Zuckerberg is Burning Through Congress’s Last Ounce of Goodwill

Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional face-off in April was not nearly the grilling that some had anticipated. Up against lawmakers who seemed to have only a passing knowledge of Facebook’s inner workings, the famously uncharismatic C.E.O. managed to turn the hearings on their heads. In the end, he emerged largely unscathed, spouting the usual pledges to do better. But in the past week, new reports have emerged showing that Zuckerberg failed to mention some of Facebook’s more questionable data-sharing practices to Congress, throwing Facebook back into purgatory just as it was beginning to claw…

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My First Climate Change Conference, a View from the Other Side

I did it. I descended into the heart of liberal darkness, Berkeley, California and attended the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses. As you may have guessed, I’m a climate change skeptic. And while this conference was interesting and gratifying for a number of reasons, it did not change my view as a climate change skeptic, but in fact, reinforced it. My own presentation (for solving climate change while making a huge profit – i.e., the Republican way) was not widely attended, but the conversation was lively…

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HORIST: Real America versus media America

One has to ask just what world do our politicians and news media folks live in? The news industry is largely a one-way communication. They report what they consider the most important events of the day and tell us how we should think about those events – the latter of which takes up the vast majority of the radio/television time and most of the column inches in the print media. If I considered media to be an accurate reflection of our American culture and society, I would not like us…

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Supreme Court Rules Warrant Needed to Track Cell Phone Location Data

Late last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that government officials have to obtain a warrant in order to track an individual’s location data via cell phone records over an extended period of time. “In the 5-4 ruling, the court said police generally need a court-approved warrant to get access to the data, setting a higher legal hurdle than previously existed under federal law. The court said obtaining such data without a warrant from wireless carriers, as police routinely do, amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S.…

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Most voters blame parents, not government, for child border separations

A majority of voters blame the parents of children who are separated at the border for the current illegal immigration crisis — not the federal government, according to a new survey. The results give an interesting look into how people feel about who is ultimately responsible for the immigration debacle, which is now playing out on television screens around the world. When families are arrested and separated after attempting to enter the United States illegally, 54 percent of likely U.S. voters say the parents are more to blame for breaking…

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White House to Block Chinese Investment, Tech Exports

The Trump Administration this week announced plans to use a 1977 emergency law to block Chinese investment in US tech and to limit tech exports to China. More specifically, the proposal blocks companies with at least one-quarter Chinese ownership from purchasing US firms involved in “industrially significant technology” and seeks to limit the export of certain technologies to China. The two-pronged approach is specifically designed to stop China from accomplishing its “Made in China 2025” initiative to become globally dominant in 10 areas of technology by the year 2025. “The President has…

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