Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) today announced that the former mayor of Paterson, Jose “Joey” Torres, has been sentenced in connection with his 2022 campaign to retake the mayor’s seat, in…
Det var med stor glädje vi i januari tog del av beskedet att Svenska Hamnarbetarförbundet varslade arbetsgivarorganisationen Sveriges Hamnar om blockad mot allt militärt handelsutbyte med Israel.
I en tid av osäkerhet och kris diskuteras vikten av att ha en BOL (Bug Out Location) som evakueringsplan. Men istället för att fly ensamt, föreslås samarbete och nätverksbyggande som en hållbar lösning. Genom gemensamma insatser kan vi öka vår motståndskraft och skapa trygghet i svåra tider.
I en tid av osäkerhet och kris diskuteras vikten av att ha en BOL (Bug Out Location) som evakueringsplan. Men istället för att fly ensamt, föreslås samarbete och nätverksbyggande som en hållbar lös…
National poll shows strong support for proportional representationhttps://www.fairvote.ca/03/02/2025/national-poll-shows-strong-support-for-proportional-representation/
Officials in at least a half-dozen federal agencies and departments are raising alarms about whether Elon Musk's assault on government is breaking the law. Over the past two weeks, Musk’s team has moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems.
Musk has said these changes are necessary to overhaul what he’s characterized as a sclerotic federal bureaucracy and to stop payments that he says are bankrupting the country and driving inflation. But many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, one audio recording, and several internal messages obtained by The Washington Post.
Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Comm
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Officials in at least a half-dozen federal agencies and departments are raising alarms about whether Elon Musk's assault on government is breaking the law. Over the past two weeks, Musk’s team has moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems.
Musk has said these changes are necessary to overhaul what he’s characterized as a sclerotic federal bureaucracy and to stop payments that he says are bankrupting the country and driving inflation. But many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, one audio recording, and several internal messages obtained by The Washington Post.
Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others. “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School. Specific concerns include the terms of the “deferred resignation” Musk’s team is offering to purge the civil service — which experts say runs afoul of federal spending law — and whether Musk’s staffers will use Treasury’s payment system to reverse spending that has already been approved.
(Two federal employee unions sued Monday to block DOGE from accessing that system. Late Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote to Congress that DOGE associates have only “read-only” access to it.)
Several federal officials said they were worried about DOGE’s taking control of government systems that hold Americans’ personal information, including student loan data, and others have raised privacy concerns about the agency’s vow to use artificial intelligence on government databases.
In other instances, officials have raised concerns that DOGE associates appeared to violate security protocols by using private email addresses or not disclosing their identities on government calls. At a more fundamental level, several legal experts and government officials expressed alarm over how Musk’s team appears to operate as a strike team, outside typical agency rules and constitutional checks on executive power. “The big-picture constitutional worry is that there is a kind of shadow executive branch that is existing and operating and exercising power outside of the channels the Constitution and the statutes that Congress authorized,” said Blake Emerson, a professor of constitutional law at the UCLA School of Law. On Monday, the White House confirmed that Musk has been designated a “special government employee,” a status typically conferred on outside advisers from the private sector.
Under a Trump executive order, the U.S. Digital Service, a White House office established during the Obama administration to consult on federal technology, has transformed itself into the U.S. DOGE Service.
Democrats in Congress have raised objections to some of DOGE’s actions, but Republicans, who control both chambers, have not moved to rein in its activities. In a sign of potential unease over how DOGE’s early moves are being perceived, President Donald Trump and Musk have defended the billionaire’s influence and the legality of their actions.
Musk has alleged that much of the government is already violating federal law and that his efforts are a needed corrective, for instance asserting over the weekend, without offering evidence, that USAID is a “criminal organization” that should be shut down and that Treasury’s career staffers routinely commit federal crimes.
Trump has also denied that Musk will be able to use his government influence to expand his personal fortune, though he did not point to specific guardrails against that. “Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities,” a White House spokesperson said. “If there’s a conflict, then we won’t let him get near it,” Trump told reporters Monday.
“We’re trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better. Where we think there’s a conflict or there’s a problem, we won’t let him go near it.” washingtonpost.com/business/20…
For a character that treasures big fish, Musk's forays so far are but guppies compared to the whale he will soon undertake to cut and saw his way to his 2 Billion in reductions.
With the Department of Defense Military he will attempt an epic not unlike Hemingway's Old Man and the SEA.
Anyone willing to venture a prognostication at the result and whether or not we will have a functioning government left??
Some perspective on the USAID situation from someone who once worked at the department. How reality differs from Elon’s Twitter feed, US personnel is being put in danger, and why Russia is enjoying the show. Thread: t.co/z1JgdhyVpk
@JeremyKonyndyk: Might not feel this way on twitter - but back here on earth, DOGE did not have a great day yesterday on the @USAID front. Elon's attempt to speedrun the destruction of USAID is starting...…
A new community-based pickleball program called Project Rally is helping cancer survivors improve their physical and social well-being, according to a recent pilot study. The program has shown strong results in terms of participation, enjoyment, and physical improvements.
A new community-based pickleball program called Project Rally is helping cancer survivors improve their physical and social well-being, according to a recent pilot study. The program has shown strong results in terms of participation, enjoyment, and physical improvements.
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot
Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: nationalpsychologist.com
Research has shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer is effective in infiltrating and killing tumor cells in preclinical models tested in mice. The novel drug CT-179 was shown to target a specific subset of tumor cells responsible for recurrence and therapy resistance in pediatric brain cancer. The findings could lead to more effective, less toxic treatments, improving survival and quality of life for young patients.
Research has shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer is effective in infiltrating and killing tumor cells in preclinical models tested in mice. The novel drug CT-179 was shown to target a specific subset of tumor cells responsible for recurrence and therapy resistance in pediatric brain cancer. The findings could lead to more effective, less toxic treatments, improving survival and quality of life for young patients.
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot
Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: nationalpsychologist.com
Self-Hosted Corner (Day 26): A quiet end to the day, updating my docker containers, and adding ram to my main Linux server. Having your own hardware means maintaining it all, but it also means understanding and upgrading and choosing new hardware. It means breaking and learning how to fix and that's a good thing. #homelab #docker #selfhosting
Q: Why do so many Black folk call Abraham Lincoln a white supremacist? He freed the slaves! Why don't Black folk have pictures of Lincoln up in their house? Are they ungrateful?
Please read the whole linked thread before you voice your disbelief.
Lincoln, explaining his position of being against slavery, but very much in support of white supremacy, and against giving people of different races the right to marry."
"...and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alo
Lincoln, explaining his position of being against slavery, but very much in support of white supremacy, and against giving people of different races the right to marry."
"...and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes."
"I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this subject,) that I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, [laughter] but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, [roars of laughter] I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes. [Continued laughter and applause.]"
People today always underestimate just how much stuff was published in earlier centuries, and how much of that is available in digital archives of public domain works. My field is different (19th century German folk tales), but the flood of available information is the same.
Though I have worried more than once that these digital archives might come under attack. The Internet Archive might be the biggest repository, but because of their dodgy approaches to copyright were vulnerable to legal attack even before the arrival of the second Trump administration - which seems certainly highly motivated to erase any history that is inconvenient to them (more so than past governments, anyway).
We really need a more robust and distributed infrastructure for both preserving and sharing those public domain works. Maybe something on the line of a souped-up #Bookwyrm might do the trick?
But we need to keep in mind that the number of works which are only available as digital scans is at least two orders of magnitudes greater. The Folks at Gutenberg.org (and Wikisource, for that matter) tend to pick the most popular works to convert, for understandable reasons. But we need to preserve the full breadth of texts for scholarship, not what the people doing this conversion work think is the most interesting.
As an example, here is the link list I use for my own research - which lists German folk tale collections in the public domain. There are hundreds of works listed on that page - but only a few are in machine-readable format, and the vast majority only exist as digital scans.
I've checked, and you don't appear to have "Deutsche Sagen" by the Brothers Grimm yet. This book is rather important to German folklore research, though less well known than their fairy tale collection.
After that, I would either go for Wrubel's "Sammlung bergmännischer Sagen" (a collection of miners' folk tales)
AOC Calls Elon Musk 'Morally Vacant' and 'Unintelligent' in Latest Video Posthttps://dailyboulder.com/aoc-calls-elon-musk-morally-vacant-and-unintelligent-in-latest-video-post/
Seems to me that if #trump wants to take over #Gaza and give the #Palestinians land elsewhere they should look at giving them North Carolina or perhaps West Virginia. I'd suggest Georgia, but I'm not sure how it's going to be with climate change over the next century.
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Ken Larson
in reply to Chuck Darwin • • •For a character that treasures big fish, Musk's forays so far are but guppies compared to the whale he will soon undertake to cut and saw his way to his 2 Billion in reductions.
With the Department of Defense Military
he will attempt an epic not unlike Hemingway's Old Man and the SEA.
Anyone willing to venture a prognostication at the result and whether or not we will have a functioning government left??