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Go grab yourself a cup of coffee (or a shot of tequila) and fire up your computer, because you really must take a few minutes to soak in the new article written by Chris Whipple and recently published in Vanity Fair. — Read the rest
The post "Cronyism in couture": Vanity Fair publishes brilliant new portraits, capturing the "hideousness of this administration" appeared first on Boing Boing.
We’ve obviously done a ton of coverage on RFK Jr. as the head of Health and Human Services because, well, he’s an unmitigated disaster. Between all the chaos he’s created with his hiring/firing practices at HHS and its child agencies, the mass exodus of talent from those agencies, and all the anti-vaxx bullshit he’s pulled with ACIP, the CDC, and agency websites, he’s a damned problem and not nearly enough of our Congress people seem willing to do anything about it. And that’s not even getting into the ongoing measles and pertussis outbreaks that are occurring in several states as we speak.
In many of our posts on Kennedy, we have begged for someone to do something about all of this. One of those possible things that could be done is to at least try to impeach this brain-wormed assclown. And now, finally, someone did. Rep. Haley Stevens of Mighigan introduced articles of impeachment this week.
“RFK Jr. has got to go. Today, I introduced articles of impeachment to remove him from office. RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and public health and on the American people,” Stevens said in a video statement released on the social platform X. “Under his watch, families are less safe, health care costs are skyrocketing, and lifesaving research — including right here in Michigan — is being gutted,” she said in the video.
“I cannot and I will not stand by while one man dismantles decades of medical progress,” she continued. “Enough is enough, and that is why I’m pushing to impeach RFK Jr., to hold him accountable and to protect the health, safety and future of every Michigander because our health, our science and our future are worth fighting for.”
Now, let me prepare you for what you’re about to hear. Stevens, as mentioned, is campaigning for a Senate seat in her state. Thus far, polling suggests it’s not going all that well, with Stevens trailing Republican Mike Rogers by several points, though she has been closing the gap recently. What you’re going to hear about this, from Republicans and some Democrats, is that this impeachment effort is a stunt to raise Stevens’ profile in the race to get more name recognition and build turnout among Democrats.
Let me make this as clear as I possibly can: even if that is true, I don’t fucking care. If that’s what it takes to at least attempt to oust Kennedy from his role, so be it. But I also do not think that is what Stevens is doing, given her larger track record on Kennedy.
Stevens has repeatedly called for Kennedy’s removal from his role since he became HHS secretary and said in September she intended to file impeachment articles against him over the “heath care chaos” under his watch. The measure is not likely to pass in a Republicans-controlled Congress.
We’ll just have to see about that last bit. It’s probably correct that Republicans won’t go against Dear Leader and do the right thing, but they should be put on the record as such. Vote against impeachment if you wish. Make yourself a responsible party to all of the horrors Kennedy has, is, and will visit upon Americans’ health. The deaths from measles. The Hep B infections in newborns, along with the long-tail health effects of those infections, including deaths. Declining vaccination rates due to the misinformation vomited from Kennedy and his hand-picked cadre of cronies. A vote against impeaching Kennedy will serve as cosigning all of the above. All of it.
Bill Cassidy could certainly help here, if he wants to stop being a partisan for ten minutes and put his doctor’s coat back on. Cassidy was a crucial vote in Kennedy’s confirmation to HHS, as well as being something of a silent whip for other Republican votes that were unsure on voting for Kennedy’s confirmation. He can likewise now serve the opposite purpose. He can come out in favor of Stevens’ articles of impeachment, whip Republican votes for it, and begin to undo the harm that he helped create through the confirmation process. He’s spilled plenty of words worrying out loud about what Kennedy is doing. Now let him back it up.
Either way, get everyone on the record. Are you okay with Kennedy’s dismantling of decades of progress made on various matters of health, or are you not? That is what an impeachment vote would be asking.
It’s no secret that 2025 has given Americans plenty to protest about. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers—including U.S. Border Patrol agents—were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car.
Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety’s servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock’s national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate.
Flock Safety provides ALPR technology to thousands of law enforcement agencies. The company installs cameras throughout their jurisdictions, and these cameras photograph every car that passes, documenting the license plate, color, make, model and other distinguishing characteristics. This data is paired with time and location, and uploaded to a massive searchable database. Flock Safety encourages agencies to share the data they collect broadly with other agencies across the country. It is common for an agency to search thousands of networks nationwide even when they don’t have reason to believe a targeted vehicle left the region.
Via public records requests, EFF obtained datasets representing more than 12 million searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. The data shows that agencies logged hundreds of searches related to the 50501 protests in February, the Hands Off protests in April, the No Kings protests in June and October, and other protests in between.
The Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma was one of the most consistent users of Flock Safety’s ALPR system for investigating protests, logging at least 38 such searches. This included running searches that corresponded to a protest against deportation raids in February, a protest at Tulsa City Hall in support of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, and the No Kings protest in June. During the most recent No Kings protests in mid-October, agencies such as the Lisle Police Department in Illinois, the Oro Valley Police Department in Arizona, and the Putnam County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s Office all ran protest-related searches.
While EFF and other civil liberties groups argue the law should require a search warrant for such searches, police are simply prompted to enter text into a “reason” field in the Flock Safety system. Usually this is only a few words–or even just one.
In these cases, that word was often just “protest.”
Crime does sometimes occur at protests, whether that’s property damage, pick-pocketing, or clashes between groups on opposite sides of a protest. Some of these searches may have been tied to an actual crime that occurred, even though in most cases officers did not articulate a criminal offense when running the search. But the truth is, the only reason an officer is able to even search for a suspect at a protest is because ALPRs collected data on every single person who attended the protest.
2025 was an unprecedented year of street action. In June and again in October, thousands across the country mobilized under the banner of the “No Kings” movement—marches against government overreach, surveillance, and corporate power. By some estimates, the October demonstrations ranked among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, filling the streets from Washington, D.C., to Portland, OR.
EFF identified 19 agencies that logged dozens of searches associated with the No Kings protests in June and October 2025. In some cases the “No Kings” was explicitly used, while in others the term “protest” was used but coincided with the massive protests.
| Law Enforcement Agencies that Ran Searches Corresponding with “No Kings” Rallies * Anaheim Police Department, Calif. * Arizona Department of Public Safety * Beaumont Police Department, Texas * Charleston Police Department, SC * Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Fla. * Georgia State Patrol * Lisle Police Department, Ill. * Little Rock Police Department, Ark. * Marion Police Department, Ohio * Morristown Police Department, Tenn. * Oro Valley Police Department, Ariz. * Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, Tenn. * Richmond Police Department, Va. * Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Calif. * Salinas Police Department, Calif. * San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office, Calif. * Spartanburg Police Department, SC * Tempe Police Department, Ariz. * Tulsa Police Department, Okla. * US Border Patrol |
For example:
But the No Kings protests weren’t the only demonstrations drawing law enforcement’s digital dragnet in 2025.
For example:
Some agencies have adopted policies that prohibit using ALPRs for monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet many officers probed the nationwide network with terms like “protest” without articulating an actual crime under investigation.
In a few cases, police were using Flock’s ALPR network to investigate threats made against attendees or incidents where motorists opposed to the protests drove their vehicle into crowds. For example, throughout June 2025, an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer logged three searches for “no kings rock threat,” and a Wichita (Kan.) Police Department officer logged 22 searches for various license plates under the reason “Crime Stoppers Tip of causing harm during protests.”
Even when law enforcement is specifically looking for vehicles engaged in potentially criminal behavior such as threatening protesters, it cannot be ignored that mass surveillance systems work by collecting data on everyone driving to or near a protest—not just those under suspicion.
As U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), ICE, and other federal agencies tasked with immigration enforcement have massively expanded operations into major cities, advocates for immigrants have responded through organized rallies, rapid-response confrontations, and extended presences at federal facilities.
USBP has made extensive use of Flock Safety’s system for immigration enforcement, but also to target those who object to its tactics. In June, a few days after the No Kings Protest, USBP ran three searches for a vehicle using the descriptor “Portland Riots.”
USBP also used the Flock Safety network to investigate a motorist who had “extended his middle finger” at Border Patrol vehicles that were transporting detainees. The motorist then allegedly drove in front of one of the vehicles and slowed down, forcing the Border Patrol vehicle to brake hard. An officer ran seven searches for his plate, citing “assault on agent” and “18 usc 111,” the federal criminal statute for assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer. The individual was charged in federal court in early August.
USBP had access to the Flock system during a trial period in the first half of 2025, but the company says it has since paused the agency’s access to the system. However, Border Patrol and other federal immigration authorities have been able to access the system’s data through local agencies who have run searches on their behalf or even lent them logins.
Law enforcement’s use of Flock’s ALPR network to surveil protesters isn’t limited to large-scale political demonstrations. Three agencies also used the system dozens of times to specifically target activists from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal-rights organization known for using civil disobedience tactics to expose conditions at factory farms.
Delaware State Police queried the Flock national network nine times in March 2025 related to DxE actions, logging reasons such as “DxE Protest Suspect Vehicle.” DxE advocates told EFF that these searches correspond to an investigation the organization undertook of a Mountaire Farms facility.
Additionally, the California Highway Patrol logged dozens of searches related to a “DXE Operation” throughout the day on May 27, 2025. The organization says this corresponds with an annual convening in California that typically ends in a direct action. Participants leave the event early in the morning, then drive across the state to a predetermined but previously undisclosed protest site. Also in May, the Merced County Sheriff’s Office in California logged two searches related to “DXE activity.”
As an organization engaged in direct activism, DxE has experienced criminal prosecution for its activities, and so the organization told EFF they were not surprised to learn they are under scrutiny from law enforcement, particularly considering how industrial farmers have collected and distributed their own intelligence to police.
The targeting of DxE activists reveals how ALPR surveillance extends beyond conventional and large-scale political protests to target groups engaged in activism that challenges powerful industries. For animal-rights activists, the knowledge that their vehicles are being tracked through a national surveillance network undeniably creates a chilling effect on their ability to organize and demonstrate.
ALPR systems are designed to capture information on every vehicle that passes within view. That means they don’t just capture data on “criminals” but on everyone, all the time—and that includes people engaged in their First Amendment right to publicly dissent. Police are sitting on massive troves of data that can reveal who attended a protest, and this data shows they are not afraid to use it.
Our analysis only includes data where agencies explicitly mentioned protests or related terms in the “reason” field when documenting their search. It’s likely that scores more were conducted under less obvious pretexts and search reasons. According to our analysis, approximately 20 percent of all searches we reviewed listed vague language like “investigation,” “suspect,” and “query” in the reason field. Those terms could well be cover for spying on a protest, an abortion prosecution, or an officer stalking a spouse, and no one would be the wiser–including the agencies whose data was searched. Flock has said it will now require officers to select a specific crime under investigation, but that can and will also be used to obfuscate dubious searches.
For protestors, this data should serve as confirmation that ALPR surveillance has been and will be used to target activities protected by the First Amendment. Depending on your threat model, this means you should think carefully about how you arrive at protests, and explore options such as by biking, walking, carpooling, taking public transportation, or simply parking a little further away from the action. Our Surveillance Self-Defense project has more information on steps you could take to protect your privacy when traveling to and attending a protest.
For local officials, this should serve as another example of how systems marketed as protecting your community may actually threaten the values your communities hold most dear. The best way to protect people is to shut down these camera networks.
Everyone should have the right to speak up against injustice without ending up in a database.
Originally posted to the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.
Yesterday, Rep. Harriet Hageman released her bill to repeal Section 230. She’s calling it “reform,” but make no mistake—it’s a repeal, and I’ll explain why below. The law turns 30 in February, and there’s a very real chance this could be its last anniversary.
Which is why we’re running Techdirt’s fundraising campaign right now, offering our very first commemorative coin for donations of at least $100 made before January 5th. That coin celebrates those 30 years of Section 230. But more importantly, your support funds the kind of coverage that can actually cut through the bullshit at a moment when it matters most.
Because here’s the thing: for nearly three decades, we’ve been one of the only sources to report fully and accurately on both how Section 230 works and why it’s so important. And right now, with a bipartisan coalition gunning to kill it based on myths and misinformation, that expertise is desperately needed.
Just in the last week or so on Bluesky I’ve posted two separate threads debunking some blatantly false narratives around Section 230 (one claiming that Section 230 means you’re not a publisher and another claiming that Section 230 is a “get out of jail free” card).
Section 230 remains one of the most misunderstood laws in America, even among the people in Congress trying to destroy it. Some of that confusion is deliberate—political expediency wrapped in talking points. But much of it has calcified into “common knowledge” that’s actively wrong. The “platform or publisher” distinction that doesn’t exist in the law. The idea that 230 protects illegal content. The claim that moderation choices forfeit your protections. All myths. All dangerous. All getting repeated by people who should know better.
So below, I’m highlighting some of our essential Section 230 coverage—not as a greatest hits compilation, but as a roadmap to understanding what’s actually at stake. If you believe in the open internet, you need Section 230. And if you need Section 230, you need someone who actually understands it fighting back against the tsunami of bullshit. That’s what you’re funding when you support Techdirt.
Let’s start with the big one. Our most popular post ever on Section 230:
Five years later, this is still the single most useful thing you can hand someone who’s confidently wrong about Section 230. It systematically demolishes every major myth—the platform/publisher nonsense, the “neutrality” requirement that doesn’t exist, the “good faith” clause people misread, all of it—in a format designed to be shared. And people do share it, constantly, because the same wrong arguments keep recycling. Consider this your foundation.
Why Section 230 ‘Reform’ Effectively Means Section 230 Repeal
This is the piece that exposes the semantic game. Politicians love to say they’re not repealing 230, just “reforming” it. But as Cathy Gellis explains, nearly every reform proposal accomplishes the same thing: it forces websites into expensive, extended litigation to reach an outcome the law currently reaches in weeks. That’s not reform—it’s sabotage by procedure. The real benefit of 230 isn’t the outcome (most of these cases would eventually win on First Amendment grounds anyway), it’s that you get there for $100k instead of $5 million. Strip that away and you’ve effectively repealed the law for everyone except the richest companies. Which, spoiler alert, is exactly the point of most “reform” proposals.
Those Who Don’t Understand Section 230 Are Doomed To Repeal It
A near universal trait of those who show up with some crazy idea to “reform” Section 230 is that they don’t understand how the law works, despite the many explainers out there (and an entire book by Jeff Kosseff). And that’s why, as with Cathy’s article above, the advocates for reform lean in on the claim that they’re just “reforming” it when they’re actually leading to an effective repeal.
Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?)
Law professor James Boyle asks the more interesting question: why do smart people keep getting this so catastrophically wrong? His answer—cognitive biases, analogies to other areas of law that don’t actually apply, and the sheer difficulty of thinking clearly about speech policy—explains why the same bad ideas keep resurfacing despite being debunked repeatedly. Understanding the psychology of the confusion is almost as important as correcting it.
Your Problem Is Not With Section 230, But The 1st Amendment
So many complaints about Section 230 are actually complaints about the First Amendment in disguise. People angry that a website won’t remove certain speech often blame 230, but the reality is that the First Amendment likely protects that speech anyway. Prof. Jess Miers explains why killing 230 won’t magically enable the censorship people want—it’ll just make the process more expensive and unpredictable. Some people hear that and think “great, we can rely on the First Amendment alone then!” Which brings us to:
Why Section 230 Is Better Than The First Amendment
This is the piece that clicks it all into place. Prof. Eric Goldman’s paper explains that 230 isn’t an alternative to First Amendment protection—it’s a procedural shortcut to the same outcome. Without 230, most of these lawsuits would still eventually fail on First Amendment grounds. The difference is it would cost $3-5 million in legal fees to get there instead of $100k. That $100k vs $5 million gap is the difference between an ecosystem where small companies can exist and one where only giants survive. Anyone telling you we can just rely on the First Amendment either doesn’t understand this or is deliberately trying to consolidate the internet into a handful of megacorps.
NY Times Gets 230 Wrong Again; Misrepresenting History, Law, And The First Amendment
And now we get to the part where even the supposed experts fuck it up. The NY Times—the Paper of Record—has made the same basic factual error about Section 230 so many times they’ve had to run variations of this correction repeatedly:
If it feels like you can’t trust the mainstream media to accurately report on Section 230, you’re not wrong. And that’s why we do what we do at Techdirt.
Even the tech press—outlets that should know better—regularly faceplants on this stuff. This Wired piece was so aggressively wrong it read like parody. The value here is watching us dissect not just the errors, but how someone can write thousands of words about a law while fundamentally misunderstanding what it does.
The title says it all. When former members of Congress—people who theoretically understand how laws work—produce something this catastrophically wrong, it reveals the scope of the problem. These aren’t random trolls; these are people with institutional credibility writing op-eds that influence policy. The danger here is that their ignorance carries weight.
Before Advocating To Repeal Section 230, It Helps To First Understand How It Works
The pattern is almost comical: someone decides 230 is bad, spends zero time understanding it, then announces a “solution” that would either accomplish nothing or catastrophically backfire. This piece is representative of dozens we’ve written, each time responding to a new flavor of the same fundamental confusion, like no other publication online.
No, Revoking Section 230 Would Not ‘Save Democracy’
People have assigned Section 230 almost mystical properties—that it’s the reason democracy is failing, or that repealing it would somehow fix polarization, or radicalization, or misinformation. The law does none of these things, good or bad. This piece dismantles the fantasy thinking that treats 230 like a magic wand.
Five Section 230 Cases That Made Online Communities Better
Amid all the doom-saying, it’s worth remembering what 230 actually enables. Jess Miers walks through five specific cases where the law protected communities, support groups, review sites, and services that improve people’s lives. Repealing 230 doesn’t just hurt Facebook—it destroys the ecosystem of smaller communities that depend on user-generated content.
Please support our continued reporting on Section 230
There are dozens more pieces in our archives, each responding to new variations of the same fundamental misunderstandings. We’ve been doing this for nearly three decades—long before it was politically fashionable to attack 230, and we’ll keep doing it as long as the law is under threat.
Because here’s what happens if we lose this fight: the internet consolidates into a handful of platforms big enough to survive the legal costs. Smaller communities die. Innovation gets strangled in the crib. And ironically, the problems people blame on 230—misinformation, radicalization, abuse—all get worse, because only the giants with the resources to over-moderate will survive, and they’ll moderate in whatever way keeps advertisers and governments happy, not in whatever way actually serves users.
That’s the stakes. Not whether Facebook thrives, but whether the next generation of internet services can even exist.
We’re committed to making sure policymakers, journalists, and anyone who cares about this stuff actually understand what they’re about to destroy. But we need support to keep doing it. If you agree that Section 230 matters, and that someone needs to keep telling the truth about it when even the NY Times can’t get basic facts right, support Techdirt today. Consider a $230 donation and get our first commemorative coin, celebrating 30 years of a law that’s under existential threat and making sure it survives to see 31.
The sign on the door of the State Historical Society of Iowa’s Centennial Building, where the society’s Iowa City research facility has been located since 1956, let visitors on Wednesday know there were only a few days left to access its remarkable archival collections or even the building itself.
The Centennial Building has been open Wednesdays through Fridays, by appointment only, since July 9. The facility is scheduled to close, perhaps permanently, and lay off the one full-time staff member still working there on Dec. 31.
The restricted hours and the plan to shutter the Centennial Building, resulting in the dismantling of its collections, was announced by the SHSI on June 17. The Iowa City archives had been underfunded for decades, despite its national reputation as an important center for historical research and its active role collaborating with communities throughout eastern Iowa. Still, the announcement was a surprise. The main reason given for the decision was that it would save DAS money, as the department was experiencing a budget shortfall.
The announcement did not address the fact that Iowa Code mandates SHSI, which was founded in Iowa City in 1857, “shall… Maintain research centers in Des Moines and Iowa City.”
There were about two dozen people in the reading area on the first floor of the Centennial Building on Wednesday afternoon. Most were union members and part of group organized by the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, to give members a chance to see the building’s extensive collection of material on Iowa workers and unions, before Dec. 31.
The labor history collection in Iowa City occupies 8,000 feet in the Centennial Building and includes an oral history project started during the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. It contains interviews with workers, from those still early in their careers to someone born in 1876.
“The project resulted in 1,200 oral history interviews with the rank-and-file workers and union members in Iowa, from 75 different occupational groups,” Mary Bennett, who was at the Centennial Building on Wednesday afternoon to help guide people through the collection, told Little Village. “Steelworkers, meatpackers, John Deere and International Harvester workers, all kinds of stories are documented here — richly documented with photographs, meeting records like minute books, union constitutions and bylaws, proceedings of meetings from the Iowa Federation of Labor. It’s a very inclusive collection. It’s a hallmark collection at the national level.”
“You’d have to go to the Walter Reuther Archive in Michigan or to New York City to find such a comprehensive collection as we have here in Iowa. We’re very lucky to have it.”
Bennett is a former special collections coordinator who worked at the Iowa City facility for 49 years before retiring in 2023. She has been a leader in the fight to reverse the decision to close the Centennial Building, and is one of 17 who sued the state in September to prevent the dismantling of the Iowa City archive and reverse the decision to close the building.
On Oct. 6, before the first hearing in the lawsuit, workers from Iowa Prison Industries started removing material from the Centennial Building. One of the concerns immediately expressed after the SHSI announcement in June — not only in Iowa, but also by national organizations representing historians and archivists — was if there had been sufficient preparations made to handle the 34,700 cubic feet of material inside. Moving or restructuring a collection requires careful planning. As the extremely compressed schedule for closing the facility and the use of imprisoned workers with no special training suggest, there was no careful planning.
State Archivist Tony Jahn, who supports closing the Iowa City facility, has said that 40 percent of the Centennial Building’s material will be transferred to the archives in Des Moines. What will happen to the rest is unclear.
On Oct. 24, Johnson County District Court Judge Kevin McKeever issued a temporary injunction prohibiting further removal of materials from the Centennial Building until the lawsuit over the Iowa City facility is resolved.
The labor history archives weren’t touched by the IPI workers. They removed books and the research center’s extensive collection of historical journals from other states. In the early 20th century, Benjamin Shambaugh, the leading Iowa historian of his day and the first superintendent of the SHSI, set up an exchange program with archives in other states in which the SHSI sent its history journal and received state journals from the other archives.
Because SHSI was archiving those journals, “the University of Iowa never collected paper copies of the journals,” Bennett explained. “We had the collection that the professors would come and look at.”
But, as Bennett pointed out, Jahn considered the journals unnecessary because they weren’t specifically about Iowa. Current SHSI Administrator Valerie Van Kooten dismissively described them as “travel books from other states.”
“They’re gone now,” Bennett said about the more than a century’s worth of journals. “Where did they go?”
While the temporary injunction won’t prevent SHSI and DAS from closing the Centennial Building on Dec. 31, leaving no staff member to supervise the handling of fragile materials, it does give local legislators time to take action to preserve the Iowa City facility.
Rep. Adam Zabner and Rep. Dave Jacoby, both Johnson County Democrats, started working this summer on a bill to reverse the decision by DAS, and will introduce it at the beginning of next legislative session on Jan. 12. Zabner and Jacoby were at the Centennial Building on Wednesday, along with Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner.
Jacoby told Little Village that on Tuesday, he and union leader Bill Gerhard drove to Wilton to meet with Rep. Bobby Kaufmann. Gerhard is the president of the Iowa State Building and Construction Trades Council, as well as the vice president of Iowa Labor History Society. Kaufmann, a Republican from Wilton, is the majority leader in the Iowa House.
“It was a great conversation,” Jacoby said. “We have an agreement that the Zabner-Jacoby bill will be the Zabner, Jacoby and Kaufmann bill. He not only agreed to sign on to the bill, but said that he’ll join us in doing what we can to prevent the closure.”
“Promises sometimes don’t mean a lot in the world of politics, but I trust him,” he added.
Jacoby said that just before he came to the Centennial Building he had been on the phone with the House staffer, discussing the particulars of the bill.
“As soon as the copy is ready, I will go to Des Moines, pick up the draft sheet, drive it to Wilton and have a meeting with Bobby,” he said. After Kaufmann signs, Jacoby plans to drive the draft bill around the state and collect signatures from other House members.
“I don’t want to wait till Jan. 12,” he said. “The injunction gives us a chance. I’m excited by that.”
The Zabner-Jacoby-Kaufmann bill won’t be the only bill about the closure of the Centennial Building. Reportedly, DAS has drafted a bill that would change Iowa Code to eliminate the requirement that SHSI maintain a research center in Iowa City.
Sen. Janice Weiner said her staff is continuing to question SHSI and DAS about the Centennial Building.
“A couple things have been very clear to me since the beginning,” the Iowa City Democrat said. “One, this is not an Iowa City issue. This belongs to all Iowans. And so many communities — not just labor, religious communities, ethnic communities, cities, companies and businesses — have records here. This is an essential part of our history and patrimony as Iowans.”
“The other piece is that this sort of happened by stealth with no legislative oversight,” she continued. “It’s the result of a budget cut that occurred at the last minute behind closed doors, done by our Republican colleagues in the Senate just before the end of session. There was never any mention in the budget subcommittees or the budget committee that this could be a result. It never came up.”
“I fully believe this should get legislative oversight. It shouldn’t be the decision of one head of DAS, who is no longer there, to dissolve and really make our history inaccessible.”
The DAS director who made the decision was Adam Steen. He resigned in August to launch a campaign for governor.
“I’m a Jesus guy. I’m a Make America Great Again guy,” Steen, a Republican, said at his campaign kickoff rally at a Des Moines-area church.
The Save Iowa History coalition that Bennett helped organize now has a website. It debunks misinformation that DAS has advanced in support of closing the Centennial Building, has updates on the lawsuit and suggestions for action supporters can take. It is also counting down the dwindling number of days the Centennial Building will be open.
“Only Six More Days for Research,” the site said on Thursday.
I don’t have much to add about Rob Reiner and wife Michelle Singer’s shocking death that other people haven’t said better, likewise any more to add about his career and political activism. It’s clear he was a good man and a very good filmmaker. What I will say is that very few people, much less filmmakers, had the sort of career run that he had as a director between 1984 and 1992: This is Spinal Tap. The Sure Thing. Stand by Me. The Princess Bride. When Harry Met Sally. Misery. A Few Good Men.
I mean, come on. With the exception of The Sure Thing, every single one of those is a stone classic, and The Sure Thing is still pretty good! It made a star out of John Cusack! There are things we still say because Rob Reiner directed the film those words were in: “This one goes to 11.” “As you wish.” “You can’t handle the truth,” and so on. You could go a whole day talking to people by only quoting Rob Reiner films and you could absolutely get away with it. No disrespect to Stephen King, Aaron Sorkin, William Goldman, Nora Ephron, etc who wrote the words, obviously. It’s Reiner who gave those words the platform to become immortal.
It’s odd and in retrospect a little enraging that in that entire run of films, Reiner was nominated for an Oscar only once, as a producer on A Few Good Men, and not ever since then. One sole Oscar nomination, not only for his own work, but for the work his production company had a hand in. Of course others were nominated because they were in or worked on his films and Kathy Bates even won, for Misery. But for Reiner himself, that one single nomination. It’s a reminder that what wins awards, and what stays in people’s hearts and minds, are sometimes very different things when it comes to movies.
If you want to know who Rob Reiner was as a filmmaker, here he is:
The beloved man who comes to you at a low point, spins you a tale, and then, when it’s done and you say to him that you would be happy to hear another story sometime, says “as you wish.” Rob Reiner’s work was and is beloved and it will last because of it.
He did good. He’s going to be missed. He is missed. This hurts.
— JS
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