Apr
7
2014

URLs du Jour — 2014-04-07

  • As a conservative/libertarian within an organization where the prevailing orthodoxy is anything but, I've been checking out the case of Brendan Eich, briefly CEO of Mozilla.

    James Taranto points out an obvious corollary to the dustup. Eich was "outed" as a dissident by laws demanding public disclosure of contributions to campaigns (in this case, a ballot initiative). Such disclosure laws are routinely demanded by liberals/progressives. They usually leave unsaid their actual motive: so that they can get even with you for opposing them afterwards.

    Taranto notes that this was foreseen in Justice Thomas's opinion in the Citizens United case. Thomas is quoted extensively, and you should read the whole thing, but here's his conclusion:

    I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in “core political speech, the ‘primary object of First Amendment protection.’ ”

    Unfortunately such perceptive pro-liberty arguments are rare these days.

  • Jonathan Last is also pretty perceptive on the issue. RTWT, but here's the executive summary: (1) To be really consistent, Mozilla should conduct a total purge of all pro-Proposition 8 employees, not just Eich; (2) Eich probably could have saved his job by doing the apologetic repentant-heretic act; that he didn't speaks well to his principles; (3) oh, yeah: stop using Firefox.

    So, yes, I've started using Google Chrome exclusively. I doubt this will be anything other than symbolic.

  • I noticed a relatively recent update to the timezone database, only a couple weeks since the previous one. What could they have missed? So I went to the release announcement and…

    Crimea switches to Moscow time on 2014-03-30 at 02:00 local time. (Thanks to Alexander Krivenyshev.) Move its zone.tab entry from UA to RU.

    Oh. Ouch. Could have also added a thanks to Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama, I suppose. The Russkies don't miss anything when they take over.


Last Modified 2014-08-06 9:16 AM EDT