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Media Bits & Bytes – Tech Sector Barrels Along

Portside
Tech Companies have been in bed with the Pentagon for a long time; Feds Swap Data with Thousands of Firms; Balloon-powered Internet on the Horizon; Emotional Data Tugs at Internet Heartstrings; Uncertain Funding for Nonprofit News Sites; Who Needs Reporters Anyway?

60 Years On: The Rosenberg Case and Constructive Revenge

Robert Meeropol & Jenn Meeropol Rosenberg Fund for Children
Today, the issues raised by the Rosenberg case resonate from the Oval Office of the White House to Bradley Manning, who is being tried under the Espionage Act of 1917, as were Ethel and Julius.

NLRB Poster Rule Likely Dead After Second Federal Court of Appeals Ruling

Amanda Becker Reuters
The decision on Friday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a 2011 rule that required employers to post, physically or electronically, a notice describing workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act. It was the second time in as many months that a federal appeals court has rejected the rule, after the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals said last month the poster rule violated employers' free speech rights.

America Feeds the Rich

Leo Gerard Campaign for America's Future
The Farm Bill that is expected to pass the U.S. House this week explains income inequality in America.

A Bad Idea

Columnist Eugene Robinson The Washington Post

Arms

Martyn Turner Cagle

From Ike to “The Matrix”: Welcome to the American dystopia

Andrew O'Hehir Salon
We live in a country that embodies three different dystopian archetypes at once: America is partly a panopticon surveillance-and-security state, as in Orwell, partly an anesthetic and amoral consumer wonderland, as in Huxley, and partly a grand rhetorical delusion or “spectacle,” as in Dick or “The Matrix” or certain currents of French philosophy.