The Texas Voter ID Law isn't Dead

Despite what you might thing after reading the headline, "Federal Court Strikes Down Tough Texas Voter ID Law", the law is far from dead. If only because this one is probably going all the way to the Supreme Court. 

The Wednesday decision was a victory for the president, who has directed the Justice Department to try to beat back a movement in several Republican-led state governments to implement ballot-box restrictions.

Ballot-box restrictions. I like that. Yeah, we want to implement ballot box restrictions that keep Mickey Mouse, dead people, and non-citizens from voting. When voter participation significantly exceeds the national average, and registered voters outnumber those eligible to vote, you've got a problem. Electoral fraud is a stain upon our country's rule of law and should be prosecuted with extreme prejudice, in addition to making it difficult to accomplish.

Texas was then free to enforce its law, which requires one of seven forms of approved identification, a list that included concealed carry licenses but not a college student's university ID. Proponents said would reduce ballot fraud.

Note that the article is acting like concealed carry licenses - a government issued photo ID - are inferior to a college's student ID - an unregulated, easily faked, non-governmental ID, that can be issued to anyone. It makes perfect sense to prevent student ID from being used to register to vote. Government issued IDs use various tactics - such as watermarks - to make the creation of fake IDs difficult (though not impossible) and include barcodes and magnetic strips. Student IDs are a piece of plastic with your name, the name of your school, and possibly the school's mascot, and have no legal standing.  There is no good reason to allow student IDs to be used for voter registration, and a lot of good reasons to prevent it.

"Today's ruling is a victory for every Texas voter. Once again, the rule of law agrees with Democrats. The Republican voter ID law is discriminatory," Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement.

If he really felt that way about the rule of law he wouldn't be so happy. Election fraud is a blight upon the rule of law, rendering the polls untrustworthy. It effectively disenfranchises all the legitimate voters - even the ones who voted the same way that the fraud went - making it so that the only vote that matters is that of the man (or the group) behind the fraud. In time, it will destroy the rule of law and the system will end in violence. 

The Unorganized Rebellion

The Unorganized rebellion is a state of revolution where, rather than operating in an organized and identifiable group, the rebels act individually, taking it upon themselves to assassinate the politicians who are the cause of the grievance. The goal of the unorganized revolution is to force the government to change it's policy in order to avoid the risk of assassination of the individuals in charge of policy.

The Reason:
An individual assassin lacks the greatest weakness of any revolution - the need to trust. Since the individual operates alone or with a small group whom they know well, there is very little chance of counterrevolutionary infiltrators leading to discovery and death. In addition, the assassination of policy makers (in large enough numbers) may lead to the elevation of sympathetic policy makers, or the fearful capitulation of the already in place policy makers.

The Weapons:
There are a multitude of firearms in the US (approximately 1 firearm per individual), but for the purposes of this post, the concern is with rifles (with a ratio of approx. 1:3), and more specifically, with rifles capable of allowing an individual to assassinate an individual from a distance where a protective detail would be incapable of detecting the assassin or responding in time to capture said assassin (assuming a well laid escape plan). This excludes a great deal of rifles in a variety of calibers, but still leaves behind a considerable amount of weapons. Unfortunately, there are no estimates of the number of rifles with this capability, an estimate made more difficult due to the ease with which a scope can be attached to a scope-less rifle. Even without such attachments, it must be noted that the most successful sniper in history used a scope-less rifle designed in 1891, and during the American Civil War sniper kills as far away as 800 yards were recorded. The standard infantry rifle of the Union, the Springfield 1861 rifled musket, had a maximum range of 1000 yards, with trained soldiers capable of accurate aimed fire at 500 yards. No amount of bodyguards can protect an individual from a halfway competent shooter. The ability of the shooter to escape depends upon the person assassinated, the location where the assassination took place, and any measures that the individual took to prevent identification.

Even if only a third of all rifles are capable of being used for the proposed purpose, there would still be millions of them. Should the line in the sand be crossed, and large numbers of citizens choose to exercise the political power inherent in a gun, the proverbial "rifle behind every blade of grass" will be aimed at the politicians responsible for crossing the line.

Given that it is effectively impossible to disarm a populace that doesn't want to be disarmed (e.g. Chechnya) the citizenry of the US will always have the means to express their extreme displeasure.


A disorganized rebellion, with individual sharpshooters running around taking potshots at politicians will quickly establish  that no policy maker is truly safe from a sufficiently disgruntled populace.

Friendly...

There is a saying: There are friendly foreign governments, but there are no friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
Most nations in the world have at least one agency devoted to espionage and/or counter-espionage. How well those twin missions executed can have a major impact on how well a nation does, and if performed right can give a nation a major advantage over other nations. Thus, any nation without an intelligence agency of some sort is at a distinct disadvantage, and is either too poor or too incompetently led to be a serious threat to any nation with a more than token military.
Thus, when other countries steal our secrets I don't get mad at those countries. I just want the various intelligence agencies here in the US to work extra hard to prevent more secrets from being stolen and for the US to retaliate against whomever stole the secrets. And when we're the ones stealing secrets from other countries I want our government to do its best to avoid any serious repercussions. After all, when it comes to intelligence gathering, even among allies, it is not a case of "want". It is a case of "need". It is immoral for a nation to not gather intelligence, engage in counter-intelligence, attempt to reprise against those who steal it's secrets, and attempt to avoid reprisal when it is caught stealing secrets.
The problems come when intelligence agencies spy upon the citizens that they're supposed to protect.

Sony breaks copyright law

The company known collectively as Sony (its a multinational conglomerate) may not be happy soon. It depends upon whether KDE (K Desktop Environment) and the Oxygen theme creators decide to sue Sony for breaking copyright law. Based off of the original source, it is also in the UEFI firmware that Sony has on (new) laptops.

Sony, by the way, is the company that put rootkits on their music CD's which would then install themselves on the vict... customer's computer. This was supposed to prevent piracy, which is against the law, by maliciously installing software on their customer's computers which is also against the law.

Mexican Vigilantes vs the Cartels

From Fox News:

Vigilante groups spring up in Mexico in fight against cartels

Frustrated by the impotency of the police to defend them against the cartels, many Mexican citizens have gone vigilante. I expect that the difference in results between the de facto lawmen and the de jure lawmen will eventually result in even more civil unrest in Mexico, but for now, the vigilantes seem to be doing a fair sight better of a job than the authorities. Some of whom have actually granted their seal of approval to the whole idea.

.....
But clearly, the vigilante squads here present problems even in their first few weeks. The vigilantes in Guerrero are holding, by their own account, 44 people accused of crimes ranging from homicide to theft. Nobody outside the village of El Zapote, where they are being held in a makeshift jail, knows what conditions they are being held in, or what charges, if any, there are against them.
When the head of the Guerrero state Human Rights Commission, Juan Alarcon Hernandez, showed up to check on the prisoners' condition, he was met by about 100 angry villagers who said they didn't want anyone to visit the prisoners. "No, no, no. We want justice!" the crowd shouted.
......

When people take matters into their own hands, its generally because the law isn't doing the job, and as such, they rarely have an overly great respect for the authorities responsible for the mess. I wonder how it'll all end up.