July 29, 1958: Ike Inks Space Law, NASA Born in Wake of Russ Moon

1958: President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The plot had thickened months before.
Beep … beep … beep …
They were steady, almost metronomic, signals coming from a tiny radio beacon orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes aboard an aluminum sphere measuring a mere 22 inches across. [...]

Judge Says Constitution Protects Right to Lie About Purple Heart

A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a little-known law making it a crime to falsely claim to have been awarded a military medal.
A Colorado man who was never in the military was arrested for falsely claiming to have won the Purple Heart (.pdf) and other medals as a Marine in Iraq. He challenged the Stolen [...]

Home Team Wins May Influence Elections

Whether politicians win or lose may come down to how local athletes play the game. When local football and basketball teams were victorious, voters were more pleased with elected officials, a study appearing online July 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds. The capricious link between sports teams and politicians’ performance [...]

June 29, 1956: Ike Signs Interstate Highway Act

1956: Urged to ease congestion on America’s roads, and inspired by Germany’s use of autobahns for troop movement during World War II, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.
The new law poured $33 billion (about $265 billion in modern purchasing power) into overhauling the country’s roadways. Then-Secretary of Commerce Sinclair [...]

Copyright Czar Backs IP Enforcement, ‘Fair Use’

Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel unveiled Tuesday the Obama administration’s first “Joint Strategic Plan” concerning intellectual property enforcement — and she gave a big nod to fair use.
The plan was required under the Pro-IP Act of 2008, which created Espinel’s post. The act was watered down to eliminate a Justice Department mandate that it assume duties [...]

Utah Attorney General Announces Execution on Twitter

Today marked an evolution of sorts for Twitter. It’s no longer just for following your favorite celebrity rants or for informing your followers you’re having a ham sandwich or just took a shower.
And self-promotion on Twitter seems so yesterday. Consider Friday’s tweets from Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. Around midnight, he tweeted that he’d given [...]

Justice O’Connor Says Videogames ‘Fabulous’ Teaching Tools

This year, the Supreme Court will decide if California’s law banning the sale of violent games to kids is constitutional. Too bad for us that retired justice Sandra Day O’Connor isn’t still on the bench.
In an interview on Good Morning America Wednesday, O’Connor extolled the virtues of videogames as a teaching tool for young kids. [...]

House GOP Launches a Republican Reddit

House GOP members unveiled a Reddit-like website Tuesday that lets users submit and rank policy ideas in categories ranging from national security to “American values.”
“It gives Americans a voice in changing the way Washington works and the policy it pursues,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California), said Tuesday on a video posted atop the site, Americaspeakingout.
But how [...]

May 14, 1771: Industrial Utopian Robert Owen Born

1771: Robert Owen is born in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in North Wales. The capitalist and social reformer will gain influence as a proponent of the humane treatment of industrial workers, a critic of unrestricted child labor, a co-founder of labor’s cooperative movement and the founder of several utopian communities.
The son of a saddler and ironmonger, [...]

May 10, 1869: Golden Spike Links Nation by Rail

1869: Four years after the Civil War, the United States is joined from coast to coast by a transcontinental railroad, as a ceremonial final spike is driven at Promontory Summit, Utah. Travel time from Atlantic to Pacific will soon fall from as much as six months, down to one week.
In an early example of [...]