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And Clinton said that passing the 1994 federal assault weapons ban “devastated” more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers in the 1994 midterms — and cost then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Wash.) his job and his seat in Congress.

“I’ve had many sleepless nights in the many years since,” Clinton said. One reason? “I never had any sessions with the House members who were vulnerable,” he explained — saying that he had assumed they already knew how to explain their vote for the ban to their constituents.

Clinton closed his remarks with a warning to big Democratic donors that ultimately many Democratic lawmakers will be defeated if they choose to stand with the president.

“Do not be self-congratulatory about how brave you for being for this” gun control push, he said. “The only brave people are the people who are going to lose their jobs if they vote with you.”

Bill Clinton to Democrats: Don’t trivialize gun culture - Byron Tau - POLITICO.com

The mystery wrapped inside a riddle that is the Gauss malware’s encryption scheme may be closer to falling.

The encrypted blob in Gauss is really interesting...

Tool Aids in Cracking Mysterious Gauss Malware Encryption | threatpost

It’s not surprising that Ortiz doesn’t see anything wrong with this system. Powerful people rarely see their own power as problematic. But the rest of us should be outraged—not just by Ortiz’s conduct, but by a system that treats thousands of defendants less famous than Swartz the same way.

Aaron Swartz and the Corrupt Practice of Plea Bargaining - Forbes

If you want to end these tactics, don’t just complain about the Swartz case. Don’t just complain when the defendant happens to be a brilliant guy who went to Stanford and hangs out with Larry Lessig. Instead, complain that this is business as usual in federal criminal cases around the country — mostly with defendants who no one has ever heard of and who get locked up for years without anyone else much caring.

The Volokh Conspiracy » The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz (Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion)

Republican legislators are proposing two alternative changes in how Pennsylvania awards its electoral votes in presidential campaigns. The General Assembly should reject each proposal.

This is a thoughtful analysis of a dangerous pair of proposals that is going to be the subject of the next thoughtless Facebook meme you read, in which those who oppose this change will be accused of supporting the disenfranchisement of voters.

This is a potential road to ruin for the United States - if these proposals are adopted in a hap-hazard fashion that favors a particular political party, framed by the screeching of partisan sheep, the consequence will a general election in which the winning administration got the minority vote - not by a thin margin as in 2000 but by a significant margin.

That is the moment where things are going to fall apart with our winner take all political system - when the reason that the losing party disregards the legitimacy of the winning party isn't some silly conspiracy theory or argument on the margins.

William Lloyd | State Electoral College proposals inappropriate » Editorials » The Tribune Democrat, Johnstown, PA

The "graph search" tool, unveiled on Tuesday, lets users trawl their network of friends to find everything from restaurants to movie recommendations and marks Facebook's biggest foray into online search.

Meet another innovation that MemeStreams had in 2002.

Facebook's Graph Search Has Analysts Seeing Revenue Potential

It was right around that time that scientists began to turn their attention to another project: trying to access these protected networks remotely, through the air, by reading activity via electromagnetic field distortions and inserting code via radio frequencies. Accessing these networks — networks that don’t have wireless routers and aren’t connected to the Internet — became something of a holy grail, dubbed “jumping the gap.”

The science has progressed significantly, and now the Army is looking at demonstrating technology that can be deployed on aircraft and ground vehicles that can wage this kind of cyber warfare.

DoD Looking to ‘Jump the Gap’ Into Adversaries’ Closed Networks | Defense News | defensenews.com

It’s one thing to stretch the law to stop a criminal syndicate or terrorist organization. It’s quite another when prosecuting a reckless young man. The prosecutors forgot that, as public officials, their job isn’t to try and win at all costs but to use the awesome power of criminal law to protect the public from actual harm. Ortiz has not commented on the case. But, had she been in charge when Jobs and Wozniak were breaking the laws, we might never have had Apple computers. It was at this moment that our legal system and our society utterly failed.

How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz--and Us : The New Yorker