization. Rather, they are individuals who know and love friends and family who are gay but fear the political backlash if they come out of the closet and vote their conscience.

To whom I say, the progress that your loved ones have made, particularly in the last 20 years, is due almost entirely to the bravery of those who stuck their necks out first. Because they did, more were willing to follow. And, as that happened, the backlash diminished. Because, it turns out, most people are willing to live and let live. The lawmakers who are secretly accepting of gay people but feel obliged to pretend otherwise in public should come out of the closet themselves.

And, in honor of a conversation I recently had with Michael Wallack, I’ll put up this old chestnut from Frank Herbert, the litany against fear, that seems apropos:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

It’s almost like finding out that a mostly forgotten ex-girlfriend has a terminal disease. You wonder how someone who was, at least briefly, so central to your life disappeared so completely from your consciousness. And, you know you ought to feel at least a little bad, but instead, you feel more nostalgia than anything else — remembering the other people and places from that time.

AltaVista is going to be discontinued on July 8, 2013. AltaVista failed because it latched on to the “web portal” business model fad. This created an opening for Google that has allowed it to rise to the world dominating company it has become. The web portal model was a notion that one page should be what a web user opened up to all the time and used to get to everything else. E-mail, stocks, news, shopping, ads, and, if you could find it, maybe a search engine. When AltaVista offered its gummed up mess of a website instead of a simple, quick loading web page for searching; it became less usable. Google arrived on the scene at the same time, offered an extremely lean search page, and the rest is history. Seems like AltaVista later tried to offer a stripped down search site called “Raging,” but it didn’t catch on and by then it was too late.

So, sometimes honoring consumer preferences ends up being a better business practice than going along with the common wisdom of the business community at the time. Keeping in mind the general theme of this blog, lawmakers might keep that in mind when the business community is advocating for a policy that doesn’t seem to square with common sense or constituent preferences.

I refer you to Tipsy’s thoughts on the recent Supreme Court DOMA decision. He believes that marriage should remain as it’s traditionally been. I have come to a different conclusion. But, I think it’s important to read thoughts such as his because it’s far too easy for proponents of same sex marriage to dismiss opponents as necessarily ignorant and/or hateful. Some certainly are, but not all. And I think it’s important to understand perspectives of those of good will and great intelligence who arrive at different conclusions.

Coming up on the sesquicentennial of Gettysburg, Tony Horwitz has an interesting piece in the Atlantic entitled 150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War. He notes that the Civil War, like all wars, is a complicated business when it comes to looking at whether it was a moral or worthwhile undertaking or not. The cost was more horrific than we generally acknowledge and the results more ambiguous if you look at the aftermath that included Jim Crow laws and whatnot.

A couple paragraphs in particular that caught my eye:

Slaveholders also resisted any infringement of their right to human property. Lincoln, among many others, advocated the gradual and compensated emancipation of slaves. This had been done in the British West Indies, and would later end slavery in Brazil and Cuba. In theory it could have worked here. Economists have calculated that the cost of the Civil War, estimated at over $10 billion in 1860 dollars, would have been more than enough to buy the freedom of every slave, purchase them land, and even pay reparations.

We could have gotten off cheaper by paying the planters. But, thinking about that, my response is emotional. Better that we should kill the those who would commit treason in defense of the evil of owning other people; even if it costs more. I have the benefit of hindsight and still would have a hard time voting for a peaceful, cheaper solution that further enriched the slave owners. But, maybe my response would be different if I would be a guy who takes a shot through the thigh and be the beneficiary of 19th century medicine.

In retrospect, the North had little choice. The Southern rebels attacked the United States, and, whatever the sensibilities of then, we can hardly take seriously today the votes in favor of a system that would have continued the slavery of 3.5 million Americans. It’s not as if they gave those individuals a chance to vote on the subject. Modern advocates of “states rights” (to allow some individuals to own other individuals) mostly ignore the rights of the owned individuals while proclaiming the legitimacy of the rights of the states that purported to secede.

McClatchy always seems to do a better job covering national security issues than other mainstream news sources. For example, they were highly skeptical – correctly, as it turns out – of the claims being made by the Bush administration during the run up to the Iraq War.

Here is another example of their work entitled, Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S. It describes what seems to be disturbing, and yet ineffective, overreach by the Obama administration in detecting potential leakers of classified information and attempting to stop them. One problem, of course, is the overuse of government classification of documents and information. The more information you’re trying to contain, the more difficult it’s going to be. Co-workers and supervisors of contractors and employees are given incentives to report on suspicions about individuals who might be leaking information.

As part of the initiative, Obama ordered greater protection for whistleblowers who use the proper internal channels to report official waste, fraud and abuse, but that’s hardly comforting to some national security experts and current and former U.S. officials. They worry that the Insider Threat Program won’t just discourage whistleblowing but will have other grave consequences for the public’s right to know and national security.

The program could make it easier for the government to stifle the flow of unclassified and potentially vital information to the public, while creating toxic work environments poisoned by unfounded suspicions and spurious investigations of loyal Americans, according to these current and former officials and experts. Some non-intelligence agencies already are urging employees to watch their co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.

“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”