OpenCdA’s post on Saturday, April 2, 2016, titled Change in CdA Council Meeting Time? pointed out that the online agenda announing the Tuesday Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting contained a serious but easily correctable defect.  The agenda would, if executed as published, result in a violation of the Idaho Open Meetings Law.  The violation was not created by the meeting time change; it was created by the order of business as announced in the agenda.  The violation and lawful correction for the violation was explained in the post.

Today at about 5:59 AM, we went to the Coeur d’Alene City website and once again looked at the online Council meeting agenda.  It had been changed, perhaps in response to our post, but the change did not correct the original error.   Here is the new agenda as it appeared this morning.

The Idaho Open Meetings Law is clear about how public meetings must be announced and conducted.  It is equally clear about when and how Executive Sessions are authorized and what business may and may not be conducted in them. (more…)

Today’s Idaho Statesman published an opinion piece headlined Permitless carry bill ‘sets Idaho up for failure’.  The op-ed’s writer, True Pearce, identifies himself as “…  an Idaho attorney, professional competitive shooter and gun rights advocate.”

Our OpenCdA post on March 17, 2016, SB 1389: Did They Ask?, wondered if Idaho’s legislators had bothered to diligently research possible conflicts between Idaho’s proposed SB 1389 and the federal Gun Free School Zone Act.  Certainly the resources for doing the research were available to the legislators even if the legislative skill and political will to pass a state law consistent with the federal law eluded them.

Our recommendation is simple:  If you’re inclined to carry a concealed weapon in Idaho, lawfully obtain the appropriate level of state permit and put it with your driver’s license or identification card.  Having the state-issued permit does not allow you to violate either federal or state laws, but failing to possess one can result in a federal statutory violation where one would not otherwise have been.

The Spokane Police Ombudsman Commission seems to have a problem with its members.

First it was Coeur d’Alene’s own export, Rachel Dolezal.   Good ol’ Rach and two of her fellow commissioners were removed from the Ombudsman Commission in 2015 for abusing their authority.

Now in this morning’s Spokesman-Review skews paper article headlined Visa request of man picked to be Spokane police ombudsman denied, but commission hasn’t given up, we learn that provisional ombudsman selectee Raheel Humayun has been denied the expedited visa necessary for him to accept the job.  It seems the ombudsman job didn’t meet the requirements for an expedited visa.  (Didn’t the City of Cowlesville hire an immigration attorney to help him through the process to make sure that didn’t happen?)

But ne’er fear.  The current chairman of the Ombudsman Commission, Reverend Debra Conklin, has a workable solution:  Change some of the information provided by Humayun on his visa application, the one that was denied.  Or as the Cowles rag puts it:

Commission Chairwoman Deb Conklin suggested tweaking Humayun’s visa application and having him apply again at the Canadian border, an action recommended by an immigration attorney who has consulted with the commission. [emphasis ours]

Here’s the thing.  Visa appliction forms generally require the applicant to personally or digitally sign the application.  By signing, the applicant is certifying that he has read and understood the questions in the application and his answers are true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.   The applicant is also informed that the submission of an application containing false or misleading statements may result in the permanent refusal of a visa or the denial of entry into the United States.

OpenCdA does wonder what makes this Canadian citizen Raheel Humayun so indispensible to the Spokane Police Ombudsman Commission that its Chairman is encouraging him to “tweak” his visa application at the border?

After 33 years with the US Geological Survey, the Cal-Tech Earthquake Lady is movin’ on.  On March 30, 2016, Dr. Lucy Jones will retire.  Well, not quite.

Today’s Los Angeles Times has a deservedly flattering story about her life including her personal and professional accomplishments.  It’s headlined The Earthquake Lady is leaving her job — to shake up how you think about climate change.  This is a story that every parent with a student in grade school or high school ought to read.  Then have your daughters, sons, and grandchildren read it.

When we put up our OpenCdA post entitled We Love Lucy! on February 21, 2016, we didn’t know Dr. Jones was contemplating retirement.  We’re thrilled and completely unsurprised that she’s taking on a new scientific challenge.  Her philosophy of science is, “What good is scientific knowledge if people don’t use it?”

One of Dr. Jones’ biggest challenges was to get citizens and officials to take earthquake preparedness seriously.  More broadly, her biggest challenge was to get officials to incorporate verified science into public policy formulation.

In her next career, Dr. Jones hopes to create a center that helps bridge the fault between science and public policy formation.  We can’t think of a better person and a more qualified scientist to do it than Dr. Lucy Jones.

On Thursday, March 7, 2016, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) jointly issued a public safety announcement entitled Motor Vehicles Increasingly Vulnerable to Remote Exploits.  This PSA is far more complete than the information-lite versions of it in various online articles.

OpenCdA thinks that another logical attack against automotive electronic systems will be the passive acquisition of measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) from those automotive systems that now or soon will store information collected by the vehicle’s event data recorder, its onboard GPS and call-for-help systems (note the date on the linked article) as well as the operator’s personal biometric identifiers.

Car hacking is real, and it won’t be going away.