TikTok's intense collection of data about each user is a threat to Americans and to US national security. As EPIC points out, TikTok is far from the only such.

The same is true for many other "social media" platforms, and school education programs, and other proprietary programs. If you can't modify the program to send whatever made-up data you want to send, instead of true facts about you, it is not safe to use.

The ADPPA bill that EPIC recommends would reduce the existing massive internet surveillance, but it starts with the usual mistake: systems can collect data that is "reasonably necessary and proportionate to provide or maintain a product or service". That is too lax and will fail to protect privacy.

My article, linked above, provides a key test. Does the rule prohibit systems that charge for parking which make every driver enter per car's license plate number? That practice is dangerous surveillance; any law that fails to prohibit it is too weak.

The ADPPA's stricter rule for children and teenagers should apply to everyone, but even that could be interpreted in a way that is too weak. We can be sure companies will press for the weak interpretation. This requirement must be bulletproof.

The CHIPS act is intended to discourage US semiconductor companies from outsourcing of chip manufacturing to hostile countries such as China. A look at the details of how it is supposed to achieve this shows the weakness and timidity of the US government in dealing with any sort of big business.

The US government hasn't got the gumption to prohibit US companies from doing things that put the nation in danger, or even to penalize them to discourage doing so. The best it can manage is to offer subsidies if they avoid those actions.

For this reason and many others, making America great again starts with slapping down the businesses that think they own it.

Here's the White House statement lauding the law.

The Pentagon should include, in its planning for where to put military bases, the predictable extra cost of putting the base in a state which prohibits abortion.

I'd go further. I'd suggest a policy of actively restationing units and activities from abortion-restricting states to abortion-tolerant states, with a goal of moving moving nearly all to the latter in 10 years.

Right-wing fanatics in Wisconsin ordered a first-grade class not to sing the song Rainbow land.

The song's words advocate tolerance instead of hate in a very general way, but the word "rainbow" was more than the censors could stand for.

Former Texas governor Connally talked with Middle Eastern leaders in 1980 trying to convince Iran to hold on to the US embassy hostages, so that Reagan would win the 1980 election.

This is according to Ben Barnes, who worked for him and accompanied him on the trip.

Officials of various countries have affirmed, over the years, that Reagan made a deal with Khomeini to refuse to free the US embassy hostages before the 1980 presidential election. Here is Greg Palast's report on Ben Barnes.

It accuses him of a lot of nastiness, but doesn't answer the questions it raises: why did Barnes not say this before, and why does he say it now? But, it doesn't cast much doubt on his recent statement.

As for calling "Dubya" a "draft-dodger". that term should not be used. I rebuke Dubya for many wrongs, including the crime of starting a war of aggression against Iraq. But there is nothing wrong in trying to escape from being conscripted into an unjust war.

That includes the Vietnam War, which the US ramped up based on fabricating the fictitious "incident" in the Gulf of Tonkin.

And it includes Putin's invasion of Ukraine. We should support Russians who are doing whatever it takes to avoid fighting in the Putin forces.