Stories

Donnie O’Sullivan, writing for CNN, reports on the recent controversy surrounding Bryton Mellot, a 22-year old Illinois resident who burned an American flag. Mellot was arrested on Sunday, July 3, by police in Urbana, Illinois. Arresting officers claimed that they had received complaints from social media users who were offended by content  Mellot posted which […]

After Facebook Live was used to publicly stream the aftermath of the shooting of Philando Castile, Facebook commented on what type of content their community standards allow. Rachel Ranosa reports in Tech Times that a Facebook spokesperson indicated that while the video of the shooting was marked with a warning, it did not violate any […]

One reason African Americans are disproportionately the victims of police brutality and excessive use of force is the sheer number of potentially hostile interactions that occur between police and low-income African Americans, according to Ilya Somin in The Washington Post. Somin highlights data showing that low-income African Americans have a very high number of encounters with […]

Writing about NATO’s recent meeting at the Warsaw Summit, Emma Ashford of Cato at Liberty, comments on the fundamental conflict between the goals of simultaneously reassuring NATO’s Eastern members and preventing further military buildup by Russia. In fact, Ashford observes, “The expected announcement of the deployment of four battalions of additional troops to the Baltics […]

In June, a federal court upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to reclassify broadband internet access as a public utility to enforce “net neutrality.” Writing for The Washington Post, Larry Downes argues that this decision will stifle innovation and deliver worse service to consumers. Downes contends that proponents of classifying broadband internet on the […]

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a lower court decision which ruled that sharing passwords could be in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The particular case, United States v. Nosal, centered on a former employee using a borrowed password to copy data from the firm’s database. However, Jason Koebler […]

The Chinese government recently passed a law banning news organizations from publishing stories sourced on social media. According to Edward Wong and Vanessa Piao of The New York Times,  this law is an attempt to diminish the power of online social networks, making it harder for protestors or dissidents to organize and publicize information deemed […]

Economic development agencies are notorious for helping politically-connected businesses profit. In Florida though, this favoritism extends beyond business. Matt Galka of WJXT Jacksonville writes about how life has been good for the executives at the Enterprise Florida economic development agency. Over the last six years, executive salaries at Enterprise Florida have risen from $800,500 to […]

The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes about the increasing presence of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States,  a controversial effort to boycott the nation of Israel until it ends its involvement in Palestine. Some BDS supporters accept the possibility of a “two-state solution,” but others do not. In response […]

According to Gary Fields of The Wall Street Journal, due to changes in federal sentencing guidelines around 14,100 people have been released early from prison and given probation since 2010. As a result of this sentencing reform, the federal probation case load has increased by seven percent. Fields notes, however, that this rise in cases […]