Tuesday Miscellany!

• Diane Feinstein, who never saw an authoritarian measure she didn't like, is aghast at how far the surveillance state has gone, and is demanding that the White House stop spying on our allies. The White House has politely told her to bugger off. Thus, Barack Obama continues to justify the F- grade I give him on civil liberties. By the way, progressives, if you want to know why groups like the NRA, GOA, CCRKBA, SAF, and so on are bitterly against even opening the door to gun crime research, it's because the Federal government has a habit of taking a mile when you give them an inch, the Constitution be damned. The NSA scandals should be the case in point.


• Marilyn B. Tavenner, the official in charge of HealthCare.gov, apologized before a House Ways and Means Committee Hearing for the utter disaster of a website rollout. If you need insurance before the website is fixed, you're better off using your phone: 1-800-318-2596


• Israeli attacks on Palestinian olive groves are kept "top secret." More here. Olive groves might not sound like a big deal to Americans, but they're a staple crop, and many of those groves go back hundreds of years. Destroying these groves denies Palestinians food and an economic base, on their own legally-held land, and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.


• Apple censored Lawrence Lessig's comments on WiFi failures in iOS 7. This fits a pattern of behavior I've noticed with Apple, where their response to obvious serious technical issues in their products is a wall of silence, denial, and groupthink. It's crap like this that makes me want to replace my Macbook Pro with a Debian system. I might give Crossover Games a try soon and see whether that lets me run EVE Online reliably. If so, I'm likely to make the switch soon.