The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Photo credti: dcwriterdawn on Flickr

NYS Senate bill 06779

AN ACT to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting

The Senate sponsor is Republican Thomas O’Mara, 53rd Senate district. The Assembly sponsor is Republican James Conte, 10th Assembly district.

As Wired reports

Proposed legislation in both chambers would require New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, to “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.” … Oddly, the bill has no identification requirement for those who request the takedown of anonymous content.

There are a lot of idiots in the world, and some of them are unfortunately Republican. O’Mara’s Senate district includes Ithaca, Elmira, Corning and my birthplace of Arkport. Conte’s district is a chunk of Suffolk County gerrymandered to include a winding piece of Nassau County. I suspect the voters of both districts may wish to choose another representative in the next election, based solely on the sheer stupidity of their current state Senator and Assemblyman.

The nurse depicted in this 2006 image was administering an intramuscular vaccination in the left shoulder muscle to a young girl. The nurse immobilized the girl’s arm by clutching it tightly, while the girl held up her sleeve in order to facilitate the procedure. CDC/ Judy Schmidt

Two deadly childhood illnesses are back in the news. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) raised all sorts of flags over the number of measles cases in the United States last year. The number of pertussis cases, also called whooping cough, is also rising rapidly across the nation.

The CDC publishes the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report every week. In that report is the data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The latest report is for week 16, ending April 21, 2012.
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The University of Rochester has this on its website:

The University of Rochester envisions itself as a community that welcomes, encourages, and supports individuals who desire to contribute to and benefit from the institution’s missions of teaching, research, patient care, performance, and community service. In a pluralistic culture, that community includes faculty, students, and staff who represent important differences. … The University not only welcomes such differences in the members of its community but, in fulfilling its own missions and in preparing the leaders of tomorrow’s world who will necessarily be operating in an equally wide-ranging environment, it actively seeks to recruit and include them in all aspects of the institution’s operations.

Steven E. Landsburg is a tenured Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. he authors the blog The Big Questions. In several recent posts, he has defended Rush Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke and that is the issue that the University seems to have with him. Here is a sample:
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Congresswoman Gabby Giffords has announced that she will resign her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this week. Her recovery from a gunshot a year ago has caused her to miss 98 percent of the 814 votes in the 112th Congress, according to the New York Times. Few members of the House or Senate make such a decision. In fact, history demonstrates that they will remain in Congress despite being physically incapable of attending or running for another office.

While Gabby Giffords tops the Times’s list of most frequent House absentees, two members running for President are second and third. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul have each missed over 30 percent of the votes while campaigning.

Examining the Times’s House absenteeism list from October, eighteen members of Congress missed 10 percent or more of the votes. Six were due to the illness of the member. Congressman Bobby Rush of Illinois missed 10.7 percent of the votes for “Constituent work”. NY congresswoman Louise Slaughter missed 10.2 percent of the voters for “Family events”. A spokesman for Don Young of Alaska told the Times that Washington, D,C. is a ten thousand mile round trip. Young has missed 16.2 percent of the votes.

The law is very specific when it comes to absences from the House. Only the illness of a member or in the member’s family is an allowable excuse. Tile 2, chapter 3, section 39 of the U.S. Code permits the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House to deduct pay from members for having been absent other than for the two illness exceptions. The law is not enforced and no member of Congress in recent memory has had their pay reduced for being absent.

Congresswoman Giffords’s resignation will allow the people of her Arizona district to elect someone who can attend the sessions of the House and House committee meetings. Her action is laudatory. It is fair to her constituents who need a representative in Washington and fair to the American taxpayers who pay the salary of every member of Congress.

Newt Gingrich is correct. The Palestinians were invented as a nation.

So what? There are a great many invented nations in the world today. No one suggests that Timor is “invented” or that the bloody Congo is “invented”.

History will not change the present. Israel has to deal with the Palestinians in 2011, no matter who they were in 1948 or 1917 or 800 AD. The harsh reality that everyone resists is that you ALWAYS have to deal with things as they are, and not with things the way you wish they would be.

Obama has muddied the waters in the Middle East very badly. Rick Perry said it best in last night’s debate. “This president is the problem, not something Newt Gingrich said.”

Our priority as a nation should be the support of Israel. They may make mistakes and we can deal with those as allies do, not with public condemnation and petty wrist slapping. No other nation in the Middle East ought to be closer to the United States as Israel.

But, and it is a big but, only Israel and the people who call themselves Palestinians can solve their issues in the end. We can support a process but they are the ones who will have to live with each other. Only those two parties can agree upon a solution that both can support. Our meddling helps nothing.