Jeanine Pirro Fear Mongers Obama Will Try To Institute Sharia Law Into Our First Amendment – Video

Posted on by


Jeanine Pirro Fear Mongers Obama Will Try To Institute Sharia Law Into Our First Amendment
http://www.newshounds.us - Jeanine Pirro #39;s exploitation of the terrorist attacks in Paris may be the craziest on Fox yet.

By: newshounds

More:

Jeanine Pirro Fear Mongers Obama Will Try To Institute Sharia Law Into Our First Amendment - Video

The First Amendment and campaign solicitations: In Plain English

Posted on by

Posted Tue, January 20th, 2015 7:46 am by Amy Howe

In 2009, Lanell Williams-Yulee sent out a letter announcing that she was running for county court judge in Hillsborough County, Florida. The letter from the Tampa lawyer, which was also posted on her campaign website, asked for contributions of as much as five hundred dollars to fund her campaign.

As fundraising appeals go, the mass mailing was a flop: it did not result in any campaign contributions. But it did draw the attention of the Florida Bar, the organization responsible for (among other things) disciplining lawyers in the state. The bar filed a complaint charging that Williams-Yulee had violated a rule that prohibits candidates for judgeships from personally soliciting campaign funds including through mass mailings like the one that Williams-Yulee had sent to would-be donors.

The Florida Supreme Court, the ultimate arbiter of attorney discipline in that state, rejected Williams-Yulees argument that the Florida rule prohibiting her from soliciting campaign contributions violated the First Amendment. Instead, it publicly reprimanded her for violating the rule and ordered her to pay for the costs of the disciplinary proceeding approximately $1800.Williams-Yulee may find a more receptive audience for her First Amendment argument at the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear her case today. She contends that the rule cannot pass the very difficult legal test known as strict scrutiny that courts apply to laws or policies that prohibit speech based on its content. She acknowledges that one of the purposes of the rule preventing favoritism and corruption could provide the kind of compelling government interest that might allow the rule to pass constitutional muster. However, she challenges the Florida Bars contention that the rule is also necessary because the government has a strong interest in preventing the appearance of bias and corruption, suggesting that such a standard is too vague.

But in any event, she adds, the Supreme Court doesnt need to decide whether preventing the appearance of corruption and bias is a compelling interest because the rule cant pass the second part of the strict scrutiny test. That prong of the test looks at whether a restriction on speech is narrowly tailored, which means that it carefully targets only the speech that needs to be restricted to accomplish its purpose no more, no less. In some ways, Williams-Yulee argues, the rule doesnt target enough speech. For example, it still allows a prospective judge to know who has contributed to her campaign, and therefore still creates the opportunity for bias, and it allows candidates to ask individuals to support their campaigns in other ways, such as by donating volunteer services instead of money. At the same time, she continues, the rule prohibits too much speech: it even applies to impersonal communications like mass mailings, website postings, and speeches to large groups, none of which are likely to create the impression that a recipient, reader, or listener must choose between making a campaign contribution or receiving less favorable treatment in future court proceedings. And, she concludes, the government has other options such as requiring a judge to recuse herself from proceedings involving a contributor or limiting campaign contributions that can combat judicial bias and corruption without restricting speech.

For its part, the Florida Bar paints a very different picture of the rule as an unremarkable and narrow restriction necessary to prevent both corruption and the appearance of corruption. The bar emphasizes not only that there is abundant evidence that the public perceives campaign contributions to judicial candidates as having an undue influence on judges decisions, but also that many state judges themselves have indicated that campaign contributions may affect their rulings. And in particular, the bar suggests, the possibility for corruption or the appearance thereof arises from the direct link between the contributor and the candidate for a judgeship; it is that link, the bar maintains, that the rule prohibiting personal solicitation of campaign contributions targets. And therefore, the bar continues, it doesnt matter that a candidate for a judgeship can eventually learn who has contributed to her campaign. It also doesnt matter, the bar contends, that a would-be judge can personally ask someone to contribute his time to the campaign: giving money, the bar suggests, speaks louder than holding signs and licking envelopes. All that the rule does, the bar concludes, is prevent a candidate for a judgeship from personally soliciting contributions. It does not otherwise restrict what she can say, and she can still raise campaign funds through a committee.

Those who believe that judges should not be elected at all (a group that includes retired Justice Sandra Day OConnor) will be watching this case closely. In their view, its bad enough that judges have to raise money for their campaigns, but allowing judges and candidates for judgeships to personally solicit campaign contributions will increase the possibility of favoritism in decision making.

The case could be even more significant, though, as the latest chapter in the Roberts Courts campaign-finance jurisprudence. Last year, in a case called McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that Congress cannot put overall caps known as aggregate limits on the amount that someone can contribute to candidates for federal offices, political parties, and political action committees. Although a ruling for Williams-Yulee might be an incremental step toward the further deregulation of the campaign-finance system, it would be a step nonetheless. Well know more about where the Court might be headed in this case after todays arguments.

Posted in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, Featured, Merits Cases

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, The First Amendment and campaign solicitations: In Plain English, SCOTUSblog (Jan. 20, 2015, 7:46 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/01/the-first-amendment-and-campaign-solicitations-in-plain-english/

View original post here:

The First Amendment and campaign solicitations: In Plain English

Exchange Ukash to Litecoin cryptocurrency. Litecoin using Ukash GBP/EUR/USD online. – Video

Posted on by


Exchange Ukash to Litecoin cryptocurrency. Litecoin using Ukash GBP/EUR/USD online.
Litecoin using Ukash: http://www.ukash-paid.com Exchange of prepaid international vouchers Ukash for electronic money of payment systems PayPal, Perfect Mone...

By: Alice Breton

View original post here:

Exchange Ukash to Litecoin cryptocurrency. Litecoin using Ukash GBP/EUR/USD online. - Video

Jim Blasko Explains BitCoin Spinoff 'Unbreakable Coin' (Video 1 of 2)

Posted on by

Las Vegas seems an appropriate place for cryptocurrency businesses to emerge, both because the coins themselves are so volatile that some gambling instinct may be required, and because Vegas is a high-tech outpost with lower taxes and lower rents than many other West Coast hot-spots, well-suited to risky startups with ambition but without huge venture backing.Jim Blasko moved there to work on low-voltage engineering for Penn & Teller, and is a qualified Crestron programmer, too (useful in a town that looks from the air like one giant light-show), but has shifted to a quite different endeavor, or rather a complex of them all related to cryptocurrency. I ran into Blasko during this month's CES, at a forum with several other cryptocoin startups, and the next day we met to talk about just how hard (or easy) it is to get into this world as an entrepreneur.

Blasko has some advice for anyone who'd like to try minting a new cryptocurrency. Making your own coin, he says, is the easy part: anyone can clone code from an existing entrant, like Bitcoin, and rename the result and that's exactly what he did. The hard work is what comes after: making worthwhile changes, building trust, and making it tradeable. Blasko's done the legwork to get his own currency, which he's bravely called "Unbreakable Coin," listed on exchanges like Cryptsy, and is working on his own auction site as well. He's also got an interesting idea for cryptocoin trading cards, and had a few prototypes on hand. (Part 1 is below; Part 2 to follow.) Alternate Video Link

Tim: So, Jim you have a couple of different Cryptocoin related businesses or enterprises that are all going on at once. But Im going to start out talking about one thing that intrigues me, which is that you have created your own coin, can you talk about how that came to be?

Jim Blasko: Creating UnbreakableCoin?

Tim: Yes.

Jim Blasko: It started off with seeing what was happening out there with other Crypto coins, seeing what was going on. This was about a year ago now. I registered the name a few months before I actually finished the coin. I knew what I wanted to call it. I am a Crestron Control Systems programmer and those are systems that we use here in large houses or casinos and it controls everything, the lights, the security, the cameras, the doors, I mean, the sound, everything is controlled by Crestron these days. So, by taking that experience I have been working with that since 1998 and by taking that experience I said, lets make our own Crypto coin, lets use bitcoins core, so lets call them bitcoin, but lets modify it a little bit, so that its faster, so that its bigger, it gives us an opportunity to give the Crypto world a second chance because not everybody got into bitcoin, a lot of people found out about it later and it was like, oh man, so we thought we can do this, I thought at least that I can do this, I always say we because we have a team now and I dont like to not include my team, my team is great, the Unbreakable team is awesome. But, I thought lets make this coin and lets not pre-mine it, lets give it to the world from day one. So, like I said we took bitcoin, we just cloned it, we made it faster and little bigger and we just said, here it is world, here it is, start mining it.

Tim: When you call it unbreakable, talk about what makes it deserve that name?

Jim Blasko: Well, SHA-256D is the same encryption algorithm that the government uses and its pretty much the best thing on the planet, it is unbreakable, even the government says its about 10 to 15 years away from being cracked itself and by then they will have improvements to it to keep it from being that, so thats what bitcoin is based on, SHA-256D, so thats why I chose that instead of what the Scrypt coin. There are too many vulnerabilities in Scrypt that I dont like and I saw that, if the government thinks SHA-256D is the best encryption, I think they are probably right, we got a pretty smart group of guys out there.

Tim: If they are telling the truth.

Jim Blasko: If they are telling the truth, but it seems to be, thats what they send all the mission data over, SHA-256D encryption. So thats pretty important stuff.

Original post:

Jim Blasko Explains BitCoin Spinoff 'Unbreakable Coin' (Video 1 of 2)

Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and Silk Road — The Silk Road Servers | EPIX – Video

Posted on by


Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and Silk Road -- The Silk Road Servers | EPIX
Ross Ulbricht #39;s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, discusses the investigation of the Silk Road servers in this first look at the EPIX Original Documentary, Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and Silk...

By: EPIX

See the original post:

Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and Silk Road -- The Silk Road Servers | EPIX - Video

How To Accept HYPER Bitcoin Payments on your Site using Coinpayments and Whitepuma – Video

Posted on by


How To Accept HYPER Bitcoin Payments on your Site using Coinpayments and Whitepuma
1. Sign up for an account with http://coinpayments.net 2. Tweet to @hypercrypto about your cart 3. Announce on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624651.0 4. Link social accounts to...

By: Jeremiah Nichol

Read the original here:

How To Accept HYPER Bitcoin Payments on your Site using Coinpayments and Whitepuma - Video

Bitcoin's Leading Advocacy Group Changes Direction

Posted on by

For a technology crowned as the biggest thing since the emergence of the Internet two decades ago, Bitcoin got off to an ominous start. As the preferred cryptocurrency of choice for Silk Road, the web site that served as an online black market, Bitcoin became a target of law enforcement. Officials from the FBI to Manhattans District Attorneys warned of a digital Wild West should the currency go unregulated. The Securities and Exchange Commission warned investors to remain vigilant for scams. Mt. Gox, once one of the leading Bitcoin exchanges in the world, collapsed into bankruptcy last year, costing users hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins. Leading voices of the financial community like former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon also cast doubt on the currencys potential.

Faced with this mountain of skepticism, Bitcoins supporters formed the Bitcoin Foundation in July 2012 to advocate on behalf of the technology. Patrick Murck, who served as the general counsel of the Foundation since its inception, often served as the communitys unofficial spokesman. Whether appearing on a panel hosted by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, meeting a roomful of skeptical federal regulators, or testifying before the Senate, the soft-spoken attorney confronted accusations that Bitcoin enabled child pornography, drug running, and identity theft among other crimes.

His efforts helped paved the way for Bitcoins greater acceptance among federal officials as well as some states, namely New York and California. Bitcoin has also made inroads among retailers and other businesses like DISH Network that began to accept the alternative currency.

Soon after taking over the top job at the Foundation this fall, however, Murck helped redirect the organization away from its traditional role as an advocate. Continuing to make public policy and advocacy a priority for the Foundation is a drain on resources, Murck wrote on the Foundations blog in December, that could be put towards technical development and serves as a distraction to a small and dedicated team.

The Foundation will instead focus on more technical challenges like overseeing the operation and development of Bitcoins technological infrastructure. As part of this shift, the Foundation parted with Jim Harper, who had signed on from the Cato Cato Institute as the Foundations Global Policy Counsel last March.

Murck explained that other organizations can now take up the mantle of the Foundations advocacy work. Just last year, Coin Center emerged as a research and advocacy center. Backed by some the nations leading venture capitalists Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen and led by Jerry Brito, who had extensive experience with cryptocurrencies in academia, it will fill the void left by the Foundation. The fledgling Chamber of Digital Commerce also formed last year as the industrys first trade association.

Originally posted here:

Bitcoin's Leading Advocacy Group Changes Direction