Finding God in a Dog

• Diane Feinstein, ever the advocate for shredding the Constitution to suit her precious morals, is offended, so offended that the American intelligence apparatus would dare spy on Congress. (Spying on other Americans is apparently fine.)


• The NSA is planning on distributing malware to millions of computers — including one near you? — with almost no human oversight.


• Speaking of which, Bruce Schneier just finished posting the last of the known NSA exploits in his "NSA Exploit of the Day" series. Read the whole thing here!


• My favorite new word: зомбоящик, English transliteration Zomboyaschik, or Zombie Box. As in, television set. Think of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, RT — and apparently Lenta.ru in the near future (Google translation, original in Russian).


• Wherein Kacy Faulconer is informed that she does not in fact know that her children will have chaste courtships. Kids are unpredictable, and tend to do things like develop free will, think for themselves, and create plans of their own.


• The Canadian Women's Hockey Team goalie just signed a contract with a minor league professional team. A "men's" professional team. Let's see how she does.

• Russia has proposed a system that hands Syria's chemical weapons over to the UN. I've been saying that Assad is Russia's puppet and we should let Russia handle him. Well, Russia's handling him. We should support Russia, instead of trying to send a message to Iran.


• George Zimmerman appears to have dodged the proverbial bullet again, this time in his domestic dispute with his wife. Let me state once again that the pro-Second Amendment community should disavow this asshole. He's a damned lucky moron, but he's a moron nonetheless, and any support for him will continue to backfire in increasingly worse ways.


• Time Magazine on the importance - the absolutely critical importance - of navalny's campaign for Mayorship of Moscow to the future of Russian democracy, here.


• I just finished Liber AL vel Legis: The Book of the Law. An Examination of Liber XXXI and Liber CCXX. I have to say that the Gillis essay on the Kill/Fill discussion is compelling. It's almost compelling enough to make me change my mind that the edit violates Aiwass's commandment to "change not the style of the letter." Almost. I hope every local body takes the time to put this on their shelves.


• FaceBook is trying to one-up Twitter. I wish they would try to one-up LiveJournal, such as by letting you print your FB as a PDF book. LiveJournal has had that capability for over a decade.


• This Kickstarter for Spiri - a cheap, autonomous, programmable quadrocopter - is almost at it's $125,000 goal. I supported it at the "I get a robot!" level. If you're a tech geek, then you should back it too!

navalny

A spokesperson for the EU's top foreign policy official, Catherine Ashton, said the embezzlement charges were unsubstantiated, and that Navalny's jailing posed "serious questions as to the state of the rule of law in Russia".

French foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot added his concern, but said: "We note that not all judicial remedies have been exhausted and that the sentence could be reviewed on appeal."

Navalny's supporters in Moscow have vowed to stage protests against the verdict later on Thursday.

1. Barack Obama will be re-elected to a second term as President.


2. John Boehner will be ousted as Speaker of the House.


3. Democrats will just barely hold on to the US Senate


4. The US unemployment rate will dip below 8%.


5. The European Union will hold on .. barely.


6. Inflation will remain below 10%.


7. Protest movements in the US, Russia, Europe and MENA will accelerate.


8. The US will substantially reduce its troop presence in Afghanistan.


9. Oregon will win the Rose Bowl.

navalny

Accelerating the Kremlin’s campaign against the country’s fledgling opposition, Russian investigators charged the blogger and anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny on Tuesday with embezzlement, a crime that carries a sentence of up to 10 years. A previous case against him based on the same events was closed this spring in Kirov by prosecutors who said they had not found evidence of wrongdoing.