Ladies: Stop Posing and Start Advocating For the Second Amendment – Bearing Arms

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Okay, Ineedto go off for a minute. You guys knowI dont get fired up often and it really does take a lot to fire me up, but once that fire is lit its all, Burn, baby, BURN!

Well, its burning and heres why:

LADIES: I love that so many of you are embracing your second amendment rights and not only becoming gun owners, but becoming responsibly armed! I cannot tell you how immensely proud I am to know that there are so many more women, daughters, mothers, caretakers, wives, nurses, teachers, homemakers, and female citizens who have joined the ranks of gun owners in America and are ready to defend themselves and protect their loved ones if needed.

That being said, as it iswith every trend, there area few women who have been all too happy to jump on the 2A train for their own advancement. You know who Im talking about. The ladies that post videos of themselves shooting ARs in tank tops, posing with their gun as they aretea cupping, posting pictures with their finger on the trigger you know: showing their assets while announcing their ignorance.

Well Im done.

I have had it with the social acceptance of these pistol princesses. It does nothing to advance our cause and it makes us all look like the gun-licking idiots the gun control advocateskeep saying we are.

If you really are a proficient gun owner and true advocate of our second amendment rights, dont talk about it, show people.

Stop talking about changes and makethem, stop posing with guns and shootthem, stop posting stupid selfies from the gun range and pay attentionwhen youre there, stop talking about things you know nothing about and learnabout them, stop bragging about what youre going to do for 2A and just DO IT, stop it just stop it already, you look RIDICULOUS!!!!

Okay, so in all seriousness 99.4% of women just want to help others, not advance their own popularity through firearms. We look at things like, if you know something that you think other women may not know, why not show that in aselfie? If you have a question about something, why not research the answer and put that into a post or make a Facebook Live video to encourage others to chime in to find their answers? If you take a firearms course, why not share the information and geo-tag your area so others looking for quality training can see your review? If youre volunteering with an NRA grassroots campaign, why not challenge your friends to join you in a smart social media post?

There are so many ways toshow your 2A assets without looking like an ass.Try thinking more of the greater good than focusing your camera on your goodies.

If youre half the gunny gal you claim to be, youll get twice the attention for being the real deal.

or continue beingjust another flash in the pan, thats fine, too. Those will eventually burn out and are quickly forgotten, although they do make good cautionary tales for the next generation of women.

Author's Bio: Jenn Jacques

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Ladies: Stop Posing and Start Advocating For the Second Amendment - Bearing Arms

Two New Second Amendment Challenges – AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

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Two New Second Amendment Challenges
AmmoLand Shooting Sports News
Healey alleges that electrical weapons are arms in common use and therefore their possession by law-abiding adult citizens is protected by the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The complaint alleges that the constitutional rights of the ...

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Two New Second Amendment Challenges - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

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Clauses of the First Amendment

The Establishment Clause

Americas early settlers came from a variety of religious backgrounds: Puritans predominated in New England; Anglicans predominated in the South; Quakers and Lutherans flocked especially to Pennsylvania; Roman Catholics settled mostly in Maryland; Presbyterians were most numerous in the middle colonies; and there were Jewish congregations in five cities.

During colonial times, the Church of England was established by law in all of the southern colonies, while localized Puritan (or Congregationalist) establishments held sway in most New England states. In those colonies, clergy were appointed and disciplined by colonial authorities and colonists were required to pay religious taxes and (often) to attend church services. Dissenters were often punished for preaching without a license or refusing to pay taxes to a church they disagreed with. Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and much of New York had no established church.

After Independence, there was widespread agreement that there should be no nationally established church. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, principally authored by James Madison, reflects this consensus. The language of the Establishment Clause itself applies only to the federal government (Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion). All states disestablished religion by 1833, and in the 1940s the Supreme Court held that disestablishment applies to state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Virtually all jurists agree that it would violate the Establishment Clause for the government to compel attendance or financial support of a religious institution as such, for the government to interfere with a religious organizations selection of clergy or religious doctrine; for religious organizations or figures acting in a religious capacity to exercise governmental power; or for the government to extend benefits to some religious entities and not others without adequate secular justification. Beyond that, the meaning of the Amendment is often hotly contested, and Establishment cases in the Supreme Court often lead to 5-4 splits.

The Lemon Test

In 1971, the Supreme Court surveyed its previous Establishment Clause cases and identified three factors that identify whether or not a government practice violates the Establishment Clause: First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster an excessive entanglement with religion. Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). In the years since Lemon, the test has been much criticized and the Court often decides Establishment Clause cases without reference to it. Yet the Justices have not overruled the Lemon test, meaning the lower courts remain obliged to use it. In some specific areas of controversy, however, the Court has adopted specific, more targeted tests to replace Lemon.

The vast majority of Establishment Clause cases have fallen in four areas: monetary aid to religious education or other social welfare activities conducted by religious institutions; government-sponsored prayer; accommodation of religious dissenters from generally-applicable laws; and government owned or sponsored religious symbols.

Aid to religious institutions

Scholars have long debated between two opposing interpretations of the Establishment Clause as it applies to government funding: (1) that the government must be neutral between religious and non-religious institutions that provide education or other social services; or (2) that no taxpayer funds should be given to religious institutions if they might be used to communicate religious doctrine. Initially, the Court tended toward the first interpretation, in the 1970s and 1980s the Court shifted to the second interpretation, and more recently the Court has decisively moved back to the first idea.

After two early decisions upholding state statutes allowing students who attend private religious schools to receive transportation, Everson v. Board of Education (1947), and textbook subsidies available to all elementary and secondary students, Board of Education v. Allen (1968), the Court attempted for about fifteen years to draw increasingly sharp lines against the use of tax-funded assistance for the religious aspects of education. At one point the Court even forbade public school teaching specialists from going on the premises of religious schools to provide remedial assistance. Aguilar v. Felton (1985). More recently, the Court has upheld programs that provide aid to educational or social programs on a neutral basis only as a result of the genuine and independent choices of private individuals. Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002). Indeed, the Court has held that it is unconstitutional under free speech or free exercise principles to exclude otherwise eligible recipients from government assistance solely because their activity is religious in nature. Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995).

Government-sponsored prayer

The Courts best-known Establishment Clause decisions held it unconstitutional for public schools to lead schoolchildren in prayer or Bible reading, even on an ostensibly voluntary basis. Engel v. Vitale (1962); Abington School District v. Schempp (1963). Although these decisions were highly controversial among the public (less so among scholars), the Court has not backed down. Instead it has extended the prohibition to prayers at graduation ceremonies, Lee v. Weisman (1992), and football games, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000).

In less coercive settings involving adults, the Court has generally allowed government-sponsored prayer. In Marsh v. Chambers (1983), the Court upheld legislative prayer, specifically because it was steeped in history. More recently, the Court approved an opening prayer or statement at town council meetings, where the Town represented that it would accept any prayers of any faith. Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014).

Accommodation of religion

Hundreds of federal, state, and local laws exempt or accommodate religious believers or institutions from otherwise neutral, generally-applicable laws for whom compliance would conflict with religiously motivated conduct. Examples include military draft exemptions, kosher or halal meals for prisoners, medical neglect exemptions for parents who do not believe in medical treatment for their ill children, exemptions from some anti-discrimination laws for religious entities, military headgear requirements, and exemptions for the sacramental use of certain drugs. The Supreme Court has addressed very few of these exemptions. While the Court held that a state sales tax exemption limited to religious publications was unconstitutional in Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock (1989), it unanimously upheld the exemption of religious organizations from prohibitions on employment discrimination for ministers. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C. (2012).

Two federal laws, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), provide broad-based statutory accommodations for religious practice when it conflicts with federal and certain state and local laws. A unanimous Court upheld this approach for prisoners against a claim that granting religious accommodations violates the Establishment Clause, reasoning that RLUIPA alleviates exceptional government-created burdens on private religious exercise in prisons. Cutter v. Wilkinson (2005).

The Court in Cutter left open the question whether such a regime applied to land use is constitutional and it also left open the possibility that even some applications in prisons may be unconstitutional if they are not even-handed among religions or impose too extreme a burden on non-believers. The Courts recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), holding that RFRA exempts for-profit employers from paying for insurance coverage of contraceptive drugs that they believe are abortion-inducing, has reinvigorated the debate over such laws.

Government-sponsored religious symbols

The cases involving governmental displays of religious symbolssuch as Ten Commandment displays in public school classrooms, courthouses, or public parks; nativity scenes in courthouses and shopping districts; or crosses on public landhave generated much debate. The most prominent approach in more recent cases is called the endorsement test; it asks whether a reasonable observer acquainted with the full context would regard the display as the government endorsing religion and, therefore, sending a message of disenfranchisement to other believers and non-believers.

The Courts decisions in this arena are often closely divided. They also illustrate that the Court has declined to take a rigid, absolutist view of the separation of church and state. In Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), the Court allowed display of a nativity scene surrounded by other holiday decorations in the heart of a shopping district, stating that it engenders a friendly community spirit of good will in keeping with the season. But in County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (1989), a different majority of Justices held that the display of a nativity scene by itself at the top of the grand stairway in a courthouse violated the Establishment Clause because it was indisputably religiousindeed sectarian. In McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005), the Court held that a prominent display of the Ten Commandments at the county courthouse, which was preceded by an officials description of the Ten Commandments as the embodiment of ethics in Christ, was a religious display that was unconstitutional. The same day, it upheld a Ten Commandments monument, which was donated by a secular organization dedicated to reducing juvenile delinquency and surrounded by other monuments on the spacious statehouse grounds. Van Orden v. Perry (2005). Only one Justice was in the majority in both cases.

More broadly, the Establishment Clause provides a legal framework for resolving disagreements about the public role of religion in our increasingly pluralistic republic.

An accurate recounting of history is necessary to appreciate the need for disestablishment and a separation between church and state.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion is one of the most misunderstood in the Constitution.

The Establishment Clause: A Check on Religious Tyranny by Marci A. Hamilton

An accurate recounting of history is necessary to appreciate the need for disestablishment and a separation between church and state. The religiosity of the generation that framed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (of which the First Amendment is the first as a result of historical accident, not the preference for religious liberty over any other right) has been overstated. In reality, many of the Framers and the most influential men of that generation rarely attended church, were often Deist rather than Christian, and had a healthy understanding of the potential for religious tyranny. This latter concern is to be expected as European history was awash with executions of religious heretics: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim. Three of the most influential men in the Framing era provide valuable insights into the mindset at the time: Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and John Adams. Franklin saw a pattern:

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England.

Benjamin Franklin, Letter to the London Packet (June 3, 1772).

The father of the Constitution and primary drafter of the First Amendment, James Madison, in his most important document on the topic, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785), stated:

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. . . . What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people.

Two years later, John Adams described the states as having been derived from reason, not religious belief:

It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. . . .Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Vol. 4, 292-93 (Charles C. Little & James Brown, eds., 1851).

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are examples of early discord. In Massachusetts, the Congregationalist establishment enforced taxation on all believers and expelled or even put to death dissenters. Baptist clergy became the first in the United States to advocate for a separation of church and state and an absolute right to believe what one chooses. Baptist pastor John Leland was an eloquent and forceful proponent of the freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state. For him, America was not a Christian nation, but rather should recognize the equality of all believers, whether Jews, Turks, Pagans [or] Christians. Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. He proposed an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution in 1794 because of the evils . . . occasioned in the world by religious establishments, and to keep up the proper distinction between religion and politics."

Pennsylvania, dubbed the Holy Experiment by founder William Penn, was politically controlled by Quakers, who advocated tolerance of all believers and the mutual co-existence of differing faiths, but who made their Christianity a prerequisite for public office, only permitted Christians to vote, and forbade work on the Sabbath. Even so, the Quakers set in motion a principle that became a mainstay in religious liberty jurisprudence: the government may not coerce citizens to believe what they are unwilling to believe. If one looks carefully into the history of the United States religious experiment, one also uncovers a widely-shared view that too much liberty, or licentiousness, is as bad as no liberty. According to historian John Philip Reid, those in the eighteenth century had as great a duty to oppose licentiousness as to defend liberty.

Establishment Clause Doctrine

The Establishment Clause has yielded a wide array of doctrines (legal theories articulated by courts), each of which is largely distinct from the others, some of which are described in Professor McConnells and my joint contribution on the Establishment Clause. The reason for this proliferation of distinct doctrines is that the Establishment Clause is rooted in a concept of separating the power of church and state. These are the two most authoritative forces of human existence, and drawing a boundary line between them is not easy. The further complication is that the exercise of power is fluid, which leads both state and church to alter their positions to gain power either one over the other or as a union in opposition to the general public or particular minorities.

The separation of church and state does not mean that there is an impermeable wall between the two, but rather that the Framers fundamentally understood that the union of power between church and state would lead inevitably to tyranny. The established churches of Europe were well-known to the Founding era and the Framers and undoubtedly contributed to James Madisons inclusion of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, and its ratification. The following are some of the most important principles.

The Government May Not Delegate Governing Authority to Religious Entities

The Court has been sensitive to incipient establishments of religion. A Massachusetts law delegated authority to churches and schools to determine who could receive a liquor license within 500 feet of their buildings. The Supreme Court struck down the law, because it delegated to churches zoning power, which belongs to state and local government, not private entities. Larkin v. Grendels Den, Inc. (1982). According to the Court: The law substitutes the unilateral and absolute power of a church for the reasoned decision making of a public legislative body . . . on issues with significant economic and political implications. The challenged statute thus enmeshes churches in the processes of government and creates the danger of [p]olitical fragmentation and divisiveness along religious lines.

In another scenario, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt to define political boundaries solely according to religion. In Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994), the state of New York designated the neighborhood boundaries of Satmar Hasidim Orthodox Jews in Kiryas Joel Village as a public school district to itself. Thus, the boundary was determined solely by religious identity, in part because the community did not want their children to be exposed to children outside the faith. The Court invalidated the school district because political boundaries identified solely by reference to religion violate the Establishment Clause.

There Is No Such Thing as Church Autonomy Although There Is a Doctrine that Forbids the Courts from Determining What Religious Organizations Believe

In recent years, religious litigants have asserted a right to church autonomythat churches should not be subject to governmental regulationin a wide variety of cases, and in particular in cases involving the sexual abuse of children by clergy. The phrase, however, is misleading. The Supreme Court has never interpreted the First Amendment to confer on religious organizations a right to autonomy from the law. In fact, in the case in which they have most recently demanded such a right, arguing religious ministers should be exempt from laws prohibiting employment discrimination, the Court majority did not embrace the theory, not even using the term once. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C. (2012).

The courts are forbidden, however, from getting involved in determining what a religious organization believes, how it organizes itself internally, or who it chooses to be ministers of the faith. Therefore, if the dispute brought to a court can only be resolved by a judge or jury settling an intra-church, ecclesiastical dispute, the dispute is beyond judicial consideration. This is a corollary to the absolute right to believe what one chooses; it is not a right to be above the laws that apply to everyone else. There is extraordinary slippage in legal briefs in numerous cases where the entity is arguing for autonomy, but what they really mean is freedom from the law, per se. For the Court and basic common sense, these are arguments for placing religion above the law, and in violation of the Establishment Clause. They are also fundamentally at odds with the common sense of the Framing generation that understood so well the evils of religious tyranny.

The Establishment Clause: Co-Guarantor of Religious Freedom by Michael McConnell

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion is one of the most misunderstood in the Constitution. Unlike most of the Constitution, it refers to a legal arrangement, the establishment of religion, which has not existed in the United States in almost two centuries. We understand what freedom of speech is, we know what private property" is, and we know what searches and seizures are, but most of us have no familiarity with what an establishment of religion would be.

The Church by Law Established in Britain was a church under control of the government. The monarch was (and is) the supreme head of the established church and chooses its leadership; Parliament enacted its Articles of Faith; the state composed or directed the content of its prayers and liturgy; clergy had to take an oath of allegiance to the king or queen; and not surprisingly, the established church was used to inculcate the idea that British subjects had a religious as well as a civic obligation to obey royal authority. The established church was a bit like a government-controlled press: it was a means by which the government could mold public opinion.

British subjects (including Americans in eight of the colonies) were legally required to attend and financially support the established church, ministers were licensed or selected by the government, and the content of church services was partially dictated by the state.

The establishment of religion was bad for liberty and it was bad for religion, too. It was opposed by a coalition of the most fervently evangelical religious sects in America (especially the Baptists), who thought the hand of government was poisonous to genuine religion, joined by the enlightenment and often deist elite (like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin), who thought church and state should be separate, and by the leadership of minority religions, who worried that government involvement would disadvantage them. Accordingly, there was virtually no opposition to abolishing establishment of religion at the national level. Establishments survived for a while in a few states, but the last state (Massachusetts) ended its establishment in 1833.

The abolition of establishment of religion entails a number of obvious and uncontroversial elements. Individuals may not be required to contribute to, attend, or participate in religious activities. These must be voluntary. The government may not control the doctrine, liturgy, or personnel of religious organizations. These must be free of state control. Other issues are harder.

For a few decades between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, the Supreme Court attempted to forbid states to provide tax subsidies to schools that teach religious doctrine along with ordinary secular subjects. Most of these schools were Roman Catholic. This effort was largely based on a misinterpretation of history, egged on by residual anti-Catholicism. The Justices said that neutral aid to schools is just like a 1785 effort to force Virginians to contribute to the church of their choice. The analogy, however, made little sense: there is all the difference in the world between funding churches because they inculcate religion and funding schools because they provide education. In fact, the history of the early republic shows that states (and later the federal government, during Reconstruction) funded education by subsidizing all schools on a nondiscriminatory basis, and no one ever suggested this violated the non-establishment principle. By 2002, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the Supreme Court returned to this original idea, allowing the government to fund schools on a neutral basis so long as the choice of religious schools was left to voluntary choice. Not only was ruling this true to history, it also best serves the ideal of religious freedom, making it possible for families to choose the type of education they want for their children.

It is sometimes suggested that laws making special accommodations for people whose religious beliefs are at odds with government policy violate the Establishment Clause, on the theory that these accommodations privilege or advance religion. This is a recently-minted idea, and not a sensible one. In all cases of accommodation, the religion involved is dissenting from prevailing policy, which means, by definition, that the religion is not dominating society. The idea that making exceptions for the benefit of people whose beliefs conflict with the majority somehow establishes religion is a plain distortion of the words. And the Supreme Court has unanimously held that religious accommodations are permissible so long as they lift a governmental obstacle to the exercise of religion, take account of costs to others, and do not favor one faith over another. Nonetheless, when religions take unpopular stances on hot-button issues (for example, regarding abortion-inducing contraceptives or same-sex marriage), critics are quick to assert that it violates the Constitution to accommodate their differences, no matter how little support that position has in history or Supreme Court precedent.

The fundamental error is to think that the Establishment Clause is designed to reduce the role of religion in American life. A better understanding is captured in this statement by Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court: this country sponsor[s] an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. Zorach v. Clauson (1952).

The Free Exercise Clause

Many settlers from Europe braved the hardships of immigration to the American colonies to escape religious persecution in their home countries and to secure the freedom to worship according to their own conscience and conviction. Although the colonists often understood freedom of religion more narrowly than we do today, support for protection of some conception of religious freedom was broad and deep. By the time of Independence and the construction of a new Constitution, freedom of religion was among the most widely recognized inalienable rights, protected in some fashion by state bills of rights and judicial decisions. James Madison, for example, the principal author of the First Amendment, eloquently expressed his support for such a provision in Virginia: It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.

Although the original Constitution contained only a prohibition of religious tests for federal office (Article VI, Clause 3), the Free Exercise Clause was added as part of the First Amendment in 1791. In drafting the Clause, Congress considered several formulations, but ultimately settled on protecting the free exercise of religion. This phrase makes plain the protection of actions as well as beliefs, but only those in some way connected to religion.

From the beginning, courts in the United States have struggled to find a balance between the religious liberty of believers, who often claim the right to be excused or exempted from laws that interfere with their religious practices, and the interests of society reflected in those very laws. Early state court decisions went both ways on this central question.

The Supreme Court first addressed the question in a series of cases involving nineteenth-century laws aimed at suppressing the practice of polygamy by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as Mormons. The Court unanimously rejected free exercise challenges to these laws, holding that the Free Exercise Clause protects beliefs but not conduct. Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Reynolds v. United States (1878). What followed was perhaps the most extreme government assault on religious freedom in American history. Hundreds of church leaders were jailed, rank-and-file Mormons were deprived of their right to vote, and Congress dissolved the LDS Church and expropriated most of its property, until the church finally agreed to abandon polygamy.

The belief-action distinction ignored the Free Exercise Clauses obvious protection of religious practice, but spoke to the concern that allowing believers to disobey laws that bind everyone else would undermine the value of a government of laws applied to all. Doing so, Reynolds warned, would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.

Reynolds influenced the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause well into the twentieth century. In 1940, for example, the Court extended the Clausewhich by its terms constrains only the federal governmentto limit state laws and other state actions that burden religious exercise. Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940). Though it recognized that governments may not unduly infringe religious exercise, the Court reiterated that [c]onduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society, citing Reynolds as authority. Similarly, the Court held in 1961 that the Free Exercise Clause did not exempt an orthodox Jewish merchant from Sunday closing laws, again citing Reynolds.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Court shifted, strengthening protection for religious conduct by construing the Free Exercise Clause to protect a right of religious believers to exemption from generally applicable laws which burden religious exercise. The Court held that the government may not enforce even a religiously-neutral law that applies generally to all or most of society unless the public interest in enforcement is compelling. Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972). Yoder thus held that Amish families could not be punished for refusing to send their children to school beyond the age of 14.

Although the language of this compelling-interest test suggested powerful protections for religion, these were never fully realized. The cases in which the Supreme Court denied exemptions outnumbered those in which it granted them. Aside from Yoder, the Court exempted believers from availability for work requirements, which denied unemployment benefits to workers terminated for prioritizing religious practices over job requirements. But it denied exemptions to believers and religious organizations which found their religious practices burdened by conditions for federal tax exemption, military uniform regulations, federal minimum wage laws, state prison regulations, state sales taxes, federal administration of public lands, and mandatory taxation and other requirements of the Social Security system. In all of these cases the Court found, often controversially, either that the governments interest in enforcement was compelling, or that the law in question did not constitute a legally-recognizable burden on religious practice.

In 1990, the Supreme Court changed course yet again, holding that the Free Exercise Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes). Employment Division v. Smith (1990). Though it did not return to the belief-action distinction, the Court echoed Reynolds concern that religious exemptions permit a person, by virtue of his beliefs, to become a law unto himself, contradicting both constitutional tradition and common sense. Any exceptions to religiously-neutral and generally-applicable laws, therefore, must come from the political process. Smith went on to hold that the Free Exercise Clause does not protect the sacramental use of peyote, a hallucinogenic drug, by members of the Native American Church.

Smith proved to be controversial. In 1993, overwhelming majorities in Congress voted to reinstate the pre-Smith compelling-interest test by statute with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). RFRA authorizes courts to exempt a person from any law that imposes a substantial burden on sincere religious beliefs or actions, unless the government can show that the law is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest. Almost half of the states have passed similar lawsstate RFRAsapplicable to their own laws. In 1997 the Supreme Court held that Congress had constitutional authority only to apply RFRA to federal laws, and not to state or local laws. Congress then enacted a narrower law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which applies the compelling-interest test to state laws affecting prisoners and land use. RFRA and RLUIPA have afforded exemptions in a wide range of federal and state contextsfrom kosher and halal diets for prisoners, to relief from zoning and landmark regulations on churches and ministries, to exemptions from jury service.

Although some exemption claims brought under these religious freedom statutes have been relatively uncontroversialthe Supreme Court unanimously protected the right of a tiny religious sect to use a hallucinogenic drug prohibited by federal law and the right of a Muslim prisoner to wear a half-inch beard prohibited by state prison rulessome touch on highly contested moral questions. For example, the Court by a 5-4 vote excused a commercial family-owned corporation from complying with the contraception mandate, a regulation which required the corporations health insurance plan to cover what its owners believe are abortion-inducing drugs. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. (2014). In the wake of Hobby Lobby and the Courts subsequent determination that states may not deny gays and lesbians the right to civil marriage, state RFRAs have become a flashpoint in conflicts over whether commercial vendors with religious objections may refuse their products and services to same-sex weddings.

Besides RFRA and other exemption statutes, the Free Exercise Clause itself, even after Smith, continues to provide protection for believers against burdens on religious exercise from laws that target religious practices, or that disadvantage religion in discretionary, case-by-case decision making. In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah (1993), for example, the Court unanimously struck down a local ordinance against the unnecessary killing of animals in a ritual or ceremonya law that was drawn to apply only to a small and unpopular religious sect whose worship includes animal sacrifice.

The Court recently recognized that the Free Exercise Clause (along with the Establishment Clause) required a religious exemption from a neutral and general federal antidiscrimination law that interfered with a churchs freedom to select its own ministers. The Court distinguished Smith on the ground that it involved government regulation of only outward physical acts, while this case concerns government interference with an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. E.E.O.C. (2012).

It remains unclear whether Lukumi and Hosanna-Tabor are narrow exceptions to Smiths general presumption against religious exemptions, or foreshadow yet another shift towards a more exemption-friendly free exercise doctrine.

At the time the United States adopted the First Amendment to the Constitution, other nations routinely imposed disabilities on religious minorities within their borders, depriving them of legal rights, making it difficult or impossible to practice their faith, and often enabling violent persecution.

One of this nations deepest commitments is to the full, equal, and free exercise of religion a right that protects not only believers, but unbelievers as well.

Religious Liberty Is Equal Liberty by Frederick Gedicks

At the time the United States adopted the First Amendment to the Constitution, other nations routinely imposed disabilities on religious minorities within their borders, depriving them of legal rights, making it difficult or impossible to practice their faith, and often enabling violent persecution. The Free Exercise Clause was thus an exceptional political achievement, imposing a constitutional norm of civic equality by prohibiting the federal government from interfering with all religious exerciseregardless of affiliation.

Only a few years before the First Amendment was ratified, James Madison wrote that all people naturally retain equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of conscience without the governments subjecting some to peculiar burdens or granting to others peculiar exemptions. A Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785). As Madison suggested, at the time the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, the guarantee of religious free exercise was understood to protect against government discrimination or abuse on the basis of religion, but not to require favorable government treatment of believers. In particular, there is little evidence that the Founders understood the Free Exercise Clause to mandate religious exemptions that would excuse believers from complying with neutral and general laws that constrain the rest of society.

The Supreme Court has historically left the question of religious exemptions to Congress and the state legislatures. The first judicially-ordered exemptions arose in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the Supreme Court held the Free Exercise Clause required religious exemptions for Amish families who objected to sending their children to high school, and for employees who were denied unemployment benefits when they lost their jobs for refusing to work on their Sabbath. This doctrine of judicially-ordered exemptions, however, was an historical aberration. In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Court considered a claim by members of a Native American religion who lost their jobs as drug counselors for using an illegal drug in a religious ritual. The Court abandoned its new doctrine of religious exemptions, ruling that the Free Exercise Clause did not grant believers a right to exemptions from religiously neutral, generally applicable laws, though legislatures were free to grant such exemptions if they wished. This relegation of exemptions to the political process in most circumstances returned the Free Exercise Clause to its historical baseline. Notwithstanding the narrow ministerial exception recognized in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church & School v. EEOC (2012), the Court has repeatedly affirmed Smith and the century of precedent cited in that case, and has shown no inclination to overturn its basic principle that neutral and general laws should apply equally to all, regardless of religious belief or unbelief.

The growth of social welfare entitlements and religious diversity in the United States has underscored the wisdom of the Smith rule. Exempting believers from social welfare laws may give them a competitive advantage, and also may harm those whom the law was designed to protect or benefit.

For example, the Court refused to exempt an Amish employer from paying Social Security taxes for his employees, reasoning that doing so would impose the employers religious faith on the employees by reducing their social security benefits regardless of whether they shared their employers religious objection to government entitlement programs. United States v. Lee (1982). Similarly, the Court refused to exempt a religious employer from federal minimum wage laws, because doing so would give the employer an advantage over competitors and depress the wages of all employees in local labor markets. Tony & Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985).

Read the full discussion here.

The Court seems poised to adopt this third-party burden principle in decisions interpreting the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as well. Five Justices in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), expressly stated that RFRA exemptions imposing significant costs on others are not allowed. The majority opinion likewise acknowledged that courts must take adequate account of third-party burdens before ordering a RFRA exemption.

The growth of religious diversity makes a religious exemption regime doubly impractical. The vast range of religious beliefs and practices in the United States means that there is a potential religious objector to almost any law the government might enact. If religious objectors were presumptively entitled to exemption from any burdensome law, religious exemptions would threaten to swallow the rule of law, which presupposes its equal application to everyone. As the Court observed in Lee, a religiously diverse social welfare state cannot shield every person . . . from all the burdens incident to exercising every aspect of the right to practice religious beliefs.

Even under the equal-liberty regime contemplated by the Founders and restored by Smith, government remains subject to important constraints that protect religious liberty. Religious gerrymanders, or laws that single out particular religions for burdens not imposed on other religions or on comparable secular conduct, must satisfy strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause. Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah (1993); Sherbert v. Verner (1963). Under RFRA and the related Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), the federal government and often the state governments are prohibited from burdening religious exercise without adequate justification. Holt v. Hobbs (2015); Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal (2005). And, like judicially-ordered exemptions, legislative exemptions that impose material costs on others in order to protect believers free exercise interests may be invalid under the Establishment Clause, which protects believers and unbelievers alike from bearing the burdens of practicing someone elses religion. Estate of Thornton v. Caldor (1985).

If exemptions are to be afforded to those whose religious practices are burdened by neutral and general laws, they should generally not be granted by courts, but by the politically accountable branches of the federal and state governments. These branches are better situated to weigh and balance the competing interests of believers and others in a complex and religiously-diverse society.

Free Exercise: A Vital Protection for Diversity and Freedom by Michael McConnell

One of this nations deepest commitments is to the full, equal, and free exercise of religion a right that protects not only believers, but unbelievers as well. The government cannot use its authority to forbid Americans to conduct their lives in accordance with their religious beliefs or to require them to engage in actions contrary to religious conscience even when the vast majority of their countrymen regard those beliefs as backward, mistaken, or even immoral.

Unfortunately, in the last few years and especially since the Supreme Courts decision requiring states to recognize same-sex marriage this consensus in favor of tolerance has been slipping. All too often, we hear demands that religious people and religious institutions such as colleges or adoption agencies must join the state in recognizing same-sex marriages (or performing abortions or supplying contraceptives, or whatever the issues happen to be), or lose their right to operate.

That has not been the American way. When this country severed its ties with the British Empire, one thing that went with it was the established church. To an unprecedented degree, the young United States not only tolerated but actively welcomed people of all faiths. For example, despite his annoyance with the Quakers for their refusal to support the revolutionary war effort, Washington wrote to a Quaker Society to express his wish and desire, that the laws may always be as extensively accommodated to them, as a due regard for the protection and essential interests of the nation may justify and permit. Letter to the Annual Meeting of Quakers (1789).

What would it mean to have a regime of free exercise of religion? No one knew; there had been no such thing before. It quickly became clear that it was not enough just to cease persecution or discrimination against religious minorities. Just two years after the ink was dry on the First Amendment, the leader of the Jewish community in Philadelphia went to court and asked, under authority of his states free exercise clause, to be excused from complying with a subpoena to appear in court on his day of sabbath. He did not ask that the state cease to do official business on Saturday, but he did ask the court to make an exception an accommodation that would enable him to be faithful to the Jewish law.

This would become the central interpretive question under the Free Exercise Clause: Does it give Americans whose religions conflict with government practices the right to ask for special accommodation, assuming an accommodation can be made without great harm to the public interest or the rights of others?

Read the full discussion here.

In the early years, some religious claimants won and some lost. The Mormon Church lost in a big way, in the first such case to reach the United States Supreme Court. Reynolds v. United States (1878). In 1963, the Supreme Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment does require the government to make accommodations for religious exercise, subject as always to limitations based on the public interest and the rights of others. Sherbert v. Verner (1963). In 1990, the Court shifted to the opposite view, in a case involving the sacramental use of peyote by members of the Native American Church. Employment Division v. Smith (1990).

Today we have a patchwork of rules. When the federal government is involved, legislation called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act grants us the right to seek appropriate accommodation when our religious practices conflict with government policy. About half the states have similar rules, and a similar rule protects prisoners like the Muslim prisoner who recently won the right to wear a half-inch beard in accordance with Islamic law, by a 9-0 vote in the Supreme Court. Holt v. Hobbs (2015).

The range of claims has been as diverse as the religious demography of the country. A small Brazilian sect won the right to use a hallucinogenic drug in worship ceremonies; Amish farmers have won exceptions from traffic rules; Muslim soldiers have been given special accommodation when fasting for Ramadan; Orthodox Jewish boys won the right to wear their skullcaps when playing high school basketball; a Jehovahs Witness won the right to unemployment compensation after he quit rather than working to produce tank turrets; a Mormon acting student won the right to refuse roles involving nudity or profanity; and in the most controversial recent case, a family-owned business with religious objections to paying for abortion-inducing drugs persuaded the Supreme Court that the government should make those contraceptives available without forcing them to be involved.

In all these cases, courts or agencies came to the conclusion that religious exercise could be accommodated with little or no harm to the public interest or to others. As Justice Sandra Day OConnor (joined by liberal lions Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun) wrote: courts have been quite capable of applying our free exercise jurisprudence to strike sensible balances between religious liberty and competing state interests. Employment Division v. Smith (1989) (concurring opinion).

At a time when the Supreme Courts same-sex marriage decision has allowed many millions of Americans to live their lives in accordance with their own identity, it would be tragic if we turned our backs on the right to live in accordance with our religious conviction, which is also part of who we are. A robust protection for free exercise of religion is not only part of the American tradition, it is vital to our protection for diversity and freedom.

Freedom of Speech and the Press

Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. What does this mean today? Generally speaking, it means that the government may not jail, fine, or impose civil liability on people or organizations based on what they say or write, except in exceptional circumstances.

Although the First Amendment says Congress, the Supreme Court has held that speakers are protected against all government agencies and officials: federal, state, and local, and legislative, executive, or judicial. The First Amendment does not protect speakers, however, against private individuals or organizations, such as private employers, private colleges, or private landowners. The First Amendment restrains only the government.

The Supreme Court has interpreted speech and press broadly as covering not only talking, writing, and printing, but also broadcasting, using the Internet, and other forms of expression. The freedom of speech also applies to symbolic expression, such as displaying flags, burning flags, wearing armbands, burning crosses, and the like.

The Supreme Court has held that restrictions on speech because of its contentthat is, when the government targets the speakers messagegenerally violate the First Amendment. Laws that prohibit people from criticizing a war, opposing abortion, or advocating high taxes are examples of unconstitutional content-based restrictions. Such laws are thought to be especially problematic because they distort public debate and contradict a basic principle of self-governance: that the government cannot be trusted to decide what ideas or information the people should be allowed to hear.

There are generally three situations in which the government can constitutionally restrict speech under a less demanding standard.

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First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Trump, the press, the First Amendment and Thomas Jefferson – Washington Post

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President Trumps attacks on the fake news media the enem[ies] of the people, including the New York Times, CNN and NBC News would be hilarious, coming from a guy who routinely makes up facts (on everything from the murder rateto the number of people casting ballots illegally (and who they voted for!) in the presidential election to the size of the trade deficit to the number of people attending his inauguration to . . . ) and whose election, we now know, was supported by a large number of disinformation websites operated and/or funded by a hostile foreign government, were it not so disturbing.

It made me wonder: Does last weeks Gaggle Order the decision to ban the New York Times, CNN, Politico, Buzz Feed, and the Los Angeles Times reporters from Sean Spicerspress gaggle violate the First Amendment?

Turns out thats a close question. It certainly looks, at first glance, like a prohibited content-based (or possibly even viewpoint-based) discrimination limiting the affected outletsability to receive information, which would subject it to the highest form of First Amendment scrutiny and require some compelling justification to be constitutional. On the other hand, surely the First Amendment doesnt prevent a president (or his press secretary) from, say, granting an exclusive interview (or providing a leak) to one (favored) reporter or paper or TV network and not another.

Theres actually an old D.C. Circuit case that is rather closely on point: Sherrill v. Knight (569 F.2d 124 (1977), available here). Sherrill, the Washington correspondent for the Nation a publication with well-known left-wing proclivities applied for and was denied a White House press pass (during LBJs presidency). The denial, however, was apparently due not to any content- or viewpoint-based animus towards Sherrill or to the Nation, but resulted solely from the determination of the Secret Service, after investigating Mr. Sherrill, that he not be issued the pass although the Secret Service refused to reveal to Sherrill the information it had on which the denial was based.

The court concluded that while it would not order the White House to issue the pass, it would order the White House to provide Sherrill with notice, opportunity to rebut, and a written decision regarding his application.

The court held (and the government itself conceded) that the denial of a White House press pass potentially infringes upon first amendment guarantees. . . . [and] itis violative of the first amendment if it is based upon the content of the journalists speech or otherwise discriminates against a class of protected speech. . . . Arbitrary or content-based criteria for press pass issuance are prohibited under the first amendment.

The court rejected the governments argument that because the public has no special right of access to the White House, and because the right of access due the press generally is no greater than that due the general public, denial of a White House press pass is violative of the first amendment only if it is based upon the content of the journalists speech or otherwise discriminates against a class of protected speech.

[W]e are presented here with a situation where the White House has voluntarily decided to establish press facilities for correspondents who need to report therefrom. These press facilities are perceived as being open to all bona fide Washington-based journalists, whereas most of the White House itself, and press facilities in particular, have not been made available to the general public. White House press facilities having been made publicly available as a source of information for newsmen, the protection afforded news-gathering under the first amendment guarantee of freedom of the press, see Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681, 707 (1972); Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 829-35 (1974), requires that this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons. See Southeastern Promotions v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 95 S.Ct. 1239, 43 L.Ed.2d 448 (1975); Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938).

Given the important first amendment rights implicated by refusal to grant White House press passes to bona fide Washington journalists, the court held that such refusal must be based on a compelling governmental interest.

Clearly, protection of the president is a compelling, even an overwhelming, interest. The court had no basis for rejecting the explicit finding of the District Court that . . .denial of a press pass to [Sherrill] proceeded solely from concern for the physical security of the President, and thus the court was unwilling to order the White House to issue Sherrill a pass. It did, however, order the White House to provide notice [to Sherrill] of the factual bases for denial, an opportunity for him to respond to these, and a final written statement of the reasons for denial, which it called a minimum prerequisite for ensuring that the denial is indeed in furtherance of Presidential protection, rather than based on arbitrary or less than compelling reasons.

So if the White House had revoked a New YorkTimes reporters press pass, or denied access to the White House press room, there would be strong grounds for a claim of unconstitutional executive action. But at the same time, the First Amendment doesnt prevent a president from, say, granting an exclusive interview to one (favored) reporter or TV network and not another; as the court put it, it would certainly be unreasonable to suggest that because the President allows interviews with some bona fide journalists, he must give this opportunity to all.

So back to Spicer. The question here seems to turn on what, exactly, is this press gaggle? Is it more closely analogous to a press briefing, ostensibly open to any and all bona fide reporters? Or is it more like an interview, in connection with which the president (or his press secretary) has considerable discretion to discriminate between those he does or doesnt invite?

I cant say for certain; I had never heard of these press gaggles before, and I dont have a lot of information about how they operate, though it does sound like its closer to the latter than to the former.

And while were on the subject, what is particularly galling to me, and to anyone who calls him/herself a Jeffersonian as I do, is the way that Trump has enlisted Jeffersons support in his attacks on the press. For instance, at aFlorida rallylast week, he said:

They [the press] have their own agenda and their agenda is not your agenda. In fact, Thomas Jefferson said, nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself, he said, becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle, that was June 14, my birthday, 1807. But despite all their lies, misrepresentations, and false stories, they could not defeat us in the primaries, and they could not defeat us in the general election, and we will continue to expose them for what they are, and most importantly, we will continue to win, win, win.

It is certainly the case that Jefferson had a very rocky relationship with the press, and said some very uncomplimentary things (as in the 1807 letter to John Norvellfrom which Trump was quoting) about them, and about what he called elsewhere the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them. . . . These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food.

But Jefferson unlike some presidents I am aware of understood very well the difference between his private disputes with the press and his personal views about press activity expressed inhis private correspondence,on the one hand, and his statements and actions taken in his public capacity and his public writings on the other, in which he was quite possibly the strongest supporter of a free and unfettered press that this country has ever had.

He rode into office in 1800, of course, on the wave of public indignation about the Adams administrations Sedition Act, which made it a federal crime punishable by up to two years in prison to criticize the government to write, print, utter, or publish, any malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, or anything that would bring them into disrepute.

Heres the text of the Sedition Act, which is worth reading if youve not read it before:

And be it further enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.

Scores of newspaper editors had been tossed into jail, and it was Jefferson, along with James Madison, who led the fight to declare theact unconstitutional.***

*** The Virginia Resolution, passed by the state assembly (and co-authored by Jefferson and Madison) declared that the Sedition Act (along with its sister statute, the Alien Act) was unconstitutional:

It exercises a power not delegated by the constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.

[The Virginia Constitution] expressly declares that among other essential rights, the Liberty of Conscience and of the Press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States, it would mark a reproachable inconsistency, and criminal degeneracy, if an indifference were now shewn to the most palpable violation of one of the Rights declared and secured in the [U.S.] constitution, and to the establishment of a precedent which may be fatal to the others.

[T]he General Assembly doth solemenly declare that the acts aforesaid are unconstitutional

A wonderful anecdote possibly anecdotal from Jeffersons presidential years captures his attitude well.

In 1804, the celebrated traveller, Baron Humboldt, called on the President one day, and was received into his office. On taking up one of the public journals which lay upon the table, he was shocked to find its columns teeming with the most wanton abuse and licentious calumnies of the President. He threw it down with indignation, exclaiming, Why do you not have the fellow hung who dares to write these abominable lies?

The President smiled at the warmth of the Baron, and replied What! hang the guardians of the public morals? No sir, rather would I protect the spirit of freedom which dictates even that degree of abuse. Put that paper into your pocket, my good friend, carry it with you to Europe, and when you hear any one doubt the reality of American freedom, show them that paper, and tell them where you found it.Sir, the country where public men are amenable to public opinion; where not only their official measures, but their private morals, are open to the scrutiny and animadversion of every citizen, is more secure from despotism and corruption, than it could be rendered by the wisest code of laws, or best formed constitution. Party spirit may sometimes blacken, and its erroneous opinions may sometimes injure; but, in general, it will prove the best guardian of a pure and wise administration; it will detect and expose vice and corruption, check the encroachments of power, and resist oppression; sir, it is an abler protector of the peoples rights, than arms or laws.

But is it not shocking that virtuous characters should be defamed? replied the Baron. Let their actions refute such libels, continued the President; believe me, virtue is not long darkened by the clouds of calumny, and the temporary pain which it causes is infinitely overweighed by the safety it insures against degeneracy in the principles and conduct of public functionaries. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property, and justly liable to the inspection and vigilance of public opinion; and the more sensibly he is made to feel his dependence, the less danger will there be of his abuse of power, which is that rock on which good governments, and the peoples rights, have been so often wrecked.

[from Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832) by B. L. Rayner]

Jefferson truly believed and acted always in accordance with the belief that free speech and a free press were the two indispensable conditions for maintaining our freedom in the face of abusive governmental power.

Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. . . .Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.To preserve the freedom of the human mind and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual agent hitherto found is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

An executive strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expences, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. But the only security of all is in a free press.The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. the agitation it produces must be submitted to, for it is necessary to keep the waters pure.

He could not have been clearer: a rambunctious and occasionally scurrilous and abusive press and if you think the press is a problem today on these grounds, you shouldread the papers from 1802 or thereabouts is the price we pay to maintain and safeguard all of our other rights. It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood.Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it.

So if Trump is channeling any historical figure in calling out the press as the enemies of the people, it is Joseph Stalin, or possibly Robespierre, not Thomas Jefferson.

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Trump, the press, the First Amendment and Thomas Jefferson - Washington Post

Rosenberg: Airbnb law amounts to a first Amendment violation – Long Island Business News (subscription)

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Traditionally, I avoid using this column to discuss issues that directly relate to my role as an attorney, as I find such practice self-serving and of dubious value for you, dear reader.

Yet, for every rule there is an exception, and the issue soon to be debated in a New York City court has such profound implications for businesses throughout the state that it is worth the time to examine the matter.

Simply distilled, a state law applicable only to NYC currently makes it unlawful to advertise occupancy or use of dwelling units where that occupancy would violate the Multiple Dwelling Law. This improper gag law is so broadly written that it covers literally any form of communication. If a similar statute is adopted with state wide application it would threaten literally any company or individual that seeks to contract for goods or services, whether through traditional mediums or the Internet. This was a law the state legislature granted to the city with the power to enforce, so the potential for this legislation to spread like a toxic weed throughout New York is real (although how it was enacted may be fatally flawed).

Originally designed to constrain Airbnbs widely successful business model of allowing apartment owners and tenants to briefly rent out their dwellings, the city capitulated in enforcing the law against the multibillion dollar Airbnb corporation and even stipulated in Federal Court that City Hall will permanently refrain from taking any action to enforce it against Airbnb.

What New York City forgot is that, irrespective of whether you are up against Airbnb or the lonely apartment owner or tenant, you cant violate the First Amendment. By prohibiting rental advertisements, the city imposes a content-based speech restriction subject to what the law calls heightened judicial scrutiny. It attempts to create, in essence, a legal house of mirrors that the city hopes defendants wont possibly navigate in their attempt to defend themselves.

More threatening for the rest of us who arent looking to offer short term rentals, the city law chills protected commercial speech. The threat of fines and liability would likely impose a form of self-censorship in the marketplace as the interpretation of what is permitted and what is prohibited becomes vague, blurred and problematic. If I ran a magazine, newspaper, broadcast operation or advertising agency, I would be extremely concerned about this laws draconian reach.

The city law also violates the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it seeks to impose strict civil and criminal liability against alleged violators. Specifically, there is no requirement in the statute that an alleged violator know that an advertisement is unlawful. Fortunately, there is precedent here. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected such efforts to impose strict liability for the dissemination of information, even where, unlike here, the content itself lacks First Amendment protection.

Of course, the City could simply go after those who actually rent units unlawfully, rather than those that merely advertise such rentals, but they seem to have decided there is far easier to pick up a lot of money by just spotting the ads than by actually knocking on the doors of alleged violators to see if a violation has in fact occurred. In fact, the city has recently allocated several million dollars to fund inspectors whose task is to identify and fine apartment owners and tenants who post illegal listings. It is a fair bet they expect to make back that investment quickly by tabulating illegal ads and then sending notices costing $1,000 per first violation, $5,000 per second violation and $7500 per third violation gotcha.

Prohibition taught America that flawed laws and ill-conceived enforcement breeds nothing but contempt for government, for trying to make criminals out of all of us. The City of New York, and by extension the New York State Legislature, would better serve the public if they would promptly review their illegal assault on freedom of commercial speech and strike this improper unconstitutional statute from the books before the courts do it for them.

Rosenberg, a graduate of St. Johns University Law School and resident of Old Westbury, is senior founding with Rosenberg, Calica & Birney LLP, a Garden City law firm.

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Rosenberg: Airbnb law amounts to a first Amendment violation - Long Island Business News (subscription)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: We must defend our First Amendment rights – Bemidji Pioneer

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After assembling, however, an irate motorist pulled up and yelled go home. Protesters responded cooly with Well pray for you! The motorist drove off only to return moments later yelling more abuses. To be heard over the insults, the protesters yelled back, Well pray for you! The exchange was brief and nonviolent. Nevertheless, two Bemidji Police vehicles soon arrived. One officer entered the bank. Another officer approached the protesters. The officer acknowledged their peaceful assembly and thanked them for exercising their First Amendment rights. After polite discussion, the officer shook hands with protesters. They even took a group photo! Hallelujah. Libertys light stills shines. But for how long?

The right to peaceful assembly is protected under the First Amendment. It is the cornerstone to a healthy democracy. Yet to date, 18 states have introduced legislation stiffening penalties for peaceful demonstrators. In Minnesota, HF 322 represents such a threat. Although the wording appears benign, its intent is perhaps less innocent. If demonstration activity is deemed unlawful, governmental units could sue individuals to recover public safety response costs. Minnesota Statute 609.705 defines unlawful as disturbing or threatening the public peace. Who decides an assembly is disturbing the peace? Will HF 322 dissuade law-abiding citizens from public demonstration? Yes, probably. Is that the true intent of the bill? Probably, yes.

If protesting raises awareness, perchance increasing others willingness to demonstrate, then unprincipled politicians may seek to deter this right. James Madison, co-author of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, recognized this threat. I share his words, ...there are more instances of abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment (by those in power) than by violent and sudden usurpations. HF 322 is such an encroachment representing the gradual effort to criminalize protesters.

This is a defining chapter in American democracy. It is my hope, despite our partisan differences, we fight to maintain this fundamental freedom. Whether you are a water protector or a pro-lifer, this bill should concern you and motivate us to collectively defend our most rudimentary rights.

Susan Kedzie

On behalf of Indivisible Bemidji, a local effort to raise awareness on social and environmental issues.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: We must defend our First Amendment rights - Bemidji Pioneer

Arizona GOP leader kills bill that trampled First Amendment speech after widespread outcry – Daily Kos

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Sometimes First Amendment speech can actually save First Amendment speech, and that's a very good thing. Due to widespread opposition, Arizona's Republican House speaker decided to kill a bill that would have made it a criminal offenseto plan a protest that led to rioting. The AP writes:

The measure passed last week by the Senate drew nationwide attention, particularly from civil libertarians, because it classified violent protest as an organized crime and said protesters who didn't initially intend to riot could still face criminal charges. That attention led Speaker J.D. Mesnard to decide Monday to kill it for the session.

Mesnard told The Associated Press that people all across the country now believe that the Arizona Legislature is trying to enact a law that will suppress their First Amendment right to assemble.

"It's gotten a lot of attention, and frankly whether it's fair or unfair, whether its accurate or inaccurate, at this point doesn't matter," he told the AP. "That's certainly not what the Legislature wants to be about I know that's not what the sponsor wanted in the first place. The best way to send a very clear signal that we're not doing it is to not move the bill."

Chalk one up for the First Amendment. Weneed it now more than ever.

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Arizona GOP leader kills bill that trampled First Amendment speech after widespread outcry - Daily Kos

Onionshare: secure file transfers using Tor – Ghacks Technology News

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Onionshare is a free open source program for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux that enables you to transfer files security using Tor.

File sharing has not changed all that much in the past ten or so years. You can send files to other users in various ways: using email, (s)ftp, file sharing services, or online storage services. There are a couple of other options such as sharing files using USB storage devices and face to face exchanges.

It is difficult to transfer files securely. You could encrypt files before you send or upload them, but someone listening in could dump the data and try to break the encryption.

Face to face may work best, but only if you are not crossing any borders.

Onionshare was designed as a direct response to a passage in Glenn Greenwalds new book in which he described the issues that he was facing getting Snowden file copies from a fellow journalist.

The open source program Onionshare uses the Tor network for anonymity. What happens in the background is the following:

When you want to share files, Onionshare creates a temporary password protected website that is hosted on the Tor network.

Anyone with knowledge of the URL and the password can access the data, and download it to a computer system. Onionshare does not take care of that part of the communication though, so it is up to the user who set up the file transfer to use a secure channel to inform recipients about the availability of the data.

The recipient opens the URL in the Tor browser, and downloads files hosted on it to the local system. All that is left to do afterwards is to close down the site. This happens automatically by default after the first download.

You may stop this from being the case though if multiple users need to download the file, or if you want to keep it available in case it needs to be downloaded again.

The program -- we have tested the Windows version -- is easy to use. You need to install it on your system, and may launch it right after installation.

Note: You need to run Tor Browser on your system. If you don't have it, download it from the official Tor Project website.

The interface supports drag and drop operations, but you may also hit the add files or add folder button instead to use the file browser. Hit the "start sharing" button afterwards, and wait for the program to create the site in the background. If things go well, you get a custom URL the files or folders you selected are made available on.

Anyone with the url may download those then using Tor.

Passwords are not set up by default. To set up one, click on File > Settings. There you need to switch either to connect using control port, or connect using socket file. The password authentication option becomes available immediately afterwards.

Onionshare is an easy to use, yet anonymous cross-platform file transfer program. You can increase the protection beyond just requiring a password to download the files by encrypting the files.

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The best free privacy software 2017 – TechRadar

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Free privacy software

Online privacy is a hot topic, with even world leaders weighing in on the subject. Many of the big-name websites and companies will track your activities to deliver targeted advertising, and can build up an astonishingly detailed profile including your interests, spending habits, age, location and more.

If you would prefer to keep your personal details private, a VPN or proxy tool will help. See our guide to setting up and maintaining a VPN.

As well as preventing third parties building up a profile of you, the best free privacy software can open up the web, granting you access to sites blocked in your country, to access region-locked content when you're travelling away from home, and to add a layer of protection when you use a public Wi-Fi network.

A whole browser dedicated to your privacy, Tor Browser is the cornerstone of any privacy toolkit

Tor Browser is probably the best-known anonymous browsing tool out there, and it is described as a 'censorship circumvention tool'.

Tor Browser has a vast following in the online privacy and security communities. It works by bouncing your communication through numerous encrypted node on the internet, making it impossible to determine your location or other identifying information.

Tor Browser employs complex technology, but is refreshingly accessible. It's based on the same code as Firefox, and guides you through the process of getting online one step at a time.

It uses different connection methods depending on what you're trying to achieve, but there's no need to understand the details because it's all taken care of for you. This combination of effective protection and ease of use makes Tor Browser the best free privacy software you can download today.

Download here: Tor Browser

Privoxy gives you total control over your privacy, but the options might be overwhelming

Privoxy is a web proxy tool that's available not only for Mac, Windows and Linux, but also Android and iOS. It is a tremendously powerful tool, but you'll need to invest a little time and effort to get it up and running.

Privoxy can be used in conjunction with just about any web browser, which is a big bonus; simply set the browser to run its traffic through the tool.

However, one of Privoxy's key features could also be a drawback for new users: it gives you very granular control over privacy settings, and configuring them is very much a manual process. There's a helpful quick start guide available, but it has the potential to be off-putting.

That said, if you're happy to persevere, this free privacy software lets you set up advanced filters that will not only ensure you remain anonymous online, but also protect you against unwanted ads.

Download here: Privoxy

Free privacy software that protects your identity by hiding your IP address from prying eyes

Hotspot Shield VPN is available in two flavors: a free, ad-supported one, and a paid-for version that offer unlimited bandwidth. Hotspot Shield hides your IP address and provides encrypted traffic tunnelling (ideal for use on public Wi-Fi networks) to improve security and ensure privacy.

You may not want to use Hotspot Shield at all time. For instance, you may only be interested in using it to access certain sites that are blocked in your country. In this case you can create shortcuts to individual sites in the Hotspot Shield window which will enable protection before launching the sites. Protection can also be toggled on an off with a single click.

The paid-for version, Hotspot Elite, only costs a few pounds or dollars a month, but it's worth trying the free edition first before opening your wallet. Its additional features, including ad-free browsing and dedicated customer support, make it a tempting proposition.

Download here: Hotspot Shield VPN

Free and user-friendly, TunnelBear is VPN made easy but keep an eye on the data limit

In addition to anonymous browsing, free VPN tool TunnelBear can also be used to bypass traffic-shaping and throttling put in place by ISPs.

The free version of TunnelBear gives you up to 500MB of data each month, but if this isn't enough, unlimited data is available for a subscription fee, with prices starting at US$4.16 per month (about 3, AU$6).

Whether you go premium or stick with the free version, you can share a single account between up to five phones, tablets, Windows PCs or Macs.

Configuration is incredibly simple, and TunnelBear's free privacy software can be used with any browser. It's probably the most accessible VPN tool there is, and is just about impossible not to recommend.

Download here: TunnelBear

A great VPN tool for protecting your privacy online, but free users have to wait their turn

Another multi-platform VPN tool, CyberGhost VPN is available as a free ad-supported app, as well as a paid-for edition offering better performance and more features.

For day-to-day or occasional use, the free version should be perfectly adequate. Configuration is very simple, with the only potential stumbling block being the installation of a virtual network adaptor.

With a single click, CyberGhost VPN will activate, giving the impression that you're browsing from another country. The free privacy software also lets you keep an eye on how much traffic you've transferred through the service using a handy graph.

The downside of using the free version is that there's a limited numbers of spaces on the servers, so you may have to wait to gain access (although you're unlikely to be kept hanging for long).

Download here: CyberGhost VPN

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Coachella Hack: Five Questions You Were Afraid to Ask – Amplify

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Goldenvoice sent out an email to its users last night warning that a database holding some of their personal information had been hacked. First reported on Vices Motherboard, the stolen information contained most user account names, email addresses and shipping information.While no financial information was compromised, the hack represents a serious security setback for the festival promoter.Yesterday Goldenvoice officials sent out thisemail to ticket buyers notifying them of the breach.

Coachella got hacked pic.twitter.com/HokC90I4Nf

Kia Makarechi (@Kia_Mak) February 28, 2017

So whats going on here? Below we answer five questions on the Coachella hack you were afraid to ask.

According to AEG,hackers were able to breach a CRM-type database that fans can use to explore Coachellas lineup and chat with other fans on the Coachella message board. This database is different from the Gingerbread ticketing system Goldenvoiceuses for Coachella that system uses a separate login and credential system from the stolen Coachella.com database.

So what was taken? According to AEG, usernames, first and last names, shipping addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth individuals, were compromised, but we have confirmed that no user passwords were stolen. Financial information like credit card information was not compromised in the attack.

They probably dont need to do anything, besides stay alert for phishing scams and other illegal activities. Coachella officials told users they should consider changing any passwords that they have shared with others.

Yeahand going forward, dont share your passwords. Watch out for suspicious emails that ask you to login to your account to verify information. Opt for double-verification settings on Gmail and Facebook and use a password vault like LastPass to store your passwords.

What can hackers do with the Coachella information they obtained? Not much the personal details stolen arent that different than the marketing lists companies sell and trade. In fact, the information is really only valuable to other festival promoters and event organizers, although purchasing the information and using it for marketing would be incredibly stupidand illegal.

According to Vice, a hacker using the handle @berkut on the dark website Tochka is taking credit and was attempting to peddle the database for $300. Using a Tor browser, we created an account on Tochka and checked out Berkuts profile he was no longer selling the Coachella data, buthe was trying to sell a stolen database for an ecommerce site based in Mumbai, India. He was also selling a stolen database from policeone.com, a news and message site for law enforcement officials.

PoliceOne acknowledged the attack on their site, posting on Feb. 7 that they had been notified that the content of our PoliceOne Forum was the subject of unauthorized access and acquisition. The incident occurred in our forums, which are run on third-party software and are entirely separate from our main PoliceOne member database and other systems, which have not been compromised.

Sites selling hacked databases area big part of the dark web, which is essentially a network of sites that can only be accessed through a virtual private network and a special web browser. It only takes avery basic knowledge of the internet to hop on and browse sites selling stolen information, weapons and lots of drugs.

Totally dudeand if you order now, it can be here in time for Coachella!

Prices are listed in US Dollars but youhave to pay with the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Just a few words of caution. First, if you do decide to buy drugs online, youre breaking a number of federal laws possession of a controlled substance, drug trafficking, and potential mail fraud. Also, theres the very real possibility that the site will get busted and your address and order history might end up on some DEA Agents desk.

When in doubt, just say no. Drugs are bad. Mkay?

Maybe. Were not saying he did, but were also not saying he didnt.

Why would Putin want to mess with Goldenvoice? Hmmmmmmm.

Founder & Executive Editor at Amplify Media

Dave Brooks has over 15 years experience as a writer, including eight years as the Managing Editor of Venues Today. He started Amplify in 2014 to give the industry its own voice and turn up the volume on live entertainment.

Dave Brooks has over 15 years experience as a writer, including eight years as the Managing Editor of Venues Today. He started Amplify in 2014 to give the industry its own voice and turn up the volume on live entertainment.

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ExtremeTech explains: All about the dark web, and how to use it – ExtremeTech

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If youve paid any attention to online marketplaces for illegal goods like the now-defunct Silk Road or the FBIs investigations into criminal in cyberspace, chances are youve heard the term dark web. Curious about what it means? Youve come to the right place.

The dark web is sometimes called onionland because of its content accessible only using services like Tor. The rest of the internet is simply referred to as the clearweb, since it isnt generally encrypted.

The dark web works just about the same as the regular internet: it uses the same TCP/IP framework to transmit HTTP and FTP traffic within and between networks, over the same phone, cable or FiOS lines that carry regular internet traffic. Content on the dark web consists of HTML webpages and their assets, just like it does on the rest of the web. In fact, under the hood, the dark web is the same as the regular web, with two important exceptions that also distinguish the dark web from the deep web.

First: the dark web isnt indexed by search engines. Second, content on the dark web cant be accessed with regular web browsing software alone; additional software is required to make the networks talk to one another.

This is because content on the dark web is hosted on overlay networks, which are physically connected to the internet but arent accessible to web crawlers. That relative inaccessibility is because the dark web uses a complete, but fundamentally different, network addressing system than the web addresses most of us know and use. Browsers like Chrome and Firefox are programmed to access website files using the DNS index, which turns a files unique address on its unique server into a string of text that you can type into your address bar. Sites indexed by the DNS registry are accessible via top-level domains like .com and .org, among others. After ICANN opened up the suffixing system to other strings of text, we started to see web addresses that look like home.cern and bit.ly but you can still type those into your address bar and get to a website, because theyre in the official DNS registry. Dark websites dont participate in the DNS system, and web crawlers dont have the software to get onto the dark web, so the dark web and the clearweb dont really cross-pollinate.

Content obscured in this way can still be accessed, but you need the right software. Its a bit like a Wi-Fi network that doesnt broadcast its SSID: you can only get access if you already know exactly how to find it. Some content accessible only through Tor is hosted at a .onion pseudo-top-level domain, which means that in the right software, you might type in foobar.onion and get to the Foobar dark website.

Such software, including the Tor browser bundle, is capable of bridging the differences in network behavior between the dark web and the clearweb. But that only works when youre using a compatible browser and have the right encryption. Tor, Freenet and I2P are the most commonly cited examples of software capable of accessing the dark web. Typing a .onion address into your Chrome address bar wont get you anywhere. Furthermore, many if not most .onion sites are generated sixteen-character non-mnemonic alphanumeric strings, rather than being composed of words like most clearweb URLs.

There also exists a difference in the path web traffic takes on the clearnet versus the dark web. Tor is valuable because it sends your own web traffic through multiple different network nodes, masking its origin and destination. Theres significant overlap between VPNs and the dark web; both services use encryption and multiple network nodes to anonymize traffic. But VPNs deal with clearweb sites that participate in the DNS system, while dark web browsers deal with domains not recognized by ICANN.

The structure of the dark web makes it anonymizing, which means that first and foremost, its used for anonymous communication and web browsing. This accounts for the vast majority of network traffic through Tor. Why seek out anonymity? To read and write about things that might get you in trouble, like political dissent or whistleblowing. The same technology that enables Tor is capable of tunneling out from behind the Great Firewall of China, and the US government contributes to the development of such software.

Anonymity also brings out those who wish to do illegal things. A 2014 study found that of the different kinds of sites on the dark net, there are more markets devoted to drugs and guns than any other kind of dark site, including forums, bitcoin laundering, hacking, fraud, whistleblowing and even regular old porn.

To paraphrase Jim Jeffries, if you want to murder someone, you cant just walk up to Pier 31 and shout GUNS, WHO WANTS TO SELL ME SOME GUNS!? But with a website like an evil eBay that lists weapons and other contraband for sale, all of a sudden you dont have to know someone with black market connections. You just have to be able to install some software.

Tor hidden services are the other thing the dark web does, and theyre what gives the dark web its shady reputation. Hidden services refers to dark sites where both the host and the visitor are anonymous to one another. That technology enables dark web sites that host illegal content to persist. Hidden services account for only 1.5% of the Tor network volume. But the overwhelming majority of resources requested over Tor hidden services fully 80% of that traffic were requests from child abuse sites. Outgoing traffic from the dark web flowed mainly between botnets and their hidden control servers. More detail on Tors traffic patterns and how much of its total bandwidth is used for illegal activities is available in a blog post by the Tor project.

The dark web is notoriously dodgy territory for both buyers and sellers. Law enforcement has been chipping away at the nominal anonymity afforded by software like Tor, and anything of interest on the dark web is as likely to be a scam as it is to be a honeypot. Between social engineering and software vulnerabilities, it is a realm best accessed while wielding some trustworthy anti-malware.

For a long time, the Silk Road was the biggest game in darknet commerce. It allowed users to sell a great many illegal things, and inspired a number of similarly designed copycat markets. Transactions there were conducted in bitcoins and other virtual currency, and then goods were shipped through the mail. But a high-profile bust and ensuing court case put several Silk Road admins in jail. The media spotlight has impinged on the Silk Roads relative obscurity, reducing its value as a black marketplace.

From Tumblr.

While Uncle Sam contributes to the development of Tor and similar anonymity resources, the government is also known to take more of a proprietary approach, considering even the dark web to be within American jurisdiction when site hosting is in question. The FBI paid Carnegie Mellon to crack Tor in pursuit of a criminal case. They even waded into the muck and ran a huge sting operation on Playpen, a darknet child porn site by taking over control of the site and running it for weeks as a poisoned well to catch its users.

The dark net is an excellent example of how difficult it is to preventcriminals from using anonymizing services designed to protect honest dissenters. Tors anonymizing functions are critically important to people who rely on it to discuss sensitive topics without fear of reprisal. The debate over how much light should be shone into the dark web is an ongoing topic of discussion. How much illegal activity should be allowed to maintain Tors positive benefits, and is there a way to unmask child molesters and other illicit activity without compromising the security that makes the dark web work?

Now read: 19 ways to stay anonymous and protect your privacy online

Check out our ExtremeTech Explains series for more in-depth coverage of todays hottest tech topics.

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Cryptocurrencies and Terrorist Financing: A Risk, But Hold the Panic – RUSI Analysis

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In January 2017, Indonesias anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist finance (AML/CTF) agency provided the first specific, public allegations from a government of terrorists using cryptocurrencies.

According to Indonesian government sources, Bahrun Naim, a member of Daesh (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS), sent Bitcoin to fellow members across Indonesia to avoid transferring money through the formal financial system.

Is this a sign of a coming wave of terrorist financing using new technology? Is Bitcoin a menace that should be banned, as US Senator Joe Manchin advised in 2014?

The prospect of terrorists relying on cryptocurrencies a subset of privately developed, tradable stores of digital value referred to as virtual currencies has prompted action from a number of jurisdictions.

The EU Parliament is expected to pass measures soon requiring the UK and other member states to bring certain virtual currency service providers within their AML/CTF regulation. These measures do not seek to prevent the use of cryptocurrencies, but will require virtual currency service providers to implement customer due diligence measures, just as banks do now.

Certain features of cryptocurrencies, which are not backed by any government, have no status as legal tender and rely on network protocols and cryptographic techniques to enable counterparties to transact, present illicit financing risks.

Cryptocurrencies enable rapid and borderless transaction settlement on a peer-to-peer basis. This means that network participants can transact directly without relying on a financial institution to process or settle the transaction.

In addition, cryptocurrencies contain various levels of pseudonymity or anonymity. In the Bitcoin network, users are identified not by their name, but by an alphanumeric public key.

Technologies that allow users to make rapid funds transfers outside the formal banking system and using concealed identities might seem to have enormous appeal to Daesh and other global terrorists.

In truth, however, the threat landscape presents a more muted picture; terrorist financing via cryptocurrencies is a risk that could grow with time, but one that warrants a measured response.

Available information on terrorists use of cryptocurrencies is limited and anecdotal. In June 2015, the US charged a Daesh supporter for posting on Twitter about how others might use Bitcoin to fund the terror group. However, in that instance, there is no indication that actual transfers took place.

In August 2016, a former CIA analyst published findings identifying a Palestinian media organisation, the Ibn Taymiyyah Media Center, a Gaza-based online jihadist news agency labelled by the US as having terrorist connections as receiving small-value Bitcoin donations. Otherwise, and with the exception of Indonesias announcement, the public record is unspecific and speculative.

Still, security agencies have focused on the possibility that cryptocurrencies use in terrorism could grow. Terrorists are rapidly becoming more technologically adept. The head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, recently described terrorists as winning the online arms race, relying increasingly on social media and online platforms to generate support faster than law enforcement can keep pace.

As terrorists expand their online presence, security agencies worry their use of cryptocurrencies will expand. Governments are anxious about terrorists use of the dark web or encrypted portions of the web where users interact anonymously and where cryptocurrencies often feature.

Of particular concern to law enforcement agencies is the use of mixers or tumblers. These privacy-enhancing tools obscure the trail of cryptocurrency transactions and can stifle attempts to decipher financial activity.

Still, perspective is necessary. It is not yet clear whether cryptocurrencies will become a major terrorist funding tool, at least in the near-term, and the longer-term picture remains uncertain. Indeed, terrorists already have a number of reliable financing streams, which show little sign of drying up.

As Tom Keatinge and Florence Keen illustrate in a recent RUSI report, lone actor and small cell terrorists fund their activity on a micro scale, using easily accessible financial services. This includes student and payday loans, public benefits, and cash.

These funding methods are often impossible for the financial sector or intelligence agencies to spot ahead of their use in terrorist operations. With such simple funding available, terrorists may not need to rush into cryptocurrencies.

Treating cryptocurrencies as an exceptional threat creates the misleading impression that more conventional financial products are not already equally, or more, vulnerable to terrorist exploitation.

Cryptocurrencies are also not necessarily impenetrable fortresses of secrecy; indeed, as the Indonesian case demonstrates, law enforcement agencies can identify their use. With Bitcoin, which is by far the most widely used cryptocurrency and relies on a public ledger the blockchain to record transactions, law enforcement agencies have a number of methods for uncovering illicit activity.

Whats more, banning Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies could stifle important innovations that could enhance financial services. While it is still far from clear how significant an impact cryptocurrencies will have, a number governments, including the UKs, are keen to enable innovation in the sector.

Cryptocurrencies have particularly vocal champions among some proponents of financial inclusion, or expanding financial services to the worlds poor. Cryptocurrencies peer-to-peer nature enables transfers to occur at reduced cost compared to credit card transactions and other established payment methods that rely on numerous intermediaries.

Proponents argue cryptocurrencies could play a role in helping the unbanked to access cost-effective financial services.

Virtual currencies therefore offer governments a test case in harnessing the promise of technological innovation while also managing financial crime risks that are still only taking shape.

Countries should pursue a sensible approach. They should ensure their law enforcement agencies have the necessary resources and skills to uncover related illicit activity; and they can work to improve information sharing with their foreign counterparts on joint investigations.

Limited efforts at regulating certain cryptocurrency service providers, such as cryptocurrency exchanges, mark a reasonable initial attempt at oversight.

Countries should take time to monitor and assess the effectiveness of new regulation before rushing into further action.

As with any new technology, awareness of risks is critical. But overreaction and panic in this early stage in cryptocurrencies history would be misguided.

David Carlisle is an independent consultant specialising in devising strategies for combating financial crime.

Banner image: If Bitcoins were real currency, this is perhaps what they would look like.Courtesy of Isokivi/Wikimedia.

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Dash Price Surges Past US$50, Gains 34% Value in just One Day – The Merkle

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Everyone in the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency is taking notice of what is happening to the Dash price right now. Contrary to what most people would have expected, the value of Dash is shooting up like a rocket. Whereas some people assumed this would be a brief pump-and-dump at first, things are starting to look more like a legitimate bull run right now.

Looking over the list of altcoins in existence right now, it is clear Dash is enjoying a lot of positive attention. Albeit it is a bit unclear as to why the value is skyrocketing over the past few days, Dash is one of the few altcoins that has been around for multiple years without seeing significant value changes. In fact, some people would argue Dash has been extremely undervalued up until now.

Unlike bitcoin, the Dash developer team has been working on privacy and anonymity traits. Although those features are not important to all cryptocurrency users per se, there are those who wouldnt say no to more privacy and anonymity while using cryptocurrency. Dash seems to check a lot of the right boxes for a lot of people in this regard, which may be attributing to the current price surge. After all, there is no reason to believe bitcoin will be the only cryptocurrency that matters to enthusiasts and investors alike.

It is equally important to take notice of some other factors. Unlike most other altcoins, Dash is not subject to that many people selling their stash while the price is going up. A lot of people run their own master nodes, which are an integral part of the dash ecosystem. To run such a master node, users need to own 1,0000 DASH and keep it locked in the wallet address associated with their master node at all times. Removing these funds will take the node out of the network and remove any rewards users receive from owning a master node in the first place.

Even though Dash has a maximum supply that is similar to bitcoins -= 22 million coins versus 21 million there are only 7.135 million coins in circulation right now. A large amount of blocks is kept in wallets belonging to master node owners, which makes the available supply closer to half of the total supply in circulation. With very few coins to be sold on the market, it is not difficult to see why the Dash price is appreciating so much as of late. The low block reward currently 3.9 coins per block keeps inflation of new coins very low as well.

The charts seem to reflect the demand for a privacy-centric cryptocurrency as well. Dashs price has been on a bullish run since mid-February, yet it has seemingly exploded in the past few days. With 31.7% gains in the past 24 hours alone, it is evident people are taking notice of what Dash brings to the table. Although this price increase has proven to be rather steep, it is possible the rise will carry over for a few more days. The bigger question is whether or not Dash will see a retrace as time progresses, which is always a possibility in the world of cryptocurrency.

Right now, one Dash is worth US$51.94, which is quite a high value. The only altcoin to reach a similar value was Litecoin, which saw a significant pump a few years ago. Once Litecoin hit the US$55 mark, however, the prices started tumbling down again. It is unsure if something similar will happen to Dash moving forward, although the momentum seems very strong right now. Then again, a strong price gain in a brief period of time will always attract some people looking to sell their current supply and buy back in cheaper.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

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Kraken Acquires Yet Another Cryptocurrency Firm, Cryptowatch … – Finance Magnates

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Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading venues in the world, has acquired the charting and trading platform Cryptowatch.Used by thousands totrade up to 22 digital assets, Cryptowatch has seen rapid growth in the past two years increasing its active user-base by 700%.

The financial details of the acquisition have not been made, but it is revealed thatCryptowatch founder,Artur Sapek is joining Kraken to lead the development ofits interface as part of the deal while continuing to develop Cryptowatch.Kraken has also already leveraged Cryptowatch to release an upgraded trading interface based on the platform.

In just 2 years Cryptowatch grew into one of the pillars of the digital asset trading community, Sapek said. Teaming up with an exchange was the natural next step, and Kraken was my first choice. The Kraken team has built a very mature and reliable exchange, and I look forward to working with them to deliver the best trading software in the industry.

Im thrilled to welcome the Cryptowatch trading platform and its founder into the Kraken family, said Kraken CEO Jesse Powell. As the industrys leading charting tool for traders, we plan to devote more resources and talent to further enhance its offering. And weve purposed the technology to provide a great new charting and trading platform to Kraken clients as the first step in improving our own interface. Its a great start to 2017 and I cant wait to share what else weve got in the pipeline.

In 2016 Kraken acquired threemajor bitcoin exchanges(Coinsetter, Cavirtex and CleverCoin) as well as the bitcoin wallet funding service Glidera soon to be rebranded as Kraken Direct.

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Kraken Acquires Yet Another Cryptocurrency Firm, Cryptowatch ... - Finance Magnates

Tech Revolutions: Cryptocurrency vs. Personal Computers Interview with Alan Yong – DCEBrief (press release)

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DCEBrief (press release)
Tech Revolutions: Cryptocurrency vs. Personal Computers Interview with Alan Yong
DCEBrief (press release)
Like many technological advances before it, cryptocurrency has spawned a rapidly developing industry. In this highly competitive field it is important to have every advantage you can get. Anyone can put together a team of individuals and give ...

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Tech Revolutions: Cryptocurrency vs. Personal Computers Interview with Alan Yong - DCEBrief (press release)

Bitcoin Just Surpassed Gold Parity – CryptoCoinsNews

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Bitcoin has been on a bull run for much of this year, increasing from $920 to now stand at $1,239, surpassing gold parity by around $2 at the time of publishing.

Bitcoin Surpassed Gold Parity image from cryptowatch

The currency has broken its all-time high while retaining value at current levels for some time. Benefiting from monetary mismanagement by authorities across the world during the second half of last year, its adoption has increased with bitcoins market cap now a hairbreadth away from $20 billion.

Gold has also increased during this year after reaching a low of $1,122 as some apparently began diversifying to bitcoin. For much of 2016, the two appeared to be inversely correlated, but began increasing at the same time this year. Gold, however, has fallen in value by $20 over the past 4 days.

Golds Price image from tradingview

The main reason for bitcoins current rise is probably due to the much-anticipated Bitcoin ETF. Only nine days to go now before a decision deadline. If it is not rejected by the 11th of March, then the ETF is automatically approved.

The two commissioners, Michael Piwowar and Kara Stein were profiled for CCN earlier this week. Piwowar probably leans towards approval. Stein is less certain, but as Piwowar is acting chairman, his decision would prevail. It is more probable, however, they will either both approve, reject or if they are split then allow the deadline to pass and thus default approve the ETF.

Prediction Markets have now moved to almost equally split, leaning slightly towards approval, with bets giving the ETF a 51% chance of approval at the time of writing. At one point, it reached a 70% chance of approval.

They can be gamed and there would be good reasons to do so in this case, but, as the deadline nears the chances of approval might increase.

Analysts are predicting stratospheric price rises if the ETF is approved, with some targeting a price of more than $3,000 per bitcoin. Hundreds of millions are expected to move in during the first week of trading as stock investors diversify with bitcoin a unique asset which does not correlate with anything else.

Piwowar has recently made some comments which appear to be directed towards the bitcoin ETF, including a mention of uncorrelated assets. In a speech at the SEC Speaks conference six days ago, Piwowar states:

In my view, there is a glaring need to move beyond the artificial distinction between accredited and non-accredited investors. I question the notion that non-accredited investors are truly protected by regulations that prevent them from investing in high-risk, high-return securities available only to the Davos jet-set.

In further comments, which seem to indicate the commissioner is in favor of approving the ETF, Piwowar states:

By holding a diversified portfolio of assets, investors reap the benefits of diversification. That is, the risk of the portfolio as a whole is lower than the risk of any individual asset. The correlation of returns is the mathematical key. When adding high-risk, high-return securities to an existing portfolio, so long as the returns from the new securities are not in perfect positive correlation with the existing portfolio, investors may reap higher returns with little to no change in overall portfolio risk. In fact, if the correlations are low enough, the overall portfolio risk can even decrease.

Kevin Lu, a hedge fund analyst, concludes in a detailed article for Seeking Alpha:

Bitcoin is a unique, uncorrelated asset class that is not strongly affected by the macroeconomic factors that drive most asset classes. There are extremely few assets that are this uncorrelated with other assets and that makes bitcoin extremely desirable from a portfolio construction perspective.

The commissioner has probably read that article and appear to be referring to it, but we wont know for certain until a decision is made or the deadline passes. For now, the market is trying to place their bets as well as price in a potential approval.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Bitcoin Just Surpassed Gold Parity - CryptoCoinsNews

What Are Bitcoin And Gold Saying About Paper Money – Seeking Alpha

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This week, gold rose to a new short-term high and Bitcoin to a new all-time price peak. Gold is traditionally a safe-haven asset. In times of uncertainty and fear, gold tends to outperform other assets. Gold is also a traditional hedge against inflation that eats away at the value of many assets. Gold metal has a long history as a commodity and a means of exchange, a currency.

Over the course of history, gold has been around a lot longer than all of the currencies now traded in the foreign exchange market around the world. Gold is a commodity, and in the United States the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulates the largest and most respected gold futures market in the world, the COMEX division of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that is new on the financial scene. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission has defined Bitcoin as a commodity but it is much more than that. Bitcoin is a pan-global currency. Central banks, monetary authorities, or supranational financial institutions around the world do not control Bitcoin in any way, shape, or form.

So far in 2017, the prices of both gold and Bitcoin are moving higher. The bullish price action in these two assets could be telling us a lot about the value of paper money these days as well as the future for the status quo of foreign exchange markets.

Gold takes off in December, again

After a sharp and painful correction that took gold from over $1345 on November 9 to lows of $1127.20 on the active month COMEX April futures contract on December 15, the yellow metal shifted back into bullish mode.

Source: CQG

As the daily chart highlights, gold took off to the upside again after making lows in the middle of December and traded to a high of $1264.90 on Monday, February 27. The next level of technical resistance for the yellow metal is above $1300 per ounce. Gold has moved higher as fear and uncertainty in markets has caused a flight to quality assets and gold has a long history as a safe haven for investors.

The all-time nominal high for the price of gold came back in September 2011 when it traded to $1920.70. Gold has been making a statement about the faith in paper currencies since it initially rallied from the $1046.20 level in December 2015 and the trajectory of price is, in many ways, a commentary on faith in currencies and other asset prices these days. While gold has been shinning, another alternative currency has blown the roof off and traded to a new all-time high this week.

Bitcoin moves to a new all-time high

The price action in Bitcoin has been more bullish than in gold.

Source: CoinDesk

On March 1, the cryptocurrency traded to its highest level in history when the price hit over $1225 against the U.S. dollar, and by the time you read this piece, it is possible that Bitcoin is even higher.

The price action in both gold and Bitcoin has been bullish in 2017, which I interpret as an important event for the future value of world foreign exchange markets.

Paper currencies are losing value - backed by nothing but goodwill

Paper currencies around the world have the backing of the full faith and credit of the governments that print the dollars, euros, yen, Swiss francs, pound sterling, RMB, and many other world foreign exchange instruments. Gold and Bitcoin have appreciated against all of these currencies so far in 2017.

There are virtually no countries in the world today that back their monetary units with gold, silver or any other hard asset. While central banks, monetary authorities, and supranational financial institutions continue to hold gold as part of their foreign exchange reserves, the days of a gold standard ended decades ago.

The global financial crisis of 2008 and slowdown in Chinese economic growth over recent years has caused a tremendous amount of volatility in markets across all asset classes. Central banks have used monetary tools such as low short-term interest rates and quantitative easing to stimulate economic conditions. While many of these tools have avoided financial disaster by encouraging spending and borrowing and inhibiting savings, the trend in monetary policy and effects of massive liquidity has diluted the value of currencies to a point where faith in central banks and governments has been on the decline.

The value of a currency is a reflection of both economic and political conditions within the nation that prints legal tender. In China, a devaluation of the RMB has led many within the nation who have seen their wealth grow over recent years to seek more stable vehicles to preserve the value of their savings.

In Europe, Japan, and many other nations around the world, economic conditions remain lethargic. Only in the United States has the economy seen a turn of events with unemployment declining and GDP starting to show signs of growth. However, the new administration in the U.S. does not wish to see a runaway dollar when it comes to value against other currencies.

The administration wants the dollar lower

In 2014, the U.S. central bank began tapering off its quantitative easing program, and in late 2015, the short-term Fed Funds rate rose above zero for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008.

Source: CQG

As the monthly chart of the U.S. dollar index illustrates, the greenback took off against other world currencies in 2014 and rose from 79.83 to 100.38 in only ten short months. The over 27% appreciation of the dollar caused hardship for multinational U.S. companies, which found their products less competitive on world markets as a result of the rally in the dollar.

The dollar index stabilized and traded in a range from 92-100.60 during a twenty-month consolidation period that following the ten-month rally. However, after the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth President of the United States, the U.S. currency broke above technical resistance on the upside and rallied to the highest level since 2002 when it traded at 103.815 at the beginning of January 2017.

In the past, administrations in the United States followed a strong dollar policy. However, there are signs that the Trump Administration under Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will not be advocates for a strong dollar at this time. Additionally, when the U.S. Federal Reserve released their monthly minutes of the latest FOMC meeting last week, one of the biggest concerns voiced by members of the body that determines short-term interest rates was that a strong dollar could weigh on economic growth.

The bottom line is that the dollar is strong against virtually all other currency instruments but the administration and central bank do not want to see the dollar continue to rise to new heights versus the world's other major currency instruments. Therefore, it is probable that the rallies in gold and Bitcoin are a reflection of a world where all paper currencies are losing value.

So many issues on the horizon favor both Bitcoin and gold

Currencies are a reflection of politics and economics. It was the financial crisis of 2008, an economic event that caused central banks to add liquidity to markets to avoid recessions or worse around the globe. However, today it seems that political forces have taken over and weigh on the value of monies printed by the governments of the world.

In China, the devaluation of the yuan and the non-convertibility of the currency for many Chinese, has led to an increase in the demand for pan-global monetary instruments like gold and Bitcoin. The rest of Asia depends on China, the world's second richest nation, for economic growth and stability. Therefore, the Chinese economic slowdown and currency devaluation could be leading other Asian citizens to safe haven and pan-global monetary instruments. In Japan, short-term interest rates at negative forty basis points make the yen a less than attractive currency to hold.

In Europe, the Brexit vote last June was likely the first shoe to drop on the political front. With the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, the economic might of Europe suffered a blow. In 2017, three other major E.U. member nations will go to the polls to elect leaders for the coming years. In the U.K., many voted to exit the E.U. because of immigration policies made in Brussels. These policies are not popular with many in other member nations and it is possible that the other member nations will also go rogue and decide to elect candidates that are not supportive of E.U. policy.

The first election will take place in March when citizens of the Netherlands go to the polls to elect a Prime Minister. A populist candidate is currently close to the top of the polls. In April, France will elect their next leader and Marine Le Pen, a far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-E.U. candidate is also receiving a lot of support in the polls leading up to the election. Later in this year, Germans will go to the voting booth to either give Chancellor Andrea Merkel another term or replace her with another candidate.

Germany is the largest and most influential economy in Europe. The Brexit vote in the United Kingdom started a nationalistic trend in Europe and if these three nations decide to reject the status quo in the months ahead, it will have dire ramifications for the future of the European Union and the euro currency.

Source: CQG

As the monthly chart of the euro currency highlights, the currency has declined from around the $1.40 level against the dollar in May 2014 to under $1.06, the lowest level since 2003. A rejection of the current leadership and those who favor the Union over a nationalistic solution will likely cause the euro currency to weaken further in the months ahead. Like in Japan, the short-term yield on the euro is at negative forty basis points and the European Central Bank continues to follow a course of quantitative easing making the euro currency a less than attractive instrument to hold.

The election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth President of the U.S. was yet another blow to the trend towards globalism in the world. President Trump has pledged to "put America first" when it comes to relations with the rest of the world. The new administration ran on a platform that was against many multilateral trade agreements negotiated by former administrations. President Trump has told the world that trade agreements will be on a bilateral basis going forward.

He also told the rest of the world that protection comes at a price and that other allied nations around the world will need to start contributing their fair share as America has been shouldering the financial burden of keeping the world safe causing the nation's deficit to grow to over $20 trillion. A dramatic change in U.S. relations with the rest of the world is yet another reason for uncertainty and fear when it comes to the future of financial markets.

Gold and Bitcoin are moving higher so far in 2017 and the value of paper currencies are in question as citizens across many nations are going to the polls and expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo. It is interesting that a move away from globalism towards nationalistic candidates in the political world is causing gold and Bitcoin to appreciate. After all, in many ways, gold and Bitcoin are pan-global currency instruments that attract safe haven buying.

For centuries, gold has been not only a store of value, it has been an instrument used when the political climate creates the need for flight capital. When it comes to Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is a means for people all over the world to avoid the manipulation and restrictions placed on money by central banks and governments so they can money wealth and savings around the globe. Many around the world are rejecting the politics of globalism in exchange for nationalism.

The world has become a smaller place because of advances in technology. The strength in gold and Bitcoin is telling us that many embrace a global view towards economics and that their money and wealth should not be under control of the governments and central banks in power. It will be interesting to see if global wealth and free flowing money that travels under the radar of governments can coexist with nationalistic political policies around the world and if the governments can do anything about the increasing popularity of these assets.

The Chinese have a saying that goes something like this, "May you live in interesting times." It will be interesting to see if the trend that started in 2016 with the Brexit vote and Presidential election in the United States continues in Europe and around the globe in 2017. Right now, both gold and Bitcoin are saying that the trend is firmly in place.

I have introduced a new weekly service through Seeking Alpha Marketplace. Each Wednesday, I will provide subscribers with a detailed report on the major commodity sectors covering over 30 individual commodity markets, most of which trade on U.S. futures markets. The report will give an up, down or neutral call on these markets for the coming week and will outline the technical and fundamental state of each market.

At times, I will make recommendations for risk positions in the ETF and ETN markets as well as in commodity equities and related options. You can sign up for The Hecht Commodity Report on the Seeking Alpha Marketplace page. Additionally, check out my website for more information about commodities.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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What Are Bitcoin And Gold Saying About Paper Money - Seeking Alpha

How To Set Up a Bitcoin Node for $5 With 1 Line of Code – The Merkle

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Bitcoin nodes are an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, they help validate transaction and keep the network alive. While there is no direct reward for running a Bitcoin node, there are plenty of reasons why you should run your own full node. Not only will you learn more about how the Bitcoin network works, but you can benefit from increased anonymity and faster blockchain querying for a mere $5 a month. This article will show you how to setup a Bitcoin node in under 5 minutes using a cheap digitalocean VPS.

Step 1: Create a droplet

If you do not already have a digitalocean account you can create one here. Proceed to your accountand create a new Ubuntu 16.04.2 x32 droplet, choose the cheapest $5 a month option which comes with 512MB and a 20GB SSD disk. It should only take a few seconds to create the droplet and you should receive an email with the required login information.

Step 2: Login to your droplet

Using Putty and the information provided in the email, we need to login to the VPS in order to begin setting up the Bitcoin node. The way digitalocean has it setup, the first time you login you would also need to set a new password. Once that is done you should have access to the machine.

Step 3: Begin Installation

We createda simple install script which you can use in order to setup all the required libraries and frameworks for the Bitcoin network. Simply enter the following line into the terminal and the installation will start:

If you want to know more about the libraries that the bitcoin binary uses and for a more detailed guide checkout this article on the importance of bitcoin nodes and how to setupone. The installation may take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour depending on what kind of CPU your VPS has. If you selected the minimum $5 / month option on digitalocean, the installation process usually takes around 30 minutes. You will know it is done when the server sends a message that it is restarting

Step 4: Enjoy your Bitcoin node

Fire up Putty again and login to the VPS. Your node should start up automatically when the server boots up and you should be able to use the command btc inexecute calls on the bitcoin client. For a complete list of availableclient calls visit the Bitcoin Wiki. Congratulations, you now run a Bitcoin node and help secure the network.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

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How To Set Up a Bitcoin Node for $5 With 1 Line of Code - The Merkle

Comets fall in district semifinals – The Hillsdale Daily News

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Matthew Lounsberry mlounsberry@hillsdale.net mlounsberryHDN

BRONSON Jonesvilles girls basketball season has come to an end with a 37-30 loss to Homer in the district semifinals in Bronson.

The Comets struggled to score consistently throughout the night, and were unable to get to the free throw line, making two of only four attempts from the charity stripe.

We attacked the basket. Obviously, we need to get [to the foul line] more to help us out, said Jonesville coach Tom Dunn.

The Comets jumped to a small 8-5 lead to start the game, but went cold from there as the Trojans scored 12 consecutive points in a run that carried into the early stages of the second quarter.

Jonesville chipped away at their 17-8 deficit, ending the half by outscoring the Trojans 7-4. Comet junior Koryn Playford ended the second quarter with a three-pointer to cut the deficit to 21-17 as the teams entered the locker rooms.

Homer was carried through the first half by juniors Megan George and Jillian Sitkiewicz, who scored 11 and 10 points respectively in the first two frames. All of the Trojans first half points were scored by the two post players.

George and Sitkiewicz tore us up in the first half for Homer, Dunn said. I thought we did a much better job on them in the second half.

Jonesville came out of halftime as the aggressor, starting the third quarter on a 12-2 run to take a 27-23 lead. The run was capped by back-to-back triples from Playford and junior point guard Katie Brown.

The Trojans scored the final four points of the frame however, to make the score 27-27 heading to the fourth quarter.

We struggled to score a little bit, but I thought we hung around. We took that four point lead, then they came back and tied it, Dunn said.

The Comets led 30-29 with about four minutes remaining in the half, and ate up the next two minutes on one possession, keeping the ball on the perimeter, and looking for an easy bucket against Homers extended defense.

The possession resulted in a turnover and a fastbreak layup for Homer however, and the Trojans took a 31-30 lead.

We got up by one, and I just wanted to spread the floor and maybe sneak to the basket, Dunn said. We werent really stalling, but we were just trying to get a back-door layup. [Homer] took the ball from us, and they made more plays at the end then we did.

Jonesville would not score for the remainder of the game, and the Trojans stretched their lead with free throws down the stretch.

George finished with 16 points for Homer, while Sitkiewicz finished with 14. Breanna McCone, an outside scoring threat for the Trojans, did not hit a three-pointer on the night, finishing with only four points.

The kids sucked it up. We just wanted to clamp down on their two bigs, Dunn said. McCone had an off night, but shes been battling an injury all year, so we just tried to key on the other two.

The Comets were led by Playford with 10 points and four rebounds. Brown contributed in many ways with seven points, five rebounds and three assists.

Also for Jonesville, Teya Nichols scored five points, Sarah Dawson had three points and four rebounds, and Samantha Dunn added three points, six rebounds and four steals.

Jonesville will lose seniors Brittany Mapes and Johnni Collard to graduation this year.

Theyve both played four years here, JV and varsity. Brittany left it on the floor tonight. She plays hard all the time. Shes a fist-fighter, Dunn said.

Johnnis a great kid to be around for the kids on the team. Shes like the Mother Hen of these guys, keeps everybody loose. Theyre two decent kids.

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Comets fall in district semifinals - The Hillsdale Daily News

Comets suffer second loss in a row – The Advocate

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Slow start dooms teams chances for early victories

Saint outfielder Tyler Barry slide back into first before the tag by Comet first baseman Eric Whitfield during CCC's 6-2 loss to Mission College at the Baseball Field on Sunday.

Cody Casares / The Advocate

Cody Casares / The Advocate

Saint outfielder Tyler Barry slide back into first before the tag by Comet first baseman Eric Whitfield during CCC's 6-2 loss to Mission College at the Baseball Field on Sunday.

By Dylan Collier, Assistant Scene Editor March 1, 2017 Filed under Sports

The Comets (3-11 overall) played Sunday at the Baseball Field to make up a contest canceled due to rain. The team faced Mission College (6-5 overall) but fell in the contest 6-2.

The game was quite the opposite of Fridays extra innings match-up, and moved swiftly finishing in two-and-a-half hours, with rain sprinkling 45 minutes after it ended.

Pitching dictated the overall tempo of the game for both teams.

Saints starting pitcher John Kelly sat down the first 12 Comet batters with four consecutive three-up, three-down innings.

The Saints early success gave every indication that something was off for the home team.

Contra Costa College hitters made solid contact but couldnt seem to find the open gaps to put runners on the bases at the beginning of the game.

I felt like we hit the ball hard, but right at people. They just played good defense, Comet catcher Alex Melendez said.

The Comets will get a chance to put the ball in play again Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. on the Baseball Field

Although CCC came up short against Mission, its pitchers continue to show signs of success.

No CCC pitcher allowed a single runner to reach first base on walks.

There was no combination of starting and relieving pitchers that achieved that through nine innings last year proving what they are capable of when they put their minds to it.

In fact starting pitcher Tyler Reames, who went to Vanden High School in Fairfield, was almost too accurate with some of his pitches significantly contributing to the outcome of the game.

I got into trouble because I left pitches over the middle of the plate, and then had to make the adjustment. They strung together a bunch of hits in the second inning to get runs, Reames said.

It didnt help that the baseball gods blessed the Saints with third baseman Jake Martinez who demonstrated reflexes similar to that of a cheetah, pouncing and scooping up grounders.

He made four diving stops where he fielded the ball right on the third-base line, one of which was a laser line drive that he sprawled out and caught.

Three of the four hits down the line would have been doubles had they found the outfield grass, with the speed the Comets displayed.

Comet first baseman Eric Whitfield said, We had some good at bats and solid pitching. But unfortunately, we stranded runners and swung at some bad pitches. We learned from our mistakes and if we can flush them out, well be all right.

Coach Brian Guinn said as a team the Comets have to continue to play hard, look to the future, and prepare for the Bay Valley Conference games.

The Comets overall record of 3-11 is nearly identical to the 4-10 mark that the team posted after 14 games last season which some see as a cause for concern.

Reames said this is a crucial time of the year when they must stick together and play as a family.

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Comets suffer second loss in a row - The Advocate