Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Normally I’d be uninterested in the story of how three New Zealand teen allegedly murdered 14 year old John Hapeta in New Zealand. According to the New Zealand Herald, “Two men charged with the murder of 14-year-old John Hapeta allegedly armed themselves with a revolver-style pistol and a claw hammer when they went to his house looking for drugs and cash. John Hapeta was celebrating his friend’s 15th birthday at his home in Justamere Place, Weymouth, when the attack occurred. Police allege the three went to John’s home on August 12 with the intention of robbing what they thought was a ‘tinnie’ house. The draft police summary of facts said Tumata and Williams pulled black bandannas over their faces and walked up to the house, confronted a man and allegedly shouted, ‘Where’s the drugs, where’s the drugs?’”

The story now becomes interesting when Judge David Harvey bans online mention of the accused’s names. No one is sure why print media (which is searchable, through interfaces like Lexis Nexus) gets special treatment here. I certainly disagree, and I’m free to publish whatever I’d like, as a journalist, including the names of the accused.

Anytime anyone wants to suppress totally free speech, I say RESIST!!

The law is quite clear–John McCain is not eligible to president. The New York Times, in A Hint of New Life to a McCain Birth Issue, explains:

A law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.”

The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.

Essentially, to become a “natural born citizen” you can either be born in the United States (John MCCain was born in the illegally occupied Canal Zone in Panama), or to be covered by a law enacted at the time of one’s birth. The law in effect when McCain was born would grant citizenship to babies born to American parents “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.” However, while the Canal zone was out of the limits of the United States, it was not out of the jurisdiction of the US.

However, in a statement to the AP, John McCain said:

Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona when it was a territory, Arizona was a territory, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And there’s no doubt about that. And it was researched again in 2000. It’s very clear that (the idea that) an American born in a territory of the United States whose father is serving in the military would not be eligible for the presidency of the United States is certainly not something our founding fathers envisioned. I am confident that the United States Supreme Court, should it ever address the issue, would agree.’

If John McCain can be president, then Arnold Schwarzenegger can run too. Of course he’s going to say it’s legal for him to become president, given he’s running. Is anyone interested in preventing him from gaining presidency using this legal technicality?

There’s now a serious reason not to vote for Barack Hussein Obama in the upcoming election. On the issue of illegal wiretapping he voted for HR 6304, which grants retroactive immunity from prosecution to telephone companies who cooperated with Bush’s presidency to illegally spy on millions of Americans.

Illegal Wiretaps We Can Believe In

We are all disappointed, Obama. TechCrunch, in Barack Obama Breaks Promise, Flip Flops, and supports Telco’s, says it best:

In voting for the bill, Obama acted in direct contradiction to his earlier statements. In 2007 Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman, said “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

Update: BoingBoing just posted the same thing a little late to the game!