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NANNY STATE UPDATE….Attention California readers: just in case Will Smith’s recent 2-hour PSA on the subject didn’t convince you to stop, it is now illegal to text while driving here in the Golden State. Oddly enough, however, it’s still legal to text while bicycling. Also, it’s legal to send a text message to a company or other non-human entity while driving. It’s only illegal to text a person. This sounds like a traffic court nightmare in the making to me, but there you have it. Details here.

In other legal news, cyber-bullying is now illegal; it’s a crime to counterfeit carpool stickers; penalties have been increased for nitwits who call 911 for nonemergencies; the Office of Emergency Services and the Office of Homeland Security have been merged, probably because this worked so great on the federal level; it’s now illegal to use radio waves to read another person’s identifying information, so no scanning of other people’s RFID-equipped passports; and safety rules have been stepped up for operators of wave pools at amusement parks. More details here.

Remember: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Unless you’re Scooter Libby.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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