The New York City Council adopted some limits on arbitrary searches of people's persons by the municipal thugs.

"Stop and frisk" without reasonable grounds for suspicion should not be allowed at all.

Everyone: thank Wendy Davis for defending women's rights with courage.

Iran's new president says he wants to reach a nuclear settlement with the US.

I hope the US looks for a settlement, and offers an end of sanctions as part of the deal. We can't take this for granted. Netanyahu will use his influence to prevent any settlement, because he wants the US and Iran to go to war rather than resolve differences peacefully.

The Iranian regime is a disgusting tyranny, which oppresses women and sometimes men too. But the US can't change this by conflict with Iran; the sanctions drive Iranians into supporting their government. Resolve this dispute, and the state will have nothing to distract the people with.

Facebook shut down some pages about protests in Turkey because they had "fake profiles". No surprise that people protesting in Turkey may not want to tell the Turkish state who they are.

This shows why any communication system that requires users to identify themselves is inadequate for democracy. That means Facebook and Google+ are no good. (Google+ allows pseudonyms, but since Google has an office in Turkey, Google would have to tell Turkey the user's real name.)

US citizens: call on Obama to pardon Snowden.