History of Instagram

Instagram was started by 27 year old Stanford graduate Kevin Systrom who was working at nextstop in 2009. Systrom previously worked at Google as a corporate development associate and interned at Odeo, the company that would evolve into Twitter. Systrom was working in marketing but then started taking engineering classes at night to learn code. He created a prototype app of an idea he originally called Burbn, which allowed people to check-in where they are on their mobile web app. Systrom would end up meeting people who lucky enough worked for venture capitalist firms at a party and got them to agree to a meeting to discuss his app Burbn. After the first meeting he quit his job and after 2 weeks he managed to raise $500,000 from the firms. Systrom would then go on to find a team to help him with the app and Mike Krieger agreed. They decided that the app was too similar to other mobile apps and so they stripped out all the features from the app and kept uploading photos, commenting, and liking then they renamed the app to "Instagram". The app was officially launched on October 6, 2010 and its growth was instantaneous. It would soon become the number one photography app gathering 100,00 users in a week and then 1 million in two months. The app only took eight weeks to make with a years work behind it. Instagram was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. Instagram now has over 600 million active users and is still increasing quickly.

Sources:
https://medium.com/@obtaineudaimonia/how-instagram-started-8b907b98a767

Schenck v. United States

The court case of Schenck v. United States was one of the cases that set the stepping stone for the first amendment of freedom of speech. Charles Schenck was a socialist who distributed pamphlets declaring that the draft violated the 13th amendment prohibition against involuntary servitude. In these pamphlets they urged the public to disobey the draft and advised only peaceful action. Schenck was charged with conspiracy to violate the espionage act of 1917 by attempting to cause insubordination in the military and obstruct recruitment. On January 9,1919 the Supreme Court heard the arguments of both sides and Schenck's counsel argued that the Espionage Act was unconstitutional and that Schenck and others were simply exercising his freedom of speech that is guaranteed by the first amendment. The court gave a unanimous ruling upholding the Espionage Act and convicting Schenck. Although Schenck may have violated the Espionage Act I do feel as though his first amendment rights were snatched away from him. His agenda may not be up to par with all people but just because he's posting flyers telling people not to join the military he's invoking  his freedom of speech rights I mean yeah his flyers may cause some people to not join but there are still a lot of people out there who are willing to lay down their lives for this country and could care less about what a flyer wants them to do. The court thought that the Espionage Act did not violate the first amendment and was appropriate to exercise of Congress' wartime authority. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes concluded that the first amendment does not protect speech that approaches creating a clear and present danger of a significant evil that Congress has the power to prevent.


Sources:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/249us47
https://www.britannica.com/event/Schenck-v-United-States

The Supreme Court & Judicial Review

The Supreme Court has one of the biggest roles in our constitutional system of government. Its the highest court in the U.S. and it's the last resort for those seeking justice. Article III, Section I states "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

Judicial Review is the best known power of the Supreme Court and its the ability to declare a legislative or executive act in violation of the constitution,is not found within the text of the constitution itself. The Court established this doctrine in the case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803

During this case the Supreme Court lead by Chief Justice John Marshall confirmed the legal principle of judicial review. The court ruled that the new president of the time Thomas Jefferson with the aid of his secretary of state were wrong to prevent William Marbury from taking office as justice of the peace for Washington County. But it was also ruled that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter and therefore could not force Jefferson and Madison to seat Marbury. While writing the decision John Marshall said that the acts of congress were in conflict with the constitution and are not law. Marshall, wrote that if two laws conflict the court bears responsibility for deciding which law applies in any case given.


Sources:
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/about
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marbury-v-madison-establishes-judicial-review

The Progressive Era

For many millennial's and those born in the Gen-Z era unless you faithfully watch the news and keep up with the war sites we typically don't really keep up with the news of the wars that America is fighting unless its the one were fighting in the middle east that we've been in for years. But typically if war news isn't plastered on a main stream news website then we probably will have no knowledge of it. That's because all the war news that we see come across our phones and television screens are always positive towards the U.S. and you will never see anything negative come across your screens about the U.S. which leaves me to think " is the government trying to silence those who are against war or do we as the people of america just ignore those Anti-war headlines.

If it weren't for this assignment I probably would still have no clue that these anti-war websites existed. This website is updated daily just like the recent headline that was updated today it says "US Forces Conduct Airstrike on Taliban Soldiers" I wouldn't have even seen that headline if I hadn't have went to the site because no major news station like CNN, MSNBC, etc. But if top main stream media outlets do cover the story its not for very long and they don't really hit the strong points of the story and once the piece is over it seems to never be brought again so viewers don't gt the full story.

The reason I think you have to actually seek out these websites is because it seems like the government doesn't want citizens to see the bad side of america whether it be foreign affairs or  foreign wars

Sources:
Antiwar.com