More Hacking To Come?

The Russians apparently hacked an electrical utility in Vermont.

Maybe they were trying to send a message to Bernie Sanders?

According to U.S. officials, the Russians planted some malware on a laptop at Burlington Electric, a power company serving the state's largest city (Burlington, population 42,452).  The laptop, fortunately, was not connected to the grid, and the malware was isolated.  But if the Russians - or anyone else - could get a piece of malware onto an electric company's laptop in a small city in the second-least populated state in the Union, it means that they - or someone - are looking to go for bigger game thereafter.

I'm beginning to wonder if sites on the Internet are next.  This is scary . . ..  This could be the start of something big! :-O

Gay Marriage Progress

With hopes for gun control legislation stalled by the continuing fear of wrath of the National Rifle Association and the chance to do something about global warming in jeopardy of being torpedoed the ramblings of noted skinflint Newt Gingrich (who says it's too costly to do anything about) and noted scientific non-expert Michele Bachmann finding no problem with a little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's still refreshing to note that gay marriage is slowly gaining acceptance. Iowa's Supreme Court ruled that it's constitutional to ban gay marriages because it discriminates against gay couples. Meanwhile, Connecticut's Republican governor signed a bill allowing it in her state (even though it was already technically legal, while the Vermont legislature legalized it over the veto of its Republican governor.

This strange confluence of events is federalism in action. It's allowing the issue to play out in the states and it's slowly gaining acceptance in unlikely places like Iowa and being fought for tooth and nail in Vermont, but the momentum is clearly on the side of proponents of this important civil rights issue.

The sticking point remains, oddly enough, California, where the state's "laid-back" residents proved to be too uptight to allow it by vote despite the acceptance of gays in San Francisco and the movie industry and the support for gay marriage from Governor Schwarzenegger. At least California voters expressed their bigotry in a secret ballot; Miss California USA's objections were too blatantly public and downright foolish.