UConn SSDP had a really cool (and under-reported) pre-conference to SSDP’s Northeast Regional Conference in April.

Several of “the usual suspects,” including myself, spoke. There’s no doubt, though, that Eric Sterling stole the show. I have seen him speak 10+ times, and he is one of the best and most engaging public speakers I have ever been exposed to. Fortunately my camera was rolling:

I was honored to be invited to speak at a very small panel at the largest and most prestigious gathering of experts in the fields of drugs and drug policy – the drug policy alliance biennial conference. I spoke about the free software movement’s view of cognitive liberty, and why the drug policy reform movement is a natural ally for free and open source software.

….now before you jump on me about the “order of magnitude” comment with encryption – I fully realize that with increasing strength that decryption becomes several orders of magnitude more difficult, but as this was not a technology conference, I didn’t want to belabor the point.

So, I’m definitely not an advocate of government health care (see my last post proposing a republican vision of health care), but I really definitely can’t stand Joe Lieberman. Some activists (and friends of mine) from UConn staged a really sweet sit-in, unto getting arrested and simultaneously singing.

This is one of the best sit-in videos this year.

Of course my readers knew I never had any illusions that Barack Obama was going to be a good President or that he was anything but a corporate lapdog. I thought it was fairly obvious after he voted to strip Americans of their right to trial by jury when they were spied upon by telecommunications companies with whom they contracted in good faith.

That said, I understood how and why many of my intelligent friends were inspired by this man’s powerful words.

Finally, now, a year after the election, people are really realizing that Obama is, at least in the worst ways, as bad or worse than Dubya Bush was.

But why? Obama’s support for warrantless wiretapping, torture, wars of aggression, bank bailouts, and all the rest of this dreadful administration’s crimes are scarcely printed in the New York Times or the Washington Post. When a tiny flashlight is shone on one corner or another of these facts, the context is always “The Obama Administration, continuing the Bush Administration’s policy of….” as if their hands are tied or as if they are somehow less culpable for the murder and torture that they commit each day.

One source, however, has consistently, without fail, continued to break the news and place it in a wide, intelligent context each and every time Obama tightens the vice-grip of totalitarianism that people more readily associated with Dick Cheney. That source is Salon.com and particularly Glenn Greenwald’s column on Salon.

Today, Greenwald writes an awesome expose on Obama’s use of the “State Secrets” privilege to cover up the shadowy wings of the White House, one of the many skills he has learned and improved upon from his predecessor.