geosoco

joined 2 years ago
 

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Unexplained Caribbean and European trips that cost taxpayers more than $90,000. A $600 sports coat paid for by an event organizer. A $45 office Christmas cake taken as his own.

These are among the perks that Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s former employees say he reveled in while using his office in ways that now have him facing a federal criminal investigation and potential ouster over allegations of corruption.

 

We’ve been talking a lot by the rush of states to push for age verification laws all over the world, despite basically every expert noting that age verification technology is inherently a problem for privacy and security, and the laws mandating it are terrible. So far, it seems that only the Australian government has decided to buck the trend and push back on implementing such laws. But, much of the rest of the world is moving forward with them, while a bunch of censorial prudes cheer these laws on despite the many concerns about them.

The Free Speech Coalition, the trade group representing the adult content industry, has sued to block the age verification laws in the US that specifically target their websites. We reported on how their case in Utah was dismissed on procedural grounds, because that law is a bounty-type law with a private right of action, so there was no one in the government that could be sued. However, the similar law in Texas did not include that setup (even as Texas really popularized that method with its anti-abortion law). The Free Speech Coalition sued over the law to block it from going into effect.

Judge David Alan Ezra (who is technically a federal judge in Hawaii, but is hearing Texas cases because the Texas courts are overwhelmed) has issued a pretty sweeping smackdown of these kinds of laws, noting that they violate the 1st Amendment and that they’re barred by Section 230.

 

A federal judge in Texas has stopped the state’s ban on drag performances, which was scheduled to go into place Friday, enforcing a temporary injunction on the measure in a win for LGBTQ rights advocates.

A group of drag performance groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, filed a suit against the state early this month claiming that the law is overly broad and infringes on their freedom of speech.

“The Court finds there is a substantial likelihood that S.B. 12 as drafted violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution under one or more of the legal theories put forward by the Plaintiffs,” District Judge David Hittner wrote in his opinion Thursday.

 

Now, the Federal Highway Administration has finished drafting a new, 11th edition of the MUTCD. The document is being reviewed by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Once the OMB approves the new Manual–likely later this summer or fall–it will be published and go into legal effect, shaping the design of U.S. streets for years to come.

view more: ‹ prev next ›