Mesa parents arrested for unsanitary home
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down???Mesa parents arrested for unsanitary home, police say
By Matthew Longdon and Jason Sillman The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:25 PM
Two Mesa parents are behind bars accused of allowing their three children to live in an unsanitary home covered in roaches and rotten food, according to police documents.
Police arrested Kari Fredenburg, 43, and Shawn Fredenburg 43, Monday night at their home near Main Street and Recker Road.
The officer went to the home after someone reported the living conditions and found rotten food on the kitchen counters, in the fridge and all over the floor. There were roaches running around maggots on the ceiling and bathroom toilet had not been flushed and was full of mold, according to the Mesa report.
Police say the parents and the two younger children, ages 10 and 13, slept on one mattress on the floor in the living room while the oldest boy, whose age was not listed, slept on three couch cushions in the home’s only bedroom. The officer reported that there were torn-up mattresses lining the walls of the bedroom as well as animal feces. The boy told the officer he had the room all to himself because he was the oldest child, according to the report.
The parents knew of the home’s unsanitary condition and felt it was OK for the children to be there, police said.
Child Protective Services took custody of the three kids, police said. The parents are each facing three counts of child abuse, a class 4 felony.
Too much information is being kept secret
'Classified' is government code for 'don't embarrass us'
I don't have a secret clearance and never have had one. But many times I have worked in secret engineering or manufacturing rooms, where I had to be baby sat by somebody with a secret clearance.All of the secret stuff I saw was down right ridiculous. A list of 50 resistors in a printed circuit board was classified. One board had an IC, that was secret before it was mounted on the printed circuit board, but once soldered on the printed circuit board was no longer secret.
When we moved a PC into a secret engineering room it literally took us 6 months to get an approval to do that from some secret bureaucrats in Washington D.C.
'Classified' is government code for 'don't embarrass us'
Our View: Too much information is being kept secret
By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 31, 2013 5:49 PM
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s conviction is really the sideshow.
What deserves the spotlight is the creeping secrecy of government. Our government. The government that’s supposed to be a beacon of light and liberty.
More than 5 million government employees and contractors have security clearances. That’s a lot of secrets. A lot of secret-keepers. Too many.
The Government Accountability Office is looking at whether too many things are being classified and how the decisions are made to release information to the public.
Rep. Duncan Hunter requested the study. He told Foreign Policy that “classification inflation” limits public access to information that should be available.
In requesting the GAO study, Hunter pointed out another problem: “With access to classified information contingent on the issuance of security clearances, overclassification stands to dangerously expand access to material that should ordinarily be limited.”
Manning and Edward Snowden show the dangers of having too many secret-keepers.
It’s easy to find examples of overzealous classification.
One of the pieces of information Manning made public was a video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq in which U.S. airmen laugh and call the targets “dead bastards.”
That attack killed civilians, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. A subsequent military investigation showed the happy-go-lucky troops misidentified camera equipment for weapons before killing people they so callously denigrated.
The only reason for classifying that video is to protect the military from embarrassment — cover your backside.
What’s more, mixing in fake secrets with real ones increases the pressure to blow the whistle.
Manning says his motivation was to expose the military’s “bloodlust” and U.S. diplomatic deception. He dodged conviction on the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, but was convicted on 22 espionage, theft and other charges in the release of secrets to WikiLeaks.
As a soldier, he broke trust. But he did the public a favor. Whistle-blowing is a time-honored way to keep government accountable.
That’s especially true when the government is showing an adolescentlike fetish for hiding things that don’t need to be hidden.
Another example from very close to home:
The Department of Homeland Security refuses to make public what it knows about how many undocumented migrants get away, how many are caught multiple times or what percentage successfully enter the U.S. It’s classified.
The Arizona Republic sought the information. Now, Republican and Democratic members of Arizona’s delegation are asking for it, too. The lack of data makes it impossible to accurately assess the effectiveness of individual DHS border strategies.
If there’s a good national- security reason to hide information on border crossings, we haven’t heard it.
Snowden’s leaks about National Security Agency spying got him a one-way ticket to no man’s land. But it also put a light on the kind of government snooping that makes a lot of Americans queasy.
This nation is under threat from terrorists, and there are good reasons for keeping some information classified.
But Manning, Snowden and the DHS raise big concerns about what’s being withheld from the American people and why. That’s an issue that deserves the spotlight.
Russia grants NSA leaker Snowden asylum
Of course you have to remember that Russia is a police state just like the USA, and the Russian government is almost certainly doing this for political reasons. But even still Edward Snowden is a freedom fighter for exposing the corruption and law breaking by the US government.Russia grants NSA leaker Snowden asylum; he leaves airport
By Vladimir Isachenkov Associated Press Thu Aug 1, 2013 7:24 AM
MOSCOW — National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden left the transit zone of a Moscow airport and entered Russia after authorities granted him asylum for one year, his lawyer said Thursday.
Anatoly Kucherena said that Snowden’s whereabouts will be kept secret for security reasons. The former NSA systems analyst was stuck at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23.
“He now is one of the most sought after men in the world,” Kucherena told reporters at the airport. “The issue of security is very important for him.”
The U.S. has demanded that Russia send Snowden home to face prosecution for espionage, but President Vladimir Putin dismissed the request.
Putin had said that Snowden could receive asylum in Russia on condition he stops leaking U.S. secrets. Kucherena has said Snowden accepted the condition.
The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday published a new report on U.S. intelligence-gathering based on information from Snowden, but Kucherena said the material was provided before Snowden promised to stop leaking.
Snowden, who revealed details of a U.S. intelligence program to monitor Internet activity, has received offers of asylum from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia and said he would like to visit those countries. However, the logistics of reaching any of those countries are complicated because his U.S. passport has been revoked.
Snowden’s father said in remarks broadcast Wednesday on Russian television that he would like to visit his son. Kucherena said he is arranging the trip.
The lawyer has said earlier that the temporary asylum would allow Snowden to travel freely around Russia, but wouldn’t allow him to leave the country. The one-year asylum can be extended.
WikiLeaks, a group which has adopted Snowden’s cause, said its legal adviser Sarah Harrison is now with him. The group also praised Russia for providing him shelter.
“We would like to thank the Russian people and all those others who have helped to protect Mr. Snowden,” WikiLeaks said on Twitter. “We have won the battle — now the war.”
Kucherena said that Snowden spent little time packing and left the airport in a taxi. The lawyer said the fugitive had friends in Russia, including some Americans, who could help ensure his security, but wouldn’t elaborate.
Snowden’s case has further strained U.S.-Russian ties already tense amid differences over Syria, U.S. criticism of Russia’s human rights record and other issues.
Putin’s foreign affairs aide, Yuri Ushakov, sought Thursday to downplay the impact this will have on the relations between the two countries.
“This issue isn’t significant enough to have an impact on political relations,” he said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies.
He said that the Kremlin hasn’t heard any signal from Washington that Obama could cancel his visit to Moscow ahead of next month’s G-20 summit in St.Petersburg.
Again government is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.
If the unconstitutional "war on drugs" didn't exist, neither would any of the cartels.
If the "war on drugs" didn't exist you would be able to walk into any grocery or liquor store and buy a pound of marijuana for what you now pay for a pound of potatoes or tomatoes.
If the "war on drugs" didn't exist there would not be 1 million plus people rotting in American prisons for victimless drug war crimes.
If the "war on drugs" didn't exist there would not have been the 40,000+ murders in Felipe Calderon's Mexican war on drugs.
If the "war on drugs" didn't exist there would not be the thousands of American murders and other crimes cause by victimless drug war crimes. If drugs were legalized these crimes would cease over night.
Phoenix narcotics agents lauded
By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 31, 2013 9:57 PM
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Phoenix have been credited with developing intelligence leading to economic sanctions levied against alleged supporters of a Mexican drug cartel boss.
The U.S. Treasury Department noted the Phoenix agents’ work this week in naming three people and three business entities in Mexico now prohibited from doing business in, or with anyone from, the United States because of alleged ties with Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia.
Authorities allege that a Mexican attorney and the widow and daughter of a lieutenant to Zambada Garcia created and/or operated a water park, a shopping center and a cattle ranch in the Mexican state of Sinaloa as “front companies” to launder drug proceeds.
Jose Antonio Nuñez Bedoya, Tomasa Garcia Rios and Monica Janeth Verdugo Garcia are the latest to be blacklisted by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which imposes economic sanctions or trade restrictions against countries and people in order to promote U.S. foreign policy and national security.
The idea behind the efforts targeting drug kingpins is to “starve these traffickers of their assets and eventually put their global criminal networks out of business,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Phoenix Division.
“The Sinaloa Cartel cannot hide behind front companies like a water park or agricultural business,” Coleman said. “We are working with OFAC to expose these traffickers’ front companies for what they really are: not legitimate businesses but illegal enterprises that fuel the drug trade, its violence and corruption.”
More than 1,300 people and business entities on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List have been linked to recognized drug kingpins. The list is a function of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
Implemented in 1999, the act was designed to deny foreign narcotics traffickers, related businesses and their operatives access to the U.S. financial system. The act prohibits all trade and transactions between the traffickers and U.S. individuals or companies — financial institutions, for example — and allows the government to freeze related assets within U.S. jurisdiction.
A violation of the Kingpin Designation Act can result in a maximum of 30 years imprisonment and $10 million in fines.
Vamanos a Uruguay???
Uruguay takes key step toward legalizing marijuana
By Andres D'Alessandro and Chris Kraul
August 1, 2013, 9:14 a.m.
BUENOS AIRES -- Uruguay appears likely to become the first Latin American country to legalize marijuana after its lower house of Congress approved a bill to regulate and sanction the consumption of pot.
Uruguay’s upper house, the Senate, still must pass the measure, but analysts believe the government-led majority favors the law and that it will be approved by October. President Jose Mujica is a strong proponent of the measure, though polls have shown a majority of Uruguayans oppose it.
The 50-46 vote in the capital, Montevideo, late Wednesday came as legalization or decriminalization of drugs increasingly is debated among Latin American leaders who see the U.S.-led war on drugs as a failure.
Cocaine, marijuana and heroin continue to flow to U.S. consumers, while Latin American countries pay the price in violence and organized crime, leaders have complained. The presidents of Guatemala and Colombia have said new ways of stopping drug trafficking should be considered.
“Uruguay will be bravely taking a leading role in establishing and testing a compelling alternative to the prohibitionist paradigm,” said John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, a Washington-based think tank that has urged that drug policies be revised.
In a statement Thursday, Walsh noted that Uruguay would join the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington in legalizing the consumption of marijuana, and that dozens of drug policy nongovernmental organizations, as well as former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, endorsed the measure.
As passed by the Uruguayan chamber of deputies, the law somewhat resembles California's medical marijuana law, although the Uruguayan measure is intended for recreational use. It would allow home cultivation of marijuana and the monthly sale of up to 40 grams (1.4 ounces) per month to users who buy it at specially licensed pharmacies. The lawmakers turned aside a Mujica initiative that the state monopolize the drug’s production and distribution.
The law would also allow the formation of so-called marijuana clubs, with 15 to 45 members each, to grow the plants. Mujica has touted the law as a way of fighting illegal drug trafficking, which he has said has brought more violence to his nation.
“At the heart of the Uruguayan marijuana regulation bill is a focus on improving public health and public safety,” said Hannah Heltzer, of New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, a civil society group that favors new approaches to what it calls a “failed war on drugs.”
Casting a decisive vote was deputy Dario Perez, who said he went along with the proposal to maintain solidarity with fellow members of his Frente Amplio party, despite personal doubts that he said are shared by a majority of Uruguayans. According to a poll by the firm Cifra, 63% of the population opposes marijuana legalization and only 26% supports it.
“I am a member of the Frente Amplio, they are my comrades and so I will cast my fate with them and see what the effects of this are five or 10 years from now,” Perez said.
Yea, sure their medical marijuana law sucks more then Arizona's medical marijuana law. But it's still much better then putting people in prison for smoking a harmless weed.
Quinn signs Illinois medical marijuana bill into law
By Monique Garcia and Ray Long Tribune reporters
12:15 p.m. CDT, August 1, 2013
Gov. Pat Quinn today signed a bill legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes in Illinois that supporters say is the strictest in the nation.
The law takes effect Jan. 1, but state regulators are likely to need months to come up with the rules. That means it could be until next summer before those suffering from 42 illnesses including cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis can legally seek relief through marijuana.
Under the new law, a person could be prescribed no more than 2.5 ounces of marijuana over two weeks. That's enough to fill two small sandwich bags. In addition, the prescribing doctor must have a prior and ongoing medical relationship with the patient. And a doctor must find that the patient has one of a few dozen serious or chronic conditions for the marijuana to be prescribed.
Patients would have to buy the marijuana from one of 60 dispensing centers throughout the state and would not be allowed to legally grow their own. Workers at dispensing centers would undergo criminal background checks, the stores would be under round-the-clock camera surveillance and users would carry cards that indicate how much they had bought to prevent stockpiling.
Marijuana would be grown inside 22 cultivation centers registered with the state.
The state agriculture, professional regulation and public health agencies need to figure out a way to determine who gets permits to open marijuana growing centers and dispensaries and to determine rules for physicians giving out cards allowing patients to obtain the marijuana.
For years, the measure had failed to gain traction at the Capitol, particularly in the House. But this spring sponsoring Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, was able to cobble together the votes needed to send the bill to the Senate, where a similar but less restrictive bill had passed in previous years.
Quinn had said he'd keep an open mind on the issue and indicated that military veterans who suffered pain might get relief.
For those of you who have not used pressure cookers they are fantastic machines that cook much faster then a microwave oven.
You put a little water in them, which when heated turns to a gas which pressure cooks the food.
After you put the food in the pressure cooker you seal it up and put it on the stove.
If you only cook small stuff like I do the pressure cooker will get up to full pressure in one or two minutes.
If you slice up your veggies many things will be cooked in 1 or 2 minutes after the cooker is fully pressurized. You can cook fish in 4 or 5 minutes.
You can also cook things like roasts in them much quicker then in a conventional oven, but I have never done that. A beef brisket will cook in 50 to 70 minutes.
And I didn't know this until those nut jobs in Boston used them to kill people but pressure cookers also make great bombs.
Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds
The Atlantic Wire
Philip Bump
Michele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which begs the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?
Catalano (who is a professional writer) describes the tension of that visit.
[T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked. ...
Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.
The men identified themselves as members of the "joint terrorism task force." The composition of such task forces depend on the region of the country, but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, include a variety of federal agencies. Among them: the FBI and Homeland Security.
Ever since details of the NSA's surveillance infrastructure were leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency has been insistent on the boundaries of the information it collects. It is not, by law, allowed to spy on Americans — although there are exceptions of which it takes advantage. Its PRISM program, under which it collects internet content, does not include information from Americans unless those Americans are connected to terror suspects by no more than two other people. It collects metadata on phone calls made by Americans, but reportedly stopped collecting metadata on Americans' internet use in 2011. So how, then, would the government know what Catalano and her husband were searching for?
It's possible that one of the two of them is tangentially linked to a foreign terror suspect, allowing the government to review their internet activity. After all, that "no more than two other people" ends up covering millions of people. Or perhaps the NSA, as part of its routine collection of as much internet traffic as it can, automatically flags things like Google searches for "pressure cooker" and "backpack" and passes on anything it finds to the FBI.
Or maybe it was something else. On Wednesday, The Guardian reported on XKeyscore, a program eerily similar to Facebook search that could clearly allow an analyst to run a search that picked out people who'd done searches for those items from the same location. How those searches got into the government's database is a question worth asking; how the information got back out seems apparent.
It is also possible that there were other factors that prompted the government's interest in Catalano and her husband. He travels to Asia, she notes in her article. Who knows. Which is largely Catalano's point.
They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.
One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.
But the NSA doesn't collect data on Americans, so this certainly won't happen
In the Thursday, Aug 1, 2013 New Times
article
article
titled
"Target Shooting a Major Cause of Arizona Forest Fires"
they seem to be using the lame excuse that guns might cause fires to ban shooting on government land.
The article says 31 fires MIGHT have been caused by guns since 2009. That is only a measly 5 fires a year.
Of course the gun grabbers usually take very small steps to achieve their goals. First it will be to ban shooting on these lands and next it will be to ban guns period.
I wonder how many fires were caused each year by smoking, campfires, or cars, compared to natural causes like lightning????
The article says a bullet MIGHT hit a rock, which MIGHT cause some sparks which MIGHT start a fire.
Of course every summer monsoons that passes over the same desert probably creates hundreds of lightning strikes which MIGHT cause fired.
You could use the same lame excuse to ban cars from driving in the desert. The frame of the car MIGHT strike a rock, which MIGHT create some sparks which MIGHT cause a fire.
Of course it's probably more likely that the exhaust from a car might start a fire, then either a bullet or a car part hitting a rock causing sparks which MIGHT cause a fire.
The Phoenix New Times article is at this URL:
Dog left in 100-degree weather, owners due in court
By Matthew Longdon The Arizona Republic -12 News Breaking News Team Thu Aug 1, 2013 10:07 PM
A Phoenix dog owner and her friend are facing trouble after allegedly leaving a dog in a car for at least 45 minutes on Friday evening when temperatures were at least 100 degrees, according to Scottsdale police records.
A witness told police that a poodle, Peachy, was in a vehicle outside a restaurant in Scottsdale and panting heavily, according to records. At one point, Peachy tried to jump out of the window, but had to be put back in the car because its leash was attached inside the vehicle, records show.
When the officer arrived, the driver, Phillip Don Mahr, 39, and the dog owner Mara Minnai,28, were leaving the restaurant and told the officer the dog was only in the car for a few minutes with water and the windows down. They also told police that Minnai checked on the dog several times.
The officer noticed a knocked-over bowl in the back seat with no water near it, records show.
The caller, a delivery driver for the restaurant, told police Peachy was panting heavily when he returned from a delivery and was barking loudly. Another employee told police he had to help the dog back in the car after it jumped out of the window and was hanging by its leash.
The employee said the dog didn’t seem to be injured.
Police records show that Mahr and Minnai had a bar tab in the restaurant and the time stamp showed they were inside for at least 45 minutes. Other employees told Mahr and Minnai they could sit on the patio and bring the dog to get it out of the heat, but they declined, according to records.
Mahr said they refused because they were only picking up a to-go order.
Peachy was still panting heavily and had a bright-red tongue after the officer spoke to witnesses. Police let both Mahr and Minnai leave with the dog after they signed a citation promising to appear in court.
Mahr and Minnai are both facing animal neglect charges, according to police.
Time to legalize fairness (and pot)
A group called the Safer Arizona Committee is working to put an initiative to legalize marijuana on the 2014 ballot. Even if you don’t like the idea you should support it, if not to legalize marijuana then to legalize fairness.
There is a provision in the initiative that would prevent individuals who are not high on marijuana from being convicted of DUI.
This actually happens in our fair state.
A lot.
And no one in Arizona government is inclined to change it.
State law says if any “metabolite” of marijuana is found in a driver’s blood he is guilty of DUI, an offense that will land him in jail, punish him with stiff fines and suspend his license for a year.
The problem is that having a metabolite in your blood doesn’t necessarily mean you’re impaired. Certain chemicals remain in the blood long after marijuana use and have nothing to do with impairment.
Earlier this year I spoke with attorney Michael Alarid, who represents a client challenging current state law.
“As things stand, a person from Arizona could go on a snowboarding trip to Colorado or Washington state, where marijuana is legal for recreational use,” Alarid said. “And then a month later he could be driving in Arizona, get stopped and be convicted of DUI.”
The state Court of Appeals has upheld the law. In its ruling on the case (Arizona vs. Shilgevorkyan), the Appeals Court said, “We determined that the legislative ban extends to all substances, whether capable of causing impairment or not.”
In other words, a person doesn’t have to be impaired – at all – in order to be guilty of a DUI.
“That’s just not right,” said Robert Clark, chairman of the Safer Arizona Committee. “Under our initiative simply having a metabolite in the system wouldn’t be enough. The person stopped by police would have to exhibit actual impairment and it has to be documented with video recording. “
In order for the initiative appear on the November 2014 ballot, proponents of legalization have to collect 259,213 valid signatures by next July 3.
“It is silly to demonize a plant,” Clark told me. “We’ve been getting very positive response from the public. I believe awareness on this issue has increased a lot in recent years. This is about personal rights and liberties. We spend so much time and money for low level enforcement, money that could be so much better spent going after the real bad guys.”
A while back I asked Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery if he was in favor of altering DUI laws so that actual impairment would have to be proved and not simply based on the presence of what could be a harmless metabolite.
He told me, “No. We do not want to create an incentive to ‘game’ how long it takes for any given metabolite to leave a driver’s system.” [So would Bill Montgomery support a new law that make it legal to arrest somebody for DUI 3 days after they drink a beer????]
Likewise there has been no effort from members of the Legislature or from the governor to alter state law.
“This will have to come from the people,” Clark said. “And we’ve received a lot of support from all over the political spectrum. It’s early, but we are starting to get a good volunteer base. We have people from all demographics working with us and coming forward to help. Funding is always an issue with an initiative, but that too is coming along.”
Just last week I heard from a man who had been charged with a DUI based on having a metabolite of marijuana in his blood.
“I was fine at the scene,” he told me. “I told the officers that I’d smoked a joint last week with some friends but nothing that night. I don’t drive drunk or impaired in any way. I asked the cops to give me all the sobriety tests they wanted. I still got the DUI.”
Those interested in finding out more about the Safer Arizona Committee can go online to legalizeaz.com.
“No one wants impaired drivers on the road,” Clark told me. “But why prosecute people who aren’t impaired? No matter how you feel about marijuana you have to believe that’s not right. Don’t you?”
U.S. issues worldwide travel alert amid terrorism fears
By Billy Kenber, Updated: Friday, August 2, 9:20 AM E-mail the writer
The State Department issued a worldwide travel alert Friday, warning of potential terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the Middle East and North Africa that could target tourists on trains, flights or other forms of public transportation.
The alert follows the decision to close 21 U.S. embassies across the Muslim world on Sunday in response to the same security threat, according to State Department officials.
“Current information suggests that al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August,” the State Department said in a statement Friday. It said the potential for attacks was particularly high in the Middle East and North Africa and that it could come from or occur on the Arabian Peninsula.
U.S. citizens traveling abroad were urged to take precautions. The alert warned that “terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests,” notably public transportation systems including “subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services.”
Speaking at a news briefing Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said a number of embassies were instructed to close on Sunday because of “security considerations.” Sunday is a normal working day in most Muslim countries, and embassies there would typically be open for business.
Harf stressed that officials were acting “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting our installations.” She did not provide details of the security threat but said that embassies could remain closed into next week.
The last time the department issued a similar warning was on last year’s anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed Sept. 11 and 12, 2012, when militants assaulted two U.S. compounds in Benghazi.
Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN’s “New Day” program: “It’s my understanding that it is al-Qaeda-linked, all right.”
Among the affected embassies are those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Three consulates will also close — two in Saudi Arabia and one in the United Arab Emirates.
Violence will rise as climate changes, scientists predict
By Monte Morin
August 1, 2013, 4:35 p.m.
Long before scientists began to study global warming, author Raymond Chandler described the violent effects of dry, "oven-hot" Santa Ana winds gusting through the city of Los Angeles.
"Every booze party ends in a fight," he wrote in his 1938 story "Red Wind." "Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband's necks. Anything can happen."
While social commentators have long suggested that extreme heat can unleash the beast in man, formal study of the so-called heat hypothesis — the theory that high temperatures fuel aggressive and violent behavior — is relatively new. Using examples as disparate as road rage, ancient wars and Major League Baseball, scientists have taken early steps to quantify the potential influence of climate warming on human conflict.
Now, three UC Berkeley researchers have pulled together data from these and other studies and concluded that the incidence of war and civil unrest may increase by as much as 56% between now and 2050, due to warmer temperature and extreme rainfall patterns predicted by climate change scientists.
Likewise, episodes of interpersonal violence — murder, assault, rape, domestic abuse — could increase by as much as 16%, they report in a study published Thursday by the journal Science.
"We find strong causal evidence linking climatic events to human conflict … across all major regions of the world," the researchers concluded.
The study assumes a global temperature increase of at least 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the next half-century, based on data from the World Climate Research Program in Geneva. It also assumes that humanity will do little to adapt to large changes in regional climate or altered rain patterns, such as developing new heat and drought-tolerant crops.
With those ground rules established, the team examined 60 papers across a variety of fields — including climatology, archaeology, economics, political science and psychology — and analyzed them against a common statistical framework.
Study topics ranged from the trivial to the sublime.
In one paper, researchers held up traffic at a sweltering Phoenix intersection to see whether motorists in cars without air conditioning were more likely to honk in anger than drivers in climate-controlled vehicles. In another, psychologists looked at weather records and Major League Baseball statistics to see whether pitchers were more likely to throw bean balls at opposing batters as the mercury rose.
Still others used data from tree rings in Southeast Asia to gauge the influence of severe drought on the collapse of the once-mighty Angkor kingdom, or analyzed sediment from Middle Eastern seas to determine how desertification influenced the fall of the Akkadian Empire more than 4,000 years ago.
No matter where in the world they looked, and no matter what time period, the researchers said they observed a link between temperature, precipitation and conflict. They calculated that large-scale group conflict could increase between 28% and 56% over the next 37 years, while interpersonal violence could increase between 8% and 16%.
"The result is alarming," said study coauthor Marshall Burke, a UC Berkeley graduate student who specializes in how climate change affects food security. "However, if we get our act together and we mitigate future climate change ... the effects will be much smaller."
The authors say they can only speculate on the reasons why increased temperature and changed patterns of rainfall would move humans to violence.
"The physiological mechanism linking temperature to aggression remains unknown," they wrote.
One traditional explanation is that climate shifts hit agrarian economies particularly hard. "People are more likely to take up arms when the economy deteriorates," said study leader Solomon Hsiang, who examines the policy consequences of climate change at UC Berkeley.
Hsiang and his colleagues make no attempt to establish a clear cause, though they say there might be a physiological link between heat and aggression. But they are not biologists; their intent, they say, is to spur further research and encourage adaptive planning in the face of global warming.
"We like to compare it to smoking," Burke said. "In the 1930s scientists were figuring out there was this really strong relationship between smoking and lung cancer, but it wasn't for many decades after that they figured out the precise mechanism that links smoking to lung cancer."
Researchers who weren't involved in the analysis praised the team for their ambitious attempt to synthesize data from a variety of studies in disparate fields.
The paper "presents a strong case for the effects of rapid climate change on violence," said Craig A. Anderson, an Iowa State psychology professor who studies violence. "There is considerable evidence that when people are uncomfortably hot, they become more physically aggressive. They tend to interpret minor annoyances as being more serious and intentional provocations than they would in comfortable temperatures."
Yet others said the paper fell short of its intended goal.
"The study does not give a single example of a real conflict where both data and qualitative evidence suggest that the violence was caused at least partly by climatic anomalies," said Halvard Buhaug, a professor of political science at the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway.
An accompanying editorial by Science Editor in Chief Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist, did not address the study specifically, but instead called on scientists from different fields to help study the cumulative impacts of climate change.
"There is a need for all scientists to rise to this challenge," she wrote.
monte.morin@latimes.com
Mexican city fines concert $8,000 over drug ballads
Fri Aug 2, 2013 2:20 PM
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities seeking to ban drug ballads known as “narco-corridos” have levied one of their stiffest punishments yet against the music, fining concert promoters 100,000 pesos (almost $8,000) for a weekend performance in the northern city of Chihuahua.
Authorities said Friday the city-imposed fine was for a performance Saturday by Alfredo Rios, better known as “El Komander,” one of the best-known singers of the “Altered Movement” genre whose lyrics frequently focus on shootouts, killings and guns.
Thousands of people in the border state of Chihuahua have died in drug-related violence in recent years, and starting about three years ago, authorities in the state capital decided to try to discourage songs that glorify drug trafficking or crime.
Javier Torres, the Chihuahua City assistant government secretary, said the concert promoters had been forced to forfeit a 100,000-peso deposit they posted prior to the weekend concert.
Torres said the money will be used to buy computers for community centers. It’s not the first time that promoters have lost deposits after singers stepped out of bounds. In July, the organizers of a local fair lost a 97,000-peso deposit after the Tucanes de Tijuana performed some narco-corridos in Chihuahua City.
“In an atmosphere of violence, it’s not right to have people glamorizing crime,” said Torres. “That feeds this type of culture, above all among young people around high school age, who see these references to crime and think they’re attractive.”
“What we are doing is protecting society, protecting our citizens and our youth,” said Torres. “(Crime) prevention is fundamental, and that can’t be done with more gunfire.”
There is little doubt that “El Komander” has glorified violence.
In one song “Cuernito Armani,” [AK-47] a reference to a designer assault rifle, he sings, “My luck was with me, a bullet pierced their driver, their truck flipped over, they couldn’t do me any more harm.”
Some other lyrics, such as those of “Tachycardia,” celebrate drugs. “Go get the jugs to get the drunkenness going, go get some floozies to enjoy, and don’t forget my additive, you know I’m a cocaine addict.”
It was unclear which of the songs violated city rules, but Torres said “there were five or six songs that reflected criminal acts, or glorified drug trafficking.”
Omar Valenzuela, Rios’ manager, acknowledges that “El Komander” has built a reputation.
“When he comes on to sing, people see him as a real big Mafia hotshot, even though he isn’t,” Valenzuela said. Age, marriage — and perhaps a well-founded fear — have changed him.
“His songs have changed a lot … Now that he’s getting radio play, he has some love songs out,” Valenzuela said. “He shows a lot of respect for the cities (where he performs), and for his own life. We wouldn’t want anyone to get mad, so there a lot of songs he doesn’t sing anymore.”
A number of famous Mexican banda and norteno singers have been killed in recent years, and some of the killings have been attributed to drug capos angered by the musicians’ songs or personal life.
But the whole idea of trying to censor songs irks Valenzuela.
“This censorship is a big fat lie,” Valenzuela said. “The politicians can tell the press they’re banning this … but they continue to listen to it. The police who stop us on the street ask for records.”
“A lot of people from the government, the federal police, the security forces, were sitting there enjoying it, drinking wine when El Komander sang,” Valenzuela said. “They even requested songs.”
Concert organizers seem to have accepted the lost deposits as one of the prices of bringing well-known acts to the city. And Rios, who didn’t have to pay any fine, has no plans to change his repertoire.
“Alfredo is more worried about what his fans want, than what the governor or the press says,” said Valenzuela.
Mississippi law requires cord blood from teen moms
By Emily Wagster Pettus Associated Press Fri Aug 2, 2013 8:07 PM
JACKSON, Miss. -- If a girl younger than 16 gives birth and won’t name the father, a new Mississippi law — likely the first of its kind in the country — says authorities must collect umbilical cord blood and run DNA tests to prove paternity as a step toward prosecuting statutory rape cases.
Supporters say the law is intended to chip away at Mississippi’s teen pregnancy rate, which has long been one of the highest in the U.S. But critics say that though the procedure is painless, it invades the medical privacy of the mother, father and baby.
And questions abound: At roughly $1,000 a pop, who will pay for the DNA tests in the country’s poorest state? Even after test results arrive, can prosecutors compel a potential father to submit his own DNA and possibly implicate himself in a crime? How long will the state keep the DNA on file?
Governor wants to end teen rape
Republican Gov. Phil Bryant says the DNA tests could lead to prosecution of grown men who have sex with underage girls.
“It is to stop children from being raped,” said Bryant, who started his career as a deputy sheriff in the 1970s. “One of the things that go on in this state that’s always haunted me when I was a law-enforcement officer is seeing the 14- and 15-year-old girl that is raped by the neighbor next door and down the street.”
But Bear Atwood, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, said it’s an invasion of privacy to collect cord blood without consent of the mother, father and baby.
She also said that an underage girl who doesn’t want to reveal the identity of her baby’s father might skip prenatal care: “Will she decide not to have the baby in a hospital where she can have a safe, happy, healthy delivery?”
The law took effect July 1 but hasn’t been used yet.
State ranks highest in teen moms
Bryant’s staff says the idea for the law came from public meetings conducted by the governor’s teen pregnancy prevention task force — a group that focuses mostly on promoting abstinence.
Statistics put the state’s teen pregnancy rate among the highest in the country. In 2011 — the most recent year for which statistics are available — there were 50.2 live births in Mississippi per 1,000 females ages 15-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The nationwide rate was 31.3.
Democratic state Rep. Adrienne Wooten voted against the bill, saying it will mostly hurt poor women and could lead to a prosecution “fishing expedition to find out who the father is.”
“I think that that is totally outside the boundaries of what we as a Legislature should be doing,” said Wooten, who, like Gipson, is an attorney. “We already have laws that deal with statutory rape.”
The only thing that surprises me about this case is that the cop who committed the crime was actually charged with a crime.
Of course if he actually gets punished, that is a different story. He will probably get the charges dropped and at the most receive a slap on the wrist if anything.
OC prosecutors: Deputy pepper-sprayed teen's pizza
Published 8:46 pm, Friday, August 2, 2013
NEWPORT BEACH (AP) — A Laguna Hills teen got the wrong topping on his pizza, and ended up sick, after a sheriff's deputy allegedly covered the pie with pepper spray during a traffic stop.
Orange County prosecutors said Friday that 30-year-old Deputy Juan Tavera is charged with spraying the slices after a 19-year-old was pulled over by a different officer for a traffic infraction.
Tavera sprayed the pizza without the teen's knowledge, so when the teen took the pizza home to his four friends, they all ate it and got sick.
The teen notified police after becoming suspicious of the deputy.
The charge of misdemeanor assault or battery by an officer carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
Tavera is due for arraignment Monday.
He has been put on administrative leave.
Former MCSO officer pleads not guilty to sexual assault
Associated Press Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:54 PM
PHOENIX (AP) — A former Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office detention officer has pleaded not guilty to assaulting a woman with a souvenir baseball bat and pointing a handgun at her.
County prosecutors say 30-year-old William Glen Edmond entered his plea at his arraignment Monday on charges of felony sexual assault and felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
His next scheduled court date is Sept. 11.
The woman told police Edmond allegedly used a wrestling hold to pin her to a bed and used a small wooden bat during the June 30 assault.
During an argument later, she says Edmond allegedly pointed a gun at her in front of her children.
Edmond was later arrested at his Avondale home.
Authorities say Edmond had worked five years with the sheriff’s office before being fired.
If drugs were legal like they were before 1914 (1937 for marijuana), nobody would be using these legal and possibly dangerous drugs that mimic marijuana and cocaine.
Interest grows in New Zealand’s designer drug law
By Nick Perry Associated Press Fri Aug 2, 2013 9:21 PM
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- A novel New Zealand law that could legalize some designer drugs is being scrutinized with interest by other countries struggling to keep up with the proliferation of “party pills” and similar products.
The law, enacted two weeks ago, represents a U-turn from the traditional approach of banning synthetic drugs. Instead, New Zealand will attempt to regulate them, allowing their sale if they go through rigorous safety testing similar to that for pharmaceuticals. Giving users a high wouldn’t be a reason to ban them, a government health official said, though they would need to come with warnings, such as not driving while under their influence.
The policy is getting some attention globally. A group of British parliamentarians this year recommended adopting a similar policy. Australian officials have contacted their New Zealand counterparts to learn more. And the New York-based nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates legalizing marijuana, wants to get a similar bill introduced in Congress.
But while the new law is giving fuel to some politicians and lobbying groups, most countries are likely to adopt a wait-and-see approach. If anything, the U.S. has become more aggressive in prosecuting cases since President Barack Obama signed a federal law last year banning 26 new synthetic substances.
Cat-and-mouse with chemists
Sold under street names such as “spice,” and “bath salts,” the drugs often mimic banned substances such as marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine. The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse says bath salts, a meth-like stimulant, can produce feelings of euphoria and increased sex drive and sociability, but also can have side-effects including paranoia, delirium and, in some cases, death.
Like many countries, New Zealand has been inundated with designer drugs in recent years, and has become frustrated with finding itself a step behind the manufacturers. Once a drug is declared illegal, a maker often alters its composition slightly to create a new, legal compound.
That cat-and-mouse game prompted the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime to describe the industry as “hydra-headed” in a June report, and say the international drug control system is foundering, because of the speed and creativity with which manufacturers are producing new variants of the drugs.
“The basic prohibitionist approach doesn’t seem to be working,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the American group. “Either a drug is criminalized, and underground chemists produce a new compound, or it’s not criminal because it’s never been created before.”
Vital to combat the problem
New Zealand lawmakers passed the Psychoactive Substances Bill in a lopsided 119-1 vote. Under the new law, any approved drugs would be restricted to people over 18 years old and couldn’t be sold in supermarkets, convenience stores or gas stations. Advertising would be restricted to the point of sale. Drugs already deemed illegal, such as marijuana and cocaine, would remain so.
Dr. Stewart Jessamine, the New Zealand health ministry official, said makers would need to show their drug is free from high rates of serious side effects such as reproductive problems, seizures and addiction. They also need to demonstrate they have clean manufacturing labs and secure supply chains.
Jessamine estimated it would cost manufacturers about $1.6 million and take about a year to get a drug approved. He said there have already been 10 to 15 applications for licenses under a provision of the new law that could allow some producers to continue selling their products while undertaking the trials, if they apply within an initial 28-day window.
Bill sponsor Peter Dunne said that at U.N. presentations, government officials from around the world have been asking about the new law. “The Hungarians, the Irish, the British, they’re all keen to know what we are up to,” he said. “It’s seen as cutting edge. They want to see how it works, and view it for their own country.”
Despite fact that tobacco is a deadly drug I still think it should be legal. If you make tobacco illegal you are going to have the same problems you had when alcohol was illegal, and the same problems we have with the insane "war on drugs" which is a dismal failure like the Prohibition.
Of course I also think it is morally wrong for companies to trick and con people into taking this deadly, addictive drug.
Old tobacco playbook gets new use by e-cigarettes
By Michael Felberbaum Associated Press Sat Aug 3, 2013 9:10 AM
RICHMOND, Virginia — Companies vying for a stake in the fast-growing electronic cigarette business are reviving the decades-old marketing tactics the tobacco industry used to hook generations of Americans on regular smokes.
They’re using cab-top and bus stop displays, sponsoring race cars and events, and encouraging smokers to “rise from the ashes” and take back their freedom in slick TV commercials featuring celebrities like TV personality Jenny McCarthy.
Tobacco marketing has been increasingly restricted in the United States, with TV commercials for traditional cigarettes banned in 1970. The Food and Drug Administration plans to set marketing and product regulations for electronic cigarettes in the near future.
But for now, almost anything goes.
“Right now it’s the wild, wild west,” Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices made of plastic or metal that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. Users get their nicotine without the thousands of chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes. And they get to hold something shaped like a cigarette, while puffing and exhaling something that looks like smoke.
So far, there’s not much scientific evidence showing e-cigarettes help smokers quit or smoke less, and it’s unclear how safe they are. But the marketing tactics are raising worries that the devices’ makers could tempt young people to take up something that could prove addictive.
The industry started by selling e-cigarettes on the Internet and at shopping-mall kiosks. It has rocketed from thousands of users in 2006 to several million worldwide who have more than 200 brands to choose from. Some e-cigarettes are stocked in prime selling space at the front of convenience-store and gas-station counters — real estate forbidden to the devices’ old-fashioned cousins.
Analysts estimate sales of e-cigarettes could reach $2 billion by the end of the year. Some say the use of e-cigarettes could pass that of traditional cigarettes in the next decade. Tobacco company executives have even noted that e-cigarettes are already eating into traditional cigarette sales.
The debate over marketing tactics is intensifying as the largest U.S. tobacco companies roll out their own e-cigarettes in a push to diversify beyond their traditional business. People are smoking fewer cigarettes in the face of tax hikes, smoking bans, health concerns and social stigma, though higher prices have helped protect cigarette revenue.
Companies like NJOY and Blu Ecigs are advertising on TV, forbidden for cigarettes for more than 40 years. LOGIC has placed mobile billboards on taxis in New York City. Swisher International Inc., maker of Swisher Sweets cigars, is sponsoring race cars promoting its e-Swisher electronic cigarettes and cigars and has a two-year deal to become the official e-cigarette of the World Series of Poker.
Blu, which was acquired by No. 3 U.S. tobacco company Lorillard Inc. last year, also has sponsored an Indy car and the 2013 Bonnaroo music festival, and its website features a cartoon character nicknamed “Mr. Cool” boasting the benefits of its e-cigarette — evoking the days of Joe Camel.
Decades ago, celebrities like actor Spencer Tracy, baseball player Joe DiMaggio and even future President Ronald Reagan, a one-time actor, shilled for brands like Lucky Strike and Chesterfield.
Now, NJOY features rocker Courtney Love in an expletive-laced online ad and counts singer Bruno Mars among its investors. Actor Stephen Dorff is featured in Blu’s TV commercials.
In Blu’s latest campaign, McCarthy says she can use the e-cigarette “without scaring that special someone away” and can avoid kisses that “taste like an ashtray” when she’s out at her favorite club. The commercials are set to start airing nationwide next week.
Traditional cigarette marketing can’t use celebrities or cartoons. Legal settlements and new regulations have long since taken ads off billboards and banned event sponsorships. While they must include health warnings, companies can still advertise cigarettes and smokeless tobacco in magazines that don’t have a large youth readership.
The electronic cigarette ads push the same themes as old cigarette ads: sophistication, freedom, equality and individualism, said Timothy de Waal Malefyt, a visiting associate professor at Fordham University’s business school and former advertising executive.
That’s the problem, tobacco opponents say.
“The ads, themes and messages are precisely the same (as those) used by the tobacco industry for decades that made those products so appealing to young people,” said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Reynolds American Inc., owner of the nation’s No. 2 tobacco company, has said it plans to use TV ads to promote a revamped version of its Vuse brand electronic cigarette that it launched last month. Altria Group Inc., owner of the nation’s biggest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA, has declined to detail its marketing strategy for its first electronic cigarette under the MarkTen brand set to launch this month.
The makers of e-cigarettes defend their strategy.
“There’s the potential here that e-cigs could do a tremendous amount of good, more good than anything anyone has done on the anti-smoking side since anti-smoking was invented,” said Jason Healy, the founder and former president of Blu and now a brand spokesman.
There are a few limitations on marketing. Companies can’t tout e-cigarettes as stop-smoking aids, unless they want to be regulated by the FDA under stricter rules for drug-delivery devices. But many are sold as “cigarette alternatives.”
Many companies restrict sales to minors but only a couple of dozen states have laws banning it. And while some are limiting offerings to tobacco and menthol flavors, others are selling candy-like flavors like cherry and strawberry — barred for use in regular cigarettes because of the worry that the flavors are used to appeal to children.
Five myths about libertarians
By Nick Gillespie, Published: August 2
Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.com and a columnist for the Daily Beast, is a co-author of “The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America.”
The specter of libertarianism is haunting America. Advocates of sharply reducing the government’s size, scope and spending are raising big bucks from GOP donors, trying to steal the mantle of populism, being blamed for the demise of Detroit and even getting caught in the middle of a battle for the Republican Party. Yet libertarians are among the most misunderstood forces in today’s politics. Let’s clear up some of the biggest misconceptions.
1. Libertarians are a fringe band of “hippies of the right.”
In 1971, the controversial and influential author Ayn Rand denounced right-wing anarchists as “hippies of the right,” a charge still leveled against libertarians, who push for a minimal state and maximal individual freedom.
Libertarians are often dismissed as a mutant subspecies of conservatives: pot smokers who are soft on defense and support marriage equality. But depending on their views, libertarians often match up equally well with right- and left-wingers.
The earliest example of libertarian principles in partisan politics might have come in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,when Anti-Imperialist League Democrats rejected empire and war — and believed in free trade and racial equality at a time when none of that was popular. More recently, civil libertarians such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) supported Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in his filibuster on domestic drones and government surveillance.
Libertarians are found across the political spectrum and in both major parties. In September 2012, the Reason-Rupe Poll found that about one-quarter of Americans fall into the roughly libertarian category of wanting to reduce the government’s roles in economic and social affairs. That’s in the same ballpark as what other surveys have found and more than enough to swing an election.
2. Libertarians don’t care about minorities or the poor.
As the recent discovery of neo-Confederate writings by a former senior aide to Sen. Paul shows, there sometimes is a connection between libertarians and creepy, racist elements in American politics. And given the influence of Ayn Rand among many libertarians, it’s easy to think that they care only about themselves. “I will never live for the sake of another man,” runs a characteristic line from Rand’s 1957 novel, “Atlas Shrugged.”
But at least two of the libertarian movement’s signature causes, school choice and drug legalization, are aimed at creating a better life for poor people, who disproportionately are also minorities. The primary goal of school choice — a movement essentially born out of a 1955 essay about vouchers by libertarian and Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — is to give lower-income Americans better educational options. Friedman also persuasively argued that the drug war concentrates violence and law enforcement abuses in poor neighborhoods.
Libertarians believe that economic deregulation helps the poor because it ultimately reduces costs and barriers to start new businesses. The leading libertarian public-interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, which has argued Supreme Court cases for free speech and against eminent-domain abuse, got its start defending African American hair-braiders in Washington from licensing laws that shut down home businesses.
3. Libertarianism is a boys’ club.
While the stereotype of a libertarian as a male engineer sporting a plastic pocket protector and a slide rule once had more truth to it than most libertarians would care to admit, the movement is in many ways the creation of three female intellectuals.
As Brian Doherty details in his 2008 book, “Radicals for Capitalism,” the modern libertarian movement was hugely influenced by best-selling novelist and writer Rand; writer and critic Isabel Paterson; and author Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of “Little House on the Prairie” author Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose work she edited. The first national ticket for the Libertarian Party, in 1972, had a woman, Toni Nathan, as its vice-presidential candidate, and from its inception, the party has supported reproductive rights and full equality under the law for women.
Newer groups such as the Ladies of Liberty Alliance are growing by emphasizing the benefits of economic freedom to an expanding class of female entrepreneurs.
4. Libertarians are pro-drug, pro-abortion and anti-religion.
Charges of libertinism are, alas, exaggerated. Virtually all libertarians believe that the prohibition of any consensual activity breeds far more problems than it solves. But a key tenet is that just because something is legal doesn’t mean you have to endorse, much less practice, it. Ron Paul drew laughs during a GOP presidential primary debate in 2011 when he asked audience members if they would try heroin if it were legal.
About 30 percent of libertarians — including many libertarian-minded politicians such as Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) — are staunchly pro-life. But most believe that the best way to change behavior is through moral suasion, not versions of prohibition that don’t work.
The same goes for religion: It should be free and celebrated as long as participation is voluntary. After all, proto-libertarian Roger Williams co-founded the first Baptist congregation in America and created Providence, R.I., as a haven of religious tolerance and fully secular government at a time when that was unheard of.
5. Libertarians are destroying the Republican Party.
In 1975, Ronald Reagan saw a kinship between libertarians and his party: “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism,” he said.
There seems to be little sense of a shared soul now, though, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says things such as: “This strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought.” Christie was referring primarily to Rand Paul, a potential rival for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has attacked Rand Paul, Amash and other critics of the surveillance state as “wacko birds,” and defenders of the GOP establishment are worried about the party’s growing libertarian streak.
Yet Republicans acknowledged the need for a major reboot after the 2012 election, and that’s precisely what libertarian-leaning politicians are offering. Rand Paul has proposed a budget that cuts about $500 billion in annual spending, and he has called for reform of unsustainable entitlements and an end to overseas military adventurism. What’s been dubbed his “hipster outreach program” is an attempt to appeal to a wider slice of voters than middle-class whites. Republicans “need to be white, we need to be brown, we need to be black, we need to be with tattoos, without tattoos, with ponytails, without ponytails, with beards, without,” he told a New Hampshire audience in May.
That’s a message that might rankle stand-pat Republicans but is likely to appeal to younger voters who, according to a recent College Republican National Committee study, want government to be smaller and more inclusive.
gillespie@reason.com
A Cheap Spying Tool With a High Creepy Factor
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
With a handful of plastic boxes and over-the-counter sensors, including Wi-Fi adapters and a USB hub, Brendan O’Connor, a security researcher, was able to monitor all the wireless traffic emitted by nearby wireless devices.Brendan O’Connor With a handful of plastic boxes and over-the-counter sensors, including Wi-Fi adapters and a USB hub, Brendan O’Connor, a security researcher, was able to monitor all the wireless traffic emitted by nearby wireless devices.
Brendan O’Connor is a security researcher. How easy would it be, he recently wondered, to monitor the movement of everyone on the street – not by a government intelligence agency, but by a private citizen with a few hundred dollars to spare?
Mr. O’Connor, 27, bought some plastic boxes and stuffed them with a $25, credit-card size Raspberry Pi Model A computer and a few over-the-counter sensors, including Wi-Fi adapters. He connected each of those boxes to a command and control system, and he built a data visualization system to monitor what the sensors picked up: all the wireless traffic emitted by every nearby wireless device, including smartphones.
Each box cost $57. He produced 10 of them, and then he turned them on – to spy on himself. He could pick up the Web sites he browsed when he connected to a public Wi-Fi – say at a cafe – and he scooped up the unique identifier connected to his phone and iPad. Gobs of information traveled over the Internet in the clear, meaning they were entirely unencrypted and simple to scoop up.
Even when he didn’t connect to a Wi-Fi network, his sensors could track his location through Wi-Fi “pings.” His iPhone pinged the iMessage server to check for new messages. When he logged on to an unsecured Wi-Fi, it revealed what operating system he was using on what kind of device, and whether he was using Dropbox or went on a dating site or browsed for shoes on an e-commerce site. One site might leak his e-mail address, another his photo.
“Actually it’s not hard,” he concluded. “It’s terrifyingly easy.”
Also creepy – which is why he called his contraption “creepyDOL.”
“It could be used for anything depending on how creepy you want to be,” he said.
You could spy on your ex-lover, by placing the sensor boxes near the places the person frequents, or your teenage child, or the residents of a particular neighborhood. You could keep tabs on people who gather at a certain house of worship or take part in a protest demonstration in a town square. Their phones and tablets, Mr. O’Connor argued, would surely leak some information about them – and certainly if they then connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi. The boxes are small enough to be tucked under a cafe table or dropped from a hobby drone. They can be scattered around a city and go unnoticed.
Mr. O’Connor says he did none of that – and for a reason. In addition to being a security researcher and founder of a consulting firm called Malice Afterthought, he is also a law student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He says he stuck to snooping on himself – and did not, deliberately, seek to scoop up anyone else’s data – because of a federal law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Some of his fellow security researchers have been prosecuted under that law. One of them, Andrew Auernheimer, whose hacker alias is Weev, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for exploiting a security hole in the computer system of AT&T, which made e-mail addresses accessible for over 100,000 iPad owners; Mr. Aurnheimer is appealing the case.
“I haven’t done a full deployment of this because the United States government has made a practice of prosecuting security researchers,” he contends. “Everyone is terrified.”
He is presenting his findings at two security conferences in Las Vegas this week, including at a session for young people. It is a window into how cheap and easy it is to erect a surveillance apparatus.
“It eliminates the idea of ‘blending into a crowd,’” is how he put it. “If you have a wireless device (phone, iPad, etc.), even if you’re not connected to a network, CreepyDOL will see you, track your movements, and report home.”
Can individual consumers guard against such a prospect? Not really, he concluded. Applications leak more information than they should. And those who care about security and use things like VPN have to connect to their tunneling software after connecting to a Wi-Fi hub, meaning that at least for a few seconds, their Web traffic is known to anyone who cares to know, and VPN does nothing to mask your device identifier.
In addition, every Wi-Fi network that your cellphone has connected to in the past is also stored in the device, meaning that as you wander by every other network, you share details of the Wi-Fi networks you’ve connected to in the past. “These are fundamental design flaws in the way pretty much everything works,” he said.
Despite Administration Promises, Few Signs of Change in Drone Wars
By MARK MAZZETTI and MARK LANDLER
Published: August 2, 2013
WASHINGTON — There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. And after Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis on Thursday that the United States was winding down the drone wars there, officials back in Washington quickly contradicted him.
More than two months after President Obama signaled a sharp shift in America’s targeted-killing operations, there is little public evidence of change in a strategy that has come to define the administration’s approach to combating terrorism.
Most elements of the drone program remain in place, including a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia that the Central Intelligence Agency continues to use to carry out drone strikes in Yemen. In late May, administration officials said that the bulk of drone operations would shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A.
But the C.I.A. continues to run America’s secret air war in Pakistan, where Mr. Kerry’s comments underscored the administration’s haphazard approach to discussing these issues publicly. During a television interview in Pakistan on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said the United States had a “timeline” to end drone strikes in that country’s western mountains, adding, “We hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”
But the Obama administration is expected to carry out drone strikes in Pakistan well into the future. Hours after Mr. Kerry’s interview, the State Department issued a statement saying there was no definite timetable to end the targeted killing program in Pakistan, and a department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said, “In no way would we ever deprive ourselves of a tool to fight a threat if it arises.”
Micah Zenko, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, who closely follows American drone operations, said Mr. Kerry seemed to have been out of sync with the rest of the Obama administration in talking about the drone program. “There’s nothing that indicates this administration is going to unilaterally end drone strikes in Pakistan,” Mr. Zenko said, “or Yemen for that matter.”
The mixed messages of the past week reveal a deep-seated ambivalence inside the administration about just how much light ought to shine on America’s shadow wars. Even though Mr. Obama pledged a greater transparency and public accountability for drone operations, he and other officials still refuse to discuss specific strikes in public, relying instead on vague statements about “ongoing counterterrorism operations.”
Some of those operations originate from a C.I.A. drone base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia — the continued existence of which encapsulates the hurdles to changing how the United States carries out targeted-killing operations.
The Saudi government allowed the C.I.A. to build the base on the condition that the Obama administration not acknowledge that it was in Saudi Arabia. The base was completed in 2011, and it was first used for the operation that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical preacher based in Yemen who was an American citizen.
Given longstanding sensitivities about American troops operating from Saudi Arabia, American and Middle Eastern officials say that the Saudi government is unlikely to allow the Pentagon to take over operations at the base — or for the United States to speak openly about the base.
Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment.
Similarly, military and intelligence officials in Pakistan initially consented to American drone strikes on the condition that Washington not discuss them publicly — a bargain that became ever harder to honor when the United States significantly expanded American drone operations in the country.
There were three drone strikes in Pakistan last month, the most since January, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which monitors such strikes. At the same time, the number of strikes has declined in each of the last four years, so in that sense Mr. Kerry’s broader characterization of the program was accurate.
But because the drone program remains classified, administration officials are loath to discuss it in any detail, even when it is at the center of policy discussions, as it was during Mr. Obama’s meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday with President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen.
After their meeting, Mr. Obama and Mr. Hadi heaped praise on each other for cooperating on counterterrorism, though neither described the nature of that cooperation. Mr. Obama credited the setbacks of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or A.Q.A.P., the terrorist network’s affiliate in Yemen, not to the drone strikes, but to reforms of the Yemeni military that Mr. Hadi undertook after he took office in February 2012.
And Mr. Hadi twice stressed that Yemen was acting in its own interests in working with the United States to root out Al Qaeda, since the group’s terrorist attacks had badly damaged Yemen’s economy.
“Yemen’s development basically came to a halt whereby there is no tourism, and the oil companies, the oil-exploring companies, had to leave the country as a result of the presence of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hadi said.
Asked specifically about the recent increase in drone strikes in Yemen, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said: “I can tell you that we do cooperate with Yemen in our counterterrorism efforts. And it is an important relationship, an important connection, given what we know about A.Q.A.P. and the danger it represents to the United States and our allies.”
Analysts said the administration was still grappling with the fact that drones remained the crucial instrument for going after terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan — yet speaking about them publicly could generate a backlash in those countries because of issues like civilian casualties.
That fear is especially pronounced in Pakistan, where C.I.A. drones have become a toxic issue domestically and have provoked anti-American fervor. Mr. Kerry’s remarks seemed to reflect those sensitivities.
“Pakistan’s leaders often say things for public consumption which they don’t mean,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States. “It seems that this was one of those moments where Secretary Kerry got influenced by his Pakistani hosts.”
Congressional pressure for a public accounting of the drone wars has largely receded, another factor allowing the Obama administration to carry out operations from behind a veil of secrecy.
This year, several senators held up the nomination of John O. Brennan as C.I.A. director to get access to Justice Department legal opinions justifying drone operations. During that session, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, delivered a nearly 13-hour filibuster, railing against the Obama administration for killing American citizens overseas without trial.
For all that, though, the White House was able to get Mr. Brennan confirmed by the Senate without having to give lawmakers all the legal memos.
And, in the months since, there has been little public debate on Capitol Hill about drones, targeted killing and the new American way of war.
Desert Vista High to require students to display IDs
By Coty Dolores Miranda Special for The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 2, 2013 1:50 PM
Starting with the new school year Monday, Desert Vista High and Compadre Academy students must wear student photo-identification cards on lanyards that were given to them during book-distribution days this week.
Desert Vista students, like most in the Tempe Union High School District, had been required to carry photo-ID cards on their person while on the Ahwatukee campus, ready to show them if asked.
Other TUHSD schools plan to maintain their show-upon-request policy in the new school year.
Staff and students at Compadre Academy’s main campus and north campus in Tempe will once again be wearing their IDs on lanyards. That policy was implemented last year.
At Marcos de Niza and Corona del Sol high schools in Tempe, staff members display their ID badges and, as with other TUHSD campuses, students are required to have them in their possession each school day.
For the past decade, TUHSD policy has required school photo IDs be carried during school hours on campus and at school events by each student.
Security guards at all TUHSD schools have received training that requires them to check all adults entering schools or on campus. If they do not have ID badges, they will go through check-in procedures at the front offices.
Desert Vista principal Anna Battle says the change to wearing photo IDs not only is a security and safety measure but also an opportunity for administration, staff and students to interact.
“I can tell you three reasons why we want students and staff to display their IDs,” Battle said. “First, relationships are key to safety. Students will know teachers by name, and the faculty staff will know students by name. As we move about the campus, we will all become better acquainted and relationships will grow.
“Secondly, Desert Vista and all TUHSD schools have outstanding students, so it’s not that we are singling out our students. What we do want is to ensure we surround them with people who are supposed to be on campus on a daily basis.
“Third, ID pouches will also be used for the new Response to Intervention program beginning this year. This is a committee of teachers, staff, students and parents, along with input from the rest of the faculty, that will oversee a program where students will have time during the day to get assistance in classes, and time to work on other class work during the school day.”
Battle said she believes that additional security measures on campus are important to parents. She acknowledges that the ID display will be a gradual learning process.
“We’re going to work into the process and educate students on the importance of displaying the IDs,” she said. “Until students get it down and understand that it’s only a change in how we’re doing business, kind reminders is what they’ll experience.”
The policy of visitors to campus leaving their driver’s license at the front office in exchange for a visitor’s pass clip-on will continue at Desert Vista, Battle said.
Only Desert Vista freshmen and new students were photographed for their IDs during this week’s book-distribution days for their new IDs. Returning students may use their old ID cards or apply for a replacement.
For Desert Vista junior Katelyn Miyasaki, last year’s photo now displayed on her new plain-blue lanyard is not a problem, she says, even though it may not go with every outfit she wears.
“I think, although it might cause some inconvenience for students, it’s really a way to add extra security, and protecting the students and keeping us safe is really the important thing,” she said. “It’s fairly unobtrusive, so I’m OK with it.”
For most of us that would mean working 52 weeks, with one week of vacation.
But our royal Congressmen and Congresswoman are taking a 5 week vacation now. Which means they only work 47 weeks a year.
I suspect they take off a lot more time then a measly 5 weeks a year. But I don't have the details on that so lets calculate their pay assuming they work 47 weeks a year.
In that case they are paid $3700 per week, or $740 for those long 4 hour days they put in.
On the other hand I think we should be glad they take off so much time. Can you imagine how much our taxes would be if they worked full 8 hour days, for 52 weeks a year robbing us and giving our hard earned money to the special interest groups that helped get them into power???
Congress: Divided, Discourteous _ Taking a Break
Associated Press
By DAVID ESPO AP Special Correspondent
WASHINGTON August 2, 2013 (AP)
The accomplishments are few, the chaos plentiful in the 113th Congress, a discourteous model of divided government now beginning a five-week break.
"Have senators sit down and shut up, OK?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blurted out on Thursday as lawmakers milled about noisily at a time Sen. Susan Collins was trying to speak.
There was political calculation even in that. Democrats knew the Maine Republican was about rip into her own party's leadership, and wanted to make sure her indictment could be heard.
Across the Capitol, unsteady bookends tell the story of the House's first seven months in this two-year term. Internal dissent among Republicans nearly toppled Speaker John Boehner when lawmakers first convened in January. And leadership's grip is no surer now: A routine spending bill was pulled from the floor this week, two days before the monthlong August break, for fear it would fall in a crossfire between opposing GOP factions.
A few weeks earlier, Boehner suggested a new standard for Congress. "We should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws that we repeal," he said as Republicans voted for the 38th and 39th time since 2011 to repeal or otherwise neuter the health care law known as Obamacare.
Reaching for a round number, they did it for a 40th time on Friday, although the legislation stands no chance in the Democratic Senate and the GOP has yet to offer the replacement that it pledged three years ago to produce.
House Democrats claimed to hate all of this, yet couldn't get enough.
After attacking virtually every move Republicans made for months, they demanded the GOP cancel summer vacation so Congress could stay in session. The break, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said, "shows shocking disregard for the American people and our economy."
To be sure, there have been accomplishments since Congress convened last winter, although two of the more prominent ones merely avoided a meltdown rather than advancing the public's preferred agenda.
A closed-door session helped produce compromise over President Barack Obama's stalled nominations to administration posts and important boards — avoiding a blow-up that Republicans said would follow if Democrats changed the Senate's filibuster rules unilaterally.
Months earlier, at the urging of their leaders, House Republicans agreed to raise the government's debt limit rather than push the Treasury to the brink of a first-ever national default.
Legislation linking interest rates on student loans to the marketplace passed, and, too, a bill to strengthen the government's response to crimes against women. Two more measures sent recovery funds to the victims of Superstorm Sandy.
Among the 18 other measures signed into law so far: one named a new span over the Mississippi River as the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, after the late baseball legend. Another renamed a section of the tax code after former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
A third clarified the size of metal blanks to be used by the Baseball Hall of Fame in minting gold and silver commemoratives: a diameter of .85 inches in the case of $5 gold coins, and 1.5 inches for $1 silvers.
The Senate passed sweeping immigration legislation to spend billions securing the nation's borders against illegal entry and creating a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants currently in the country unlawfully. The vote was 68-32, with all Democrats and about one-third of Republicans in favor.
But House Republicans, many of whom oppose granting citizenship to anyone living in the country illegally, deemed the bill a non-starter. They intend to have alternative legislation this fall. If it succeeds, that will give the two houses about a year to somehow compromise before Congress' term expires.
The Senate approved a bipartisan farm bill that followed customary lines in providing funding simultaneously for growers and for government programs to feed the hungry.
But a revolt by tea party conservatives blocked passage of a combined bill in the House, which then approved a measure to aid farmers. The leadership promises one for nutrition programs this fall, and an attempt will be made to find common ground with the Senate.
So far, Congress' classic two-house compromises have been elusive.
Both houses have approved budgets.
But some Senate Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to begin compromise talks, saying they will relent only if there is agreement in advance not to raise the federal debt limit as part of any deal.
"Let me be clear, I don't trust the Republicans," said GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, a tea party-backed first-term lawmaker from Texas. "I don't trust the Democrats, and I think a whole lot of Americans likewise don't trust the Republicans or the Democrats because it is leadership in both parties that has got us into this mess."
Indeed, most opinion polls over the past six months put public approval for Congress in the mid-teens, with disapproval generally over 70 percent.
And yet, says Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., "Congress does reflect the American people and the American people are divided."
Sen. Deb Fischer, a Nebraska Republican who took office in January, said gridlock "is not as bad as I expected," and seems exaggerated by the frenzied 24-hour-a-day news cycle. She said she has been able to agree with several Democrats on amendments to bills in committee.
On a larger scale, though, even prior agreements are endangered. One example:
Under legislation already in effect, spending for one category of federal programs is supposed to total $967 billion for the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1, with a portion set aside for defense and another share for domestic accounts.
In the House, Republicans approved a budget that adheres to the $967 billion figure but puts more into defense and less into domestic programs than is mandated.
In the Senate, Democrats opted for $1.058 trillion, far in excess of the agreed-upon total.
The difference, about $92 billion, must be reconciled before lawmakers can approve legislation to keep the government in operation after Sept. 30.
Further complicating matters, some tea party-backed Republicans say they will vote for such legislation only if it cancels all funding for the health care law that Congress passed three years ago — a condition Democrats and Obama vehemently reject.
The alternative to compromise is a partial government shutdown, an outcome leaders in both parties say they can avoid.
But that's a struggle for after vacation.
Phoenix narcotics agents lauded
Phoenix narcotics agents lauded
Uruguay takes key step toward legalizing marijuana
Uruguay takes key step toward legalizing marijuana
Medical marijuana legal in Chicago!!!!
Medical marijuana legal in Chicago!!!!
Don't Google "pressure cooker" unless you love cops
Don't Google "pressure cooker" unless you love Homeland Security goons in your living room!!!
A new lame excuse to ban guns???? Forest Fires???
Source
www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2013-08-01/news/target-shooting-a-major-cause-of-arizona-forest-fires
Dog left in 100-degree weather, owners due in court
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down???? You know real criminals like robbers, rapists and murderers!!!!
Time to legalize fairness (and pot)
Has hell frozen over??? I actually agree with E.J. Montini
U.S. issues worldwide travel alert amid terrorism fears
I suspect this is another one of the things that H. L. Mencken is talking about when he says:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
On the other hand the American government has murdered thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim countries with our unconstitutional wars so I can understand the Arab world attacking Americans to get even.
Global warming causes global violence????
I suspect if this was true Phoenix would have more murders then Chicago. That's one interesting thing about the Chicago Tribune web site. Almost every day they list all the murders that occurred in Chicago the previous day. Something that ain't even close to the number of murders in Phoenix.
Mexican city fines concert $8,000 over drug ballads
It's not about drugs, it's about cash! $8,000 in cash or 100,000 pesos!!!!
A proven model
Mississippi law requires cord blood from teen moms
4th & 5th Amendments null and void in Mississippi????
Cops pepper spray teenagers pizza????
Of course I would have probably thanked the cop. Not for trying to poison me, but for putting some good hot sauce on my pizza.
Former MCSO officer pleads not guilty to sexual assault
Source
Interest grows in New Zealand’s designer drug law
Of course the real problem is not these designer drugs, but the insane unconstitutional war on drugs.
Old tobacco playbook gets new use by e-cigarettes
The legal drug tobacco kills about 6 million people worldwide, followed by alcohol which kills about 2.5 million people worldwide.
Five myths about libertarians
Source
A Cheap Spying Tool With a High Creepy Factor
Low tech internet spying - NSA tools for the homeless???
Source
Obama - No more drone murders (fingers crossed)
Source
Desert Vista High to require students to display IDs
Desert Vista High School Prison????
Congress to take a 5 week vacation!!!!
Let's see our royal US Congressmen and US Senators get paid $174,000 a year.
Valley Metro: CEO approved lack of minimum service
2) put in all pages, government, police, drugs, tempe, anti-war
3) use in in lawsuit demanding refund for days bus on strike
put in lawsuit demanding refund for days bus pass was not good.
Source
Valley Metro: CEO approved lack of minimum service By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Aug 3, 2013 8:51 PM Valley Metro is saying CEO Steve Banta approved the decision not to require that the bus company provide residents minimum southeast Valley service at all times, including in the event of a strike, a contract provision that The Arizona Republic has learned is currently mandated under Phoenix bus-service contracts. As of late Saturday, the three-day-old bus strike was ongoing and negotiators for bus company First Transit and for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433, which represents about 400 drivers, remained at the bargaining table, aiming to broker a compromise on a new contract and get buses rolling again. Banta previously told the Republic that he was not on the contract procurement team and that he did not know why the team decided not to include a minimum-bus-service provision. On Saturday, following a Republic story about the lacking requirement, that has left tens of thousands of residents without bus service, Valley Metro spokeswoman Hillary Foose said, in an e-mailed statement to the Republic, that Banta approved the decision. “What he (Banta) said…is that, while he was not part of the procurement team, Steve did approve the decision,” Foose wrote. Banta did not return a request for further comment or reaction to the company statement. That provision may have been the key to helping prevent the ongoing strike that has shut down all bus service in the southeast Valley, Tempe Councilman Kolby Granville told the Republic on Saturday. The 40 routes not operating account for nearly half of the total Phoenix-area bus routes. Valley residents, who endured the Phoenix and Tempe bus strike last year - which because of the minimum-service requirement maintained some bus service - waited at bus stops this week wondering why they were left without the safety net this time. Granville said that he is among the council members who were “surprised” to find out in the days leading up to the strike that the contract approved in January for a new company to run southeast Valley bus services lacked the requirement. The Tempe City Council and the Valley Regional Public Transportation Authority board of directors, which includes appointed representatives from Phoenix-area cities, approved the contract with First Transit. Granville and Tempe Councilman Joel Navarro said that it was a glaring oversight not to inform Tempe council members, prior to that approval, of the decision not to include the requirement. Navarro told the Republic Friday that he has called for an internal review into why the decision was made and if the city can still make changes to the contract to include the requirement. Tempe City Councilwoman Shana Ellis, who is Tempe’s representative on the Valley Metro board, did not return repeated requests for comment. The Republic asked Valley Metro for names of the individuals who served on the procurement board. “As for the names of the evaluation panel, this information is privileged,” Foose said in an e-mailed statement. “I can tell you that the panel was comprised of representatives from Valley Metro, Tempe, Mesa and Scottsdale. We also had an outside transit perspective from Denver.” The provision, Granville said, was in Veolia’s bus contract, which operated Tempe service before it was unified with other southeast Valley cities under the First Transit contract, which took effect July 1. Marie Chapple, a Phoenix Public Transit spokeswoman, told Republic Saturday, that if a strike was to happen against Phoenix bus companies, residents could count on some service because the city requires the safety net in its contracts with First Transit and Veolia. “Just talking with passengers, yes, it did help (during last year’s strike,” Chapple said. “People were still able to try and find a way (to get to their destination),” she said. “We wanted that in there (because) the most important thing is to serve the people the people.” The contract requirement isn’t just vital because it reassures Valley residents, desperate to get to work and appointments, that a regardless of a strike, and as long as they are willing to put up with longer waits, the bus company must keep some buses rolling, Granville said. The minimum-service requirement also is tied to a hefty fine if service is not provided, he said. Granville said the fines for not providing minimum service and the cost of flying in drivers from other properties to provide minimum service can serve as a deterrent to allowing contract negotiations to deteriorate to the point of a strike and give a bus company a significant monetary incentive to ending a strike. “When people run the numbers, when they see how much money a strike is going to cost,” he said, “If it’s (the fine) is high enough, it would make everyone think long and hard before dealing with that punishment.” Banta has said that there are drawbacks to requiring minimum service, including safety concerns tied to using outside drivers who are unfamiliar with the community’s bus routes. “It’s unsafe to expect outside operators to safely use new equipment and operate routes/on roadways without training or experience,” Foose wrote. Granville refuted that concern, saying, “I certainly wouldn’t want an untrained bus driver but if they are certified to drive a bus in Denver, they can certainly drive a bus in Phoenix.” Chapple said that there were no safety issues tied to outside drivers operating buses during last year’s strike. Banta also has said that although Phoenix and Tempe required Veolia to provide minimum service, which was to equate to the amount of bus service provided on Sundays, during last year’s strike Veolia was unable to meet that level. Granville and Navarro agreed that some service is better than no service. “I think it’s a mistake that should not be repeated in the future,” Granville said of the oversight, adding that residents who depends on public transportation and the cities that earns revenue from transit services are paying the price.
And of course a handicapped person in a wheelchair certainly has a right to carry a conceal weapon to protect himself from criminals who may prey on him because he looks like a easy victim to rob.
Police: Mesa man in wheelchair fatally shot during arrest
By Jackee Coe The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Aug 4, 2013 2:01 PM
A 49-year-old man in a wheelchair was killed Sunday morning after Mesa police shot him during an altercation, authorities said.
The man had been riding in his wheelchair on the sidewalk about 9:15 a.m. near Main Street and Williams when Mesa police officers spotted him from their vehicles and pulled over to stop him, Mesa Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tony Landato said. Officers had been looking for the man, who police said has had several drug-related run-ins with police, because they knew he had a felony warrant for narcotics.
After confirming the warrant was still active, officers were making arrangements with the jail to accommodate the man’s wheelchair when one of the officers noticed he was fidgeting with his waistband, Landato said. Officers searched him and found two knives sheathed in his waistband under his shirt.
Officers took the knives but one noticed a bulge around his side that turned out to be a holstered gun, Landato said. When the man realized the officers had seen the gun, he reached for it.
The officers began fighting with the man when he put his hand on the gun, and in the process one officer fired his gun at least once, striking the man, Landato said. He died on scene. None of the officers were injured.
The three officers involved, who have not been identified, have been put on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated, per standard procedure, Landato said. The officer who fired the gun is an 8-year veteran of the Mesa police force.
Landato said situations like this can be very dangerous.
“To maybe the onlooker, they think, ‘Oh, there’s a guy in a wheelchair,’ but because, for one, you can tend to take their motives and things for granted or see them as handicapped, that doesn’t mean they can’t grab a weapon and fire a gun,” he said. “And also because they’re seated and they’re in this wheelchair, they have in close proximities, a lot more areas where they might conceal something.”
Landato said typically when a person has a warrant, officers detain them, confirm who they are and verify that the warrant still is active. Once the warrant is confirmed, officers place the person under arrest, search them and then put them in the police vehicle to take them to jail.
This situation was slightly different because the man was in a wheelchair, Landato said. Officers had detained him but hadn’t searched him yet because he had not been taken into custody.
Debbie Washington, who lives in an apartment complex nearby, said she was taking out the trash when she heard three quick gunshots and ducked behind the dumpster. She watched as paramedics worked to try to save the man, who she said was lying in the street.
The incident has made her feel unsafe in her home, where she has lived for just five months.
“I’m ready to go. I’m ready to move,” she said. “It’s not a good area. I’ll just put it that way.”
Bradley Manning’s mother: My son is ‘Superman’
Associated Press Sun Aug 4, 2013 10:00 AM
LONDON — In a rare interview, the British mother of U.S. soldier Bradley Manning has urged her son not to give up hope, even as he faces up to 136 years in prison for disclosing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents.
In comments published by the Mail on Sunday, Susan Manning said he should know she considered him her “Superman.”
“Never give up hope, son,” she was quoted as saying. “I know I may never see you again, but I know you will be free one day. I pray it is soon.”
Susan Manning, a 59-year-old from Wales, had not given an interview in years.
She is divorced from her son’s father, Brian, and the Mail said she suffered from unspecified health problems. Manning’s parents have largely stayed out of the spotlight since transparency group WikiLeaks began publishing the documents leaked to it by the 25-year-old Army private.
The soldier was convicted last month on a slew of charges, including Espionage Act violations, but was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. Sentencing hearings in his case are expected to resume Monday.
L.A. actors with fake guns bring police with real ones
By Greg Risling Associated Press Sat Aug 3, 2013 2:44 PM
LOS ANGELES — College filmmakers were using fake guns to shoot a robbery scene at a suburban Los Angeles coffee shop when the movie took a scary twist that wasn’t in the script.
Eight police officers were descending on the masked actors. The police were real, with very real guns drawn, and had no idea this was a movie.
“Drop the gun! Drop it! Drop it!” one officer yells on an audio recording police were carrying.
One of the actors immediately let go of his fake assault rifle. But another held onto his replica handgun, forcing officers to make a life-or-death choice. An officer knocked the gun from the actor’s hand and handcuffed him, drawing a peaceful climax to what could have been something far worse.
“One of the officers made the decision that had the man moved, he would have been killed,” said Glendora police Capt. Tim Staab. “It was just milliseconds from a tragedy.”
Police said it showed the dangers of movie-making for amateur film crews who don’t get permits and follow proper steps before taking to the streets.
“I can’t think of a situation more dangerous than having a gun in your hand with cops responding,” Staab said. “It was much closer than we ever want to get close to.”
Attempts to reach the film’s director were unsuccessful. The students declined to tell police what college they were from.
The officers responded to the shop after receiving a 911 call from a woman who reported seeing an armed, masked gunman inside Classic Coffee in Glendora, a suburb east of Los Angeles that rarely sees Hollywood film crews.
Police said there was nothing to indicate a short movie was being shot. No one was outside to warn customers, there were no signs, and no permit had been pulled.
When officers arrived, there was no question in their mind that a robbery was occurring, Staab said.
It’s rare “to go into a coffee shop and see someone carrying an AR-15 rifle and wearing a mask,” he said.
Under normal filming protocols, weapons carried by the actors have orange markings to indicate they are replicas. But the markings on the guns used by the students had been covered by a black pen, presumably to make the weapons look more realistic.
Staab said one of the masked men, apparently startled by the real-life response, held the fake gun by his side, pointed toward the ground. When he didn’t drop it, Staab said, an officer did something unusual — he stripped it from the man’s hand and sent the gun falling to the floor.
After the man was handcuffed, the officer is heard on the audiotape asking what was going on. Somebody says a film was being made.
“You are shooting a short film?” the officer asks. “In a store with a man with a gun?”
The students were allowed to keep the fake weapons and weren’t facing charges. They were given a lecture by officers about the dangers they created and went on their way.
Give me a break there is no clause in the "Bill of Rights" that says it is null and void for anything other then horse and buggy technology.
Supreme Court may need to decide how private a cellphone is
By Robert Barnes, Sunday, August 4, 2:39 PM
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. didn’t hesitate last fall when a questioner asked him about the biggest constitutional challenge the Supreme Court faced.
Roberts told the audience at Rice University in Houston that the court must identify “the fundamental principle underlying what constitutional protection is and apply it to new issues and new technology. I think that is going to be the real challenge for the next 50 years.”
The court has started the process, of course. In the recently completed term, a majority said technological advances in how quickly warrants may be obtained means that in most cases police officers must obtain one before forcing a suspected drunken driver to take a blood test.
And, over a sharply worded dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, the court went a long way toward endorsing DNA testing as the modern-day equivalent of fingerprinting. It approved of Maryland’s law that allows police to take DNA swabs at the time someone is arrested for — not convicted of — a major violent crime.
Now, amid a national debate over how much government should be able to find out about the private activities of its citizens in the name of combating terrorism, the next issue seems teed up for Supreme Court review:
Cellphones.
More than 85 percent of Americans carry one and they provide authorities with more than just a vast record of a person’s travels and phone calls. Modern smartphones have a memory capacity equal to that of a typical home computer in 2004, capable of storing millions of pages of documents.
“That information is, by and large, of a highly personal nature: photographs, videos, written and audio messages (text, email and voicemail), contacts, calendar appointments, web search and browsing history, purchases and financial and medical records,” Judge Norman H. Stahl of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit wrote recently. “It is the kind of information one would previously have stored in one’s home.”
Stahl wrote for the majority in a 2 to 1 decision that applied the Fourth Amendment to the search of a cellphone found on a man arrested for selling drugs. The amendment protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
In most cases, a warrant is required. But the Supreme Court has said there are numerous exceptions to that general rule. In particular, in what courts refer to as “search incident to arrest,” a warrantless search is justified when officers are protecting themselves by looking for weapons or securing evidence that might be destroyed.
And justices in the past have been lenient about allowing searches of items found on a person who has been legally arrested.
But Stahl and fellow Judge Kermit V. Lipez disagreed with the government’s contention that a cellphone is “indistinguishable from other kinds of personal possessions, like a cigarette package, wallet, pager or address book, that fall within the search incident to arrest exception” approved by the Supreme Court.
Stahl and Lipez endorsed a “bright-line” rule that warrantless cellphone data searches are “categorically unlawful” given the “government’s failure to demonstrate that they are ever necessary to promote officer safety or prevent the destruction of evidence.”
Dissenting Judge Jeffrey R. Howard said his colleagues had no need to make such a broad ruling. “The constitutionality of a search cannot turn solely on whether the information is written in ink or displayed electronically,” he wrote.
The decision creates a split among courts that have examined the issue. The Florida Supreme Court, for instance, has ruled that police generally may not search an arrestee’s cellphone data, and some states have taken action legislatively.
But more importantly for the Supreme Court, every other federal appeals court that has looked at the issue is at odds with the 1st Circuit’s decision in U.S. v. Wurie.
When the government asked for an enbanc review of the panel’s ruling, 1st Circuit Chief Judge Sandra Lynch said there would not be much point in that.
“I think the preferable course is to speed this case to the Supreme Court,” she wrote. Only the justices can settle the “confusing and often contradictory guidance to law enforcement” supplied by lower courts.
Once they’ve taken care of that, the justices might want to decide whether the government needs a warrant to obtain cellphone location data from telecommunications carriers. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled last month that a warrant was unneeded.
That contrasts with a unanimous decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court, based on the state constitution, that it is required. Other federal appeals courts are reviewing similar cases.
Tracking a person’s whereabouts via a cellphone and searching it for information after an arrest raise different Fourth Amendment questions. But the justices know that a rapidly changing technology landscape complicates their work.
In a case last year concerning GPS tracking of a suspect, Justice Sonia Sotomayor worried about a digital age “in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said “dramatic technological change may lead to periods in which popular expectations are in flux and may ultimately produce significant changes in popular attitudes.”
In his Houston speech, Roberts said the coming decisions will test how “prescient” the framers were in developing a document that can deal with a world they could not have foreseen.
Roberts likes to be self-deprecating in public appearances, so he added that maybe he worried too much. “Maybe it’s just the fact that technology is outpacing me rather than the Constitution,” he said.
10 años del último ‘vocho’ fabricado en México
Uno de los modelos más famosos de la industria automotriz y que se convirtió en insignia en la fábrica de Puebla.
El 30 de julio de 2003 salió el último vehículo modelo Sedán de Volkswagen de la línea de producción en Puebla, siendo el auto insignia de la armadora alemana desde 1945.
En total se fabricaron 21 millones 529 mil 464 ‘Vochos’ que se mandaron a todas partes del mundo, pues el modelo ganó la predilección de los compradores por sus bajos costos en mantenimiento y alto rendimiento.
En México se produjeron 1 millón 691 mil 542 autos, de un total de 21 millones 529 mil 464 unidades de 20 países.
En 1967 Volkswagen abrió su fábrica en Puebla y al 30 de julio de 2013 era la última planta de VW que fabricaba el auto en todo el mundo.
Escarabajo, Vocho, Pichirilo, Cucaracha y Poncho fueron algunos de los nombres populares que recibió este modelo.
Sedan última Edición fue la última variante y salió el 10 de julio de 2003; sólo se produjeron 3 mil unidades.
El 30 de julio se fabricó el último coche de esta línea en México y en todo el mundo.
Ex-Phoenix officer’s murder trial set to begin
Associated Press Mon Aug 5, 2013 7:36 AM
PHOENIX — Jury selection is set to begin Monday for a former Phoenix police officer charged with murder and animal cruelty in the fatal shootings of an unarmed man and his dog during a domestic dispute call.
Authorities say then-Officer Richard Chrisman broke the law in his response to the 2010 call that ended with the death of 29-year-old Daniel Rodriguez at the south Phoenix trailer that Rodriguez shared with his mother. Chrisman disputes that he acted improperly, saying the shooting was justified because Rodriguez had reached for the officer’s gun during a tussle that preceded the shooting.
Attorneys are expected to make opening arguments Wednesday.
Rodriguez’s mother had called police from a neighbor’s trailer because she said her son had damaged property inside their trailer after the two had gotten into an argument on Oct. 5, 2010.
Investigators say that when Rodriguez questioned the officers’ right to be inside the trailer, Chrisman drew his pistol, put its muzzle on Rodriguez’s temple and said he didn’t need a warrant to be there. Chrisman’s partner told investigators that there was no threat being made against either officer. Chrisman denies that he put his gun to Rodriguez’s temple.
Authorities say Chrisman put his gun back in its holster and tried to grab Rodriguez, leading to a struggle in which both officers tried unsuccessfully to restrain Rodriguez and used their stun guns on Rodriguez, who at one point removed the Taser probes that were on his chest.
Investigators also say Chrisman shot pepper spray into Rodriguez’s eyes and drew his pistol a second time and shot Rodriguez’s barking dog. Chrisman’s partner told investigators that the dog wasn’t attacking either officer.
Another scuffle between Chrisman and Rodriguez began when Rodriguez said he wanted to leave on his bicycle. At some point, Chrisman drew his pistol again and shot Rodriguez in the chest from about two to three feet away. Rodriguez fell to the ground and was later pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
The case, to a large degree, boils down to conflicting accounts from Chrisman and his partner, Officer Sergio Virgillo — the only two people, besides Rodriguez, inside the trailer to witness the escalating confrontation.
Virgillo told investigators that he never saw a weapon in Rodriguez’s hands and that there was no threat that required deadly force. Chrisman’s attorney has said Virgillo had exhausted all options for controlling Rodriguez before he fired the shots and that Virgillo abandoned Chrisman and walked out of the trailer.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, whose office is prosecuting the case, declined to say whether there was other evidence beyond the two officers’ accounts to back up their contention that Chrisman committed a crime.
Chrisman had pleaded not guilty to second degree murder, aggravated assault and animal cruelty charges. The nine-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department was fired about five months after Rodriguez’s death.
Defense attorneys had complained earlier in the case that an account of the shooting that was filed into court records didn’t contain any information to their client.
“We look forward to having the trial start and having a chance to tell our side of the story,” said Chrisman’s attorney, Craig Mehrens.
———
Associated Press writer Brian Skoloff contributed to this report.
You know real criminals that hurt people like robbers, rapists and muggers???
Dancing leads to ‘saggy pants’ arrest
Associated Press Fri Aug 2, 2013 4:05 PM
BOGALUSA, La. — A Bogalusa man who allegedly caused a disturbance by dancing drunkenly in the street has also gained the distinction of apparently being the first person charged with a violation of the city’s “saggy pants” ordinance.
Police Chief Joe Culpepper tells The Daily News that police responded to a complaint call late Sunday. When they arrived, he says officers found a shirtless man dancing in the middle of the road with his pants sagging “to the point that his complete buttocks were in view.”
Culpepper said officers arrested Joshua Davis, 25, on charges of public drunk, the saggy pants ordinance and resisting an officer. It was not immediately known if Davis had an attorney.
Culpepper said, as far as he knows, it’s the first actual saggy pants charge issued by the department.
Police began enforcing the 2007 ordinance last November despite some council members expressing doubts over the law’s constitutionality. The maximum penalty is a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.
The beltline crackdown comes after complaints from resident Larry “Nub” Galloway, who had repeatedly appeared before the City Council to urge action against young people walking around in public with their underwear exposed due to low-slung pants.
Opelousas outlawed saggy pants in 1998; Caddo Parish enacted a similar ban in 2012. Municipalities including Shreveport, Delcambre, Mansfield and Alexandria had passed them earlier this century.
The Louisiana House passed an anti-sag bill in 2004, but the Senate shot it down amid national ridicule. Similar bills failed in 2008 and 2010.
Culpepper said Bogalusa’s ordinance specifically applies to the exposure of underwear, and that everyone he’s seen wearing saggy pants in public was exposing an under layer of gym shorts.
“Everyone I’ve seen myself might have been exposing the shape of their butt, but it was covered by gym shorts,” he said. “I have yet to see underwear. I just haven’t seen it.”
But the officer who arrested Davis allegedly saw a violation and booked him accordingly.
Culpepper said he did the right thing.
“It’s a law just like the public drunkenness law,” Culpepper said. “We’ll enforce it, and it’s up to the courts to determine the rest of it.”
The same is true about arrests made by the TSA when they search airline passengers for contraband. Again over 50 percent of the arrests are made for victimless drug war crimes, with less then 1 percent of the arrests for "terrorist" crimes.
I suspect the data the NSA has been collecting on us when it taps our phones and reads our emails is used mostly to make arrests for victimless drug war crimes, and that very little of the arrests are for the "terrorists" crimes we are told the NSA is protecting us from.
The NSA is giving your phone records to the DEA. And the DEA is covering it up.
By Brian Fung, Published: August 5 at 10:06
A day after we learned of a draining turf battle between the NSA and other law enforcement agencies over bulk surveillance data, it now appears that those same agencies are working together to cover up when that data gets shared.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips, according to Reuters. The information shared includes “intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records,” and it’s problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counter-terrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations.
Because the SOD’s work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can’t be seen to have originated from a NSA source.
So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as “parallel construction.” Reuters explains:
Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using “parallel construction” may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.
The report makes no explicit connection between the DEA and the earlier NSA bulk phone surveillance uncovered by former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden. In other words, we don’t know for sure if the DEA’s Special Operations Division is getting its tips from the same database that’s been the subject of multiple congressional hearings in recent months. We just know that the NSA sometimes grants DEA access to Section 702 phone records, and also, separately, that a special outfit within DEA sometimes gets tips from the NSA.
There’s another reason the DEA would rather not admit the involvement of NSA data in its investigations: It might lead to a constitutional challenge to the very law that gave rise to the evidence.
Earlier this year, a federal court said that if law enforcement agencies wanted to use Section 702 phone records in court, they had to say so beforehand and give the defendant a chance to contest the legality of the surveillance. Lawyers for Adel Daoud, who was arrested in a federal sting operation and charged with trying to blow up a bomb, suspect that Daoud was identified using Section 702 records but was never told.
Surveys show most people support the NSA’s bulk surveillance program strongly when the words “terrorism” or “courts” are included in the question. When pollsters draw no connection with terrorism, support tends to wane. What’ll happen when the question makes clear that the intelligence not only isn’t being used for terrorism investigations against foreign agents, but is actively being applied to criminal investigations against Americans?
And of course I suspect the police will use some of this stuff to terrorize the people they pretend to protect.
Small police forces snap up military surplus
From bayonets to bowling pins, little restrains giveaway program
Aug. 1, 2013
Written by Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press
MORVEN, GA. — Small-town police departments across the country have been gobbling up tons of equipment discarded by a downsizing military — bicycles, bed sheets, bowling pins, French horns, dog collars, even a colonoscopy machine — regardless of whether the items are needed or will ever be used.
In the tiny farming community of Morven, Ga., the police chief has grabbed three boats, scuba gear, rescue rafts and a couple of dozen life preservers. The town’s deepest body of water: an ankle-deep creek.
The Defense Department program originally was aimed at helping local law enforcement fight terrorism and drug trafficking. But an Associated Press investigation found that a disproportionate share of the $4.2 billion in property distributed since 1990 has been obtained by police departments and sheriff’s offices in rural areas with few officers and little crime.
The national giveaway program operates with scant oversight, and the surplus military gear often sits in storage, the AP found.
The AP obtained thousands of pages of emails and other documents related to the program. The AP investigation reveals that staffing shortages and budget constraints have made it difficult for federal and state program officials to keep track of all of the property and to prevent police forces from obtaining excessive amounts of used military equipment and other Defense Department-transferred property.
A $200K machine that doesn't work
Program officials often have to trust recipients to follow the rules and take only what they can use. Requests for equipment are reviewed, but the process hasn’t stopped many overly aggressive departments from grabbing property that could be better used by other communities with a greater need.
For many, the opportunity to amass a vast array of gear with few strings attached has proven too tempting to pass up.
Morven Police Chief Lynwood Yates, for example, has acquired a decontamination machine originally worth $200,000 for his community of about 700 residents, and two additional full-time officers. The high-tech gadget is missing most of its parts and would need $100,000 in repairs.
He also received a shipment of bayonets, which have never made it out of storage in his 1.7-square-mile city.
“That was one of those things in the old days you got it because you thought it was cool,” Yates said of his bayonets. “Then, after you get it, you’re like, ‘What the hell am I going to do with this?’ ”
Chief bought TVs, fryers, pool table
Morven isn’t the only example of a giveaway program gone wild: Before his firing earlier this year for an unrelated matter, the police chief in Rising Star, Texas — the only full-time officer in the town of 835 residents — acquired more than $3.2 million worth of property within 14 months. According to an inventory obtained by the AP, the items included nine televisions, 11 computers, three deep fryers, two meat slicers, 22 large space heaters, a pool table, 25 sleeping bags and playground equipment.
Federal officials suspended Rising Star from the program in March after investigators discovered many items — including 12 pairs of binoculars — were missing from police department facilities.
Nearly 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participate is what’s commonly called the 1033 Program, after a section of the National Defense Authorization Act that permits transfer to law enforcement agencies of military property no longer needed. The program has grown drastically in recent years, due in large part to the scaling down of the military from two wars, tight local-government operating budgets and eligibility expansion in 1996 to include all state and local law enforcement work. In fiscal year 2012, a record $546 million worth of property was transferred.
Applications are handled by state coordinators. Overall command, including the responsibility to root out abuse, is handled by an office at the Defense Logistics Agency in Battle Creek, Mich.
What rubbish. If the government is peeking into your home, property or belonging for any reason looking for reasons to arrest you, that is a search and the government should be required to get a search warrant before doing it. Period!!!!!
Drone Regulations: Spying Concerns Prompt States To Consider Legislation
By LISA CORNWELL 08/04/13 10:16 AM ET EDT AP
CINCINNATI -- Thousands of civilian drones are expected in U.S. skies within a few years and concerns they could be used to spy on Americans are fueling legislative efforts in several states to regulate the unmanned aircraft.
Varied legislation involving drones was introduced this year in more than 40 states, including Ohio. Many of those bills seek to regulate law enforcement's use of information-gathering drones by requiring search warrants. Some bills have stalled or are still pending, but at least six states now require warrants, and Virginia has put a two-year moratorium on drone use by law enforcement to provide more time to develop guidelines.
Domestic drones often resemble the small radio-controlled model airplanes and helicopters flown by hobbyists and can help monitor floods and other emergencies, survey crops and assist search-and-rescue operations. But privacy advocates are worried because the aircraft can also carry cameras and other equipment to capture images of people and property.
"Right now police can't come into your house without a search warrant," said Ohio Rep. Rex Damschroder, who has proposed drone regulations. "But with drones, they can come right over your backyard and take pictures."
Since 2006, the Federal Aviation Administration has approved more than 1,400 requests for drone use from government agencies and public universities wanting to operate the unmanned aircraft for purposes including research and public safety. Since 2008, approval had been granted to at least 80 law enforcement agencies.
But the FAA estimates that as many as 7,500 small commercial unmanned aircraft could be operating domestically within the next few years. A federal law enacted last year requires the FAA to develop a plan for safely integrating the aircraft into U.S. airspace by September 2015.
Damschroder's proposed bill would prohibit law enforcement agencies from using drones to get evidence or other information without a search warrant. Exceptions would include credible risks of terrorist attacks or the need for swift action to prevent imminent harm to life or property or to prevent suspects from escaping or destroying evidence.
The Republican said he isn't against drones but worries they could threaten constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
"I don't want the government just going up and down every street snooping," Damschroder said.
The Ohio House speaker's office says it's too soon to comment on the chances for passage. But similar legislation has been enacted in Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Montana, Texas and Oregon.
The sponsor of Tennessee's bill said the law was necessary to ensure that residents can maintain their right to privacy.
"Abuses of privacy rights that we have been seeing from law enforcement recently show a need for this legislation," said Republican Sen. Mae Beavers.
Beavers and Damschroder modeled their bills after one signed into law this year by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who said then that "we shouldn't have unwarranted surveillance."
But the industry's professional association says regulating law enforcement's use of unmanned aircraft is unnecessary and shortsighted. It wants guidelines covering manned aircraft applied to unmanned aircraft.
"We don't support rewriting existing search warrant requirements under the guise of privacy," said Mario Mairena, government relations manager for the Arlington, Va.-based Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
The association predicts unmanned aircraft systems will generate billions of dollars in economic impact in the next few years and says privacy concerns are unwarranted.
In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage vetoed the state's drone-regulating legislation, saying "this bill steps too far" and would lead to lawsuits and harm Maine's opportunities for new aerospace jobs. He plans to establish guidelines allowing legitimate uses while protecting privacy.
The American Civil Liberties Union supports legislation to regulate drone use and require search warrants, but it would also like weapons banned from domestic drones and limits on how long drone-collected data could be kept, said Melissa Bilancini, an ACLU of Ohio staff attorney.
In North Dakota, Rep. Rick Becker's bill to ban weapons from drones and require search warrants failed, but the Republican says he plans to try again because "we must address these privacy concerns."
Democratic Rep. Ed Gruchalla, formerly in law enforcement, opposed Becker's bill out of concern it would restrict police from effectively using drones.
"We are familiar with drones in North Dakota, and I don't know of any abuses or complaints," he said.
Drones can be as small as a bird or have a wingspan as large as a Boeing 737, but a program manager with the International Association of Chiefs of Police says most law enforcement agencies considering unmanned aircraft are looking at ones weighing around 2 pounds that only fly for about 15 minutes.
"They can be carried in the back of a car and put up quickly for an aerial view of a situation without putting humans at risk," Mike Fergus said, adding that they aren't suited for surveillance.
Medina County Sheriff Tom Miller in northeast Ohio says his office's 2-pound drone is intended primarily for search-and-rescue operations and wouldn't be used to collect evidence without a warrant.
Cincinnati resident Dwan Stone, 50, doesn't have a problem with some limits.
"But I don't oppose drones if there is a good reason for using them," she said.
Chase Jeffries, 19, also of Cincinnati, opposes them.
"I don't want the government being able to use drones to spy on people," he said.
Also the schools in the Scottsdale school district will now be run like like prisons where the students are treated like inmates, rather then students.
Tighter security first lesson in Scottsdale this school year
By Laurie Merrill and Mary Beth Faller The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Aug 5, 2013 9:35 AM
Parents and students will notice increased safety and security measures in the Scottsdale Unified School District when school resumes this week.
Classes begin Wednesday, and some of the changes will affect parents before they even get to the school buildings.
School-zone cameras
Scottsdale has become the first municipality in the region to launch portable school towers, new devices that look like phone booths but conceal cameras, police said.
The two units, which began issuing citations July 21, will be rotated through Scottsdale’s 31 school zones, according to police.
Unlike typical speed cameras that snap photos when a car exceeds the limit by 11 mph, the school towers click into action at 6 mph over the limit.
The speed limit is 15 mph between the portable signs erected when school is in session, according to state law.
Motorists in the zones may not pass other vehicles and must stop when anyone is in the crosswalk.
Failure to stop when a child is in the crosswalk could mean double fines.
Violators face fines of $219 and $305 and are not eligible for traffic school, according to Scottsdale City Court. They must appear in court.
The Scottsdale, Cave Creek and Paradise Valley unified school districts all have campuses in Scottsdale, as well as several charter and private schools.
Scottsdale police in June tested a portable tower on Miller Road, Officer Dave Pubins said. From June 4 to 6, the devices recorded 130 violations, though no citations were issued during the test phase, Pubins said.
When school is not in session, the tools will be placed near other pedestrian high-traffic areas, such as parks, pools, shopping areas and sports fields, Pubins said.
The Scottsdale City Council in December approved a five-year contract with American Traffic Solutions, the company contracted to provide photo enforcement in the city.
The school towers and two mobile photo-enforcement vans were included in the contract, which also called for adding cameras to eight new intersections and more electronic-feedback signs, police said.
The devices can be used in places with too little room for the vans, Pubins said. Scottsdale will keep deploying the vans in school zones that have enough parking and continue to use patrol officers, police said.
The contract calls for the city to pay ATS $1.2 million the first year, the same amount it paid last year, according to a City Council report.
Officials said the program is essentially self-supporting, citing revenue generated from traffic penalties. In fiscal 2010-11, the program put about $925,000 back into city coffers, the report said.
‘Gate-to-gate’ security
Parents will no longer be allowed to walk their children to the classroom door under a stricter security policy in the Scottsdale district.
James Dorer, chief of security for the district, said the schools will start a “gate-to-gate” philosophy, meaning that gates at all campuses will be closed.
In the morning, parents who choose to park instead of using the drop-off lane must leave their children at the gate, where staff will take them to their classrooms or the playgrounds. The same rules apply for afternoon pickup.
Parents who want to go to a classroom must sign in at the front office and get a visitor badge.
“We know parents like to walk their kids to the classroom,” he said, and it has been common for most elementary schools to leave the gates open for classroom drop-off and pickup.
“But that becomes a weak spot,” he said of the congregated adults outside the classrooms. “We don’t truly know if they are parents and what their intentions are.
“The vast majority are parents who are supposed to be there, and they are welcome, but we need to have a process.”
Badges required
All parents on Scottsdale district campuses will be required to get a visitor badge at the front office, even if they are quickly visiting a classroom.
“I’m trying to stress that anytime anyone is on a campus, they have to have an ID (badge) visible, so someone who doesn’t have one sticks out. That’s the goal,” Dorer said.
However, the district is tweaking its philosophy on ID badges for students. A year ago, Dorer outlined a plan that would eventually require all students to wear ID badges at all times. This year, middle- and high-school students will be required to wear them but not younger students.
“We had some successes and some setbacks as with any first-year program,” he said. “There has been mixed reception to it.”
Dorer said that some parents of elementary students didn’t support the plan, and that enforcement varied among campuses.
Elementary students still are supposed to keep their ID badges with them this year, but there won’t be daily enforcement, Dorer said.
Middle- and high-school students still will be required to wear their badges, and that was a mixed bag last year, too. A missing badge, which costs $5 to replace, was considered a dress-code violation, and the district recorded a 900 percent increase in that type of violation last year.
Dorer said that in the workplace, employees are required to wear security badges. “We’re trying to prep our students for that world.
“It’s a change of culture, and it will take time.”
Mesa cops murder man in wheelchair
Did the cops murder this guy because he had a gun??? Remember in Arizona it is legal for almost ANYBODY over 18 to carry a concealed weapon.
Bradley Manning’s mother: My son is ‘Superman’
Your right Susan Manning you son is Superman, in addition to being a freedom fighter and patriot. The government's claim that he is a traitor and a terrorist is rubbish.
L.A. actors with fake guns bring police with real ones
Source
Supreme Court may need to decide how private a cellphone is
Will the Supremes continue to say "technology" makes the Bill of Rights null and void???
10 años del último ‘vocho’ fabricado en México
Source
Ex-Phoenix officer’s murder trial set to begin
Source
Dancing leads to ‘saggy pants’ arrest
Don't these pigs have any real criminals to arrest????
NSA is giving your phone records to the DEA.
Over 50 percent of the arrests for Patriot Act crimes are for victimless drug war crimes. Less then 1 percent of the arrests are for "terrorist" crimes.
Small police forces snap up military surplus
Sounds like a government welfare program for cops.
Search Warrants required for drone overflights???
If you ask me the 4th Amendment is pretty clear and we don't need a bunch of silly new laws forbidding government spying on us.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"
The problem is our government masters have made thousands of lame excuses on WHY they don't have to honor the 4th Amendment. As in this case the cops use the lame excuse that flying an airplane over your home to spy on you isn't really spying on you and thus not a violation of the 4th Amendment.
Photo radar bandits for 15 mph school zones???
Scottsdale Schools to be run like POW camps???
Scottsdale Schools to be run like prisons???
Photo radar bandits for 15 mph school zones???