Stun gun spurs Second Amendment case

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BOSTON - Jaime Caetano was beaten so badly by her ex-boyfriend that she ended up in the hospital. So when a friend offered her a stun gun to protect herself, she took it.

Caetano, who is homeless, never had to use it but now finds herself at the center of a contentious Second Amendment case headed to the highest court in Massachusetts.

The Supreme Judicial Court is being asked to decide whether a state law that prohibits private citizens from possessing stun guns infringes on their right to keep and bear arms. In an unusual twist, the court is also being asked to examine whether the Second Amendment right to defend yourself in your own home applies in the case of a homeless person.

Arguments before the court are scheduled Tuesday.

Police found Caetano's stun gun in her purse during a shoplifting investigation at a supermarket in 2011. She told police she needed it to defend herself against her violent ex-boyfriend, against whom she had obtained multiple restraining orders.

During her trial, Caetano, 32, testified that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly came to her workplace and threatened her. One night, she showed him the stun gun and he "got scared and left me alone," she said.

She was found guilty of violating the state law that bans private possession of stun guns, devices that deliver an electric shock when pressed against an attacker.

In her appeal, her lawyer, Benjamin Keehn, argues that a stun gun falls within the meaning of "arms" under the Second Amendment. Keehn wrote in a legal brief that the state's ban "cannot be squared with the fundamental right to keep and bear arms." He also argues that self-defense outside the home is part of the core right provided by the Second Amendment.

Massachusetts is among only five states that ban stun guns and Tasers for private citizens, said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written extensively about Second Amendment issues. The devices are used by law enforcement agencies around the country.

A ban in Michigan was overturned in 2012 after the state appeals court ruled that a total prohibition was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Michigan Constitution.

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Stun gun spurs Second Amendment case

Massachusetts homeless woman's stun gun spurs Second Amendment case

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BOSTON >> Jaime Caetano was beaten so badly by her ex-boyfriend that she ended up in the hospital. So when a friend offered her a stun gun to protect herself, she took it.

Caetano, who is homeless, never had to use it but now finds herself at the center of a contentious Second Amendment case headed to the highest court in Massachusetts.

The Supreme Judicial Court is being asked to decide whether a state law that prohibits private citizens from possessing stun guns infringes on their right to keep and bear arms. In an unusual twist, the court is also being asked to examine whether the Second Amendment right to defend yourself in your own home applies in the case of a homeless person.

Arguments before the court are scheduled Tuesday.

Police found Caetano's stun gun in her purse during a shoplifting investigation at a supermarket in 2011. She told police she needed it to defend herself against her violent ex-boyfriend, against whom she had obtained multiple restraining orders.

During her trial, Caetano, 32, testified that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly came to her workplace and threatened her. One night, she showed him the stun gun and he "got scared and left me alone," she said.

She was found guilty of violating the state law that bans private possession of stun guns, devices that deliver an electric shock when pressed against an attacker.

In her appeal, her lawyer, Benjamin Keehn, argues that a stun gun falls within the meaning of "arms" under the Second Amendment. Keehn wrote in a legal brief that the state's ban "cannot be squared with the fundamental right to keep and bear arms." He also argues that self-defense outside the home is part of the core right provided by the Second Amendment.

Massachusetts is among only five states that ban stun guns and Tasers for private citizens, said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written extensively about Second Amendment issues. The devices are used by law enforcement agencies around the country.

A ban in Michigan was overturned in 2012 after the state appeals court ruled that a total prohibition was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Michigan Constitution.

Read this article:

Massachusetts homeless woman's stun gun spurs Second Amendment case

Homeless woman's stun gun heads to Mass. high court

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Jaime Caetano was beaten so badly by her ex-boyfriend that she ended up in the hospital. So when a friend offered her a stun gun to protect herself, she took it.

Caetano, who is homeless, never had to use it but now finds herself at the center of a contentious Second Amendment case headed to the highest court in Massachusetts.

The Supreme Judicial Court is being asked to decide whether a state law that prohibits private citizens from possessing stun guns infringes on their right to keep and bear arms. In an unusual twist, the court is also being asked to examine whether the Second Amendment right to defend yourself in your own home applies in the case of a homeless person.

Arguments before the court are scheduled Tuesday.

Police found Caetano's stun gun in her purse during a shoplifting investigation at a supermarket in 2011. She told police she needed it to defend herself against her violent ex-boyfriend, against whom she had obtained multiple restraining orders.

During her trial, Caetano, 32, testified that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly came to her workplace and threatened her. One night, she showed him the stun gun and he "got scared and left me alone," she said.

She was found guilty of violating the state law that bans private possession of stun guns, devices that deliver an electric shock when pressed against an attacker.

In her appeal, her lawyer, Benjamin Keehn, argues that a stun gun falls within the meaning of "arms" under the Second Amendment. Keehn wrote in a legal brief that the state's ban "cannot be squared with the fundamental right to keep and bear arms." He also argues that self-defense outside the home is part of the core right provided by the Second Amendment.

Massachusetts is among only five states that ban stun guns and Tasers for private citizens, said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written extensively about Second Amendment issues. The devices are used by law enforcement agencies around the country.

A ban in Michigan was overturned in 2012 after the state appeals court ruled that a total prohibition was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Michigan Constitution.

See the original post here:

Homeless woman's stun gun heads to Mass. high court

When Does the First Amendment Protect Threats?

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Many people don't know where courts draw the line on what constitutes free speechor what they mean by a "true threat."

In a 2003 case, the Supreme Court ruled that Ku Klux Klan burnings are sometimes but not always protected speech. (Rainier Ehrhardt/Reuters)

Not long ago, a dissatisfied reader emailed that he had enough guns to stop people like me. I emailed back to ask whether he was threatening me.

The reply: I'm not stupid enough to telegraph genuine ill intent.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving the question of when a seemingly threatening communication (this one on Facebook, not email) can be a crime. Lets clear up some confusion, shared by my correspondent above, about what threats are and why they can be punished.

The case is Elonis v. United States. Anthony Elonis lived in Lower Saucony Township, Pennsylvania. Until 2010, he was married with two children and worked at a nearby theme park. In May 2010, his wife left him, taking their two children. Not long after that, he was fired because of multiple complaints of on-the-job sexual harassment (for example, a female coworker alleged that he found her alone in the office at night and began to undress).

He turned to Facebook. About his former coworkers, he posted: I have sinister plans for all my friends and must have taken home a couple [of keys]. About his ex-wife, he posted: Im not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts. When she got a restraining order, he posted, Ive got enough explosives to take care of the state police and the sheriff's department and Im checking out and making a name for myself Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined ... The only question is ... which one? FBI agents came to his door; he posted his fantasy of killing one female agent: Pull my knife, flick my wrist, and slit her throat Leave her bleedin from her jugular in the arms of her partner. He was convicted in federal district court of five counts of transmitting in interstate commerce (here, the Internet) any threat to injure the person of another.

Free Speech Isn't Free

Elonis argued that, under the First Amendment, the government had to prove that he had a subjective intent to threaten. He said he lacked that, in part because some of his posts echoed words by rapper Eminem. The court of appeals held instead that the statute only requires that a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by those to whom the maker communicates the statement as a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm.

Lets break that down carefully. Elonis argues that the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was actually thinking, This message will terrify the person it refers too, and I want that. The government says that it must only prove that a reasonable person would have thought it would terrify.

Originally posted here:

When Does the First Amendment Protect Threats?

Tor Browser 4.5-alpha-1 is released | The Tor Blog

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The first alpha release of the 4.5 series is available from the extended downloads page and also from our distribution directory.

This release features a circuit status reporting UI (visible on the green Tor onion button menu), as well as isolation for circuit use. All content elements for a website will use a single circuit, and different websites should use different circuits, even when viewed at the same time. The Security Slider is also present in this release, and can be configured from the green Tor onion's Preferences menu, under the Privacy and Security settings tab. It also features HTTPS certificate pinning for selected sites (including our updater), which was backported from Firefox 32.

This release also features a rewrite of the obfs3 pluggable transport, and the introduction of the new obfs4 transport. Please test these transports and report any issues!

Note to Mac users: As part of our planned end-of-life for supporting 32 bit Macs, the Mac edition of this release is 64 bit only, which also means that the updater will not work for Mac users on the alpha series release channel for this release. Once you transition to this 64 bit release, the updater should function correctly after that.

Here is the complete changelog since 4.0.1:

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Tor Browser 4.5-alpha-1 is released | The Tor Blog

CCN: Breaking Bitcoin News

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In todays day and age, most people are completely unaware that many charities are charged a fixed transaction cost for every deposit into their bank account. Because of this, charities almost never see the...

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Robocoin Bitcoin ATM operators now have a new attractive alternative to abiding by Robocoin's new compliance standards. In response to Robocoin's move to enforce AML/KYC compliance for all of its ATM...

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CCN: Breaking Bitcoin News

Match Preview: Undefeated Comets Visit Winless Heat

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November 28, 2014 - Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) Missouri Comets INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (November 28, 2014) - The undefeated Missouri Comets (4-0) visit the winless Harrisburg Heat (0-3) at the Farm Show Arena on Saturday at 7:05 p.m. ET. The match will be streamed for free on GoLive Sports Cast.

Fans are encouraged to attend the official watch party hosted by Comets Nation at Coach's Bar & Grill (414 W. 103RD Street Kansas City, MO 64114).

Head Coach Vlatko Andonovski's team will try to extend its winning streak to five after earning their fourth straight victory last Saturday at the Independence Events Center when they beat the Wichita B-52s 13-3.

On the other hand, the Heat has not been able to win a game in the 2014/15 MASL season and stands fifth in the Eastern Division with an overall record of 0-3. Last Friday, Head Coach Tarik Walker's team fell 27-0 in their visit to the Baltimore Blast.

The Harrisburg Heat joined the MASL after having played two seasons as part of the Professional Arena Soccer League. The team has yet to play in the playoffs since its PASL expansion.

Forward Leo Gibson remains second in the standings with a total of 18 points (12 goals and 6 assists) just behind San Diego's Nick Perera who has 20 points (9 goals and 11 assists).

After scoring four goals and being named Borden Man of the Match for his performance against Wichita last Saturday, defender Brian Harris was named to the MASL Week 4 Team of the Week.

For the Heat, midfielder Kenneth Fultz leads Harrisburg with 3 points (3 goals, 0 assists) followed by forward Tom Mellor who has scored twice this year.

This will be the first and only time both teams meet in the regular season.

Next up, the Comets will return home as they host the reigning PASL Champions Chicago Mustangs next Friday.

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Match Preview: Undefeated Comets Visit Winless Heat

Ripples in Space-Time Could Reveal 'Strange Stars'

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By looking for ripples in the fabric of space-time, scientists could soon detect "strange stars" -- objects made of stuff radically different from the particles that make up ordinary matter, researchers say.

The protons and neutrons that make up the nuclei of atoms are made of more basic particles known as quarks. There are six types, or "flavors," of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. Each proton or neutron is made of three quarks: Each proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark, and each neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark.

In theory, matter can be made with other flavors of quarks as well. Since the 1970s, scientists have suggested that particles of "strange matter" known as strangelets -- made of equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks -- could exist. In principle, strange matter should be heavier and more stable than normal matter, and might even be capable of converting ordinary matter it comes in contact with into strange matter. However, lab experiments have not yet created any strange matter, so its existence remains uncertain. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

One place strange matter could naturally be created is inside neutron stars, the remnants of stars that died in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas. Neutron stars are typically small, with diameters of about 12 miles (19 kilometers) or so, but are so dense that they weigh as much as the sun. A chunk of a neutron star the size of a sugar cube can weigh as much as 100 million tons.

Under the extraordinary force of this extreme weight, some of the up and down quarks that make up neutron stars could get converted into strange quarks, leading to strange stars made of strange matter, researchers say.

A strange star that occasionally spurts out strange matter could quickly convert a neutron star orbiting it in a binary system into a strange star as well. Prior research suggests that a neutron star that receives a seed of strange matter from a companion strange star could transition to a strange star in just 1 millisecond to 1 second.

Now, researchers suggest they could detect strange stars by looking for the stars' gravitational waves -- invisible ripples in space-time first proposed by Albert Einstein as part of his theory of general relativity.

Gravitational waves are emitted by accelerating masses. Really big gravitational waves are emitted by really big masses, such as pairs of neutron stars merging with one another.

Pairs of strange stars should give off gravitational waves that are different from those emitted by pairs of "normal" neutron stars because strange stars should be more compact, researchers said. For instance, a neutron star with a mass one-fifth that of the sun should be more than 18 miles (30 km) in diameter, whereas a strange star of the same mass should be a maximum of 6 miles (10 km) wide.

The researchers suggest that events involving strange stars could explain two short gamma-ray bursts -- giant explosions lasting less than 2 seconds --seen in deep space in 2005 and 2007. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) did not detect gravitational waves from either of these events, dubbed GRB 051103 and GRB 070201.

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Ripples in Space-Time Could Reveal 'Strange Stars'

India to Push Next Space Frontier, With Launch of Crew Module in mid-December

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Sriharikota: Just months after achieving the milestone of a successful mission to Mars, India is set to push another frontier in space, by launching a human crew module and then retrieving it from the sea upon re-entry. The crew module will blast off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on board the GSLV-Mark III, which will be India's heaviest rocket till date.

The crew module will not carry any astronauts on its first test flight, which is scheduled between December 15 and 20. After rising more than a hundred kilometres into space, the crew module would be brought back to Earth, and its reentry trajectory will be studied. The capsule will then be recovered using Indian coast Guard ships from close to the Andaman Nicobar islands. A simulated recovery was carried out recently in the region.

The crew module will be launched as a payload on the GSLV-Mark III, which will blast off for the first time. The flight would be a sub-orbital test flight, and will see the first two stages being fired. The third stage, which is cryogenic, is still under development and would not be tested. However, the launch vehicle would carry a dummy cryogenic stage.

Till date, only Russia, America and China have the capability of flying astronauts into space. Once the government gives a final go-ahead for this ambitious rupees 12500 crores human space flight endeavor by ISRO, India will be able to notch another significant achievement in space exploration.

ISRO says it can fly an astronaut within seven to eight years of the govt giving its final go-ahead. The only Indian to have gone into space is astronaut Rakesh Sharma, who flew aboard the Soyuz space capsule in 1984.

The flight of the GSLV-Mark III will also be monitored by ISRO scientists, for its flight parameters, its behaviour as it moves through the atmosphere and its stability.

While the rocket would cost Rs 140 crore, the crew module would cost Rs 15 crore, said MYS Prasad, Director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

"The rocket can carry up to four tonne payload. This is the heaviest rocket India has ever launched. It is 630 tonne at lift off. We would test only the first two stages and not the cryogenic stage," explained S Somanath, Project Director, GSLV Mark III.

The cup cake-shaped crew module is 2.5 metre tall and 3.5 metre in diameter."The three tonne weighing crew module would use four set of parachutes to safely land on the surface of the sea at 7 metre per second. It will land some 180 km from Indira Point of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. From the lift off to the crew module splashing into the sea, it will take around 20 minutes," said S Unnikrishnan Nair, Project Director of the Crew Module programme.

The capsule, tentatively designed to carry three astronauts, would be recovered by Indian Coast Guard ships. A practice of the recovery was done on October 31 with Coast Guard ship ICGS Samudra Paheredar, he added.

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India to Push Next Space Frontier, With Launch of Crew Module in mid-December