For those of you who don't know, Brooke Oberwetter, aka The Jefferson 1, was arrested for silently bopping her head in the Jefferson Memorial on April 13 as part of the Thomas Jefferson Dance Party, organized by our friends in Liberty over at Bureaucrash, to celebrate the occasion of Thomas Jefferson's 265th birthday, and as a way to revive the dancing-as-freedom meme.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:Really!? Standing around bopping your head on "public" property (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) is an arrestable offense?! Don't Park's Department personnel have more important things to do? Oh, right, they work for the Park's Department, of course they have nothing better to do. My bad.

Fore more info on the Jefferson 1 and to donate to her legal defense fund, visit the Free the Jefferson 1 weblog here.

New York is trying to collect taxes from online merchants, even if they have no physical presence in the state and Amazon is suing, claiming the law is unconstitutional.

From the New York Times:

Amazon filed a complaint in State Supreme Court in Manhattan objecting to the law, which was approved as part of the $122 billion state budget that Gov. David A. Paterson signed last week. The law is expected to raise about $50 million.

The issue is not whether people should pay tax when they buy goods from out-of-state sellers like Amazon. For decades, the state has required them to pay sales or use tax.

The question is whether the vendors must collect that tax on behalf of the state. Generally, only those companies that have a physical presence — like an office or store — in the state where the purchase is made are required to collect the tax.

The new law is based on a novel definition of what constitutes a presence in the state: It includes any Web site based in the state that earns a referral fee for sending customers to an online retailer. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of affiliates — from big publishers to tiny blogs — that feature links to its products. The state law says that thousands of those have given an address in New York State, although the addresses have not been verified.

Shouldn't the state where the business was located have the most legitimate claim on sales taxes from transactions that took place with that business. I'm just sayin'.

More here and here.

Here's an interesting little piece about a handicapped man being tackled, arrested, and put on trial for recording a conversation with a police officer.

If the police insist on not being recorded, citizens will just get sneaky, and start recording them on the sly.

[R]ightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual

Thomas Jefferson.

Just had to throw that quote out there.

Here's an interesting story on the the current state of space law over at Transterrestrial Musings.

It mostly deals with space regulation and ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations).

A very interesting article that points out what happens when government gets involved where it shouldn't.