I originally posted this to the G+ app on the tablet, but have rewritten large parts of it here.

I was reading an article linked below on the tablet when I clicked a little “sharing” icon in my browser which passed the link to another application (G+). According to a recent ruling, you won’t be able to buy an HTC android device that can do that after April, 2012 (unless HTC figures out another way to do it) because Apple says they patented the technique in 1996. Apple was making Newtons and Power PCs running MacOS in 1996. The patent diagram even includes a floppy drive!. How ludicrous is it to try to apply a technique developed for an operating system long since abandoned (in favor of a open source unix OS) to shut down the use of a “similar” technique in an open source unix OS (android) developed 15 years later? Ironic because you have one company (Apple) which has built its last 10 years of success on top of an open source OS (OSX from BSD Unix) and is claiming another company can’t use some little piece of open source code because its similar to something they got rid of because it sucked?

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President Obama’s war in Libya, even if it is moral, prudent and legally authorized under international law by the Security Council, is plainly unconstitutional

Michael Lind lays out the case pretty well in today’s Salon article for why he thinks Obama’s order to assist in the UN action against Ghadafi is illegal. On the one hand I really believe it would be the height of hypocrisy for America to refuse to assist any movement of people living under an authoritarian regime to overthrow their oppressors when our very existence as a nation is the direct result of French assistance to us during our struggle against the English in our own War for Independence. It seems especially hypocritical considering the sheer volume of rhetoric we’ve thrown around for 40 years concerning democracy while silently propping up the very dictators we’re asked to remove now. But on the other hand, if the president doesn’t have the authority to order military actions (even if requested by allied UN nations and required by UN treaty obligations), then he doesn’t have it. If an act of Congress is required to authorize military action in support of a UN resolution under article 42 then Congress should be asked to authorize it. I understand the time-sensitive nature of the situation, and that swift action may have been required, but certainly there is always enough time to obey the law?
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