your government at play 1: equality before the law

IRS apologizes for targeting conservative groups

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

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other versions of the story point out that the expected parties have already torn into this red meat.

while i see no evidence that this was party of deliberate campaign of harassment by the administration,¹ the possibility that such things could happen gives me some sympathy for the supremes' broad ruling in citizens united. can we trust the party(ies) in power to make fair election rules under which new entrants can easily start to play on the political stage?

edit: unexpected parties are showing unusual interest too:

Michael Macleod-Ball, chief of staff at the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, called the IRS story "constitutionally troubling" and suggested that "there must be clear checks in place to prevent this from ever happening again." Even former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett tweeted: "IRS seems to be claiming this was stupidity, not malice. Maybe so. But we shouldn't take their word for it and neither should Congress."

IRS Admits to Targeting Conservative Groups, in media res

1: i'm having trouble imagining it was; the administration is not that stupid. if they were caught at it, "watergate" would cease to be a by-word for political malfeasance. and i'm sure my bastards would push "obamagate" as a replacement.

your government at play 2: freedom of speech; see also: barn door, horse, bolted

3D-printed plastic gun faces U.S. government crackdown

Free blueprints that allow anyone with a 3D printer to make a plastic handgun that fires real bullets have been taken offline after an order from the U.S. Department of Defence, says the man who posted them online.

Cody R. Wilson, a 25-year-old University of Texas law student, confirmed Thursday afternoon on Twitter that Defcad, the site where the blueprints for the Liberator pistol were posted starting last weekend, is "going dark" at the request of the Department of Defence Trade Controls.

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beyond the utter futility of trying to censor this when it was popularly posted online, i coulda sworn that it was legal. i'd thought descriptions of (and even recipes for) criminal activities were considered protected speech, and thus the survival of books on picking locks, making illegal drugs, and all sorts of weapons of mass excitement. it's not too hard to find apparently correct recipes online for explosives, poison gasses, and even simple nuclear weapons.

ObGeekery: i'm very fond of a old computer game called "alpha centauri". as a reward for building certain in-game structures, the game would play short videos. they were all amazingly high quality for what was essentially an n-th generation sequel of an older game. after building "the plantary datalinks", one was rewarded with a video opposing censorship; it ended with the most excellent line, "beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."