Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Whoops.
The National Security Agency apparently didn’t mean to spy on law abiding Americans. They accidentally collected thousands of communications by Americans with no known connection to terrorism according to a report in USA Today.
I’m not sure what was going on. After Edward Snowden said the NSA was doing this, we were told it was an important part of protecting Americans. Now it is a mistake they apparently realized in 2011. Is anyone else confused?
Last night I watched some excellent reporting by Anderson Cooper on the detention of David Miranda (Glenn Greenwald’s spouse). Greenwald believes this incident was meant to intimidate him and all journalists.
This weekend I had also read a good story in the NY Times called How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets. There was also an online feature called Behind the Cover Story: Peter Maass on How He Got the Very Secret Laura Poitras to Open Up. Both are interesting reading and not unrelated to this discussion free speech and fear.
Laura Poitras is a documentary film maker and some of her films on Iraq and surveillance have irritated US authorities to the point that she is on a watch list and subject to to extensive security screening and sometime detention. All of this and more can be found in How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets (see link above).
I suppose now that Poitras is known to have gotten Edward Snowden (and his NSA secrets) to Glenn Greenwald, she is even more unpopular the US government.
Both the Miranda and Poitras stories raise the question of whether this apparent retaliation is meant to introduce an element of fear of the consequences of free speech that will make Americans less willing to speak freely if they happen to disagree with our government.
I am still trying GenealogyBank. See my earlier post for more (or maybe less) on my initial impressions.
I’m about half-way through the trial and I’m very impressed with the old newspapers aspect of the website. So far I haven’t had much luck searching the historical documents and books in their collection but given time I may get better at that. The GenealogyBank search box to the right is free to use and gives you an idea of the site but you do need to pay to actually view the documents.
I find the newspaper search much better than the one at Ancestry. I think the search function works better and there is quite a collection of newspapers to search. I’ve not had much luck with my New York City ancestors. Part of the problem is common names such as Greer and Tracey.
Reidy is not so common but in most of the records my great grandfather’s name was spelled Ready. So a search for William Ready pulls up articles with headlines such as “William ready to do this or that”.
But I have found quite a bit on other lines, especially those in Maryland and Delaware. And despite all the difficulties I have found some things in New York City. Despite my ancestors being mostly obscure, they got into the papers at times.
Some of the findings are the types of things I expected. Some are total surprises. So far I’m impressed with GenealogyBank.
I am trying out GenealogyBank right now. I suppose I would have rather had a free trial but they charge for a 30 day access trial. The GenealogyBank search box to the right is free to use and gives you an idea of the site but you do need to pay to actually see the old newspapers, historical documents and books in their collection.
Most of the papers are from the U.S. but there are Irish American newspapers with information on Ireland and that is of interest to me. In fact, I’ve found a few worthwhile items there during this trial.
So far I’m a few days into the trial and feel it is well worth the fee for looking. They do have quite a collection and I have found quite a bit in a few days.
So if you think this might be of interest, look around. I’ll be writing more about my experience with GenealogyBank. I just noticed that I hadn’t posted in about a week and want to let you know what I’ve been up to.
Years ago Daniel Patrick Moynihan said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
But now people seem to be armed with their own facts. Supposed facts are claimed to support both sides of an argument. Unfortunately it is the claim that gets the attention and relatively few hear about the basis of the claimed fact later.
For example, I am sure many of us saw the claim that about 75% of small businesses will have to fire workers or cut their hours as a result of ObamaCare. This claim was based on a survey or more accurately what the survey was said to show. Of course, the survey showed no such thing but that part of the story was not very prominent in the news.
The Fact Checker of the Washington Post recently examined this claim and lays out the facts and demonstrates why this claim is far from fact. Lest anyone think this is a partisan criticism, I should point out that this article has links to previous articles by this fact checker criticizing President Obama and the NRA for misusing survey data.
Two other sites I like for checking the factual basis of claims are Politifact and FactCheck.org.
Don’t accept the “facts” presented by either side without some critical thinking and checking. Having fact checkers helps us do that. Thanks to the fact checkers.
Over a year ago the Republicans who control the state legislature and the governor’s office in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided that we needed to spend millions of dollars and disenfranchise many voters in order to fight the virtually nonexistent crime of voter impersonation.
I specify Republicans because the law did not attract a single Democratic vote. And I think it is not just coincidence that this is likely to disenfranchise many more Democratic voters than Republicans.
Unfortunately for the Republicans and the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, this attempt ended up in court, has not yet been enforced, and is now costing even more.
When I wrote about this last year, The Philadephia Inquirer had a good series of articles on the issues but the link I had in my post then is bad. I don’t know why they reorganized the website but I cannot find anything comparable. Fortunately philly.com has posted a good article from the PA Independent on the VoterID issue.
I have no problem with showing ID at the polls. The problem I see is the state limiting what is acceptable as ID and choosing to make obtaining that ID especially difficult.
For those interested in reading more, here are a few recent articles:
Just up the road a few miles from here, the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Register of Wills has been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Some of those couples have been married in Pennsylvania. But the problem is that such marriages are against state law.
A few weeks ago, the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania announced that she would not defend state law banning gay marriage in court because she believed the law to be unconstitutional. Now the Montgomery County Register of Wills is issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The governor is suing to stop the Montgomery County Register of Wills.
Same-sex marriage has come to Pennsylvania but this is a very confusing but interesting situation and I don’t have a clue as to how it will turn out.
Very soon after part of Voting Rights Act was struck down by the Supreme Court several states moved to restrict voting rights with the new-found freedom that they believed the court had given them.
For example, here is Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas):
In June, the Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional to hold Texas and several other states to a different standard in the Voting Rights Act. The Court found that the actions of the past could not be held against current and future generations. The result of the decision is that Texas is no longer required to seek pre-clearance from the Justice Department before voting rights laws can be implemented.
In other words, the Supreme Court message to the Justice Department was clear – don’t mess with Texas. But Eric Holder and the Justice Department aren’t listening. …
The bold in the quote above is my emphasis because that part is clearly wrong.
It is important to note that the Supreme Court only struck down the requirement that some (but not all) jurisdictions be subject to pre-clearance by the Justice department for any voting change because those jurisdictions were identified using 40 year old data.
The Court upheld all other aspects of the Voting Rights Act and clearly did not give states the freedom to restrict voting in any way they choose. All states (even Texas) are subject to the Voting Rights Act.
I think Eric Holder and the Justice Department are listening and doing the right thing .
I live outside of Philadelphia and so yesterday I happened to be reading The Philadelphia Inquirer and I ran across an interesting article about the need for bipartisan cooperation and public service. The article is Public service, a noble calling.
The article is by an unlikely pair – Karen Hughes and Victoria Kennedy. Read it; it is worth your time and while you are at the website, look around.
The Google Newspaper Archive has not gone away although many think it has. A few years ago, it was announced that Google was shutting down the Newspaper Archive project.
But reading further into the articles you may notice that while Google is no longer scanning newspapers to add to the archive, what was already done is still online and searchable.
The link http://news.google.com/newspapers will give you a list of newspapers in the archive and a search box. You can refine your search after the initial seach.
The link https://news.google.com/news/advanced_news_search?as_drrb=a takes you to a seach box that lets you refine your search right away.
I haven’t decide which I like better but give both a try. You may find nothing but then maybe you will find something worthwhile.
I had a dream the other night. Before going any further I should note that I live in Pennsylvania.
Without going into all the details I will briefly summarize the situation. I was visiting out-of-state and had reason to believe that I might receive a gift of a nice bottle of wine. Now I could have consumed the gift on the spot or drove home with it. I was pretty sure I would do the prudent thing and not drink a bottle of wine before driving a few hours.
However I do live in Pennsylvania and it is illegal to transport liquor into Pennsylvania with limited exceptions. I could claim it was sacramental wine but since I did not have a sacramental wine license or any other type of liquor license, that did not seem a good option.
The police have recently been enforcing that law. I just thought that should be mentioned lest you think I was dreaming it was Prohibition days.
Anyway, in my dream I drove back home to Pennsylvania with my present and as soon as I crossed the state border I was charged with illegal transportation of liquor into Pennsylvania.
As I mentioned before, I’ve been filling in some details on close relations who are not direct ancestors. That is, collateral rather than lineal relationships. I’ve been looking into the John Greer and Julia Mary Hopkins family of New York City.
Their second child Letitia “Lottie” Greer very rarely used her actual first name. In fact the only record I’ve found so far with Letitia as her name Continue reading “Letitia “Lottie” Greer of New York City”
Bad news, then good news, and bad news again on medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania.
House Republicans followed through Monday on their threat to kill a provision written by the state Senate to require Gov. Tom Corbett to seek federal approval for an expansion of Medicaid eligibility to provide taxpayer-paid health care to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians.
This from an article on the back and forth state of medicaid expansion in PA.
As part of health care reform (Obamacare), the federal government was going to pay to expand medicaid. But since this is a joint program between the federal and state governments, the states need to be willing participants. Seems an inexpensive way for the states to help their poorer residents. The federal government pays 100 percent for the first three years, starting next year, and 90 percent after that.
But 21 states governed by Republicans refused this deal. There are 6 states that haven’t decided yet and Pennsylvania is one of them.
I live in Pennsylvania so I’ve been paying attention to the see-saw here. First our Republican governor says NO. Then the state Senate says YES . Then the state House says No (see the quote above).
So I don’t know what will happen but I suspect the needy in Pennsylvania will be the losers.
Dick Eastman in his Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter has posted an article called How to Create EPUB Files for use in eBooks.
Since an EPUB has many advantages over the the PDF or even paper copies may be using now, you might want to consider it. The article goes into these advantages. But perhaps more importantly, it tells you how you can do this for free or with other paid options if you prefer that route.
Normally this article is available to customers of the paid version of the newsletter but this article is offered as free EPUB download to all who read the shorter version in the free newsletter online.
I read the article last night on my iPhone with the free Bluefire Reader app.
There was an interesting article about evidence-based approaches and faith-based approaches to our policies in the Washington Post last week.
Is God for or against food stamps? How about global warning? Should we favor evidence-based approaches to faith-based approaches in deciding on policy? How about other issues? Interesting questions.