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All eyes on a state tax cut - Talk Business & Politics
In the General Election on Nov. 2, 2010, Arkansas voters approved Constitutional Amendment 86, which required the General Assembly to meet annually, with even-numbered years designated as the fiscal session....
Tennessee lawmakers widen field for private school players in public school sports bill
A last-minute amendment may have just widened the field.Tennessee lawmakers in the Senate advanced a bill on Monday that would let certain private school studen
Amendment 49: Corrections to C.13 Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration
C.13 Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration (STRIDE) solicits proposals from U.S. industry to conduct design studies of
81% of Americans Say Money Controls Politics – Can a Constitutional Amendment Fix It?
Polls consistently show that nearly all Americans across the political spectrum agree that there is too much money in politics – whether from foreign sources, corporations, or so-called “dark money” groups.
Omaha bar owner files lawsuit over right to use ‘barbershop’ in business name
An Omaha bar owner has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Nebraska Board of Barber Examiners after the state threatened him with fines and possible criminal charges over his business name.
The First Amendment protects the Second
It’s not an attack on the Second Amendment, but the First Amendment. I know this is going to sound crazy but, there was a time when liberals, not conservatives, were the champions of free speech. Today? Now in Colorado it is punishable to “mis-gender” someone. By speaking truthfully, say calling a man, “a man,” when […]
Effort to save, reform Business Council advances; Freedom Caucus presses to defund it.
A Senate committee passed a measure Monday to reform the agency, with an amendment to put lawmakers in charge rather than form a task force.
Tribute to late Charlie Kirk illuminates division in Kansas politics on meaning of free speech
Republicans and Democrats in Kansas Legislature take bright-line approach to questions about Charlie Kirk's use of First Amendment right to speech.
Judge temporarily blocks Pentagon from punishing Sen. Kelly for call to resist unlawful orders
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that Pentagon officials violated Kelly's First Amendment free speech rights and “threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.”
Noise restriction near health care facilities in Grand Rapids takes effect
An amendment to Grand Rapids’ noise ordinance takes effect Thursday, prohibiting amplified sound within 100 feet of hospitals and clinics.
Amendment 47: Corrections to B.2 Heliophysics Foundational Research
B.2 Heliophysics Foundational Research (HFR) solicits investigations that advance the fundamental physical understanding of the Sun-Heliosphere-Planetary
Amendment narrows ‘agricultural disparagement’ language in sweeping farm bill
The amendment would align the definition with federal commodity classifications.
Serbia: Reform denounced as a political takeover of justice
In a rushed, opaque procedure, Serbia's ruling majority has pushed through legal amendments that critics say undermine judicial independence and are designed to neutralize the prosecutors investigating organized crime.
Amendment 44: Final Text for B.2 Heliophysics Foundational Research
B.2 Heliophysics Foundational Research (HFR) solicits investigations that advance the fundamental physical understanding of the Sun-Heliosphere-Planetary
Alabama House votes to amend contract language for math, science teacher incentives
The amendment would allow veteran educators who have been teaching in for over 20 years to sign contracts up to three years in length.
Editorial cartoons for Feb. 1, 2026: ICE shooting in Minneapolis, political blowback, 2nd Amendment
The week in visual commentary.
Amendment 42: Several Changes to F.10 PRISM
F.10 Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) solicits development and flight of a science-driven suite of instruments and
Trump's response to Pretti killing upends Second Amendment politics : Here & Now Anytime
Alex Pretti was legally carrying a gun when a federal agent shot and killed him in Minneapolis last weekend. President Trump and other federal officials blamed his death on the fact that he had a gun, but Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus chair Bryan Strawser explains why he disagrees.And, after leading immigration operations in Minneapolis, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino has returned to his previous job in California. CalMatters investigative reporter Sergio Olmos talks about Bovino’s record in California.
Frederick zoning amendment could change rules for home businesses
Frederick business owners who operate out of their homes could have new rules under a zoning amendment being considered by the city's Planning Commission.
Virginia Democrats' redistricting resolution illegal due to technicality, judge finds
The judge also said the Democratic-led legislature failed to follow its own rules in adding the redistricting amendment to a special session, calling that “a blatant abuse of power.”
Killing of Alex Pretti scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump
The blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.
Killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis scrambles Second Amendment politics for Trump and Republicans
Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration's characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed in January by ...
Amendment 41: A.10 INNOVATE Updates
A.10 Impactful and novel use of NASA earth observations and models for value-added applications, technology, and societal benefits (INNOVATE) solicits
Gun rights groups and legal experts question Trump administration’s stance on the Second Amendment after shooting
Claims by Trump administration officials that the man fatally shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis lacked a right to possess a firearm and that his killing was justified are being dismissed by legal experts and assailed by gun rights groups ordinarily aligned with the president.
TABOR and the Colorado Constitution’s fiscal Gordian Knot
A corporate president advised me once there are two kinds of lawyers: “those who tell you why you can’t do things and those who figure out how to get things done anyway.” He only hired the latter. Since the adoption of the TABOR amendment in 1992, the Colorado legislature has opted for counsel from the […]
Trump administration goes after Second Amendment rights in justifying Minneapolis shooting
A number of pro-gun rights Republicans pushed back on the administration's argument that Alex Pretti was dangerous because he had a gun. Pretti was legally licensed to carry one.
Hamm v. Smith: The Limits of Legal Certainty when Science Evolves - Petrie-Flom Center
Can states keep IQ testing people sentenced to death until they get the “right” score for execution? What is really at the heart of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on executing people who have an intellectual disability?
New ICE warrant policy disregards a fundamental American right, experts say. Here’s what we know
With an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement memo that allows officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant, the Trump administration is seeking to usurp guardrails that are enshrined in the Fourth Amendment and have protected Americans’ civil liberties for centuries, experts in constitutional law and immigration policy told CNN.
Amendment 37: New Opportunity: C.12 Foundational Artificial Intelligence for the Moon and Mars
C.12 Foundational Artificial Intelligence for the Moon and Mars (FAIMM) is intended to enable individual researchers to participate as members of teams who
Amendment 36: New Program Element: F.19 Collaborative Opportunities for Mentorship, Partnership and Academic Success in Science
F.19 Collaborative Opportunities for Mentorship, Partnership and Academic Success in Science (COMPASS) funds collaborations between NASA Centers and academic
Amendment 34: A.6 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment Science Team Final Text and Due Dates
A.6 Earth Venture Suborbital-4 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment (LACCE) Science Team (ST) solicits proposals to build the full LACCE Science Team,
Israeli tech CEO calls on US govt to 'limit' First Amendment,' take control of social media to prevent 'lies'
Tech CEO Shlomo Kramer advocated government regulation of free speech during a CNBC interview, claiming First Amendment limitations necessary to prevent polarization and "lies."
Republicans must hold the line: No Hyde Amendment, no deal on health care
Any plan that does not include Hyde can never be viewed as “clean.”
The disunity of science is a feature, not a bug
Mathematical models wield miraculous power, but mistaking them for reality has trapped science in a destructive quest for a “Theory of Everything.” Physicist and philosopher Ragner Fjelland argues that this leads to bloated, Frankenstein theories kept alive by clumsy, ad-hoc amendments, which reduce rather than boost science’s power. Fjelland calls for a radical shift in our attitude: we must reorientate towards creating entirely new theories, celebrating rather than lamenting disunity and diversity in science. Science, from the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century to the present day, has more or less developed in a “reductionist” way. The fundamental assumption is that all sciences may be ordered in a hierarchy that can be represented as an upside-down pyramid. At the top we find the human sciences, and at the bottom physics. Strong (or “ontological”) reductionism maintains that all theories at one level can be completely reduced to the lower level, all the way down to theories of atoms and elementary particles, or whatever is “at the bottom.” In the end, all diversity in the world can be unified in one fundamental theory. Hence it is called a final theory, or a Theory of Everything.One of the central figures in developing the idea of a Theory of Everything is the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 for his work. He emphasizes the non-empirical status of the theory:There exists no closely resembling alternative theory. This means that any slight change brought about in the rules would make the theory unlikely or inelegant. The theory will be a "package deal": take it, or leave it. This should hold both for the local laws and for the boundary conditions.This endeavor is not new. On the contrary, it goes all the way back to the birth of Western philosophy 2,500 years ago. The Babylonians made regular astronomical observations during a period of 600 years, from 747 BCE until 150 ACE. They developed mathematical techniques to predict astronomical phenomena, but they made no attempts at explaining them. However, the Greeks developed models, both material and theoretical, to explain the observed phenomena.The best example is Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. Here he introduces a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who has constructed the universe according to an original plan. Plato seems to have thought that the original plan is what is actually real, while the material world is merely an imperfect realization of it. He therefore does not, in the Timaeus, reconstruct the material universe, but the original plan, which can then be used to explain the material universe.Plato’s aim in producing a theoretical model is to reconstruct the original plan. That is what he carries out in Timaeus—and some modern physicists have embarked on the same project. For example, Einstein’s basic attitude is reflected in the title of Abraham Pais’ biography: “Subtle is the Lord...,” echoing Einstein’s comment, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” In an interview Einstein compared our situation to a child who enters a huge library. The child knows that someone has written the books, but he does not know the languages in which they are written. He suspects that there is a mysterious order, but he does not know what it is.___“We have all been working in what Husserl called the Galilean style; that is, we have all been making abstract mathematical models of the universe to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the ordinary world of sensation.”Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)___This Platonist view is contrary to a widespread impression of science, symbolized by the picture of the “father” of modern science, Galileo Galilei, with his telescope. According to this impression, Galileo liberated himself from the dominating metaphysics of his day—basically Aristotelian philosophy—and constructed a telescope that he directed towards the sky, showing that Jupiter has four moons. He also performed experiments with bronze balls rolling down inclined planes and found the law of freely falling bodies.However, in other cases Galileo emphasized the unreliability of our senses. It is easy to see why. He defended Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we are not at rest at the center of the universe, but moving at a tremendous speed through space. Why don’t we observe this motion? Galileo praises Copernicus because “with reason as his guide he resolutely continued to affirm what sensible experience seemed to contradict.” In other places he directly refers to Plato. SUGGESTED VIEWING The quest for a final theory With Michio Kaku Galileo’s Platonism goes back to his early writings. In The Assayer, published as early as 1623, Galileo compared the universe to a grand book that is written in the language of mathematics, and “its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” Therefore, things that cannot be described by mathematics—for example, colors, smells and odors—are not real. They are merely subjective.This division into subjective and objective, advocated by Galileo and his younger contemporary René Descartes, is normally associated with a mechanistic world view, which is regarded as the opposite of Platonism. When we reduce something to, for example, molecules and atoms, we move “downwards.” In contrast, the Platonist moves “upwards,” to abstract entities. However, it only shows that when we address fundamental questions, we should be careful in applying everyday spatial metaphors like “up” and “down.”___Nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world.___The endeavor of finding a Theory of Everything has been heavily criticized. In 2006, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin published “The Crisis in Fundamental Physics.” He argued that one of the most fundamental principles of science is that we should only regard theories as scientific if we have the possibility to show that they are false by experiments. Although he did not refer to Karl Popper, other critics have referred to Popper and argued that a theory is not scientific if it cannot be falsified (see for example Ellis & Silk 2014).These were not the first physicists to be anti-reductionists. In 1972, the journal Science published an article by the physicist Philip Anderson with the title “More Is Different.” This is the kind of article a scientist would normally write only after he has won a Nobel Prize. However, Anderson won the Nobel Prize for physics five years later, in 1977. The article is amazing, not primarily because it argues in favor of anti-reductionism in general, but because it argues for anti-reductionism within physics itself. Anderson’s conclusion was:At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.We may say that Plato started the “unity of science movement,” based on Euclidean geometry as the model of all knowledge. A distinguishing mark of geometry is that all possible constructions can be reduced to a few fundamental principles. We have to acknowledge that this approach has limitations. In general, we can easily model technological systems. In addition, we may construct simplified and idealized models that capture important aspects of systems, from various perspectives and for various purposes. But nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world. In a complex system, each level has its distinct, emergent, properties that are characteristic of this level. Therefore, a complex system should be investigated at different levels and from different perspectives. Instead of exclusively pursuing a scientific ideal based on the unity of science, we should acknowledge the diversity—or even the disunity—of science.
The Return of the Antebellum Constitution
The Supreme Court and the president are undermining the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Trump tests the First Amendment: A timeline
Within weeks of retaking the White House, President Donald Trump boasted that he had “brought free speech back to America.” But since then, he has tested the limits of the First Amendment time and again.
Retired cop jailed for 37 days over Charlie Kirk meme sues, saying his First Amendment rights were violated
A retired Tennessee law enforcement officer was held in jail for more than a month this fall after police arrested him because of a Facebook post of a meme related to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Live updates: GOP health care bill comes to House floor; Senate takes up NDAA
The House is set to vote Wednesday on a narrow, GOP-crafted health care bill, having shut down any chance of an amendment that includes an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. A contentious …
Amendment 29: F.6 Science Activation Final Text and Due Date.
The Science Mission Directorate Science Activation Program encourages all people to actively participate in science through activities and resources developed
WATCH: Sen. Ossoff Urges Republicans to Put Politics Aside, Extend Affordable Care Act Tax Credits
“In this building, maybe it’s about the politics, but in the real world and in Georgia, this is life or death,” Sen. Ossoff said In June, Sen. Ossoff offered an amendment to the Trump budget bill to extend key Affordable Care Act tax credits, but Republicans blocked Sen. Ossoff’s amendment Washington, D.C. — Ahead of this week’s Senate […]
‘We’ll need to see a warrant’: the group teaching businesses vital tool to fight ICE raids
Siembra in North Carolina gives owners fourth amendment rights trainings should federal agents show up at their door
Supreme Court to debate if sidewalk preacher may pursue First Amendment suit
Gabriel Olivier’s lawyers will tell the Supreme Court on Wednesday that his sidewalk ministry is about sharing his faith with his fellow citizens – and should be protected by the First Amendment.
Missouri sports betting is now legal — here's what it means for residents, fans and teams
Missourians narrowly passed Amendment 2 in 2024, which legalized sports betting in the state. The constitutional amendment places Missouri among the nearly 40 states with legal sports gambling.