The Case for Smaller Bills: Restoring Transparency in American Legislation

Introduction

The American legislative process has undergone a troubling transformation over the past century. What began as a system producing focused, comprehensible laws has evolved into one that regularly generates massive, incomprehensible omnibus bills thousands of pages long. This shift threatens the very foundations of democratic governance by making it impossible for legislators, let alone the public, to understand what they’re voting on or what has become law.

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025

Executive Power, Legal Precedent, and Political Hypocrisy

Every time there is a new President it seems we have the same arguments over what authorities the President has. Often these debates become hysterical shouting matches and usually they demonstrate both a lack of knowledge about our system of government and history.

February 15, 2025February 15, 2025

Two WordPress plugins that I had A.I. write for me.

Enhance Your WordPress Editor with Two Powerful Plugins

WordPress continues to evolve as a content management platform, and today had AI write two plugins that can significantly improve your content creation workflow: Post Search Replace and AI Content Assistant.

February 14, 2025February 15, 2025

Games they play – how governments and media shape narratives.

It is an interesting time we live in. While people have always tried to shape narratives it has become more important to be able to spot that activity. I listened to the congressional testimonies of Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, and realize just how bad things have gotten. And then the recent news about USAID and how it has been used to influence jorunalism.

February 13, 2025February 15, 2025

OMG, the size of the Federal Government. Elon Musk has no idea.

I recently saw a video clip of Elon Musk describing how hard it was to get a list of government agencies. Here is the clip: https://www.youtube.com /shorts/GXJvxPMY_H0

In the clip he says the Google and different AI’s say the number is around 400. Well I went to the government site https://www.opm.gov/about-us/open-government/Data/Apps/Agencies/index.aspx which lets you see the agencies. But of course the site makes it difficult to see them all. You have to use drop-down lists to filter. So for fun I used an AI to write a JavaScript program to scrape and list just the entries in the first category of “Cabinet Level Agencies”. The final result was a table with 63120 rows.

February 11, 2025February 12, 2025

New York Times game “Letterbox” bookmarklet cheat

I wrote a bookmarklet that finds a two word solution to the New York Times game “Letterbox”. It worked, but for fun I decided to let an AI rewrite it to be faster. Here is the code it came up with, but it did take several tries before it could open a new tab. It runs significantly faster than what I wrote.

February 10, 2025February 10, 2025

A Guide to Spotting & Avoiding Scams

Scams are everywhere, and they’re getting more sophisticated. But don’t worry—you’re not alone! This guide will help you recognize scams, protect yourself, and take action if you ever become a target.

February 10, 2025February 23, 2025

Executive Orders: Tool of Governance or Authoritarianism?

I was at a Superbowl party and someone claimed that President Trump is an authoritarian. I suspect an argument for that might be that presidents issue executive orders, especially if you happen to disagree with the policies of the President . Here is a brief history of executive orders and how they have been used historically, compared to recent times.

February 9, 2025February 9, 2025

The Psychology Behind Scams: How Fraudsters Exploit Human Behavior

Scams are not just about deception—they are psychological manipulations designed to exploit cognitive biases and emotional triggers. Despite advancements in security measures, fraudsters continue to succeed because they understand how people think and react under pressure. This article explores the key psychological principles that make scams effective and examine real-world examples demonstrating these tactics in action.

February 5, 2025February 5, 2025

Battle of Wits: AI vs. Community College Students

After years of teaching community college and working with AI, I’ve concluded that comparing their intelligence is like comparing apples to artificially generated images of apples. AI can instantly calculate complex derivatives that make calculus students weep, yet it confidently insists that Abraham Lincoln was the first astronaut to walk on Mars. Meanwhile, community college students might take 20 minutes to figure out how to connect to the schools network, but at least they know that playing computer games during lectures is a bad idea – most of the time.