Friday a reactor tripped off, and NRC got around to telling us about it today:
Millstone 3, 3.2 miles WSW of New London, Connecticut,
about half way between Boston and New York.
I hear a few people live around there.
That’s its second downtime in six months.
Why is nuclear considered reliable baseload?
Distributed solar power wouldn’t all be down at once,
and wouldn’t risk irradiating millions of people.
Here’s Event Number 49260: Continue reading
The Supreme Court has declined to review a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down an Illinois law prohibiting audio recordings without permission, echoing last year’s First Court decision that you can record police on the job. Let’s remember it’s not just police:
“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting
‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”
That means all elected or appointed or employed government officials, from County Commissioners and City Councils down through sheriff and police departments to the Animal Shelter. Police are employees, not elected or appointed, so these rulings would appear to apply to other governmental employees.
Radley Balko wrote for Huffpo 27 November 2012, Supreme Court Inaction Boosts Right To Record Police Officers,
Continue readingThe Illinois and Massachusetts laws have been used to arrest people who attempt to record on-duty police officers and other public officials. In one of the more notorious cases, Chicago resident Tiawanda Moore was arrested in 2010 when she attempted to use her cell phone to record officers in a Chicago police station.
Received today. -jsq
Too often there are incidents of this nature that go unreported while American Citizens feels that the United States Justice Department knows about these types of incidents but little to nothing seems to end these alleged incidents of Americans CONSTITUTIONAL Rights Violation? But then who cares until they need a young man to volunteer to serve on foreign battlefields for the rights of others.
-George Boston Rhynes
Here’s a playlist:
Taser incident in Boston, Georgia
Video by George Boston Rhynes for bostongbr on YouTube (K.V.C.I.).
I don’t know any more about it than what’s in these videos, and in the writeups by George; see below. -jsq
Continue reading
Pace Lattin wrote for Technorati,
Federal Courts Rule it is Not Illegal to Film Police
John S. Quarterman
This specific case in question was Simon Glik vs.The City of Boston
(and several police officers), in which a teenage Simon Gilk was arrested
after videotaping Boston Police abusing a homeless man. While Mr. Gilk was
not interfering with the police, he was arrested on wiretapping charges.
The ACLU had sued on his behalf, even when the charges were dropped,
noting that there was a growing epidemic of citizens in the United States
being arrested by police for videotaping, even when documenting police
brutality and abuse.
The First Court Agreed with the ACLU that this should be legal, and wrote
that: “The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a
public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities,
fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment
activity].
The First Court of Appeals has reached a decision that would allow the
general public to video-tape police officers while they are working. This
decision comes right after several well-known public cases have come to
light involving citizens being arrested for video-taping police.
The Atlanta Police Department already avoided this problem
by settling a previous case and making a policy that citizens can video police.
This appeals court ruling
now says anybody can, nationwide, because of the First Amendment.
Why has this become an issue lately? Continue reading