Month: May 2017

This is F%$#ed Up

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Various aspects of the US State security apparatus have been leaking so egregiously that the Manchester police has stopped sharing data with US agencies over the concert bombing:

Police investigating the Manchester Arena bomb attack have stopped sharing information with the US after leaks to the media.

UK officials were outraged when photos appearing to show debris from the attack appeared in the New York Times.

It came after the name of bomber Salman Abedi was leaked to US media just hours after the attack, which left 22 dead.

Theresa May said she would tell Donald Trump at a Nato meeting that shared intelligence “must remain secure”.

………

Greater Manchester Police hope to resume normal intelligence relationships – a two-way flow of information – soon but is currently “furious”, the BBC understands.

Its chief constable Ian Hopkins said the recent leak had caused “much distress for families that are already suffering terribly with their loss.”.

The force – which is leading the investigation on the ground – gives its information to National Counter-Terrorism, which then shares it across government and – because of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement – with the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

………

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera says UK officials believe that US law enforcement rather than the White House is the likely culprit for the leaks.

The leaks do sound a lot like the FBI: The organization has a long tradition of grandstanding with the press.

And I would note that it has happened before, and it only seems when it’s the FBI that’s involved in the investigation:

Lord Blair, who was the head of the Metropolitan Police at the time of the bombings in London on 7 July 2005, said a similar leak had happened then.

“It’s a different world in which the US operate in terms of how they publish things and this is a very grievous breach but I’m afraid it’s the same as before,” he said.

This is why my money is on the leaker being in the FBI.

And in the Further Adventures of Florida Man………

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This Picture Positively Screams “Florida Man”

A man in Florida, Devon Arthurs, shot his Neo-Nazi roommates because they mocked his recent conversion to Islam.

Before converting,he was also a Neo-Nazi, so I really don’t understand how how Mr. Arthurs did not anticipate the reaction of his wannabee Aryan roommates:

A man in Florida who shot two of his roommates dead gave an unusual defense, the authorities say: they were neo-Nazis who had disrespected his recent conversion to Islam.

 The arrest of the gunman, who said he had also been a neo-Nazi before becoming Muslim, led to the discovery that a fourth roommate had been stockpiling materials that could be used to create a bomb, according to a federal criminal complaint. That roommate, a member of the Florida National Guard, kept a picture of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, on his dresser, the authorities said.

 Both men are now in custody. The accused gunman, Devon Arthurs, 18, has been charged with two counts of murder, and his surviving roommate, Brandon Russell, 21, has been charged with two counts related to the explosive material and devices.

Only in Florida, or maybe Montana.

Only in America………

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In the special election for Montana’s only Congressional seat,  Republican Greg Gianforte has been formally charged with assault for body-slamming a Guardian reporter.

There is an audio tape, and a Fox News camera crew witnessed it:

The Republican candidate for Montana’s congressional seat has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he is alleged to have slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s special election, breaking his glasses and shouting: “Get the hell out of here.”

Ben Jacobs, a Guardian political reporter, was asking Greg Gianforte, a tech millionaire endorsed by Donald Trump, about the Republican healthcare plan when the candidate allegedly “body-slammed” the reporter.“He took me to the ground,” Jacobs said by phone from the back of an ambulance. “I think he whaled on me once or twice … He got on me and I think he hit me … This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in reporting on politics.”

Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna, field producer Faith Mangan and photographer Keith Railey witnessed the incident at Gianforte’s campaign headquarters in Montana, according to an account published on the Fox News website. After Jacobs asked Gianforte his question, Acuna wrote: “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.

“Faith, Keith and I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the man, as he moved on top the reporter and began yelling something to the effect of ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ … To be clear, at no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriff’s deputies.”

Jacobs subsequently reported the incident to the police. The Gallatin county sheriff’s office said on Wednesday night it had completed its investigation and that Gianforte had been issued with a charge of misdemeanour assault. 

It appears that Gianforte was upset with the Guardian‘s earlier report detailing his financial ties to sanctioned Russian businesses.

With heavy early voting, and with a significant portion of the Republican electorate objectively support assault in general, and assaults on journalists in particular, this nut-job is still likely to win the race, because ……… Montana.

More of This

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Content delivery network Cloudflare was subjected to an attempted shakedown by patent trolls, and not only did they not back down, they filed a complaint with the troll’s state bar:

Cloudflare, the Internet security company and content delivery network, was founded more than seven years ago but miraculously hadn’t ever been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit from a non-practicing entity (commonly referred to as a “patent troll”) until this March.

 Rather than pay a nuisance settlement, Cloudflare is going all-out to fight Blackbird Technologies LLC, a company founded by two former big-firm lawyers that has amassed dozens of patents and filed more than 100 lawsuits. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says Blackbird is a classic “patent troll,” albeit one with a new, and potentially dangerous, twist on its business model.

 In addition to filing its responsive papers in court today, Cloudflare also has sent letters to state bar regulatory committees in Massachusetts and Illinois, asking them to investigate Blackbird further.

 In an extensive blog post this morning, Prince says that in addition to beating a patent he views as invalid, he intends to look into Blackbird’s operations further “and expose how patent trolls really operate.” By Cloudflare’s count, Blackbird has filed 107 cases since 2014, making it “one of the most prolific trolls in the United States.”

 Prince goes on to say that “Cloudflare will not settle this case and doesn’t plan to settle any patent troll case, ever.” In addition, Cloudflare will spend $50,000 to crowdsource prior art that could invalidate Blackbird’s patents. By issuing the prior art “bounty,” Cloudflare seeks not just to invalidate the patent asserted against Cloudflare, but of any of the 37 other patents and applications owned by Blackbird.

 ………

 That puts Blackbird squarely in the much-criticized business model sometimes derided as “patent trolling”—buying a patent, holding it in a shell company, filing a batch of lawsuits, and then (presumably) splitting the settlement revenue with the inventor.

 There’s a new twist, though. Blackbird Technologies LLC is now the patent holder and also appears to be directly owned by the attorneys who are litigating the case—Verlander and her cofounder, Chris Freeman.
………

 In Prince’s view, Blackbird is really a law firm and so shouldn’t be allowed to act as its own client. “As far as we can determine, Blackbird produces no products or services which it makes available to the public,” writes Prince. “Rather, it offers litigation services and is in the business of filing lawsuits.”

 Blackbird’s vaunted “new model” is “to distort the traditional Attorney-Client relationship,” according to Prince, simply buying a client’s claims rather than actually taking the person on as a client.

(emphasis mine)

We really need to find a way to shut down these parasites.

BTW, quoting from the aforementioned blog post:

………

Worse still, Blackbird is a new, especially dangerous breed of patent troll. Like the dinosaur in the latest Jurassic Park movie, a synthetic combination of Tyrannosaurs and Velociraptor, Blackbird combines both a law firm and intellectual property rights holder into a single entity. In doing so, they remove legal fees from their cost structure and can bring lawsuits of potentially dubious merit without having to bear any meaningful cost. In other words, Blackbird’s new breed of entity is specifically designed to add leverage and amplify the already widely maligned problem of patent trolling.

………

Blackbird Technologies has filed 107 cases since September of 2014, making it one of the most prolific trolls in the United States. Its website links to a “News” item titled “4 Frequent Filers of IP Suits to Watch this Year” which highlights Blackbird as “a newer entrant on the list of top patent plaintiffs, coming in at fourth place with 48 suits last year in the District of Delaware spanning a wide range of technologies.” Some of the patents at issue include: Bicycle Pet Carrier, Buttock Lift Support, Sports Bra, and Method for Managing a Parking Lot. A complete list of Blackbird’s patents is available here. Although they have been very aggressive about filing such claims, they have still not taken a single case through trial. And only a couple of those cases made it to the claim construction phase, where the Court defines the meaning of the patents at issue. Instead, many of Blackbird’s cases have been resolved shortly after filing, suggesting that these cases were never about legal rights or claims but were instead about creating the impetus for a nuisance settlement in the face of significant litigation costs.

………

Blackbird Technologies has filed 107 cases since September of 2014, making it one of the most prolific trolls in the United States. Its website links to a “News” item titled “4 Frequent Filers of IP Suits to Watch this Year” which highlights Blackbird as “a newer entrant on the list of top patent plaintiffs, coming in at fourth place with 48 suits last year in the District of Delaware spanning a wide range of technologies.” Some of the patents at issue include: Bicycle Pet Carrier, Buttock Lift Support, Sports Bra, and Method for Managing a Parking Lot. A complete list of Blackbird’s patents is available here. Although they have been very aggressive about filing such claims, they have still not taken a single case through trial. And only a couple of those cases made it to the claim construction phase, where the Court defines the meaning of the patents at issue. Instead, many of Blackbird’s cases have been resolved shortly after filing, suggesting that these cases were never about legal rights or claims but were instead about creating the impetus for a nuisance settlement in the face of significant litigation costs.

They actually sued Netflix over the concept of mailing DVDs.

These people don’t just need to be out of business.  They need to be disbarred for “acquiring a proprietary interest in the subject matter of litigation”,* and for, “sharing fees or firm equity with non-lawyers.”†

They should also be jailed for fraud, because their use of these patents is clearly deceptive.

*Violation of Rule 1.8(i).
†Violation of Rule 5.4(a) or 5.4(d).

The D.E.A. Directed Slaughters in Latin America, and Then Lied about It.

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It appears that the Drug Enforcement Administration covered up its role in death squad activities in the Honduras.

I’m not particularly surprised. Given the US record on such things (Google School of the Americas) involves actively support of human rights abuses, and training for those who commit these crimes, it is part of the tradition of “American Exceptionalism.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration misled the public, Congress and the Justice Department about a 2012 operation in which commando-style squads of American agents sent to Honduras to disrupt drug smuggling became involved in three deadly shootings, two inspectors general said Wednesday.

The D.E.A. said in response that it had shut down the program, the Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team.

Under the program, known as FAST, squads received military-style training to combat Taliban-linked opium traffickers in the Afghanistan war zone. It was expanded to Latin America in 2008 to help fight transnational drug smugglers, leading to the series of violent encounters in Honduras in 2012.

A scathing 424-page joint report from the inspectors general of the Justice and State Departments underscored the risk that Americans accompanying partner forces on missions in developing countries, ostensibly as trainers and advisers, sometimes drift into directly running dangerous operations with little oversight.

The report focused on the first shooting, on a river near the village of Ahuas on May 11, 2012. A boat collided with a disabled vessel carrying American and Honduran agents and seized cocaine. Gunfire erupted, and four people on the boat were killed.

The D.E.A. said at the time that the victims were drug traffickers who had attacked to try to retrieve the cocaine, but villagers said they were bystanders. The inspectors general found no evidence to support the agency’s version, disputing a claim that surveillance video showed evidence that the people on the boat had fired on the disabled vessel.

“Even as information became available to D.E.A. that conflicted with its initial reporting, including that the passenger boat may have been a water taxi carrying passengers on an overnight trip,” the report said, “D.E.A. officials remained steadfast — with little credible corroborating evidence — that any individuals shot by the Hondurans were drug traffickers who were attempting to retrieve the cocaine.”

The inspectors general also rejected the D.E.A.’s insistence at the time that the operation — as well as two others, in June and July 2012 — had been led by Honduran law enforcement officials. The review “concluded this was inaccurate” and said D.E.A. agents “maintained substantial control.”

………

The D.E.A. refused to cooperate with the State Department as it sought to investigate what had happened in Ahuas. Michele M. Leonhart, then the agency’s administrator, told the inspector general she had approved that decision because subordinates told her there was no precedent for the State Department to investigate a D.E.A. shooting and it might compromise its investigations, the report said.

………

The killings in Honduras, along with at least two episodes in 2012 in which partner countries shot down suspected smuggling planes after receiving intelligence from the United States about their flight paths, led to increased media and congressional scrutiny of the D.E.A. Within a few months, the agency was rethinking and scaling back its operations, including considering a requirement that FAST agents stay on helicopters rather than join their trainees in raids.

One of the lawmakers who raised critical questions about the FAST operations in Latin America after the Ahuas shooting, Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, called the new report “nothing less than a wholesale indictment of the D.E.A. and Honduran police.”

Calling for compensation to the families of the victims, he said the report unmasked “egregious events and conduct” and a subsequent cover-up that “demeaned the lives of the victims and the reputation of the United States.”

I think that Pat Leahy massively overestimates the esteem to which the United States is held.

Oh Snap!

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It appears that everyone’s favorite racist nut-job, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, lied on his security clearance forms:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not reveal meetings with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance to serve as the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official.

Sessions came under fire earlier this year for not disclosing to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing that, as the senator from Alabama, he met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential election when he was also serving as an adviser to the president. In March, Sessions recused himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign after The Washington Post reported the two meetings.

That same information was omitted from Sessions’s security clearance form, which is known as an SF-86, as first reported Wednesday night by CNN.

………

The security clearance form requires anyone applying for a security clearance to list “any contact” that he or his family had with a foreign government or its representatives over the past seven years.

His spokesmen are claiming that the FBI told him that he didn’t have to list the contacts, which is not what the law says.

There does appear to be an exception for contacts at foreign conferences as a part of government business, but none of Sessions fall under that exception:

………

A legal expert who regularly assists officials in filling out the form disagrees with the Justice Department’s explanation, suggesting that Sessions should have disclosed the meetings.

“My interpretation is that a member of Congress would still have to reveal the appropriate foreign government contacts notwithstanding it was on official business,” said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who specializes in national security law.
Zaid added that in a similar circumstance he advised a member of Congress to list all foreign contacts — including those made during official US government business.

To obtain a security clearance, a federal official is not required to list the meetings if they were part of a foreign conference he or she attended while conducting government business. Sessions’ meetings, however, do not appear to be tied to foreign conferences.

Jeff Sessions has been a cancer on the American political scene for decades.

One hopes that he won’t weasel out of this.

It Looks Like Russian Intelligence Made Jim Comey Its Bitch

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It appears that much of the Comey’s strategy and pronouncements were driven by documents that had been forged by elements of the Russian state security apparatus:

A secret document that officials say played a key role in then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has long been viewed within the FBI as unreliable and possibly a fake, according to people familiar with its contents.

In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received what was described as a Russian intelligence document claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server.

The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter. If true, the revelation of such an understanding would have undermined the integrity of the FBI’s investigation.

Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.

But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. The Americans mentioned in the Russian document insist they do not know each other, do not speak to each other and never had any conversations remotely like the ones described in the document. Investigators have long doubted its veracity, and by August the FBI had concluded it was unreliable.

There is NO ONE who comes off well on this entire matter:

  • Comey behaved as a preening narcissist.
  • Hillary Hillary stonewalled in a way that evoked Nixon, only without the charm.
  • Bill Clinton for his blindingly stupid tête-à-tête with Loretta Lynch aboard his plane.
  • Loretta Lynch for her blindingly stupid tête-à-tête with Bill Clinton aboard his plane.

It’s a clusterf%$# all around.

Linkage

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The Death Star was an inside job:

We are F%$#ed

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Up in the arctic, there is a vault holding the seeds of thousands of species of crops.

Its purpose is to protect the biodiversity of agriculture in an increasingly commercial and monoculture system.

An unexpected thaw in permafrost just flooded portions of the complex:

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.

But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world’s hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. “It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that,” said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault.

“A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in,” she told the Guardian. Fortunately, the meltwater did not reach the vault itself, the ice has been hacked out, and the precious seeds remain safe for now at the required storage temperature of -18C.

But the breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes. “It was supposed to [operate] without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day,” Aschim said. “We must see what we can do to minimise all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself.”

………

“The Arctic and especially Svalbard warms up faster than the rest of the world. The climate is changing dramatically and we are all amazed at how quickly it is going,” Isaksen told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. 

Anthropogenic climate change is real, and we are only beginning to see the consequences.

Our Corrupt Pentagon

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In an effort to simplify procurement and save costs, the Pentagon buys fuel for all the services, and then distributes it to each of them on an as needed basis.

In theory, this should save money by reducing procurement and inventory costs.

In practice, the Pentagon has overcharged the services and diverted the profits to a secret slush fund:

The Pentagon has generated almost $6 billion over the past seven years by charging the armed forces excessive prices for fuel and has used the money — called the “bishop’s fund” by some critics — to bolster mismanaged or underfunded military programs, documents show.

Since 2015, the Defense Department has tapped surpluses from its fuel accounts for $80 million to train Syrian rebels, $450 million to shore up a prescription-drug program riddled with fraud and $1.4 billion to cover unanticipated expenses from the war in Afghanistan, according to military accounting records.

The Pentagon has amassed the extra cash by billing the armed forces for fuel at rates often much higher — sometimes $1 per gallon or more — than what commercial airlines paid for jet fuel on the open market.

Under a bureaucracy that dates to World War II, the Defense Department purchases all of its fuel centrally and then resells it at a fixed price to the Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine Corps and other customers, who pay for it out of their own budgets. The system is intended to reduce duplication and promote efficiency.

The Defense Department is the largest single consumer of fuel in the world. Each year, it buys about 100 million barrels, or 4.2 billion gallons, of refined petroleum for its aircraft, warships, tanks and other machines.

The practice of exploiting fuel revenue to plug unrelated gaps in the defense budget has escalated in recent years, prompting allegations — and official denials — that the accounts are being used as a slush fund.

I am not sure of the etymology of the term “Bishop’s Fund”, maybe it goes back to the Borgia Popes or some such.

In any case,  this is no surprise coming from an agency that has kept its books unauditable for decades, despite laws requiring it to clean up its act.

Gee, I Think We’ve Found the Problem

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After a political neophyte billionaire purchased the chairmanship of the Florida Democratic Party, he hired one Sally Boynton Brown as executive director of the party.

When she was asked about issues she responded that issues, or your know helping people didn’t matter:

There is truly no defeat the Florida Democratic Party will avoid snatching from the hands of victory. Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party radioactive. His polling numbers are plummeting right alongside the GOP as a whole. And the nation is seeing a groundswell of progressive activism at levels not witnessed since the 1960s.

So how does the new, incoming brass running the Florida Democratic Party respond? By telling constituents that “issues” don’t matter and that it’s not the party’s job to focus on policies that will actually help anyone, like single-payer health care.

Last night, the party’s new second-in-command, Sally Boynton Brown, spoke in front of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Broward County. And throughout the exchange, she steadfastly refused to commit to changing the party’s economic or health-care messaging in any concrete way.

“This is not going to be popular, but this is my belief of the time and place we’re in now: I believe that we’re in a place where it’s very hard to get voters excited about ‘issues,’ the type of voters that are not voting,” Brown said.

Brown, the former executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party, was hired last month to take over for the outgoing executive director, Scott Arceneaux. Last night was her first encounter with local progressives, who are already disgruntled after Stephen Bittel — a billionaire real-estate developer, gas station franchiser, environmental dredging company executive, and major political donor — was elected to serve as party chair earlier this year. Many progressives accused him of buying his way into the job via campaign donations.

And Brown’s speech perfectly illustrates why the Florida Democratic Party (and the party in general) can’t seem to get out of its own way and actually win elections.

………

Later in the meeting, she then said that people who are struggling to make ends meet — and often decline to vote because they say it doesn’t matter — do not vote based on “issues” they care about and instead vote because they are “emotional beings.” She added that people apparently skip voting because they’ve somehow forgotten about the “power of democracy,” whatever that means.

She also said that taking money from large corporations such as Florida Power & Light could somehow be a good thing — and that the “relationship” created when gigantic corporations give thousands of dollars to political candidates can somehow make it easier for politicians to push back against corporations when they are “raping our country.”

Seriously, it was this sort of dysfunctional bullsh%$ that had an incompetent candidate run a truly clueless campaign that lost to an inverted traffic cone.

I understand how so-called “centrist” Democrats might support being a party about nothing, since they themselves are about nothing, but we have seen, a truly awful something beats an anodyne nothing.

Why a Turtle Should Not Carry a Scorpion Across the Nile*

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Because stinging you to death is in its nature.

Case in point, the City of Pittsburgh’s extensive efforts to suck up to Uber:

When Uber picked this former Rust Belt town as the inaugural city for its driverless car experiment, Pittsburgh played the consummate host.

“You can either put up red tape or roll out the red carpet,” Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh, said in September. “If you want to be a 21st-century laboratory for technology, you put out the carpet.”

Nine months later, Pittsburgh residents and officials say Uber has not lived up to its end of the bargain. Among Uber’s perceived transgressions: The company began charging for driverless rides that were initially pitched as free. It also withdrew support from Pittsburgh’s application for a $50 million federal grant to revamp transportation. And it has not created the jobs it proposed in a struggling neighborhood that houses its autonomous car testing track.

Blame is being pointed in many directions. While Mr. Peduto had trumpeted his relationship with Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, he didn’t get any commitments in writing about what the company would provide for Pittsburgh. That became an issue in Pittsburgh’s Democratic mayoral primary this month, with Mr. Peduto’s challengers criticizing his relationship with Uber and one calling the company a “stain” on the city. (Mr. Peduto won the primary.)

“This was an opportunity missed,” said Michael Lamb, Pittsburgh’s city controller, who has called on Uber to share the traffic data gathered by its autonomous vehicles.

The deteriorating relationship between Pittsburgh and Uber offers a cautionary tale, especially as other cities consider rolling out driverless car trials from Uber, Alphabet’s Waymo and others. Towns like Tempe, Ariz., have already emulated Pittsburgh and set themselves up as test areas for self-driving vehicles. Many municipalities see the experiments as an opportunity to remake their urban transportation systems and create a new tech economy.

There are two lessons here:  The first is that if you give public assets to a private business, there will be little if any long term goodwill generated in response, and thesecond lesson is that Uber in general, and Travis Kalanick in particular, are snakes, and they cannot be trusted.

*The folktale of the turtle and the scorpion. Just read it.

In News That Should Surprise No One

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Former Trump NSC chair and current Islamophobic nut job Mike Flynn has taken the 5th and will refuse to testify before the Senate:

President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn has formally invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in declining a subpoena to appear before a Senate committee.

Flynn’s attorneys cited the constitutional provision in a letter to the Senate Committee on Intelligence in which they declined to provide documents the congressional committee had requested pertaining to his communications with officials of the Russian government.

“Producing documents that fall within the subpoena’s broad scope would be a testimonial act, insofar as it would confirm or deny the existence of such documents,” the lawyers’ letter said, according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press.

Flynn is demanding immunity, despite the fact that in 2016 he publicly stated that a request of immunity was an admission of guilt.

Heh.

Finally!

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The Supreme Court has finally ruled on the venue shopping by patent trolls:

The US Supreme Court ruled (PDF) today on how to interpret the patent venue laws, and the controversial business of “patent trolling” may never be the same.

In a unanimous decision, the justices held that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles all patent appeals, has been using the wrong standard to decide where a patent lawsuit can be brought. Today’s Supreme Court ruling in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods enforces a more strict standard for where cases can be filed. It overturns a looser rule that the Federal Circuit has used since 1990.

The ruling may well signal the demise of the Eastern District of Texas as a favorite venue for patent lawsuits, especially those brought by “patent trolls,” which have no business outside of licensing and litigating patents.

The TC Heartland case will affect the entire tech sector, but the parties here are battling over patents on “liquid water enhancers” used in flavored drink mixes. TC Heartland, an Indiana-based food company, got sued by Kraft Foods in Delaware, then sought to move the case back to its home turf. Neither the district court judge nor the Federal Circuit would allow such a transfer.

………

Not a word about “patent trolls” appears in today’s 13-page opinion, but it’s no secret that do-nothing patent holders were the issue at the heart of the contentious debate over patent venue. Plenty of companies had reason to complain about the Federal Circuit’s rule, and they let their concerns be known. A brief (PDF) signed by 48 Internet companies and retailers asked the Supreme Court to uphold the “restrictive patent venue statute” that Congress had approved, and to “stop forum shopping.” Trade groups representing bankers, realtors, and big software companies also supported TC Heartland.

The Texas attorney general, joined by 16 other states, filed a brief (PDF) as well, noting the incredible concentration of patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas. The AGs sided with TC Heartland, writing that they “have an interest in protecting their citizens from abusive claims of patent infringement, which businesses and residents confirm are a drag on economic growth.”

Finally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge (PDF), and Engine Advocacy (PDF) chimed in, complaining that the venue rules had empowered “patent assertion entities” to the detriment of small innovators.

The Eastern District of Texas figures prominently because federal judges have the ability to set their own rules, and the judges in this district are basically the patent trolls bitches.

There are blocks of offices in east Texas that are empty but have tenants.  They are rented by venue shopping trolls.

Putting an end to this is a good first step in ending patent abuse.

What the F%$#

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Someone just bombed an Ariana Grande Concert in Manchester:

An explosion that may have been a suicide bombing killed at least 19 people on Monday night and wounded 59 others at an Ariana Grande concert filled with adoring adolescent fans, in what the police were treating as a terrorist attack.

Panic and mayhem seized the crowd at the Manchester Arena as the blast reverberated through the building, just as the show was ending and pink balloons were dropping from the rafters in a signature flourish by Ms. Grande, a 23-year-old American pop star on an international tour.

Traumatized concertgoers, including children separated from parents, screamed and fled in what appeared to be the deadliest episode of terrorism in Britain since the 2005 London transit bombings.

Speaking to reporters early Tuesday, Manchester’s chief constable, Ian Hopkins, said the police learned of the explosion around 10:33 p.m. The wounded were taken to six hospitals, he added.

There was no immediate word from the authorities on the precise cause of the blast, but unconfirmed reports said a suicide bomber might have detonated a nail-filled explosive device.

Intelligence officials in the United States were briefed on the Manchester explosion late Monday and were told that it appeared to be a terrorist attack, according to a senior official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The scene in downtown Manchester immediately evoked the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, which included a deadly assault inside the Bataclan concert hall, where the Eagles of Death Metal had been playing. But unlike the Bataclan show, the Manchester concert was filled with young teenagers.

Why the f%$# would anyone bomb an Ariana Grande concert? (Seriously, no irate music critic jokes right now.  It’s too soon.)

OK, This Is the Weirdest Political Development of the Week

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Note that I’m not saying that this is the weirdest political development in the UK, nor am I saying that it is the weirdest political development if you excluding Donald Trump.

I am saying that this is the weirdest political development in the world this week.

In the past week or so, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been seen as a dead man walking, has started to look like he’s actually going to give the Tories a run for their money:

It would be a severe overstatement to suggest that things are currently going well for Labour. There’s been a recent upturn in the polls, true, but the party is still lagging a good nine points behind the Tories. It’s only because things were looking so bleak before that a comparatively smaller defeat can be interpreted as some kind of success. On a uniform swing, current polling suggests they’ll lose 12 seats while the Conservatives will gain 16. And even that’s optimistic, as evidence suggests that vote losses have been heavier in crucial marginal constituencies.

Still, when you think about where they were a month ago it’s hard not to be somewhat impressed. This election was supposed to be May’s for the taking. Having insisted there would be no early election, she then changed her mind to boost her majority at a time when Labour seemed at its weakest. Since then, her poll lead has halved. In vote share terms, Labour is currently polling only a percentage point lower than its result in the 2005 election – which was enough to secure a significant majority. The reason the Tories are still so far ahead is because, post-EU referendum, they’ve swallowed up most of the Ukip vote by adopting the nationalist agenda.

The release of the parties’ respective manifestos was a pivotal moment. Even some of Corbyn’s harshest critics felt obliged to admit that, actually, the Labour one contains a lot of good stuff. Promises including free childcare for all two- to four-year-olds, a properly funded NHS, free hospital car parking, one million new homes, a cap on rent hikes, an increase in the carers’ allowance, an end to the 1 per cent public sector pay rise cap, an increase in carers’ allowance, the reintroduction of the education maintenance allowance and free higher education made sure there was plenty to appeal to a broad cross-section of society.

Plans to introduce a “fat-cat” tax on banks and a new 50p income tax band for earnings over £123,000 (but no tax rises for anyone earning under £80,000) allayed fears about how such measures will be funded. The whole document was costed in detail – an essential move for a party particularly vulnerable to accusations of economic incompetence.

In contrast, the Conservative manifesto has gone down like a lead balloon. Entirely uncosted (something the Tories find easier to get away with) and almost all punishment with few positive promises to sweeten the deal. Though the largest swing seems to have been amongst 25-49s, who are now 15 per cent more likely to say they’re planning to vote Labour than they were previously, the policy that has attracted most negative attention primarily affects the elderly. The so-called “dementia tax” is basically a levy on inheritance that only affects people unlucky enough to need social care. Critics on the left have pointed out that the policy may deter people for seeking the help they need because they worried about being to leave something for their children. There’s also a strong risk it will encourage suicide.

The backlash was so strong that May was forced into an embarrassing U-turn, but her attempted “clarification” left voters with more questions than it answered. It seems she’s still planning to go ahead with the “dementia cap” but will introduce a cap on the total amount that can be taken. Of course, this only helps the richest who’ve got more than can be taken. Comparatively less wealthy dementia sufferers will be hit just as hard.

Some translation here:  What the Britons call a “Manifesto”, we in the States call a platform, and what they call, “Social care,” is what we would call “Assisted living”.

So, round the clock care for cancer monitoring is covered, but the same (probably less expensive) care for Alzheimers would not be covered.

This has been damaging to the Tories for a number of reasons:

  • Many of the proposals in the Tory manifesto show a sort of radicalism that runs counter to British political culture.
  • Theresa May is showing herself to be a bit of a social sadist.  (A true daughter of Thatcher)
  • May’s “U-turn” is transparent weaseling, which makes her appear weak. 

I still think that Labour’s chances of winning an election are somewhere near that of the Minnesota Vikings winning a Super Bowl, but they may significantly outperform expectations.

Stupidest Meme of the Year

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It was funny the first half a dozen times, but this, “One orb to rule them all,” crap needs to stop:

A startling photograph of Donald Trump, the Egyptian president and Saudi king placing their hands on a glowing orb at a summit in Riyadh has prompted comparisons between the US president and villains from comic books and film.
Trump vows to meet ‘history’s great test’ by conquering extremism
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Trump, King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Abdel Fatah al-Sisi were pictured standing with their hands on the miniature globe at the opening event for the new Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology on Sunday. The US president is in the Gulf kingdom on his first state tour.

By the power of Grayskull, this got old fast.

Linkage

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This could be good, or it could be awful, or it could be uneven and spotty.

Given that this is from the mind of Seth McFarlane, my money is on the final option, though I am going to try and catch the first episode, because it is directed by Jon Faveau .