Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced “Aaron’s Law” on Tuesday night, announcing it via the user-generated site Reddit. The piece of legislation would modify the the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to exclude terms of service violations. “There’s no way to reverse the tragedy of Aaron’s death, but we can work to prevent a repeat of the abuses of power he experienced,” Lofgren wrote. “The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute.” Read the full bill here.

Meanwhile, The Hill reports that federal prosecutors came under fire yesterday by lawmakers for their "ridiculous and trumped-up" charges against Aaron Swartz:

“The charges were ridiculous and trumped-up,” Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) told The Hill. “It's absurd that he was made a scapegoat. I would hope that this doesn't happen to anyone else.”

Polis called Swartz — a co-creator of Reddit who was accused of stealing articles from a computer archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — a "martyr" for why Congress should limit the discretion of prosecutors.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the government's handling of the case was “pretty outrageous.”

“Based on what I know, I think the Department of Justice was way out of line on the case,” she told The Hill.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has said that his Oversight panel will take a look at the case to determine if the federal prosecutors acted inappropriately:

Issa expressed sympathy with some of Swartz’s goals. While “cybercrime and hacking has to be taken seriously,” he said, Congress should take up Swartz's cause of making more information freely available to the public.

“We're looking at the real question of open government,” Issa said. “Has the government or even MIT been holding back materials that the public has a right to know?”

Issa said he wanted to make sure “that what is paid for is as widely available as possible to the American people.”

Many materials on JSTOR are funded by public universities or government research grants. Subscriptions to JSTOR cost thousands of dollars.

He also said “whether or not there was excessive prosecution is something we’ll look at.”

All three lawmakers -- Issa, Polis, and Lofgren -- serve on the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Justice Department. They also worked with Swartz and his group "Demand Progress" in 2012 to defeat online piracy legislation that was backed by the entertainment industry.

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Stephen Colbert had a field day with every one of these gun nuts that have come out of the woodwork now that it looks like there could finally be some movement on gun control and with Vice President Biden meeting with his task force after the latest mass shooting.

No one was spared from Alex Jones screaming at Piers Morgan on CNN, to Larry Ward and his remarks about "Gun Appreciation Day" and Martin Luther King, to James Yeager and his threats to start killing people if there are any new gun control laws passed.

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Via Idlenomore.ca:

Check out this stunning, short documentary on "Idle No More" from the San Francisco and Oakland solidarity rallies created by Grounded TV.

Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution that honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth.

Reuters:

"Joseph Keller doesn't expect he'll live to see the end of 2013. He blames the house at 190 Avondale Avenue.

Five years ago, Keller, 10 months behind on his mortgage payments, received notice of a foreclosure judgment from JP Morgan Chase. In a few weeks, the bank said, his three-story house with gray vinyl siding in Columbus, Ohio, would be put up for auction at a sheriff's sale.

The 58-year-old former social worker and his wife, Jennifer, packed up their home of 13 years and moved in with their daughter. Joseph thought he would never have anything to do with the house again. And for about a year, he didn't.

Then it started to stalk him."

- In 2010, the county sued Keller because the house, already picked clean by scavengers, was in a shambles, its hanging gutters and collapsed garage in violation of local housing code.

- The tax collector started sending Keller notices about mounting back taxes, sewer fees and bills for weed and waste removal.

- Last year, Chase's debt collector began pressing Keller to pay his mortgage, which had swollen, with penalties and fees, from $62,100.27 to $84,194.69.

- Worst of all, last January, the Social Security Administration rejected Keller's application for disability benefits; the "asset" on Avondale Avenue rendered him ineligible. Keller's medical problems include advanced liver disease, hepatitis C and inactive tuberculosis. Without disability coverage, he can't get the liver transplant he needs to stay alive.

Mr. Keller is still legally responsible for the home he left after the bank foreclosure notice, because months later, Chase filed to dismiss the foreclosure judgment and the order of sale.

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Good morning, today is Wednesday, January 16, 2013. Now brace yourselves...Ann Romney will not be appearing on "Dancing with the Stars."

Your morning open thread begins below.

For anyone who missed it over the weekend, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry had a rather interesting segment to open her show on Sunday, where she said conservatives haven't always been against gun control laws and the issue wasn't necessarily a partisan one. She gave viewers a little history lesson about the days when the Black Panthers were taking up arms on the streets of California and none other than conservative icon St. Ronnie Reagan was signing legislation to disarm them.

So... if we want to get conservatives to go along with some sort of gun control legislation, do we need to try to bring back the Black Panthers and get them back out there advocating for open carry? They all loved it when we had these TeaBirchers out there bringing guns to rallies and town hall meetings protesting the health care law. If Fox was going crazy over just a few of these New Black Panthers standing outside of a polling place, imagine how they'd act if we had the old Black Panther Party back, '60's style, armed and ready to stand up for their Second Amendment rights.

For more on what Harris-Perry was talking about here and what went down with the Black Panthers in the '60's, check out this article from The Atlantic from back in Sept. of 2011: The Secret History of Guns:

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

Indian police say that a woman was gang-raped by seven men over the weekend (Yes, another one.) after she boarded a bus on Friday night. Police have arrested six of the men and are searching for the seventh. The 29-year-old woman boarded a bus in Gurdaspur district in Punjab, but the bus sped past her stop. The bus driver and his helper than took her to an undisclosed location, where five other men joined and raped her through the night. They dropped her off in her village the next day. The victim said, “They threatened me with a sharp-edged weapon and did wrong things with me. They kept me confined all through the night and forced me to do what they want.”

The violent gang rape in New Delhi has drawn attention to a pattern of violence and discrimination against women in India that leads to the deaths of nearly 2 million women every year. Between 25,000 and 100,000 women are killed each year in dowry disputes. Each year 100,000 women are burned to death, and another 125,000 die from violent injuries that are rarely reported as killings. One expert said, “Women are breaking through and advancing toward greater attainment—but in a society that continues to be patriarchal, that is increasing tensions. And one of the manifestations of that tension is increased violence against women.”

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Economists like Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman have warned that Republicans could "blow up the world economy" if they refuse to raise the nation's debt ceiling but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) disagrees, saying that it could actually be a "wonderful experiment."

During a Tuesday interview with conservative talk show host Sandy Rios, Coburn insisted that only "stupid things" would be shut down if the the debt ceiling was not raised.

"We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit," he insisted. "Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid; it’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250-300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay, it’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded."

Coburn continued: "It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children."

Rios said she worried that Republicans would be giving President Barack Obama the power to decide if Social Security and military checks would be delayed if Congress decided to breach the debt limit.

"He can decide it but the point is, look, we’re coming to a point in our country where the cost of our profligate spending in the past is going to be so great and so manipulated that our freedoms are going to be put at risk," the Oklahoma Republican opined. "I’m not sure we should continue down that road. That doesn’t mean federal employees aren’t good employees and it doesn’t mean they don’t do a good job but we have set it up where we’ve undermined self-reliance, we’ve undermined efficiency, we’ve undermined expectations in this country as far as those who work for the federal government and then we’ve overpromised."

"Maybe we lose that battle, but if we lose that battle, we’re going to lose our country anyway. And that’s what people ought to be thinking about."

A study by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that a breach of the debt ceiling would mean that the government could continue to fund interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare and food stamps at the expense of every other federal program.

“[B]ut doing all that will mean defaulting on everything — really, everything — else,” The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein explained last week. “The FBI will shut down. The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs. The prisons won’t operate. The biomedical researchers won’t be funded. The court system will close its doors. The tax refunds won’t go out. The Federal Aviation Administration will go offline. The parks will close. Food safety inspections will cease.”

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

Chicago News and Weather | FOX 32 News

Authorities at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport discovered 18 severed human heads after they opened a mysterious package on Monday.

Via:

U.S. Customs officials at O’Hare initially held up the shipment, when they found the paperwork to be “a little confusing.” Then the containers were X-rayed, and that’s when officials discovered what was inside, Brucci said.

"The heads still had the skin on them."

Not sure why they had to tell us that, I didn't think it wouldn't be on them.

“Everybody here is ‘Oh my gosh, you got a box of heads’ and everybody thinks that it’s unheard of,” Brian Bell, a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

I guess some of us just don't get out and around to the same places as those DHS agents.

The medical specimens had been in limbo since just before Christmas, when they arrived on a flight from Rome and were held up due to improper paperwork, said Mary Paleologos, a spokeswoman with the Cook County medical examiner’s office, whose office took custody of the heads this week.

Though the discovery was gruesome, they appear to be medical samples from Italy and were shipped to the US for cremation, but were initially "misplaced."

Now that the cremation service has showed up with the proper paperwork, the heads (including skin) will be released after authorities verify the paperwork.

The owner of a smoothie shop in Utah charges liberals more for their drinks than conservatives, and donates the price difference to organizations like The Heritage Foundation.

The shop, Think Progress reports, is "tellingly named the I Love Drilling Juice and Smoothie Bar, is owned by George Burnett, a pro-oil and gas activist."

“I’m very open about it, very public about it, that I’m going to charge them a little bit more, and I have liberals come in and pay the extra dollar surcharge,” Burnett said, referring to his unique pricing structure. [...] “And actually all three liberals have been happy to pay it. We had a husband and wife come in — he was conservative and she was liberal — and he paid conservative for himself and liberal for her.”

Clever asshole entrepreneur that he is, Burnett also sells “I Love Drilling” shirts and bumper stickers on his website, and people actually buy and wear them.

Burnett claims he wants to start a conversation about “the fiscal differences between big government/small government and liberal ways.” The liberal tax is intended to “help make that point.”

One conservative customer went even farther, explaining, “For him to do this kind of puts a face out there on people who are, in my opinion, in the wrong. ‘In the wrong’ being liberals,” Peterson said. “To see them being charged a little bit more, it makes me happy.”

Some day...a business will open in Vernal that will charge conservatives higher prices. Suddenly the conservatives will be screaming that their freedom of speech rights are being violated.