Homeless in Arizona

Congress should try listening to constituents before voting

Frequently when one bill is heard several times in either the House or Senate a Congressman or Senator will vote for the bill one time, and then against the bill the second time.

No the these folks are not dyslexic nut jobs who don't know what is going on. They intentionally vote BOTH ways, so they can tell supporters of the bill they voted for the bill and tell opponents of the bill that they voted against the bill.

Of course their final vote for the bill will almost always represent the voice of what ever special interest group gave them the most cold hard cash in campaign contributions.

Source

Letter: Congress should try listening to constituents before voting

Posted: Thursday, July 18, 2013 12:16 pm

Letter to the Editor

Congressman Matt Salmon claims to be concerned with “the erosion of our constitutional rights,” according to a recent press release on his sponsorship of the LIBERT-E Act. While he appears to have a legitimate concern for constitutional rights and liberties, his voting record begs to differ.

Let’s go back to the beginning of 2013. In February, CISPA was reintroduced to the House. This bill raised heavy criticism from both sides of the aisle as to the Internet surveillance powers it granted to the federal government. The bill passed with support from Congressman Salmon. Then, last month, the NSA leaks hit the press and government surveillance became the most discussed issue of the summer.

Kicking off the anti-NSA tirade was a congressional letter to Keith Alexander demanding answers to questions on how the FBI and the NSA collect internet information and cellular metadata. Among the 25 signatures on this letter was Rep. Salmon’s. Why is this Representative who voted to extend Patriot Act surveillance powers to the federal government suddenly interested in their use? After a call to his local office, a spokesperson claimed that he “regrets” voting in favor of CISPA. Congressmen don’t get to just regret a controversial vote.

Is Salmon’s sponsorship of the LIBERT-E Act a sincere effort to limit unconstitutional federal surveillance, or is it merely an appeal to the now-outraged conservative voting population he represents? Maybe the next time he votes he should listen to his constituent concerns rather than ignoring them until it becomes an unpopular practice.

Andrew Barber

Gilbert

Goodyear police detective accused of sex with minor

More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters. Of course personally I think that all victimless crimes such as this should be legalized. http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles/20130718goodyear-detective-accused-of-sex-abuse-of-minor-abrk.html?nclick_check=1 Goodyear police detective accused of sex with minor By D.S. Woodfill The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Jul 18, 2013 10:24 PM A Goodyear police detective and 20-year employee was indicted on multiple sex abuse counts prosecutors said he committed in 2004 and as late as 2006. Jose Roman, 52, was arrested on July 1 and faces 12 felony counts including sexual conduct with a minor and molestation. All charges handed down on July 9 by a Maricopa County Superior Court grand jury stem from accusations by a woman who said she was 12 when the abuse started. Roman’s lawyer, Tracey Westerhausen, could not be immediately reached for comment at her home or office Thursday evening. Roman’s accuser reported the alleged abuse to police on May 9, the day after she said she had an argument with him in front of family members and he admitted to the molestation, according to Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office documents. She’s now 22. It was not clear what her relationship is to Roman, but at least some of the abuse occurred at homes, in Avondale, Glendale and at his home in Tonopah, she said. The Republic does not name victims of sexual abuse. Investigation documents said Roman denied the allegations when interviewed by police and agreed to a polygraph examination which gave a “no decision result, indicating no truthful or untruthful determination could be made.” Authorities said Roman eventually admitted to the allegations to his wife during two recorded conversations on June 27. In those conversations, police said he “provided details of the offense that only an active participant would know.” An emailed statement from police spokeswoman Lisa Kutis said Roman was placed on unpaid administrative leave May 10 from the department after the accusations surfaced. Roman was hired August 5, 1993 and has worked in the department’s Investigations Division since 2006, according to the statement. “All of Detective Roman’s open and pending cases have been reassigned to other detectives in the division.” Kutis declined to comment further on the case. Roman’s next court appearance is set for Sept. 4 at 8:15 a.m.

Using denial-of-service attacks to crash telephone service???

The process is identical to using "denial of service attacks" to knock out an internet web site. Just have a whole bunch of phones at the same time call the land line number you want to shut down.

Many years ago I read a story about a couple who where ripped off by a national tele-Evangelical preacher who conned them into donating their life savings to his phoney baloney religion.

The couple's son got even with the preacher by having his computer dial the preachers 800 number continuously to prevent other people from calling it.

Just for fun I bought a few chips at Radio Shack and built a circuit board for a few bucks to do the same thing. Now I guess you wouldn't even have to build your own hardware to do it but could buy a board with a PIC chip on it and program it to continuously dial the same number. Total cost under $50. For that matter I suspect you could write an application on these new "smart" cell phones to do the same thing.

Source

VoIP phone hackers pose public safety threat

By Paresh Dave

July 18, 2013, 7:15 p.m.

The demand stunned the hospital employee. She had picked up the emergency room's phone line, expecting to hear a dispatcher or a doctor. But instead, an unfamiliar male greeted her by name and then threatened to paralyze the hospital's phone service if she didn't pay him hundreds of dollars.

Shortly after the worker hung up on the caller, the ER's six phone lines went dead. For nearly two days in March, ambulances and patients' families calling the San Diego hospital heard nothing but busy signals.

The hospital had become a victim of an extortionist who, probably using not much more than a laptop and cheap software, had single-handedly generated enough calls to tie up the lines.

Distributed denial-of-service attacks — taking a website down by forcing thousands of compromised personal computers to simultaneously visit and overwhelm it — has been a favored choice of hackers since the advent of the Internet.

Now, scammers are inundating phone lines by exploiting vulnerabilities in the burgeoning VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, telephone system.

The frequency of such attacks is alarming security experts and law enforcement officials, who say that while the tactic has mainly been the tool of scammers, it could easily be adopted by malicious hackers and terrorists to knock out crucial infrastructure such as hospitals and 911 call centers.

"I haven't seen this escalated to national security level yet, but it could if an attack happens during a major disaster or someone expires due to an attack," said Frank Artes, chief technology architect at information security firm NSS Labs and a cybercrime advisor for federal agencies.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security declined to talk about the attacks but said in a statement that the department was working with "private and public sector partners to develop effective mitigation and security responses."

In the traditional phone system, carriers such as AT&T grant phone numbers to customers, creating a layer of accountability that can be traced. On the Web, a phone number isn't always attached to someone. That's allowed scammers to place unlimited anonymous calls to any land line or VoIP number.

They create a personal virtual phone network, typically either through hardware that splits up a land line or software that generates online numbers instantly. Some even infect cellphones of unsuspecting consumers with viruses, turning them into robo-dialers without the owners knowing that their devices have been hijacked. In all cases, a scammer has access to multiple U.S. numbers and can tell a computer to use them to dial a specific business.

Authorities say the line-flooding extortion scheme started in 2010 as phone scammers sought to improve on an old trick in which they pretend to be debt collectors. But the emerging bulls-eye on hospitals and other public safety lines has intensified efforts to track down the callers.

Since mid-February, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a task force that includes the FBI, has received more than 100 reports about telephony denial-of-service attacks. Victims have paid $500 to $5,000 to bring an end to the attacks, often agreeing to transfer funds from their banks to the attackers' prepaid debit card accounts. The attackers then use the debit cards to withdraw cash from an ATM.

The hospital attack, confirmed by two independent sources familiar with it, was eventually stopped using a computer firewall filter. No one died, the sources said. But hospital staff found the lack of reliable phone service disturbing and frustrating, one source said. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the incident.

But typical firewalls, which are designed to block calls from specific telephone numbers, are less effective against Internet calls because hackers can delete numbers and create new ones constantly. Phone traffic carried over the Internet surged 25% last year and now accounts for more than a third of all international voice traffic, according to market research firm TeleGeography.

To thwart phone-based attacks, federal officials recently began working with telecommunications companies to develop a caller identification system for the Web. Their efforts could quell more than just denial-of-service attacks.

They could block other thriving fraud, including the spoofing and swatting calls that have targeted many people, from senior citizens to celebrities such as Justin Bieber. In spoofing, a caller tricks people into picking up the phone when their caller ID shows a familiar number. In swatting, a caller manipulates the caller ID to appear as though a 911 call is coming from a celebrity's home.

Unclassified law enforcement documents posted online have vaguely identified some victims: a nursing home in Marquette, Wis., last November, a public safety agency and a manufacturer in Massachusetts in early 2013, a Louisiana emergency operations center in March, a Massachusetts medical center in April and a Boston hospital in May.

Wall Street firms, schools, media giants, insurance companies and customer service call centers have also temporarily lost phone service because of the attacks, according to telecommunications industry officials. Many of the victims want to remain anonymous out of fear of being attacked again or opening themselves up to lawsuits from customers.

The Marquette incident is noteworthy because when the business owner involved the Marquette County Sheriff's Department, the scammer bombarded one of the county's two 911 lines for 3 1/2 hours.

"The few people I've talked to about it have said that you just have to take it and that there's no way to stop this," Sheriff's Capt. Chris Kuhl said.

A Texas hospital network has been targeted several times this year, said its chief technology officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the individual's employer has not discussed the attacks publicly. One of its nine hospitals lost phone service in a nurses unit for a day, preventing families from calling in to check on patients.

As the hospital searched for answers, it temporarily created a new number and turned to backup phone lines or cellphones for crucial communications. The chain eventually spent $20,000 per hospital to install a firewall-type device that is able to block calls from numbers associated with an attack.

For all the money spent on Internet security, companies often overlook protecting their telephones, Artes said.

"It's kind of embarrassing when a website goes down, but when you shut down emergency operations for a county or a city, that has a direct effect on their ability to respond," he said.

The Federal Communications Commission has begun huddling with phone carriers, equipment makers and other telecommunication firms to discuss ideas that would help stem the attacks. One possibility is attaching certificates, or a secret signature, to calls.

The FCC's chief technology officer, Henning Schulzrinne, acknowledged that though such a solution is probably a year or two away, it could put an end to most fraudulent calls.

But Jon Peterson, a consultant with network analytics firm Neustar, said such measures raise privacy worries. Some calls, such as one to a whistle-blower hotline or one originating from a homeless shelter, may need to remain anonymous. There won't be a single fix. But the goal is clear.

"The lack of secure attribution of origins of these calls is one of the key enablers of this attack," Peterson said. "We have to resolve this question of accountability for the present day and the future."

paresh.dave@latimes.com

Twitter: @peard33

N.J. court: Warrants needed for cellphone tracking

Source

N.J. court: Warrants needed for cellphone tracking

By David Porter Associated Press Fri Jul 19, 2013 6:19 AM

NEWARK, N.J. — Police in New Jersey will soon have to get warrants if they want to track suspects using cellphone data, the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a decision that affords citizens here more privacy protections than they enjoy under federal law.

In a unanimous ruling Thursday stemming from the arrest of a burglary suspect in 2006, the court directed that beginning in 30 days, all law enforcement officers must get a search warrant based on probable cause if they want to get access to cellphone locating data. Since 2010, police have had to satisfy a lower standard of demonstrating there are “reasonable grounds” to believe the information would be relevant to an investigation.

“No one buys a cell phone to share detailed information about their whereabouts with the police,” Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote. “That was true in 2006 and is equally true today. Citizens have a legitimate privacy interest in such information.”

Rabner noted that federal courts have been divided over the issue of cellphone tracking by law enforcement. In some other areas, he wrote, New Jersey’s constitution goes farther than the Fourth Amendment in protecting citizens from unreasonable search and seizure — particularly in previous cases involving Internet usage, bank records and hotel telephone records.

“When people make disclosures to phone companies and other providers to use their services, they are not promoting the release of personal information to others. Instead, they can reasonably expect that their personal information will remain private,” Rabner wrote. “For those reasons, we have departed from federal case law that takes a different approach.”

Rubin Sinins, an attorney who argued on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and a state criminal defense lawyers association, called Thursday’s decision “vitally important.”

“I’m not surprised it was unanimous because the basic premise of the opinion is quite logical and consistent with citizens’ reasonable expectation of privacy in their cellphone usage,” he said.

In the 2006 case, police tracked Robert Earls to a motel on Route 9 in Howell using information provided by T-Mobile about the location of a cellphone believed to be in his possession. When he opened the door to his room, police saw items they believed had been stolen and arrested him. He eventually pleaded guilty to burglary and theft.

It wasn’t immediately clear how Earls’ case would be affected by the ruling since a lower court will now have to consider whether police were justified in using the cellphone data without a warrant under an exception for emergency circumstances. Police said they believed Earls’ girlfriend was in danger because she had cooperated with them.

The new warrant rule applies only to Earls’ case and future cases. The state attorney general’s office has trained county law enforcement personnel to obtain warrants for GPS-based location data since 2006, and warrants were obtained in about 85 percent of 600 cases involving cellphone location data for a six-month period last year, according to Thursday’s ruling.

“As a practical matter, this ruling only affects future cases, and police in New Jersey already have been routinely seeking probable-cause based warrants before seeking cellphone location information,” attorney general’s office spokesman Peter Aseltine said in an email. “We will implement training for New Jersey law enforcement to ensure compliance with this ruling.”

NSA director wants private companies to spy on us for the government????

Source

NSA director suggests phone companies, not government, could store calling records

By Robert O’Harrow Jr., Published: July 18 E-mail the writer

ASPEN, Colo. — The director of the National Security Agency said Thursday that he is open to the idea of allowing telephone companies, rather than the NSA, to store vast pools of calling records that could be used in counterterrorism cases.

Speaking at a security conference, Gen. Keith Alexander strongly defended the spy agency’s surveillance efforts, which rely on the information known as calling “metadata” to identify and track terrorists and their plots.

But he said that keeping that data in private hands might help quell fears that the agency is intruding into individuals’ lives. [And more important it could provide the government with a way to get around the pesky Constitution by letting private companies spy on us for the government]

“I think it’s something we should consider,” Alexander said.

Alexander’s remarks came during the Aspen Institute’s annual security forum, a retreat that includes current and former intelligence officials, Pentagon leaders, contractors, and the national news media.

The conference this year is heavily focused on cybersecurity and the NSA’s surveillance programs, which burst into public view after leaks by Edward Snowden, a contractor employee who worked at NSA facilities in Hawaii.

In response to questions from NBC correspondent Pete Williams, Alexander acknowledged that internal cybersecurity shortcomings enabled Snowden to download and leak top-secret material about wide-ranging surveillance programs.

Alexander said the agency has launched efforts to tighten security, including locking doors to server rooms and limiting the use of flash drives and other devices for downloading data. He also described how analysts would now have to use a buddy system when seeking access to certain records, another security measure.

“We’re taking the actions to fix this,” Alexander said. “We will fix this.”

Earlier in the day, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter described the Snowden thefts as essentially a hack from an insider. He said that was possible because NSA no longer compartmentalizes information as it did in the past. It also gave many employees, Snowden included, too much latitude to access records.

“It’s no outsider hacking in. It is an insider,” he said. “There was an enormous amount of information concentrated in one place. That’s a mistake.”

“We’re acting to reverse both of those things,” Carter said.

The surveillance programs and cybersecurity and warfare have become the central themes of Alexander’s eight-year tenure at the NSA. In addition to being director of the NSA, Alexander is commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.

Under his leadership, the agency is dramatically expanding of the number of cyber­warriors, from about 900 to 4,900. By the fall of 2015, the command intends to create 13 teams of hackers with offensive capabilities, meaning they will be trained to break into other networks and collect information or disrupt or destroy the systems.

The agency also created some of the most far-reaching surveillance programs as part of the war on terror, as shown by the documents Snowden leaked to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post.

One program collected “metadata” about millions of phone calls from American telecom companies.

In one document, a classified report prepared in 2009 by the NSA inspector general, Alexander is described as saying “if the relationships with these companies were ever terminated, the U.S. “SIGINT” (signals intelligence) system would be irrevocably damaged, because NSA would have sacrificed America’s home field advantage as the primary hub for worldwide telecommunications.”

Another top-secret program, called PRISM, collected e-mail, documents, photographs and other records from Microsoft, Apple and at least seven other Internet companies.

In an hour-long conversation with Williams, Alexander strongly defended the NSA’s surveillance programs, saying they have prevented attacks or disrupted terrorist groups dozens of times.

At the same time, he said, the surveillance programs are tightly focused on stopping terrorism or helping the FBI, not on communication by regular Americans. He said the program receives more oversight than any other similar programs in the world.

“I don’t think we could ask for anything better,” Alexander said. “From my perspective, this is the best approach.”

When Williams pressed Alexander about whether the NSA really needed to collect “metadata” about hundreds of millions of phone calls, Alexander said: “What does it take to stop a terrorist attack?”

Alexander described Snowden as a low-level “systems administrator.” He said Snowden needed to be able to download information as part of his job to support the analysts in Hawaii, where he worked. He blamed the leaks on a “huge breach of trust” by Snowden.

Alexander said he has “concrete proof” that terrorist groups have changed their communications as a result of the Snowden disclosures.

“What we’re doing is telling the enemy our playbook,” Alexander said, without providing any details.

Throughout his talk, Alexander involved the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying that the country needed then the kinds of surveillance programs and tools the NSA is using now to prevent attacks.

Free dental work for government pork????

Source

Investigators looking into whether Va. first lady got free dental work, 2 people say

By Laura Vozzella and Rosalind S. Helderman, Published: July 18 E-mail the writers

RICHMOND — Investigators looking into gifts to Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his family have asked questions about whether first lady Maureen McDonnell received cosmetic dental work for free, according to two people familiar with the probe.

Federal officials have been investigating allegations that a dentist within the large Richmond-area practice of W. Baxter Perkinson Jr. provided cosmetic dentistry services at no charge to the first lady, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Free dental work would expand the number of gifts that the first family has received and add a new name to what has been a short list of benefactors. It also would fit a pattern of items given to Maureen McDonnell — including designer clothing and accessories — that appear to have been aimed at polishing her image as first lady.

Until now, most of the gifts that investigators were known to be probing were from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the chief executive of Star Scientific. They include a $15,000 New York shopping spree for the first lady, a $6,500 Rolex watch for the Republican governor and $145,000 in payments and loans to the McDonnells and two of their bride-to-be daughters.

Investigators also have asked about possible gifts from Del. David I. Ramadan (R-Loudoun), a jeweler who confirmed last month that he had been called to appear as a witness before a federal grand jury in the case.

Perkinson has declined to respond to messages seeking comment, but a woman who returned a call on behalf of his practice and who gave her name only as Marie noted that laws governing the privacy of health-care records would prevent divulging anything about services to anyone.

“We’re not at liberty to discuss anything,” she said.

A well-known dentist with 11 offices in the Richmond area, Perkinson has a $20 million building named after him at the Vir­ginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry. McDonnell appointed Perkinson to the VCU board of visitors in July 2010. He had previously served as VCU rector and as vice president of the VCU Health Systems board.

Rich Galen, the privately funded spokesman that Gov. McDonnell hired to field questions about the investigation, neither confirmed nor denied that any dental work had been provided for free.

“It wasn’t reported, but it didn’t have to be reported,” Galen said, speaking hypothetically. He was referring to the fact that under Virginia law, elected officials do not have to notify the state about gifts to immediate family members. The officials have to annually disclose any gifts to themselves worth more than $50.

“It may well be that they’ve looked at every gift, but it doesn’t mean there’s any significance,” Galen said. “On the face of it, it’s just not material to everything else we’re talking about.”

The McDonnells have been under scrutiny for gifts since The Washington Post reported in March that they had promoted a nutritional supplement made by Star Scientific around the time that Williams picked up the $15,000 catering tab at the wedding of one of their daughters.

The governor had not reported the gift on the disclosure form he filed the state, but he said he did not have to because it was a present to his daughter, not to him. He has said efforts by himself or his wife to promote the supplement, an anti-inflammatory named Anatabloc, were in line with what they would do to boost any Virginia-based enterprise.

Asiana crash victim died after firetruck ran over her

Source

SFO crash: Coroner says Asiana crash victim died after firetruck ran over her

By Robert Salonga and Joshua Melvin

Mercury News

Posted: 07/19/2013 08:23:55 AM PDT

SAN MATEO -- In another heartbreaking turn of events since Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport two weeks ago, a coroner revealed Friday that one of the victims jettisoned from the disintegrating aircraft initially survived but was killed after she was run over by a firetruck responding to the chaos on the runway.

San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said that 16-year-old Ye Mengyuan died from multiple blunt-force injuries consistent with being run over by a vehicle. He added that an examination of internal hemorrhaging ruled out any chance she was already dead when the truck hit her.

"She was alive when she received the injuries," Foucrault said.

San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, appearing with Foucrault at a press conference, apologized to the Ye family for her death. She said the news is "devastating."

It was the worst possible outcome ever since authorities raised the possibility a rescue vehicle from the San Francisco Fire Department's airport detail hit one of the fatal victims in the aftermath of the July 6 crash of the Boeing 777 jetliner. Hayes-White said Friday that multiple vehicles may have been involved.

It tempered what had been widely lauded as a heroic and astounding rescue effort spearheaded by the department.

"I am profoundly saddened by the involvement of a responding emergency vehicle in the death 16-year-old Ye Mengyuan," San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement. "On behalf of the people of San Francisco, I offer my deepest condolences and regret for her tragic death, and the deaths of her close friend Wang Linjia, and 15-year-old Liu Yipeng. Our hearts are heavy, and our thoughts and prayers continue to be with their families and friends an ocean away."

He added: "The men and women of the San Francisco Fire Department dedicate themselves and put their own lives at risk to save people. Through the quick response and heroic decisions of our first responders, the lives of many of the 307 passengers and crewmembers on Asiana Airlines Flight 214 were undoubtedly saved that day. This tragic accident is especially hard for them -- and all of us -- to endure."

Mengyuan was one of two girls found dead after the crash, along with 16-year-old Wang Linjia, who authorities believe died from injuries suffered when the Chinese schoolmates were ejected from the plane after the tail hit the sea wall on Runway 28L and broke off. Both girls were seated near the rear of the aircraft.

It also means that four of the five people who were thrown from the plane survived, at least briefly. Three flight attendants were also found on the runway and were hospitalized with a battery of serious injuries. A third fatality was reported July 12 when 15-year-old Liu Yipeng, who was found in the wreckage still strapped to her seat, died from her injuries at San Francisco General Hospital.

The San Francisco Fire Department has said that firefighters realized only after extinguishing the plane fire and helping the more than 300 survivors get to safety, that one of the victims was found in the tracks of an Airline Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) rig. Mengyuan had been covered in fire-retardant foam and was discovered in the tracks the firetruck made in the foam, according to the San Francisco Police Department, whose hit-and-run investigation unit was assigned to the case.

Still, even when that finding was made last week, it was still uncertain about whether her death was caused by the crash or the vehicle, a question that was given tragic clarity Friday.

Two days after the crash and one day after the revelation of what happened to Mengyuan surfaced, the fire department said that each of the five personnel operating a rescue apparatus at the crash site passed drug and alcohol screenings in the ensuing investigation.

The Associated Press reported over the weekend that Linjia didn't get immediate medical attention because she wasn't spotted until 14 minutes after the crash.

Survivors, firefighters and police described a hectic, fluid, and chaotic scene after the crashed plane came to a stop. As rescue teams arrived, passengers were exiting the gaping hole in the back of the fuselage where the tail was once attached, others were sliding down emergency chutes, and others still had ventured into the waters of the San Francisco Bay, presumably to douse or soothe burns and injuries.

Jet fuel gushed from the wings as the evacuation carried on. San Francisco police officer Jim Cunningham, who heroically entered the plane without any protective equipment and ushered out survivors, recalled the urgency to get to the plane being so great that while racing to the scene, he had to slow his patrol car to ensure a trailing ambulance wouldn't crash trying to keep up.

Meanwhile, an anticipated year-long federal investigation continues into the cause of the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board has reported that the aircraft was flying too low to the runway and well short of its targeted landing speed, and that by the time they realized this and decided to try another landing, the tail hit the sea wall, which broke the plane into pieces and sent it spinning into the runway, after which a fire broke out.

Investigators are exploring a variety of factors, but the information revealed so far has suggested pilot error rather than mechanical failure, based on cockpit-voice and flight-data recorder information and the fact that the lead pilot was relatively inexperienced in operating the 777 and was making his first landing at SFO.

All three girls who died attended Jiangshan Middle School in Zhejiang, an affluent coastal province in eastern China, according to Chinese media. They were heading to a summer camp at West Valley Christian School in Los Angeles.

Indiana halts vanity license plates over '0INK' lawsuit

Source

Indiana halts vanity license plates over '0INK' lawsuit

By Mary Beth Schneider Indianapolis Star Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:41 AM

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana motorists who want a vanity plate will have to put their plans on idle until a lawsuit over an “0INK” plate is settled.

State Bureau of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Scott Waddell said late Friday that the personalized license plate program will be temporarily suspended, pending the outcome of the legal case.

Those who already have personalized plates can keep them, and even renew them. But anyone else who fancies a plate that tells the world “IMGR8” or “UR2CLOS” will just have to “W8.”

Waddell, in a statement, blamed the suspension of the plate program on the legal challenge, saying it is necessary “in order to protect Hoosier taxpayers from the considerable expense that these types of lawsuits bring.”

It’s the latest in a series of legal complications for the BMV. Earlier this month, it had to agree to repay Hoosiers after overcharging for driver’s licenses. Last month, after an extended legal battle, it agreed to restore the specialty plate for the Indiana Youth Group, which supports gay, bisexual, transgender and sexually questioning youth.

The lawsuit that prompted the BMV to park the vanity plate program was filed in Marion County Superior Court in May by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on behalf of a Greenfield policeman, Rodney Vawter.

For three years, Vawter had a license plate that read “0INK” -- with a zero in place of the O -- but when he tried to renew it in March, it was rejected.

The lawsuit says Vawter considers the plate’s verbal pig snort “an ironic statement of pride in his profession.”

“Corporal Vawter selected the phrase ‘oink’ for his license plate because, as a police officer who has been called ‘pig’ by arrestees, he thought it was both humorous and also a label that he wears with some degree of pride,” the lawsuit states.

The BMV this year told Vawter the plate was inappropriate, and cited a state statute that allows the BMV to refuse to issue a plate that officials believe carries “a connotation offensive to good taste and decency” or “would be misleading.”

Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU, said that statute should be deemed an unconstitutionally vague infringement on free speech. And he called Friday’s suspension of the BMV program “curious.”

“I don’t understand that,” Falk said. “This (suspension) in no way affects the lawsuit, so I’m not sure what the BMV is saving in expenses. The lawsuit that we have challenges not the PLP program; it challenges the standards by which plates are assessed and the fact that apparently the BMV is using standards” which are not spelled out in law or code.

Waddell, in his statement, said the personalized plate program is one of the BMV’s oldest.

“Indiana is not the first state to see its PLP statutes challenged, as this has become a widespread topic of debate across the nation,” he said.

Goodyear detective sex case may hinder others

Goodyear detective sex case may hinder others

By Jim Walsh, Erin O’Connor and Matthew Longdon

The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team

Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:13 PM

Maricopa County authorities are trying to determine if a Goodyear police detective who’s behind bars, accused of having sex with a minor, can still testify in cases he investigated.

Jose Roman Jr., 52, was arrested on July 1 and faces 12 felony counts, including sexual conduct with a minor and molestation. All charges handed up on July 9 by a Maricopa County Superior Court grand jury stem from accusations by a woman who said she was 12 when the abuse started. The woman is now 22.

Roman resigned Thursday from the Goodyear Police Department, Police Chief Jerry Geier said in an e-mail.

Roman’s arrest puts the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in a difficult position because the agency is responsible for prosecuting him for the felonies. But at the same time, he could be a key witness in cases he investigated as a detective, such as the murder trial of Eugene Maraventano, said Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

Maraventano, 64, is accused of stabbing his wife and son, Bryan, to death out of fear he may have given his wife HIV from prostitutes he used to frequent and concern about what would become of his son. Police said he acknowledged the crimes.

“It’s too early to tell what impact this will have on future cases,’’ Cobb said.

If Roman is determined to have been untruthful during the child-molestation investigation that led to his arrest, he could be placed on the Brady List, a database of officers who have questionable integrity because of their behavior and should be not be called as witnesses.

Cobb said pretrial hearings would likely determine if Roman could be called as a witness and whether his testimony could be challenged in court by a defense attorney based upon his arrest on the sex charges.

“Anything that would arise out of this case that would speak to his credibility could affect his ability to testify,” Cobb said.

Geier said other detectives were assigned to Roman’s cases and he’s unaware of any investigations that were harmed by this.

Roman’s accuser reported the alleged abuse to police on May 9, the day after she said she had an argument with him in front of family members and he admitted the molestation, according to Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office documents. The Arizona Republic does not name sex-crime victims.

Authorities said Roman eventually admitted the allegations to his wife during two recorded conversations on June 27. In those conversations, police said he “provided details of the offense that only an active participant would know.”

Chris Hegstrom, a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said detectives from his agency investigated the Roman case because some of the alleged abuse occurred in Tonopah, which falls under the Sheriff’s Office’s jurisdiction.

Roman was placed in segregated custody at a Maricopa County jail, where he is awaiting a pretrial conference scheduled for Sept. 4, Hegstrom said.

Geier said Roman was initially placed on paid administrative leave when the allegations surfaced in May, which is a standard procedure, but he was placed on unpaid leave after he was arrested July 1. The Goodyear Police Department is conducting an administrative investigation but was unable to comment further until it’s completed, Geier said.

Republic reporter D.S. Woodfill contributed to this report.

Intelligence official defends mass gathering of phone data

Source

Intelligence official defends mass gathering of phone data

By David G. Savage

July 19, 2013, 9:51 p.m.

WASHINGTON — A top Obama administration lawyer defended the government's once-secret policy of sweeping up phone records in the U.S., arguing Friday that this mass data collection violates no one's right to privacy and can help intelligence agents track suspected terrorists.

"Although we collect large volumes of metadata under this program, we only look at a tiny fraction of it," [Yea, sure. If you believe that I have some land I would like to sell you in Florida.] Robert S. Litt, general counsel for the director of national intelligence, said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. And agents check the records "only for a carefully circumscribed purpose — to help us find links between foreign terrorists and people in the United States," he said. [Again, Yea, sure. If you believe that I have some land I would like to sell you in Florida.]

Litt and other Obama administration officials have stepped forward this week in an organized campaign to try to explain and defend a secret data collection policy that was revealed early June by Edward Snowden, a former government contractor.

In another departure from past practice, the director of national intelligence announced Friday that the secret surveillance court order, which expired Friday, had been renewed by the court.

"The government filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking renewal of the authority to collect telephony metadata in bulk, and that the court renewed that authority," the director of national intelligence said in a statement.

The National Security Agency had been gathering the dialing records from major telephone companies under orders approved by the secret foreign intelligence court. It had done so under part of the Patriot Act that authorized the government to obtain records that were "relevant to an authorized investigation." [And just who ordered the authorized investigation of the 100 million plus Americans the NSA has been monitoring the phone calls of????]

In most crime cases, investigators find a suspect and then go looking for phone or travel records that could confirm guilt. [But now we are all assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, so Uncle Sam spies on everybody????]

But a collect-first, search-later policy makes sense for intelligence work, Litt said Friday. [Yea, and it makes sense in a police state too. Something which Amerika has turned into!]

"Rather than attempting to solve crimes that have happened already, we are trying to find out what is going to happen before it happens," he said. [So now we have psychic cops????]

Litt acknowledged that many lawyers had questioned how collecting all the phone records for months at a time could fit under the Patriot Act's authorization for records that are "relevant to an authorized investigation."

Earlier this week, Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sharply disputed the legality of the mass data collection. Several insisted that the law as they wrote it did not authorize an open-ended collection of records. [Translation - they will say anything to get reelected!!!! - They wrote the law. They voted for the law. They should have know that it more or less flushed the Bill of Rights down the toilet. And now they should be booted out of office]

Litt argued that the word "relevant" sometimes can have an "extremely broad" meaning. He cited instances in which grand juries or civil discovery orders authorized the search of a huge volume of documents, even though only a few of them might prove relevant and useful. [I am sure the folks that wrote the Bill of Rights has a much narrower definition of "relevant"]

Litt said the "bulk data set" of phone records "can help identify links between terrorists overseas and their potential confederates in the United States." [So can flushing the Bill of Rights down the toilet! That doesn't mean the cops and Congress should have done it]

"Many will recall that one of the criticisms made by the 9/11 Commission was that we were unable to find the connection between a hijacker who was in California and an Al Qaeda safe house in Yemen. Although the NSA had collected the conversations from the Yemen safe house, they had no way to determine that the person at the other end was in the United States. This collection program is designed to help us find those connections."

He said telephone companies do not keep the records for long. If the government did not collect the data, it would be destroyed, he said. [Sounds like a lame excuse to me. The telephone companies are not violating the 4th Amendment so that means NSA should????]

Litt also said Americans do not have a constitutional right to privacy in records that are held by banks or phone companies. [But they certainly should!!!!] In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that although phone conversations are protected as private under the 4th Amendment, dialing records are not. [I think the Supreme Court got it wrong on that!!!]

"We do not get the content of any conversation. We do not get the identity of any party to the conversation, and we do not get any cell site or GPS locational information," he said. [Well jerk, you lied to us when you said you didn't collect this data, before Snowden told us. How do we know you are not lying about collecting cell site data or GPS data???]

Although U.S. officials have admitted only to gathering phone records, their legal theory would also appear to permit the routine collection of bank records or travel records, both of which could prove relevant at some point in a terrorism investigation.

david.savage@latimes.com

A new way to beat DUI charges???

Source

DUI convictions at risk in California, Bay Area prosecutor warns

By Tracey Kaplan

tkaplan@mercurynews.com

Posted: 07/13/2013 04:00:00 PM PDT
Updated: 07/19/2013 06:50:42 PM PDT

Jaskaran Gill was still on probation for a DUI when he was caught doing 100 mph on Interstate 880 in San Jose with his blood-alcohol concentration nearly twice the legal limit.

A second drunken-driving conviction could have stripped him of his driver's license for at least a year and landed him in jail. But a more devastating likelihood loomed: The State Bar might deny Gill the right to practice law or significantly delay the start of his career at a time when he was more than halfway through Santa Clara University law school.

So, Gill claimed that his blood-alcohol level wasn't really 0.14, as the Santa Clara County crime lab had reported in early 2010. The lab's methodology was outdated, he claimed, rendering the test scientifically invalid and therefore not admissible as evidence in court.

Gill's novel defense tactic failed, thanks to a dedicated young prosecutor who won an epic battle with the law student's lawyers -- and to the county crime lab, which demonstrated that Gill would be considered drunk even if the test had been performed using the more up-to-date procedure.

But now, the same prosecutor, Christopher Boscia, is warning that drunken-driving prosecutions across California are vulnerable to similar legal challenges.

"It is simply a matter of time before a trial court in California excludes blood results based on this novel defense tactic," Boscia writes in a highly technical, 32-page article in the upcoming edition of the Santa Clara Law Review. "If successful, this tactic could undermine every DUI prosecution in the state."

Desperate challenges

Defendants are always coming up with desperate ways to challenge DUI prosecutions, from attacking the credentials of a lab technician to claiming someone else was driving. But the strategy Gill used has already worked in Washington state and Michigan, though so far just in the lower courts.

In California, Boscia contends, the only way to protect some 200,000 annual prosecutions from a possible decision by a judge to exclude the results is if all crime labs revise their procedures and the Legislature updates the DUI regulations. Santa Clara County already has switched to a new protocol for blood-alcohol tests. If an appellate court were to uphold a lower court decision to exclude the results on this theory, it would be binding statewide.

The way the test is now done is arguably outdated for two reasons. Much of the equipment used throughout the state has not been certified as accurate under international standards. The other problem is that a test result -- for instance, Gill's 0.14 blood-alcohol level -- is really an estimate of the true value. Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Chris Boscia, San Jose, Calif., April 2013. (LiPo Ching, Bay Area News Group) It actually needs to include another calculation called the measure of uncertainty, which is somewhat like the margin of error in a poll.

In Gill's case, the uncertainty turned out to be plus or minus 4 percent, a fairly tiny range that still put him well over the limit. But in borderline cases, where a defendant's blood-alcohol level is close to the legal limit, presenting a range of values could make a decisive difference. And defense attorneys also can argue, as they did in Gill's trial, that the range of values must be reported in every case because expressing someone's blood-alcohol concentration as a single value gives the judge or jury false confidence in the results.

"Without the measure of uncertainty, the information in a single value is actually misleading," said Ted Vosk, a Harvard law graduate with an undergraduate degree in physics and math, and the leading national expert on these kind of DUI challenges.

In California so far, defense attorneys haven't been able to persuade judges to exclude the single-value test results. But some lawyers have found -- especially in borderline cases -- that the argument undermines the jury's confidence in the prosecution.

"I make the challenge regularly," said Peter Johnson, the Contra Costa County lawyer who represented Gill. "In one case, the jury told us that was the reason for the acquittal. Some judge at some point is going to take it seriously."

Doubt as a tactic

The concept of uncertainty has been discussed in scientific circles at least since the early 1900s, Boscia writes. In 2011, the not-for-profit group that accredits crime labs issued a guideline advising them they had to convert to it for a broad series of tests, not just for blood alcohol. But the labs and legal community protested, and the deadline was postponed until the end of 2013.

"Uncertainty sounds like doubt, even though it's not," Boscia said. "Whenever prosecutors hear the word, they want to run in the other direction."

Some labs have begun the conversion, including the Contra Costa County lab, where Gill's mother works as a toxicologist. But at the time of her son's trial in 2010, her lab had not adopted the new procedures, she acknowledged in a phone interview.

Boscia argues that DUI prosecutions are still vulnerable for several reasons. First, in counties that haven't switched to the new way of handling DUI tests, the tests could be challenged for the next six months.

But even after the change, there will be thousands of blood samples that were tested under the old model that cannot simply be retested using the new procedure to calculate the uncertainty because the defense could argue that alcohol tends to deteriorate over time.

A third problem, Boscia says, is that there will be a conflict between the state's regulations covering DUI cases and the way in which crime labs are handling DUI tests. The prosecutor said defense lawyers could then take a different tack and attack those scientifically valid results on that technical conflict. He's calling for the Legislature to quickly update the law -- and also to set up a forensic science advisory board to ensure that the best science is being practiced and presented to juries in California courtrooms.

Boscia also is traveling around the state training other prosecutors how to fend off any legal challenges. Most DUIs are prosecuted by busy novices in three to five days; Boscia's trial stretched over six weeks and lasted 20 days.

"It's important Chris' message be heard,'' said Sepideh Mousakhani, editor of the Santa Clara Law Review. "(His) article has the potential to make a great difference in the legal community."

As for Gill, he was sentenced to 210 days in jail. Now, about 21/2 years after his arrest, he has remained sober and is still trying to gain admission to the State Bar -- including, his mother said, by volunteering full time for Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

3 charged in Phoenix phony-pot-dispensary bust

Source

3 charged in Phoenix phony-pot-dispensary bust

By D.S. Woodfill Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:43 AM

Police said they served a warrant on a phony medical marijuana establishment in northeast Phoenix Friday evening and arrested three men.

Department spokesman Tommy Thompson said in a written statement that Kenneth George Winans, Herman Andre Vega and Jeremy Lee Buford Skidmore were suspected of selling pot illegally from a building on Cactus Road, near the Piestewa Freeway.

Thompson said officers served a search warrant and “determined that they had no valid business licenses.”

“Marijuana, brownies, muffins and candies containing marijuana were seized along with several weapons,” Thompson said.

Police arrested Winans, Vega and Skidmore on charges of suspicion of illegally controlling an enterprise, possession of marijuana for sale and possession of narcotic drugs for sale.

Thompson said Vega and Skidmore were also charged with possessing a firearm during a drug offense.

$85 bribe will get you thru TSA lines faster???

Source

TSA expands faster screening to more travelers

Associated Press Fri Jul 19, 2013 4:29 PM

WASHINGTON — The government is expanding the ways airline passengers can enroll in an expedited screening program that allows travelers to leave on their shoes, light outerwear and belts and keep laptop computers in cases at security checkpoints.

Under the Transportation Security Administration’s Precheck program, only travelers who were members of the frequent flyer programs of some air carriers were eligible for expedited screening. On Friday, TSA Administrator John Pistole said beginning later this year U.S. citizens will be able to enroll online or visit an enrollment site to provide identification, fingerprints and an $85 enrollment fee.

About 12 million people are currently enrolled in the program. Pistole said he expects about another 3 million people to enroll before the end of the year. [Which will bring in $255 million in TSA bribes, or enrollments fees as the our government masters call them. Who says our royal rulers in the Federal government can't be bought]

U.S. military drone surveillance is expanding to hot spots beyond declared combat zones

Source

U.S. military drone surveillance is expanding to hot spots beyond declared combat zones

By Craig Whitlock, Published: July 20 E-mail the writer

The steel-gray U.S. Air Force Predator drone plunged from the sky, shattering on mountainous terrain near the Iraq-Turkey border. For Kurdish guerrillas hiding nearby, it was an unexpected gift from the propaganda gods.

Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, filmed the charred wreckage on Sept. 18 and posted a video on YouTube. A narrator bragged unconvincingly that the group had shot down the drone. But for anyone who might doubt that the flying robot was really American, the video zoomed in on mangled parts stamped in English and bearing the label of the manufacturer, San Diego-based General Atomics.

For a brief moment, the crash drew back the curtain on Operation Nomad Shadow, a secretive U.S. military surveillance program. Since November 2011, the U.S. Air Force has been flying unarmed drones from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey in an attempt to suppress a long-simmering regional conflict. The camera-equipped Predators hover above the rugged border with Iraq and beam high-resolution imagery to the Turkish armed forces, helping them pursue PKK rebels as they slip back and forth across the mountains.

As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s robust surveillance networks far beyond traditional, declared combat zones.

Over the past decade, the Pentagon has amassed more than 400 Predators, Reapers, Hunters, Gray Eagles and other high-altitude drones that have revolutionized counterterrorism operations. Some of the unmanned aircraft will return home with U.S. troops when they leave Afghanistan. But many of the drones will redeploy to fresh frontiers, where they will spy on a melange of armed groups, drug runners, pirates and other targets that worry U.S. officials.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the U.S. Air Force has drone hubs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to conduct reconnaissance over the Persian Gulf. Twice since November, Iran has scrambled fighter jets to approach or fire on U.S. Predator drones that edged close to Iranian airspace.

In Africa, the U.S. Air Force began flying unarmed drones over the Sahara five months ago to track al-Qaeda fighters and rebels in northern Mali. The Pentagon has also set up drone bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Seychelles. Even so, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa told Congress in February that he needed a 15-fold increase in surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering on the continent.

In an April speech, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the Pentagon is planning for the first time to send Reaper drones — a bigger, faster version of the Predator — to parts of Asia other than Afghanistan. He did not give details. A Defense Department spokeswoman said the military “hasn’t made any final decisions yet” but is “committed to increasing” its surveillance in Asia and the Pacific.

In South and Central America, U.S. military commanders have long pined for drones to aid counternarcotics operations. “Surveillance drones could really help us out and really take the heat and wear and tear off of some of our manned aviation assets,” Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, chief of the U.S. Southern Command, said in March.

One possible destination for more U.S. drones is Colombia. Last year, Colombian armed forces killed 32 “high-value narco-terrorists” after the U.S. military helped pinpoint the targets’ whereabouts with manned surveillance aircraft and other equipment, according to Jose A. Ruiz, a Southern Command spokesman.

The U.S. military has occasionally operated small drones — four-foot-long ScanEagles, which are launched by a catapult — in Colombia. But with larger drones such as Predators and Reapers, U.S. forces could greatly expand the range and duration of their airborne searches for drug smugglers.

An invitation from Turkey

In the fall of 2011, four disassembled Predator drones arrived in crates at Incirlik Air Base in southern Anatolia, a joint U.S.-Turkish military installation.

The drones came from Iraq, where for the previous four years they had been devoted to surveilling that country’s northern mountains. Along with manned U.S. aircraft, the Predators tracked the movements of PKK fighters, sharing video feeds and other intelligence with the Turkish armed forces.

The Kurdish group has long fought to create an autonomous enclave in Turkey, launching cross-border attacks from its hideouts in northern Iraq. Turkey has responded with airstrikes and artillery attacks but has also sent ground troops into Iraq, further destabilizing an already volatile area. The Turkish and U.S. governments both classify the PKK as a terrorist group.

Turkey’s leaders had feared that U.S. cooperation against the PKK would wither after the Americans left Iraq. So they invited them to re-base the drones on Turkish soil and continue the spying mission from there.

Neither side has been eager to publicize the arrangement. The Obama administration has imposed a broad cone of silence on its drone programs worldwide. Pentagon officials declined interview requests about Operation Nomad Shadow.

The Turkish government has acknowledged the presence of Predators on its territory, but the robotic planes are a sensitive subject. A global survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of Turks disapprove of the Obama administration’s international campaign of drone attacks against extremists.

Officials with the Turkish Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this report.

Pilots 6,000 miles away

The drones occupy a relatively tiny corner of the sprawling base at Incirlik, according to interviews with other officials and public documents that shed light on Nomad Shadow.

The operation is staffed by about three dozen personnel from the U.S. Air Force’s 414th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron and private contractor Battlespace Flight Services.

The drones, which began flying in November 2011, are sheltered in an unobtrusive hangar converted from an abandoned “hush house,” a jet-engine testing facility outfitted with noise suppression equipment.

“It was tight, but we could fit four aircraft inside the hangar and close the doors,” said a former Air Force official involved in Nomad Shadow who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation.

For most of their time aloft, the remote-control Predators are flown via satellite link by pilots and sensor operators stationed about 6,000 miles away, at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

While in Turkish airspace, the drones cannot spy and must turn off their high-tech cameras and sensors, according to rules set by the Turkish government. It takes the sluggish Predators, with a maximum air speed of 135 mph, about five hours to reach the Iraqi border.

The Iraqi government permits the overflights. Once in Iraq, the Predators usually fly a rectangular route known as “the box” for up to 12 hours each mission as they beam video and other intelligence to Missouri.

U.S. analysts view and evaluate the footage before transmitting it to a joint U.S.-Turkish intelligence “fusion cell” in Ankara, the capital. There’s usually a built-in delay of at least 15 to 20 minutes. That would give a drone enough time to leave the vicinity if Turkish authorities decided to launch artillery rounds or airstrikes against detected PKK targets, the former Air Force official said.

From the outset, some U.S. officials have worried about the potential for botched incidents.

In December 2011, Turkish jets bombed a caravan of suspected PKK fighters crossing from Iraq into Turkey, killing 34 people. The victims were smugglers, however, not terrorists — a blunder that ignited protests across Turkey.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that American drone operators had alerted the Turkish military after a Predator spotted the suspicious caravan. Rather than ask for a closer look, Turkish officials waved off the drone and launched the attack soon after, the paper said. Turkey’s leaders denied the report, saying they decided to attack based on their own intelligence.

The incident exacerbated simmering frustrations among officials in Ankara and Washington.

The Turkish government has long pressed the Obama administration to devote more flight hours to the operation and to sell Turkey a fleet of armed Reaper drones. But U.S. officials and lawmakers have resisted both requests.

The Pentagon has expressed concern that the Turkish military wants the fruits of the drone surveillance but has been unwilling to consult with Americans on the best ways to exploit it. “There have been a lot of U.S. attempts to help the Turks get better at fusing the intelligence with an operation,” said a former U.S. defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment.

At the same time, the former U.S. official called Nomad Shadow an overall success. The constant stream of surveillance footage has prevented PKK attacks, he said, and has enabled the Turkish military to carry out more-limited, precise counterterrorism operations instead of sending large numbers of troops into northern Iraq.

“It’s been extremely effective in preventing cross-border operations by the Turks,” the former official said.

Clues in the crash report

On Sept. 17, 2012, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Ankara to see Gen. Necdet Özel, chief of the general staff of the Turkish armed forces.

As other Turkish officials had done in previous talks, Özel pressed Dempsey for more help against the PKK, including more drone flights, according to Turkish media accounts of the meeting.

The next day, in a fit of unlucky timing, a Predator on a routine patrol experienced a sudden and complete loss of power. Drone operators at Whiteman Air Force Base could not communicate with or control the aircraft.

The drone nose-dived, dropping 11,000 feet in about four minutes before crashing into an uninhabited region, according to a U.S. Air Force accident investigation report obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

Before releasing the report, the Air Force redacted all geographic references to the location of the crash or where the drone was based. But parts of the report contain clues that make clear that the drone was on a Nomad Shadow mission in northern Iraq.

Transcripts of interviews with the drone’s ground crew mention that they were deployed to Incirlik with the 414th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron. Another document identified the lost aircraft as NOMAD 01.

But the strongest evidence can be found in an appendix to the report with photographs of the accident site.

The images are outtakes from the propaganda video that the PKK posted on YouTube the day after the crash. The photos show several damaged Predator pieces. U.S. military censors carefully blocked out the faces of guerrillas posing with the wreckage.

Black Boxes in Cars: A Question of Privacy

Black Boxes in Cars: A Question of Privacy

By JACLYN TROP

Published: July 21, 2013

When Timothy P. Murray crashed his government-issued Ford Crown Victoria in 2011, he was fortunate, as car accidents go. Mr. Murray, then the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, was not seriously hurt, and he told the police he was wearing a seat belt and was not speeding.

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times

Within the programming of the air bag control module is the capability to store crash data on an event data recorder.

But a different story soon emerged. Mr. Murray was driving over 100 miles an hour and was not wearing a seat belt, according to the computer in his car that tracks certain actions. He was given a $555 ticket; he later said he had fallen asleep.

The case put Mr. Murray at the center of a growing debate over a little-known but increasingly important piece of equipment buried deep inside a car: the event data recorder, more commonly known as the black box.

About 96 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States have the boxes, and in September 2014, if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has its way, all will have them.

The boxes have long been used by car companies to assess the performance of their vehicles. But data stored in the devices is increasingly being used to identify safety problems in cars and as evidence in traffic accidents and criminal cases. And the trove of data inside the boxes has raised privacy concerns, including questions about who owns the information, and what it can be used for, even as critics have raised questions about its reliability.

To federal regulators, law enforcement authorities and insurance companies, the data is an indispensable tool to investigate crashes.

The black boxes “provide critical safety information that might not otherwise be available to N.H.T.S.A. to evaluate what happened during a crash — and what future steps could be taken to save lives and prevent injuries,” David L. Strickland, the safety agency’s administrator, said in a statement.

But to consumer advocates, the data is only the latest example of governments and companies having too much access to private information. Once gathered, they say, the data can be used against car owners, to find fault in accidents or in criminal investigations.

“These cars are equipped with computers that collect massive amounts of data,” said Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based consumer group. “Without protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse.”

What’s more, consumer advocates say, government officials have yet to provide consistent guidelines over how the data should be used.

“There are no clear standards that say, this is a permissible use of the data and this is not,” Ms. Barnes said.

Fourteen states, including New York, have passed laws that say that, even though the data belongs to the vehicle’s owner, law enforcement officials and those involved in civil litigation can gain access to the black boxes with a court order.

In these states, lawyers may subpoena the data for criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, making the information accessible to third parties, including law enforcement or insurance companies that could cancel a driver’s policy or raise a driver’s premium based on the recorder’s data.

In Mr. Murray’s case, a court order was not required to release the data to investigators. Massachusetts is not among the states to pass a law governing access to the data. Asked about the case, Mr. Murray, who did not contest the ticket and who resigned as lieutenant governor in June to become head of the Chamber of Commerce in Worcester, Mass., declined to comment.

Current regulations require that the presence of the black box be disclosed in the owner’s manual. But the vast majority of drivers who do not read the manual thoroughly may not know that their vehicle can capture and record their speed, brake position, seat belt use and other data each time they get behind the wheel.

Unlike the black boxes on airplanes, which continually record data including audio and video, the cars’ recorders capture only the few seconds surrounding a crash or air bag deployment. A separate device extracts the data, which is then analyzed through computer software.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade association that represents 12 automakers including General Motors and Chrysler, said it supported the mandate because the recorders helped to monitor passenger safety.

“Event data recorders help our engineers and researchers understand how cars perform in the real world, and one of our priorities for E.D.R.’s continues to be preserving consumer privacy,” said Wade Newton, a spokesman for the trade association. “Automakers don’t access E.D.R. data without consumer permission, and we believe that any government requirements to install E.D.R.’s on all vehicles must include steps to protect consumer privacy.”

Beyond the privacy concerns, though, critics have questioned the data’s reliability.

In 2009, Anthony Niemeyer died after crashing a rented Ford Focus in Las Vegas. His widow, Kathryn, sued both Ford Motor and Hertz, contending that the air bag system failed to deploy.

The black box, however, derailed Ms. Niemeyer’s assertion that her husband had been traveling fast enough for the air bag to deploy.

Though Ms. Niemeyer lost the suit last year, her lawyer, Daniel T. Ryan of St. Louis, was successful in excluding the black box data as evidence on the grounds that the device is not fully reliable. The judge in the case ruled that because an engineer working on behalf of Ford retrieved the data, the plaintiffs, who maintained there were errors, had no way to independently verify it.

“It’s data that has not been shown to be absolutely reliable,” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s not black and white.”

The origins of black boxes, which are the size of about two decks of cards and are situated under the center console, date to the 1990 model year, when General Motors introduced them to conduct quality studies. Since then, their use and the scope of the data they collect has expanded.

The lack of standardization among manufacturers has made it difficult to extract the data, most notably during the investigations into the crashes caused by sudden, unintended acceleration in some Toyota vehicles.

Until recently, crash investigators needed an automaker’s proprietary reader as well as the expertise to analyze the data. The safety administration’s regulations will help enable universal access to the data by using a commercially available tool. At the same time, police departments are receiving training on the new regulations. In Romulus, N.Y., last week, the Collision Safety Institute, a consultancy in San Diego, helped teach New York State Police investigators how to read the devices.

But privacy advocates have expressed concern that the data collected will only grow to include a wider time frame and other elements like GPS and location-based services.

“The rabbit hole goes very deep when talking about this stuff,” said Thomas Kowalick, an expert in event data recorders and a former co-chairman of the federal committee that set the standard for black boxes.

Today, the boxes have spawned a cottage industry for YouTube videos on how to expunge the data. And Mr. Kowalick, seeing an opportunity, invented a device that safeguards access to in-vehicle electronics networks. It is controlled by the vehicle’s owner with a key and is useful in the event of theft, he said.

“For most of the 100-year history of the car, it used to be ‘he said, she said,’ ” Mr. Kowalick said. “That’s no longer going to be the way.”

U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is both for and against Obamacare???

And if you are for Obamacare, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema also seems to want you to think she is also for Obamacare. This is probably U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema true position.

Frequently the same bill will be voted on several times in the US House or US Senate and our double talking Congressmen and Senators will routinely vote against a bill on the first vote and then flip flop and vote for the same bill the second time around.

No our Congressmen and Senators are not confused idiots who don't know which way to vote. They do this very intentionally to mislead people so they can claim to be FOR the bill when they talk to people who are FOR the bill, and so they can claim to be AGAINST the bill when they talk to people who are AGAINST the bill.

That's probably why U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema voted against Obamacare which she almost certainly supports. So she can trick people who are against Obamacare into voting for her.

Source

Politics spurs some Ariz. Dems to join Republicans on health care

By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:47 PM

U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema once toured Arizona on behalf of the White House, touting the benefits of health-care reform. Last week, the freshman Democrat voted with the GOP to delay the law’s requirement that individuals and businesses buy insurance by 2014.

Sinema said she still supports the law because it helps students and people with pre-existing conditions obtain coverage.

“However, the law isn’t perfect. ...,” Sinema said in a statement after the vote. “Arizona’s hard-working families and businesses need transparency and certainty about this health care law and its implementation. A one-year delay will ensure that Arizonans get that certainty.” [And she will trick a few people into thinking that she is against Obamacare and get their votes]

Sinema also had a political motivation for the vote. Her congressional district, which stretches from Phoenix to Mesa, is considered a toss-up seat, where enough conservative-leaning voters concerned by the health-care law could boot her out of office in the mid-term elections. [Which is why she would love to trick a number of people into thinking she is against Obamacare so she can get their votes.]

That’s what happened in 2010, when voters turned out in droves to unseat Democrats in an uproar over passage of the president’s health-care law. [And of course Kyrsten Sinema doesn't want to be booted out of office because she is a big time socialist that supports Obamacare]

The GOP is hoping to capitalize again on opposition to the overhaul in the midterm elections, just as more consumers begin to feel the effects of reform as requirements for most individuals to obtain insurance kick in.

“Folks like Sinema have reason to be concerned because they are still champions of a law that is not popular in their districts,” said Constantin Querard, a Valley Republican strategist. “When you see someone who’s as much of a vocal supporter of ‘Obamacare’ as Sinema is voting against it, you know it’s going to be an issue” in the 2014 campaigns. [And even though Kyrsten Sinema loves Obamacare, if you hate Obamacare Kyrsten Sinema probably wants to trick you into thinking she hates Obamacare to get your vote]

Arizona’s two other Democrats who represent swing districts, Reps. Ron Barber and Ann Kirkpatrick, voted for the delays as well. [Again probably for the same reason Kyrsten Sinema voted for it. To trick their opponents into thinking they are against Obamacare]

House Speaker John Boehner scheduled the votes, calling for fairness for individuals and to “delay and dismantle Obamacare,” after President Barack Obama announced fines would be postponed until 2015 for midsize businesses that fail to provide employee health insurance.

The House bills — long shots in the Senate and guaranteed to be vetoed by the president — affirmed the business delay and added that individuals should get a one-year reprieve. Just 35 House Democrats supported the business delay and 22 backed it for individuals.

Next year’s races are expected to ramp up around the time consumers notice major changes to health care because of the Affordable Care Act.

In the fall, states will open online marketplaces for uninsured individuals and businesses to buy private coverage. A few months later, Arizona is scheduled to expand Medicaid coverage to thousands of low-income families.

Democrats are hoping voters who are uninsured will give the party credit once they receive coverage. But Republicans predict voters will react negatively once fines and higher premiums kick in.

Highlighting the political fight that still rages around the 2-year-old law, Obama held an event last week with a few of the more than 8.5 million Americans he said will receive rebates this summer from their insurance companies because of the law’s provision requiring insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on health care. The president also touted early indications that insurance costs will be lower in several states under the law.

“Health-care implementation could take center stage (in 2014) if there are massive problems. And if there are, it will likely haunt Democrats no matter what Republicans vote on,” said David Wasserman, an editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report based in Washington, D.C.

He said Democrats like Sinema are likely to continue to frame the issue as “keep the bill and fix it,” while Republicans will continue to advocate repealing the law.

Phoenix elected officials are liars or idiots??? Probably both.

Reach Robert Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8472.

Posted on July 21, 2013 7:40 pm by Robert Robb

Primaries are for fighting

>SNIP<

* City of Phoenix leaders told voters that, if they approved a bond to expand and improve the convention center, private investors would build a new downtown hotel to support it. That turned out not to be the case, and Phoenix taxpayers had to build the hotel as well.

When Phoenix leaders conned legislators into picking up half the cost of the expansion, they promised that it wouldn’t actually cost the state anything. Extra revenue generated by the expansion would produce significantly more than the state’s share. If not, Phoenix would make up the difference from its state-shared revenues.

Now that time has come for an accounting, Phoenix wants to renege or renegotiate. The excuse is that it’s been a hard economy and the Legislature contributed to the convention center’s underperformance by passing SB 1070.

So, in addition to paying for half the cost, the state was to allow the convention business to control the state’s immigration enforcement policies?

The state had no business making such a special deal with a single city in the first place. It certainly shouldn’t agree to let Phoenix off the hook for its false promise

Dubai pardons woman at center of rape dispute

Source

Dubai pardons woman at center of rape dispute

By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press

Updated 9:35 am, Monday, July 22, 2013

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — With her passport back in hand, a Norwegian woman at the center of a Dubai rape claim dispute said Monday that officials dropped her 16-month sentence for having sex outside marriage in the latest clash between the city's Islamic-based legal codes and its international branding as a Western-friendly haven.

Dubai authorities hope the pardon of the 24-year-old woman will allow them to sidestep another potentially embarrassing blow to the city's heavily promoted image as a forward-looking model of luxury, excess and cross-cultural understanding.

"I am very, very happy," Marte Deborah Dalelv told The Associated Press after she was cleared by the order of Dubai's ruler. "I am overjoyed."

But the case points to wider issues embedded in the rapid rise of Gulf centers such as Dubai and Qatar's capital Doha, host for the 2022 World Cup. These cities' cosmopolitan ambitions often find themselves at odds with the tug of traditional views on sex and alcohol.

Nowhere in the region are the two sides more in potential conflict than Dubai, where the expatriate work force outnumbers locals 5-to-1 and millions of tourists arrive each year with high-end fun on their minds.

Most foreign residents and visitors coast through Dubai's tolerant lifestyle. Women in full Islamic coverings shop alongside others in miniskirts, and liquor flows at resorts and restaurants. Yet once authorities determine a legal line has been crossed, it's often difficult and bewildering for the suspects.

Dalelv, in Dubai for a business meeting, said she told police in March that she was raped by a co-worker after a night that included cocktails. She was held in custody for four days and sentenced last week for illicit sex outside marriage and alcohol consumption — which is technically illegal without a proper license, but the rule is rarely enforced.

The alleged attacker, identified as a 33-year-old Sudanese man, was charged with the same offenses and received a 13-month sentence — also cleared by a pardon, according to Dalelv.

Rape prosecutions are complicated in the United Arab Emirates because — as in some other countries influenced by Islamic law — conviction requires either a confession or the testimony of adult male witnesses.

In a twist that often shocks Western observers, allegations of rape can boomerang into illegal sex charges for the accuser. In 2008, an Australian woman said she was jailed for eight months after claiming she was gang-raped at a UAE hotel.

The fears of sex-outside-marriage charges also lead some single domestic workers in the UAE to abandon their babies or seek back-room abortions.

Other, less serious, cases have also shed light on the tensions in Dubai between cosmopolitan modernity and Muslim legal codes and tribal traditions. In 2009, a British couple was sentenced to one month each in prison after an Emirati woman claimed they engaged in an overly passionate kiss. Motorists have been convicted for a rude gesture in a moment of road rage.

"I have my passport back. I am pardoned," said Dalelv, who worked for an interior design firm in Qatar. "I am free."

There was no immediate word from Dubai officials, including whether the pardon was linked to traditions of clemency during the current Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"I have my life back," added Dalelv. "This is a great day."

Her mother, Evelyn Dalelv, told the AP from Norway she is "incredibly happy" at the outcome, but thinks her daughter would consider returning to the Middle East after further study in interior design.

"Luckily, she is going back to study in Oslo in the autumn," she said.

In Norway, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide posted a Twitter message: "Marte is released! Thanks to everyone who signed up to help."

Barth Eide told the Norwegian news agency NTB that international media attention and Norway's diplomatic measures helped Dalelv, who was free on appeal with her next court hearing scheduled for early September. Norway also reminded the United Arab Emirates of obligations under U.N. accords to seriously investigate claims of violence against women.

"The United Arab Emirates and Dubai is a rapidly changing society. This decision won't only affect Marte Dalelv, who can travel home now if she wishes to, but also serve as a wake-up call regarding the legal situation in many other countries," Barth Eide was quoted as saying.

Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter: "Happy that Marte has been pardoned and that she is a free woman again."

Dalelv said she planned to leave the UAE soon, but first wanted "to thank some very special people," including local groups that supported her. She had been staying at a Norwegian-linked aid center.

The AP does not identify the names of alleged sexual assault victims, but Dalelv went public voluntarily to talk to media.

In an interview with the AP last week, she recalled that she fled to the hotel lobby and asked for the police to be called after the alleged attack. The hotel staff asked if she was sure she wanted to involve the police, Dalelv said.

"Of course I want to call the police," she said. "That is the natural reaction where I am from."

Norway's foreign minister said "very high level" Norwegian officials, including himself, had been in daily contact with counterparts in the United Arab Emirates since the verdict against Dalelv.

"We have made very clear what we think about this verdict and what we think about the fact that one is charged and sentenced when one starts out by reporting alleged abuse," Barth Eide said.

In London, a rights group monitoring UAE affairs urged authorities to change laws to "ensure victims are protected, feel comfortable reporting crimes and are able to fairly pursue justice."

"While we are pleased that Marte can now return home to Norway, her pardon still suggests that she was somehow guilty of a crime," said Rori Donaghy, a spokesman for the Emirates Center for Human Rights. "Until laws are reformed, victims of sexual violence in the UAE will continue to suffer in this way and we will likely see more cases such as this one."

___

Associated Press writer Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.

Florida football player arrested for barking at police dog

Source

Florida football player arrested for barking at police dog

By MARK LONG

Associated Press

Posted: 07/21/2013 09:09:39 AM PDT

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida linebacker Antonio Morrison has been arrested again.

Morrison was arrested early Sunday on two misdemeanors charges: barking at a police dog and resisting arrest.

The sophomore from Bolingbrook, Ill., also was arrested June 16 for allegedly punching a bouncer. He received deferred prosecution on the simple battery charged, a deal in which he was ordered to stay out of trouble for six months.

He was back in court Sunday, when a judge released him on his own recognizance.

According to the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, Morrison walked up to an open window on a police car and barked at a K-9 dog named Bear. The dog responded by barking back, prompting an officer to arrest Morrison for interfering with a police canine. According to the arresting officer, Morrison's actions diverted the canine's "attention from my investigation and towards him."

Officers said Morrison resisted attempts to handcuff him.

Morrison told officers he made a "woof-woof" sound at Bear because the dog barked at him.

Morrison could be looking at a suspension of a game or two to begin the season. The Gators open Aug. 31 against Toledo and play at Miami the following week. Morrison played in 13 games, with three starts as a freshman, and is expected to have a bigger role this fall.

Police save us from more imaginary bomb threats

Source

Downtown streets reopen after briefcase declared not to be bomb

By Kate Mather

July 22, 2013, 9:27 a.m.

Downtown L.A. streets closed during Monday's commute were reopened after police declared safe an unattended briefcase found outside City Hall.

Authorities were called to the scene just after 7 a.m., when the case was spotted on a park bench on the south lawn of City Hall, Los Angeles police Officer Wendy Reyes said.

Several area streets were blocked outside City Hall, Grand Park and the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters were blocked by police tape, delaying drivers during the morning commute.

A bomb squad determined there were no explosives inside and police cleared the scene shortly before 8:30 a.m., officials said.

Source

Police: Suspicious Mesa package a 'movie prop'

Posted: Friday, July 19, 2013 5:40 pm

ABC15.com

A suspicious package found in Mesa Thursday afternoon turned out to be nothing more than a movie prop.

Mesa Police Department spokesman Tony Landato said the package was found around 4:30 p.m. at an apartment complex near Guadalupe and Alma School Roads.

Landato said the bomb squad determined the package was not a threat and cleared the scene around 5 p.m

Drunk San Francisco fireman MAY lose his job????

Source

Monday Jul 22, 2013 10:13 AM PT

SF firefighter suspected in drunken crash may lose job

The San Francisco Fire Department is moving to terminate the firefighter who allegedly drove a ladder truck into a motorcyclist while drunk and then left the scene.

Sources tell us Chief Joanne Hayes-White sent a letter to the Fire Commission on Thursday, asking that 20-year veteran Michael Quinn — who is in rehab outside the city — be fired, even though the police investigation is continuing.

Quinn’s lawyer, James Bustamante, himself a former firefighter, called the termination move “premature” and irresponsible” given that the investigations have not even been completed.

Quinn, 43, a 23-year veteran, was arrested after the crash late June 29 at Fifth and Howard streets, in which the motorcyclist suffered busted ribs and a punctured lung. Quinn, who works at Station 1 on Folsom Street, was driving a ladder truck to what turned out to be a false alarm.

Officials say Quinn stopped the rig but then disappeared after being told that he would have to undergo a drug and alcohol test. He showed up two hours later at the station and was subsequently arrested on suspicion of felony drunken driving and hit-and-run.

Prosecutors, however, opted not to file charges for the time being and told police to do more investigating. [Huhhh??? The guy blew .13 which makes him legally drunk at .08. And according to SF Fire Department policy they have a zero tolerance policy of absolutely NO alcohol use period.]

The affair is particularly embarrassing for the Fire Department, because drinking on the job is not a new problem at station houses. It hasn’t helped that it came just a week before at least one Fire Department rig ran over an Asiana Airlines plane crash survivor at San Francisco International Airport, though Hayes-White has so far called that “a tragic accident.”

According to law enforcement sources, Quinn was told by his captain to wait in the truck after the crash until police arrived. Instead, he walked into a nearby bar, where a security camera filmed him drinking pitchers of water before he walked away into the night, the sources said.

About two hours later, Quinn showed up back at Fire Station 1, where he was tested and found to have a blood alcohol count of 0.13 percent, above the legal driving limit of 0.08 percent – and way, way over the departments zero tolerance level, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the case. [They can't talk about a fireman who was drunk as a skunk and ran over a civilian??? That is insane! Nope, that's government at work]

Police have been trying to reconstruct what Quinn did during the two hours between the crash and his reappearance at Station 1. They’re expected to give their report to the district attorney on Tuesday. [Who cares what he did AFTER the accident!!! He was drunk as a skunk when the accident occurred and that is all the facts the police need. If a drunk civilian ran over a person the cops wouldn't care what he was doing 2 hours after the accident.]

Quinn could contest his firing – and may want to, because under the city’s new retirement law, he could lose his department pension.

“In no way do we want to downplay the tragedy here,” Bustamante said. “But the move to terminate firefighter Quinn is a political move by a department that has a number of active investigations pending and a command staff in near revolt.”

NSA growth fueled by need to target terrorists

Source

NSA growth fueled by need to target terrorists

By Dana Priest, Published: July 21 E-mail the writer

Twelve years later, the cranes and earthmovers around the National Security Agency are still at work, tearing up pavement and uprooting trees to make room for a larger workforce and more powerful computers. Already bigger than the Pentagon in square footage, the NSA’s footprint will grow by an additional 50 percent when construction is complete in a decade.

And that’s just at its headquarters at Fort Meade, Md.

The nation’s technical spying agency has enlarged all its major domestic sites — in Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Texas and Utah — as well as those in Australia and Britain.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, its civilian and military workforce has grown by one-third, to about 33,000, according to the NSA. Its budget has roughly doubled, and the number of private companies it depends on has more than tripled, from 150 to close to 500, according to a 2010 Washington Post count.

The hiring, construction and contracting boom is symbolic of the hidden fact that in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the NSA became the single most important intelligence agency in finding al-Qaeda and other enemies overseas, according to current and former counterterrorism officials and experts. “We Track ’Em, You Whack ’Em” became a motto for one NSA unit, a former senior agency official said.

The story of the NSA’s growth, obscured by the agency’s extreme secrecy, is directly tied to the insatiable demand for its work product by the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, military units and the FBI.

The NSA’s broad reach in servicing that demand is at the heart of the controversy swirling around the agency these days. Both Congress and the public have been roiled by the disclosure of top-secret documents detailing the collection of U.S. phone records and the monitoring of e-mails, ­social-media posts and other Web traffic of foreign terrorism suspects and their enablers.

Lacking a strong informant network to provide details about al-Qaeda, U.S. intelligence and the military turned to the NSA’s technology to fill the void. The demand for information also favored the agency’s many surveillance techniques, which try to divine the intent of people by vacuuming up and analyzing their communications.

“There was nothing that gave you more insight into the inner workings of these organizations as the NSA,” said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter­terrorism Center. “I can’t think of any terrorist investigation where the NSA was not a pre­eminent or central player.”

One top-secret document recently disclosed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snow­den, who is on the run from U.S. authorities, revealed that 60 percent of the president’s daily intelligence briefing came from the NSA in 2000, even before the surge in the agency’s capabilities began.

“The foreign signals that NSA collects are invaluable to national security,” the agency said in a statement released Friday to The Post. “This information helps the agency determine where adversaries are located, what they’re planning, when they’re planning to carry it out, with whom they’re working, and the kinds of weapons they’re using.”

The NSA’s ability to capture, store and analyze an ever greater amount of people’s communications has never been accompanied by public explanations of new legal authorities, programs or privacy safeguards. Only the unauthorized disclosure of these secrets has forced officials to explain them in broad terms, reassure the public and complain about the damage from their public airing.

“I wish that I were here in happier times for the intelligence community,” said Robert S. Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, speaking at the Brookings Institution on Friday. “These disclosures threaten to cause long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.”

Battlefield support

The story of the NSA’s post-Sept. 11 history could begin in many places, including the parking lot of the CIA. There, in late 2001, a burly Navy SEAL paced inside a trailer with a telephone to his ear. The trailer had been hastily converted from a day-care facility to an operations center for the CIA’s covert armed drone program, which was about to kill one of its first al-Qaeda targets, 8,000 miles away in Afghanistan.

On the line with the SEAL was the drone operator and a “collector,” an NSA employee at the agency’s gigantic base at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga. The collector was controlling electronic surveillance equipment in the airspace over the part of Afghanistan where the CIA had zeroed in on one particular person. The SEAL pleaded with the collector to locate the cellphone in Afghanistan that matched the phone number that the SEAL had just given him, according to someone with knowledge of the incident who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The collector had never before done such a thing. Before even intercepting a cellphone conversation, he was accustomed to first confirming that the user was the person he had been directed to spy on. The conversation would then be translated, analyzed, distilled and, weeks later, if deemed to be interesting, sent around the U.S. intelligence community and the White House.

On that day, though, the minutes mattered.

“We just want you to find the phone!” the SEAL urged. No one cared about the conversation it might be transmitting.

The CIA wanted the phone as a targeting beacon to kill its owner.

The NSA collector in Georgia took what was then considered a gigantic leap — from using the nation’s most sophisticated spy technology to record the words of presidents, kings and dictators to using it to kill a single man in a terrorist group.

The revolutionary significance of that and other similar operations was quickly grasped by intelligence officials. With analysts and technicians from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the NSA subsequently assembled a team in the basement of its headquarters called the Geolocation Cell, or Geo Cell. Its purpose was to track people, geographically, in real time.

The cell opened up chat rooms with military and CIA officers in Afghanistan — and, eventually, Iraq — who were directing operations there. Together they aimed the NSA’s many sensors toward individual targets while tactical units aimed their weaponry against them.

A motto quickly caught on at Geo Cell: “We Track ’Em, You Whack ’Em.”

With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the surprisingly quick disintegration of postwar conditions there, the NSA began sending collectors with surveillance equipment to embed with Army brigades and Marine regimental combat teams to target insurgents and terrorists. The units were called tactical cryptologic support teams. The military commanders often had no prior understanding of what the NSA did. But they quickly demanded more of the agency once they learned what it could do.

At the same time, the NSA supported a parallel effort by CIA paramilitary units and clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) teams tasked with capturing or killing al-Qaeda leaders, deemed “high-value targets.” NSA analysts and collectors moved into the JSOC commander’s new and growing operational headquarters in Balad, Iraq, which also serviced Afghanistan.

By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this “The Find,” and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit.

At the same time, the NSA developed a new computer linkup called the Real Time Regional Gateway into which the military and intelligence officers could feed every bit of data or seized documents and get back a phone number or list of potential targets. It also allowed commanders to see, on a screen, every type of surveillance available in a given territory.

Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the NSA, said in an interview last week that he would tell people, “If we could do this half well, this will be the golden age of sigint,” or signals intelligence.

A growing reach

The battlefield technology overseas was matched by a demand back in the United States for larger amounts of data to mine using the NSA’s increasingly sophisticated computers. Financial and biometric data, the movement of money overseas, and pattern and link analysis became standard NSA tools. Another example, recently revealed by Snowden, is the bulk collection of telephone metadata — information about numbers dialed and the duration of the calls.

The NSA’s burgeoning secret activities splashed into public view in 2005 when the New York Times reported on the warrantless surveillance of U.S. communications, and subsequent statements by former NSA employees contended that the agency was collecting Americans’ e-mails and phone calls. Some suspected that NSA capabilities were limitless when it came to counterterrorism investigations.

Although the NSA tries hard to maintain a low profile, the physical manifestation of its growing importance has been quietly evident to the communities that surround its major foreign and domestic bases.

Within the past couple of years, bulldozers have plowed through the earth near Bluffdale, Utah, to ready a million-square-foot facility housing a center that will store oceans of bulk data.

In 2007, ground was broken for a $1 billion facility on 120 acres at Fort Gordon, where an NSA workforce of 4,000 collects and processes signals intelligence from the Middle East, according to the agency.

In Hawaii, the NSA outgrew its Schofield Barracks Army site years ago and opened a 250,000-square-foot, $358 million work space adjacent to it last year. The Wahiawa Annex is the last place that Snowden, then a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, worked before leaving with thousands of top-secret documents. The main job of the NSA’s Hawaii facility is to process signals intelligence from around the Pacific Rim.

Officials fear that Snowden gained access to sensitive files that outline espionage operations against Chinese leaders and other critical targets.

In Texas, the agency has added facilities to its San Antonio-based operations. Its main site, at Lackland Air Force Base, processes signals intelligence from Central and South America. In Colorado, the NSA’s expanding facilities on Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora collect and process information about weapons systems around the globe.

Overseas, the NSA’s station at RAF Menwith Hill on the moors of Yorkshire is planned to grow by one-third, to an estimated 2,500 employees, according to studies undertaken by local activists. Although hidden from the main road, up close it is hard to miss the 33 bright-white radar domes that sprout on the deep green landscape. They are thought to collect signals intelligence from parts of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

The NSA’s Pine Gap site in Australia has added hundreds of new employees and several new facilities in recent years. Over the years, Pine Gap has played a role in many U.S. and NATO military operations, including intercepting communications about possible nuclear testing by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and an analysis of the technical characteristics of Iraq’s GPS jamming systems during the 2003 invasion, according to a book by David Rosenberg, a former NSA analyst at Pine Gap. It also processes signals intelligence from parts of Asia.

The upgrades to the cryptologic centers were done “to make the agency’s global enterprise even more seamless as we confronted increasingly networked adversaries,” according to the NSA statement to The Post. “However, we always adjust our efforts to exploit the foreign communications of adversaries and defend vital U.S. networks in accordance with national priorities and in full accordance with U.S. law.”

It added: “The notion of constant, unchecked, or senseless growth is a myth.”

Julie Tate contributed to this report.

NRA's black commentator becomes Web sensation

NRA's black commentator becomes Web sensation

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Reporting from Houston, Texas

July 23, 2013

Colion Noir belongs to the NRA and owns several guns, including a sleek Glock 17 handgun and a customized AR-15 rifle. But as Noir frequently points out, he does not fit the stereotype of NRA members, or what he calls OFWG: "Old, fat white guys."

At 29, he's not old. Nor is he fat — he's slender and stylishly dressed with sneakers made by Prada. He's also not white.

In the world of gun owners, Noir, an African American, has become an Internet sensation and his popularity is growing. At this year's National Rifle Assn. convention here, he was surrounded by fans when he arrived to film a Sportsman Channel segment on the NRA News stage.

"You are certainly causing some controversies," said Cam Edwards, host of the radio talk show "NRA News Cam & Co."

Noir has attracted followers with funny, edgy pro-gun videos — titles include "Gun Control & Bathrooms" and "You Know You're a Gun Control Hypocrite if ..." He has emerged as a dynamic and unexpected NRA persona.

Gun control advocates dismiss him as an NRA pawn, and some blacks accuse him of being an Uncle Tom. But to many at the convention, Noir demonstrated a historic diversity among gun owners that defies stereotypes.

After Noir left the talk-show stage, fans approached to shake hands and pose for photographs. Most were white. A handful of them, like Quentin Smith, were black.

"Congratulations," said Smith, 44, a gun owner from Cypress, Texas. "There's a few of us out there."

The NRA does not release membership demographics, but according to a Pew Research Center survey, many gun owners in America are white — 31% of whites polled this year said they owned guns, compared with 15% of blacks and 11% of Latinos.

"This is one tie that binds all of us together," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, describing the group as "the oldest civil rights organization in America."

Arulanandam noted that the NRA also recently signed on a woman and a young veteran as commentators who speak to other growing demographics within the ranks of gun owners. He said the NRA did not choose Noir because of his race.

"When he speaks, he's able to relate to a variety of people. That's why he has a broad following," Arulanandam said.

Noir was born Collins — "Mr. Colion Noir" is a stage name — son of an executive chef and a registered nurse. He graduated from high school in Houston, went to the University of Houston, where he majored in political science, and earned a law degree from Texas Southern University's Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

Noir is a practicing attorney. He reads fashion blogs, loves gadgets and drives a sports car and a truck — neither with a gun rack, although he keeps a metal candy dish full of bullets in his living room.

Noir said he grew up hesitant to admit he liked firearms because it wasn't something people talked about in his middle-class neighborhood. He fired his first gun, a little Taurus .40, about seven years ago at the urging of a friend who took him to a shooting range.

"I remember how exhilarating it was," Noir said, comparing the experience to sky diving.

Soon afterward, he was going to the range weekly and researching guns. He later joined the NRA and bought about a half dozen guns. Noir, who once worked at A/X Armani Exchange and favors tailored suits, worries that a concealed handgun might "print," or show through the fabric.

"Secret Service have the worst cut suits — big and bulky," so their guns won't show, Noir said.

A few years ago he began posting YouTube videos of himself critiquing guns and accessories. Then he started tackling politics and pop culture, addressing mass shootings, assault weapon bans and gun control campaigns by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the rapper formerly known as Snoop Dogg.

Noir said he recently started preparing a video about "stand your ground" laws after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

"I decided to table it because there's too much complexity," Noir said.

Noir sprinkles his videos with gun slang and offbeat humor, sometimes delivered with a smirk, sometimes deadpan. Some videos have been viewed more than 800,000 times.

In one, Noir sits on a plush couch in his loft next to his assault rifle, wearing his black Yankees cap and a modern plaid shirt, tossing off references to Justin Bieber and "Entourage" while mocking the owners of .45 handguns as "the Scientologists of the gun world" because they've attributed mythical powers to the .45 bullet — think "Zeus' thunderbolt or Thor's hammer."

The camera cuts again and again to Noir wearing different baseball caps as he plays other characters.

Why carry a .45? The characters explain.

"Because a 9 millimeter only kills your body, but the .45 — that kills your soul," one says, staring dully at the camera.

"Maybe because I'm too lazy to shoot twice," another says.

"The only ones I know can survive a .45 is Wolverine and Superman," says yet another.

Noir reasons there's not much difference between a .45 and other powerful firearms, like the 9-millimeter handgun: "Are you going to be any more dead when, in one of her drunken stupors, Lindsay Lohan runs over you with her Range Rover Sport versus Kim Kardashian in her full-size Range Rover?"

Noir was launching his online brand last spring when the NRA approached him. Officially, he's a paid commentator, not a spokesman, though the videos are branded NRA. He and the group declined to say how much he's paid.

Once a deal had been struck, the NRA released an ad in March promoting his first video praising the gun rights group for championing the right of blacks to bear arms during Jim Crow and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

"The same government who at one point hosed us down with water, attacked us with dogs and wouldn't allow us to eat at their restaurants told us we couldn't own guns when bumbling fools with sheets on their heads were riding around burning crosses on our lawns and murdering us," Noir says in the video as "Washington elitism" flashes across the screen.

The National Rifle Assn. convention drew large crowds in Houston this year. (Aaron M. Sprecher / Bloomberg)

It was not a misreading of history, according to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America."

Winkler said that the armed Black Panthers of the 1960s, despite criticism by then-Republican California Gov. Ronald Reagan and many conservatives, paved the way for the NRA's current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment: that citizens should be able to carry guns in public, not just for hunting, but for protection, including protection against government tyranny.

Now some in the black community have denounced Noir for what they say is selling out to the white pro-gun establishment, with critiques posted on theroot.com and the Black Entertainment Television website.

"He's taking more heat from black people than anybody. The racism that exists now is mostly on our side," said the Rev. Kenn Blanchard, 50, a gun rights activist who is black. He said he advised Noir to accept the NRA deal.

Noir said he expected attacks, but he gets frustrated when critics highlight his race.

"Calling me an Uncle Tom simply because I'm into firearms, it doesn't even make sense. My entire identity as a black guy is based on my ownership of guns? Really?" he said. "Some of the most influential black individuals have advocated for the use of firearms, so how come when I do it, I'm vilified? Take a look at the Black Panthers, MLK, Malcolm X."

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. supported gun rights? Noir noted that after King's home in Montgomery, Ala., was firebombed, King applied for a handgun permit.

When it comes to outreach to potential black gun owners, Noir will find that the demographics are stacked against him, Winkler said. Figures show blacks and Latinos are more likely to be Democrats who support gun control, especially young minorities in urban areas who associate guns with gangs and neighborhood violence, he said.

Perhaps Noir's rise says more about the NRA's acceptance of minorities than the group's ability to woo them.

At the NRA convention, as Noir left the talk-show stage, Chris Blow of Magnolia, Texas, stopped him. Blow, 59, is a longtime NRA member and had watched Noir's videos. Where, he wondered, did Noir like to shoot? Noir reeled off a few locations in the Houston area. Blow, who is white, smiled knowingly and shook Noir's hand.

"You seem like someone I'd like to go shoot with," he said.

How do you spell revenue - 15 mph school zones!!!

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Police: 'Zero tolerance' for those not driving safe around school zones

Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 6:45 am

By Angie Holdsworth, ABC15.com

Children are heading back to school starting Monday and that means drivers will need to use extra caution.

"There is no tolerance," said Officer John Allison with Chandler Police. "The speed limit is 15 miles per hour and that starts once your front wheel passes the sign." [Translation - we will shake you down and squeeze every cent out of you with those silly 15 mph school zones.]

Chandler Unified School District is one of a few districts opening school doors Monday. Others will start next week with most districts starting the week of August 5th.

Allison said officers will be out in full force over the next couple of weeks as commuters get back in the school routine.

"There will be a lot of congestion around some schools," he said. "You have to give yourself more time."

Allison also reminds drivers that they must stop for kids and crossing guards at school crossings. He said all drivers in all lanes must stop once a child or guard's foot steps off the curb.

He also reminds drivers that kids may not always follow the rules and are easily distracted so be watchful.

Detroit a snapshot of U.S.

Source

Detroit a snapshot of U.S.

Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:01 PM

Among other painful effects of Detroit filing for bankruptcy, thousands of city pensioners and employees will suffer severe cuts in remuneration; citizens are not receiving services.

This is the result, according to the official appointed to oversee the process, of 60 years of neglect, of failing to respond to the realities that were so evident. The city was spending more than its revenue, was promising more to its workers and citizens than it was capable of delivering, and living on borrowed money it could never pay back. Detroit is another clarion signal that we are living beyond our means.

On the national level, we are nearly $17 trillion in debt and we have added another trillion each year under the Obama administration.

We are borrowing 42 percent of our national operating budget. Both of our entitlement programs are in danger of failing, and we just added another, which is showing strong signs of a similar fate. Despite a half-century of anti-poverty programs, the percentage of the population in poverty has not changed. The number of people on food stamps is growing rapidly.

Detroit failed to heed the obvious warnings, and it is now in dire straits and its citizens are suffering mightily. The country is mirroring the experiences of Detroit, and we are refusing to acknowledge what we know is true. How long are we going to pretend? What happens when a country goes bankrupt?

— Dennis Santillo, Cornville

Top public pension earner sues Vernon after CalPERS cuts his benefit

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Top public pension earner sues Vernon after CalPERS cuts his benefit

By Ruben Vives and Hector Becerra

July 22, 2013, 8:41 p.m.

The man who was granted California's biggest public pension isn't giving it up without a fight.

Bruce Malkenhorst took home more than $911,000 a year as city manager of the tiny city of Vernon. His reign ended shortly before he was convicted of misappropriating public funds, and he walked away with an annual pension that eventually topped $500,000, the largest in the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

But CalPERS last year decided to cut his pension to $115,000, concluding he'd derived some of his hefty salary improperly.

So now the 78-year-old Malkenhorst is suing Vernon to make up the difference. His lawyers are making a novel if improbable argument: Because it paid him a high salary, the city is responsible for keeping his retirement benefits at the higher level even though CalPERS balked.

Vernon now faces a potentially costly legal battle as attorneys face off with the city's onetime power broker, who for years was thought to be the highest paid public official in the country.

It could turn into a test case for other city leaders who have seen their hefty pensions cut by CalPERS.

Bell's former city administrator, Robert Rizzo, was poised to receive a pension of about $650,000. But CalPERS cut it to $50,000 after Rizzo and seven other city officials were accused of corruption. His assistant, Angela Spaccia, had her projected pension cut from $250,000 to $43,000.

Last year CalPERS found that Vernon improperly boosted the retirement benefits of nearly two dozen top employees, resulting in the largest public pension reduction in state history. Malkenhorst's successor, Eric T. Fresch, who made as much as $1.6 million in 2008, had his pension stripped completely. Fresch died last year.

Malkenhorst's attorney has already presented hundreds of pages of exhibits as evidence of what he says are the city's vows to fund his rich pension. In the suit, Malkenhorst describes his pension as a promise from the city based on his "highest earnings at Vernon." He notes that eight years ago, when CalPERS first raised issues about his pension, the city supported Malkenhorst. That changed last year, he said, when CalPERS reduced his pension.

Vernon officials argue that Malkenhorst had been paid more than enough.

"The exhibits well document that Mr. Malkenhorst made a pile of money working for Vernon when he ran the show and was lord of the manor," said City Atty. Nicholas Rodriguez. "We intend to litigate it and believe that he is entitled to nothing further from Vernon."

CalPERS alleges that Vernon improperly boosted Malkenhorst's retirement benefits, arguing that his pension was "illegally based on unpublished pay rates, overtime and an inflated longevity allowance." Although Malkenhorst held as many as 10 positions during his 29-year tenure in the city's government, CalPERS determined that only his pay as city clerk was properly reported for purposes of his pension. Malkenhorst filed two lawsuits to prevent his pension from being reduced. He lost both but is appealing.

Malkenhorst was squired around in limousines, and it often seemed that he oversaw the City Council, not the other way around. Those who know Malkenhorst said they are not surprised he is fighting back.

"Bruce Malkenhorst can't be called shy," said Steve Freed, president of the Vernon Property Assn., a business advocacy group. "He's an aggressive guy with an aggressive personality. If he thinks he truly earned this money, then he absolutely will make every effort to attain that money."

Freed said he has little sympathy for Malkenhorst.

"He set his own salary, he set his own benefits package, then swept it through the City Council," he said. "He was coming close to $1 million a year, which is just irresponsible for a city to be paying one person."

John Kruissink, a former Vernon historian, said Malkenhorst never tried to hide that he was getting paid a huge salary, which a compliant City Council readily awarded him.

"Bruce believes in himself and that he didn't do anything wrong…. He's going to go down swinging," Kruissink said.

Malkenhorst did not return a call seeking comment, nor did his attorney.

Malkenhorst retired in 2005. The next year, Los Angeles County prosecutors filed public corruption charges against him, accusing him of spending $60,000 in city money for personal use, including massages, golf outings, meals and political contributions. He pleaded guilty in 2011. He was sentenced to three years' probation and ordered to pay $35,000 in fines and penalties, as well as $60,000 in restitution to Vernon.

Malkenhorst was already the highest-paid public official in California by the late 1980s. In an interview with The Times in 1989, he declared his salary of $162,000 at the time to be a bargain for Vernon.

"I always thought if I made this much money I'd be rich," he quipped.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

hector.becerra@latimes.com

Blame Washington 'compromise' for where we are today

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Blame Washington 'compromise' for where we are today

By David Schweikert My Turn Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:10 PM

The Arizona Republic recently ran a story suggesting Congress has lost the art of compromise. To make the point, they highlighted the recent votes in the House on the "FARRM Bill."

Claiming this bill was “a federal lifeline” for farmers and “families in need of help putting food on the table,” they pointed out that I didn't “compromise” by voting against this measure.

The point was also made that a vote seemingly as uncontroversial as a farm bill, should not be a vote of principle but merely a difference of opinion on policy, and therefore something both sides could agree to pass.

I disagree.

We are in the midst of a spending crisis. Those of us committed to stopping out-of-control spending need to step up our game. As a conservative, I do not oppose excessive spending measures to be disagreeable. I simply recognize what many in Washington ignore -- we can't afford them.

Each and every one of these spending votes is, in fact, a matter of principle. It is morally wrong to continue to spend money we don't have while racking up debts so great that our children will never begin to pay them off. [That's rubbish, they are not putting our children into debt, they are stealing the money from US now. The National Debt is a sham for running the printing presses to print money.]

Excessive government spending has hurt our economy, created millions more in unemployment, and driven our national debt to dangerous levels. And that is not a matter of opinion, policy or lack of compromise. That's reality.

Consider the food-stamp program.

It's reality that in the 1970s, just one in 50 Americans received food stamps. That number is now one in seven.

It's reality that taxpayers currently spend $80 billion a year on food stamps --- a 62 percent increase from the last Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Mamangement Bill.

It's also reality that in the past five years our national debt has more than doubled to more than $17 trillion. Every high-school graduate owes $910,553, and every baby born this year owes $1,496,098.

That’s tragic.

Even though it was a huge win for taxpayers that the House split the food-stamp portion out of the farm bill, the farm portion was still riddled with waste and abuse.

Since the New Deal, Washington has been picking winners and losers in the agriculture industry through a combination of price controls, import restrictions, subsidies and cash payments. While this was initially a laudable goal, the farm bill today has become nothing more than corporate welfare -- where, bizarrely, some farmers are even paid not to farm their land.

Some can claim it’s members like me, holding out for real and lasting spending reforms, that are standing in the way of “compromise.” If you use Washington's definition of compromise, which seems to be spending more money than we have, then maybe you are right.

However, true compromise cannot be an excuse to keep spending away America’s future. Sadly, that's where "compromise" has gotten us thus far.

I was elected on a platform of reducing the size and cost of government that have left us trillions in debt and threatened our economic prosperity.

I plan to continue doing just that. I promise to stand firm and unequivocally oppose legislation like the farm bill that continues the Washington tradition of out-of-control spending with money we don't have.

Because with more than a $17 trillion national debt, the stakes are too high to abide by Washington's definition of "compromise."

U.S. Rep. David Schweikert is a Republican representing Arizona's Fifth Congressional District.

Officials call synthetic drug verdict a victory

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Officials call synthetic drug verdict a victory

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 22, 2013 11:19 PM

Federal officials lauded a jury’s guilty verdict Friday as an important breakthrough in the crackdown against highly addictive synthetic drugs that have been blamed for suicides and irrational behavior.

Michael Rocky Lane, 51, was accused of altering MDPV, a powerful stimulant added by emergency order in 2011 to the federal list of controlled substances, to create synthetic drugs with similar effects to methamphetamine and cocaine.

Lane was found guilty Friday of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled-substance analogues and possession with intent to distribute controlled-substance analogues.

The scheme involved eight other people who were arrested after agents executed hundreds of search warrants nationwide a year ago in “Operation Log Jam.”

Federal agents posed as Hells Angels members in making a series of drug buys in the Valley, including a June 20, 2012, buy of 2,500 packets for $5,600 in a Thunderbird Road parking lot, according to a federal affidavit.

Federal drug officials said after the operation that 91 people were arrested during raids in 109 cities and that they seized the equivalent of 18 million drug packets.

“This is our first case. That’s why we are so excited,” said Cosme Lopez, a spokesman for John S. Leonardo, U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona. “This is a new venture for the U.S. attorneys everywhere.”

Special Agent Ramona Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said Lane’s prosecution is the first involving production of designer drugs in the U.S that are chemically engineered to mimic MDPV. A previous case in New York targeted imported drugs.

An emergency order in October 2011 made MDPV a controlled substance under the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act of 1986, which regulates the structure of designer drugs. Synthetic drugs produced in a lab are designed to mimic or amplify the effects of naturally occurring drugs, such as cocaine or marijuana.

Use of these designer drugs has been linked to suicides, violent behavior and medical problems.

Lane hired a chemist to slightly alter the makeup of MDPV and produced a series of drugs that were just as potent at a Tempe warehouse through his company, Dynamic Distribution, Sanchez said.

The new drug was known as “Eight Ballz Ultra Premium Glass Cleaner.” Other drugs were known as “Amphed Lady Bug Attractant Exuberance Powder” and “Snowman Glass Cleaner.”

Prosecutors were able to prove the drugs were pharmacologically similar to Schedule I and Schedule II controlled substances, with effects on the central nervous system that were equal to or greater than those of methamphetamine or cocaine.

“Phoenix served as a major hub,” Sanchez said, with the drugs produced in Tempe distributed throughout the United States. “The harm that was inflicted by these drugs is only matched by the profits these people made by selling them.”

She said the other eight defendants were accused of conspiring with Lane. They have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Four are Valley residents, while the others are from California, Minnesota and New Jersey.

The co-conspirators were identified by federal authorities as Nicholas Pascal Zizzo of Phoenix; Benjamin Joshua Lowenstein of Phoenix; David Titus of Phoenix; Clinton Strunk of Mesa; Vincent Collura of New Jersey; Andrew Scott Freeman of Minnesota; Scott Stone of Minnesota; and Daniel Pollock of Escondido, Calif.

Federal officials hope the verdict sends a message to others that altering the chemical composition of “bath salts” and other designer drugs and labeling them as “not fit for human consumption’’ will not protect them from arrest and prosecution, Sanchez said.

The case was tried before U.S. District Judge David Campbell from June 25 until Friday. Lane is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 21.

Lopez said Lane faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a $1 million fine or both.

“Individuals who manufacture and distribute these mislabeled designer drugs are responsible for products that have been linked to overdoses, deaths and hallucinations,” Leonardo said in a prepared statement.

NSA revelations reframe digital life for some

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NSA revelations reframe digital life for some

By Oskar Garcia Associated Press Mon Jul 22, 2013 9:53 AM

In Louisiana, the wife of a former soldier is scaling back on Facebook posts and considering unfriending old acquaintances, worried an innocuous joke or long-lost associate might one day land her in a government probe. In California, a college student encrypts chats and emails, saying he’s not planning anything sinister but shouldn’t have to sweat snoopers. And in Canada, a lawyer is rethinking the data products he uses to ensure his clients’ privacy.

As the attorney, Chris Bushong, put it: “Who wants to feel like they’re being watched?”

News of the U.S. government’s secret surveillance programs that targeted phone records but also information transmitted on the Internet has done more than spark a debate about privacy. Some are reviewing and changing their online habits as they reconsider some basic questions about today’s interconnected world. Among them: How much should I share and how should I share it?

Some say they want to take preventative measures in case such programs are expanded. Others are looking to send a message — not just to the U.S. government but to the Internet companies that collect so much personal information.

“We all think that nobody’s interested in us, we’re all simple folk,” said Doan Moran of Alexandria, La. “But you start looking at the numbers and the phone records … it makes you really hesitate.”

Last month former government contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing that the National Security Agency, as part of its anti-terrorism efforts, had collected the phone records of millions of Americans. A second NSA program called PRISM forces major Internet firms to turn over the detailed contents of communications such as emails, video chats, pictures and more.

Moran’s husband, an ex-Army man, already was guarded about using social media. Now she is looking through her Facebook “friends” to consider whom to delete, because she can’t know what someone in her network might do in the future. Moran said she’s uneasy because she feels unclear about what the NSA is keeping and how deep the agency’s interests might go.

In Toronto, attorney Bushong let a free trial of Google’s business applications expire after learning about PRISM, under which the NSA seized data from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and AOL. Bushong is moving to San Diego in August to launch a tax planning firm and said he wants to be able to promise confidentiality and respond sufficiently should clients question his firm’s data security. He switched to a Canadian Internet service provider for email and is considering installing his own document servers.

“I’d like to be able to say that I’ve taken all reasonable steps to ensure that they’re not giving up any freedoms unnecessarily,” he said.

Across the Internet, computer users are talking about changes small and large — from strengthening passwords and considering encryption to ditching cellphones and using cash over credit cards. The conversations play out daily on Reddit, Twitter and other networks, and have spread to offline life with so-called “Cryptoparty” gatherings in cities including Dallas, Atlanta and Oakland, Calif.

Information technology professional Josh Scott hosts a monthly Cryptoparty in Dallas to show people how to operate online more privately.

“You have to decide how extreme you want to be,” Scott said.

Christopher Shoup, a college student from Victorville, Calif., has been encouraging friends to converse on Cryptocat, a private messaging program that promises users they can chat “without revealing messages to a third party.” Shoup isn’t worried that his own behavior could draw scrutiny, but said the mere idea that the government could retrieve his personal communications “bothers me as an American.”

“I don’t think I should have to worry,” he said.

Cryptocat said it nearly doubled its number of users in two days after Snowden revealed himself as the source of leaks about the NSA’s programs. Two search engine companies billed as alternatives to Google, Bing and Yahoo are also reporting significant surges in use.

DuckDuckGo and Ixquick both promise they don’t collect data from users or filter results based on previous history. DuckDuckGo went from 1.8 million searches per day to more than 3 million per day the week after the NSA revelations came to light. Ixquick and sister site Startpage have gone from 2.8 million searches per day to more than 4 million.

Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive of DuckDuckGo, said the NSA programs reminded people to consider privacy but that government snooping may the least of an everyday computer user’s concerns. DuckDuckGo’s website warns of the pitfalls of Internet search engines, including third-party advertisements built around a user’s searches or the potential for a hacker or rogue employee to gain access to personal information.

Potential harm is “becoming more tangible over time,” said Weinberg, who is posting fewer family photos, dropping a popular cloud service that stores files and checking his settings on devices at home to ensure they are as private as possible.

At Ixquick, more than 45,000 people have asked to be beta testers for a new email service featuring accounts that not even the company can get into without user codes, spokeswoman Katherine Albrecht said. The company will levy a small charge for the accounts, betting that people are willing to pay for privacy. As computer users grow more savvy, they better understand that Internet companies build their businesses around data collection, Albrecht said.

“These companies are not search engines,” she said. “They are brilliant market research companies. … And you are the product.”

Representatives for Google, Yahoo and PalTalk, companies named in a classified PowerPoint presentation leaked by Snowden, declined comment. Microsoft, Apple and AOL officials did not return messages. Previously, the companies issued statements emphasizing that they aren’t voluntarily handing over user data to the government. They also rejected newspaper reports indicating that PRISM had opened a door for the agency to tap directly into companies’ data centers whenever the government pleases.

“Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period,” Google CEO Larry Page said in a blog post.

It’s not clear whether big Internet companies have seen changes in how their products are used. An analysis released this month by comScore Inc. said Google sites accounted for two-thirds of Internet searches in June — about 427 million queries per day.

In Tokyo, American expat Peng Zhong responded to the spying news by swapping everything from his default search engine and web browser to his computer’s operating system. Zhong, an interface designer, then built a website to help others switch, too. Called prism-break.org, the site got more than 200,000 hits in less than a week after Zhong announced it on social networks.

Since then, Zhong said he’s seen numerous people talking online about their own experiences in changing their computing habits.

“It’s a start,” he said.

Union jerks cost Gary Schrum $50,000????

Source

Owner fights NLRB complaint

By Peter Corbett The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:31 PM

The new owner of a Phoenix produce-packaging company is fighting a union complaint to the National Labor Relations Board that he illegally fired five workers.

But the owner said that four of the five left because they indicated they could not meet federal employment requirements.

Gary Schrum, owner of Farm Fresh Company Target One LLC, said that in March, when he bought the company, he told the roughly 50 employees that all workers would have to be screened by E-Verify, the federal system that allows employers to verify the eligibility of employees to work in the United States.

It was his option to do so under guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“I didn’t want Sheriff Joe (Arpaio) coming in and taking all of my workers,” said Schrum, who joined Farm Fresh in 1989 and became manager in 1998.

Schrum bought Farm Fresh on March 1 from David Prince for $1.2 million — with monthly payments of $10,000 for 10 years — and leases the company warehouse from Prince’s mother, according to NLRB documents.

After he took over, Schrum said, five Farm Fresh employees left the company: Three of them resigned when he announced the E-Verify scrutiny, one was dismissed because of an unresolved discrepancy over his Social Security number, and one was fired for excessive absences and tardiness.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 99 responded to the employee departures with a March 15 complaint to the NLRB stating that Farm Fresh interfered with workers’ efforts to organize a union to represent them and fired five workers for their union activity.

An administrative-law judge for the board heard testimony on the complaint in June, and both sides submitted briefs to the judge last week.

The union’s complaint stated that five Farm Fresh employees complained to Schrum about wages, hours and working conditions on Feb. 16, about two weeks before Schrum bought the company.

The union alleged that Farm Fresh supervisors interrogated employees about union organizing activity in early March and pressured them not to sign union-authorization cards.

Sandra Lyons, counsel for the NLRB, in a brief filed Friday, said that Farm Fresh production supervisor Jesus Loya had a pattern of harassing employees before the business changed hands.

Loya was replaced as production supervisor after Schrum took over, according to the brief.

But Lyons’ brief argued that Loya continued to act as a supervisor and violated employees’ rights by closely monitoring and interrogating them about their union activity.

The brief also alleged that Schrum violated workers’ rights by meeting with them to hear their grievances and promising better working conditions as a way to diminish interest in the union.

Schrum denied that he or his supervisors interfered with union organizing at Farm Fresh.

“If employees want a union, they can do it,” he said.

Schrum said he did explain the advantages and disadvantages of union representation, including the fact that workers would have to pay $7 to $12 per week for union dues. He said he also gave the workers contact information for the NLRB to allow them to get more guidance on their rights.

“My employees have a voice with me,” Schrum said. “I don’t need a union in between us. I want to be able to listen to my employees and hear their grievances.”

Schrum said he has offered to rehire and give back pay to four of the five former workers if they are authorized to work through the E-Verify system. That offer was not made to the employee Schrum said was fired for regularly missing work and being late.

Schrum said the union’s complaint and related legal expenses have been costly and made his transition as owner of Farm Fresh more difficult.

“I’m actually in jeopardy of losing my business over it, that’s how financially expensive it’s been, in excess of $50,000,” he said.

Geoffrey Carter, an administrative-law judge working for the labor board, heard three days of testimony last month on the union’s complaint against Farm Fresh.

Lyons and Farm Fresh attorney Christopher Meister submitted their briefs to Carter on Friday. Meister declined comment.

A decision is pending on whether Farm Fresh terminated any employees for unlawful reasons based on the workers’ union activity. Lyons is asking that all five Farm Fresh employees be reinstated with back pay.

Farm Fresh operates in a warehouse six blocks east of Chase Field in downtown Phoenix. Workers clean, chop and package celery, carrots, onions and other produce in a production room that is kept at 40 to 45 degrees. The produce is sold to restaurants and school cafeterias.

The starting wage is about $8.25 without health benefits, Schrum said.

Martin Hernandez, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 99 vice president, declined comment on the complaint filed against Farm Fresh. The union’s attorney, Elizabeth Hinckle, also declined comment.

Campbell calls for Arizona prison chief to resign

Campbell calls for Arizona prison chief to resign

By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 23, 2013 6:42 PM

A key lawmaker is calling on the state’s prison chief to resign, citing a high prison suicide rate, security failures, inadequate medical care and inappropriate ties to the private-prison industry.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, a longtime critic of the Department of Corrections and private prisons, said his call for director Charles Ryan’s resignation was prompted by the suspected homicide last month of an inmate at the Lewis state prison complex in Buckeye.

“Director Ryan has exhibited a pattern of mismanagement and a lack of leadership resulting in an unsafe corrections system in our state,” Campbell said in a statement. “Under his direction, our corrections system has wasted tax dollars, jeopardized people’s lives and damaged the state’s credibility.”

Campbell, who is considering a run for governor in 2014, said Ryan has failed to plug holes in prison security, stem criminal behavior by corrections employees, properly manage private-prison contracts and ensure adequate health care for inmates.

Bill Lamoreaux, a spokesman for the corrections department, said Ryan and other agency officials have responded to Campbell’s concerns and provided “detailed information on ADC’s operations.”

“Earlier this year he was even invited to tour ADC correctional facilities so that he could gain a firsthand understanding of the Department, its employees and operations,” Lamoreaux said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Representative Campbell did not respond to ADC’s offer.”

Gov. Jan Brewer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brewer appointed Ryan to lead the agency in 2009.

Under his tenure, the state has privatized inmate health care and now faces a class-action lawsuit alleging that the department provides inadequate medical, dental and mental-health care to inmates. Also under Ryan, two murderers escaped from a private prison near Kingman in 2010, leading to a nationwide manhunt and the deaths of two people. An internal investigation blamed human error and lax monitoring of the private-prison contract.

Republic reporter Craig Harris contributed to this article.

Bikers rousted at northern Ariz. rally sue police

Bikers rousted at northern Ariz. rally sue police

Associated Press Tue Jul 23, 2013 12:22 PM

Members of a motorcycle club claim their constitutional rights were violated when Arizona officers rousted them at gunpoint at a campsite where a man shot his wife and two others before killing himself.

The Sons of Hell filed a federal lawsuit last week against the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office. Its members claim officers were trying to collect information for a criminal street gang database, even though they knew club members weren’t involved in the 2011 shooting at a bike rally near Flagstaff.

A DPS spokesman declined comment Tuesday. The sheriff’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A similar lawsuit the club filed last year was dismissed without prejudice after its attorney abandoned the case.

The club has new legal representation and is seeking monetary compensation.

Cop gets ‘desk duty’ for leaking bomb suspect photos

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Cop gets ‘desk duty’ for leaking bomb suspect photos

By Dough Stanglin USA Today Tue Jul 23, 2013 11:14 AM

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — The Massachusetts State Police photographer who leaked arrest photos of the Boston bombing suspect in the wake of a glam cover shot by Rolling Stone has been placed on restricted or “desk duty” pending a full investigation of the case, according to Boston media.

The action came during a closed hearing before a three-person panel for Sgt. Sean Murphy, a veteran state police officer.

Murphy had provided Boston magazine photos of a wounded and unkempt bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev moments before he was arrested in the backyard of a Watertown, Mass., residence on April 19.

One of the photos shows Tsarnaev with streaks of blood on his face and the red dot of a police sniper’s laser sight on his forehead.

He had been huddling in a boat after being injured during a shootout with police hours earlier in which his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed.

Murphy had said in a statement to Boston magazine that the cover shot on Rolling Stone, reminiscent of its treatment of Jim Morrison, was an insult to police, military members and the families of anyone killed in the line of duty.

Murphy wasn’t authorized to release the photos, and he’s already served a one-day, unpaid suspension.

“This guy is evil,” Murphy said. “This is the real Boston bomber. Not someone fluffed and buffed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.”

The Tsarnaev brothers were suspects in the April 15 twin bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon that left three people dead and injured more than 200.

Tsarnaev, who is being held at a prison medical center, is also accused of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer while on the run three days later.

The U.S. attorney’s office called the release of the photos “completely unacceptable,” and some attorneys said the images and Murphy’s comments could be used to argue government bias against Tsarnaev.

Murphy was not allowed to talk to reporters after the hearing, but his 19-year-old son, Connor Murphy, said he supported him “100 percent.”

“I couldn’t be prouder of him,” he added.

Leonard Kesten, Murphy’s lawyer, said the elder Murphy showed a lot of “heart” and “courage,” the Boston Herald reported.

As Murphy was walking into the hearing Tuesday morning, he told reporters “life is good,” according to WBZ-TV.

Murphy will keep his job for now, but will be assigned to a desk duty pending a final ruling in the case.

License plate cameras used to falsely arrest Phoenix City Council Candidate????

Phoenix City Council candidate mistakenly detained

Christina Leonard is the Phoenix community editor.

By Eugene Scott PHX Beat Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:51 PM

Phoenix police briefly detained a Phoenix City Council candidate Tuesday afternoon after an officer’s computer incorrectly indicated a warrant out for the candidate’s arrest.

Police let Jeffrey Brown go when it became apparent they had the wrong person.

“They took my tie off and belt off and arrested me, saying I owed 600 and something dollars for a parking ticket,” said Brown. “Do they normally do that?”

Brown, who works as a mental-health advocate, appeared a little shaken after police handcuffed him. And he’s not completely in the clear. He’ll have to clean up some other infractions, but at least he wouldn’t have to spend Tuesday night in jail.

The police detained Brown, who is running for City Council in District 4, as he was leaving the Republic Media building in downtown Phoenix. Brown had just attended an Arizona Republic editorial board meeting with other candidates in the central Phoenix district.

Officer Arnie Cuellar said his police vehicle has an automatic license plate reader, which hit on Brown’s Mitsubishi Spider.

Cuellar said he called to verify Brown’s information, and he discovered the warrant was for a different Jeffrey Brown.

Cuellar said a mistake in the system caused the confusion.

“I apologized again (to Brown). That really ticks me off. We’re just trying to do our job,” he said.

But it doesn’t mean Brown is completely off the hook.

The search revealed Brown does have about $70 in unpaid parking tickets on his Mitsubishi, Cuellar said.

(Police records also showed Brown owes $675 in unpaid parking tickets on a GMC Yukon. Brown said he sold the Yukon at least a year ago, but it appears the new owner has not changed the vehicle registration.)

Police also wouldn’t let Brown drive away, saying his driver’s license was suspended following a June implied-consent DUI arrest.

“Implied consent tells me he refused some tests,” Cuellar said. According to Arizona’s implied consent law, refusing to provide a blood sample subjects a DUI suspect to an automatic driver's-license suspension.

Not allowed to drive his car, Brown walked to the Arizona Department of Transportation’s downtown Phoenix offices to work out the details.

Phoenix municipal court records show several cases against a Jeffrey Brown with the same birth month and year, including a recent DUI case.

Cuellar said Brown told him he was going to court Wednesday to address the DUI.

In an e-mail, Brown said Tuesday's incident wasn't the first time authorities had confused him with someone else.

"I should not have been arrested and detained and I would think the courts and Phoenix PD could do a better job of communicating before arresting or deatining someone," he wrote. Brown noted that the incident happened with "cameras rolling," adding "I think I might need an attorney."

Proof elected officials can't be trusted???

Source

State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law

Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:26 pm | Updated: 2:16 pm, Tue Jul 23, 2013.

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 0 comments

PHOENIX — Legislators are free to ignore a voter mandate to boost education funding each year to account for inflation, an attorney for the state told the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Kathleen Sweeney, an assistant attorney general, conceded voters did approve the inflation adjustment in 2000, and she also did not dispute that the Arizona Constitution prohibits legislators from repealing or altering voter-approved laws.

But Sweeney, seeking to allow the Legislature to disregard the 2000 law, told the justices voters had no constitutional right to enact the funding mandate in the first place.

That brought a somewhat surprised reaction from Chief Justice Rebecca Berch. She pointed out it was the Legislature that put the inflation adjustment provision on the ballot in the first place.

"They got the voters to vote on their bad language,'' she said. “And now they're trying to disavow their bad language.''

Sweeney did not exactly contest the question of whether lawmakers essentially had pulled a fast one on voters, getting them to approve a law that had no legal standing.

"Perhaps, your honor,'' she replied to Berch.

And Sweeney gave essentially the same response to a query by Justice John Pelander, who asked if she was arguing that the 2000 vote was "a fruitless, useless act.''

The fight most immediately affects whether lawmakers are required to annually adjust education funding.

That 2000 ballot measure boosted the state's 5-percent sales tax by six-tenths of a cent. It also requires the Legislature to increase funding for schools by 2 percent or the change in the gross domestic price deflator, whichever is less.

Lawmakers did that until the 2010 when, facing a budget deficit, they reinterpreted what the law requires. The result is that, since then, schools have lost anywhere from $189 million to $240 million, depending on whose figures are used. Don Peters, representing several school districts, filed suit.

Legislators did add $82 million in inflation funding for the new fiscal year that began July 1 after the state Court of Appeals sided with challengers. But they are hoping the Supreme Court concludes that mandate is legally unenforceable.

The outcome of this fight has larger implications — and not only for future education funding. It also could set the precedent for what voters have the right to tell the Legislature to do.

Sweeney argued there are limits, despite the constitutional right of voters to approve their own laws and despite the Voter Protection Act that shields these laws from legislative tinkering.

She said the 2000 measure sets the formula for increasing state aid — and then tells the Legislature to find the money from somewhere. Sweeney argued that infringes on the constitutional right of lawmakers to decide funding priorities.

Justice Scott Bales pointed out the inflation formula is a statute. He said while it was enacted by voters, it should have the same legal status as a law approved by legislators themselves.

"Do you think the Legislature can simply ignore statutes providing that it shall do certain things?'' he asked.

"Yes,'' Sweeney responded.

Peters disagreed.

"The statute that requires inflation adjustments is the law,'' he told the justices. “The Legislature has to obey the law like all the rest of us.''

And Peters said the constitutional Voter Protection Act precludes the Legislature from altering that law without first asking voter permission.

"Therefore, it must do what the statute required unless the people change it,'' he said.

Pelander questioned whether there are limits on what voters can tell the Legislature to do. Peters responded that the Arizona Constitution gives voters broad powers to make their own laws as long as those measures do not "offend'' other state or federal constitutional provisions.

"So they can do pretty much anything they want to,'' Peters told the justices. “And that includes giving instructions to the Legislature.''

Peters acknowledged the Supreme Court has previously said a law approved by one Legislature cannot bind future lawmakers.

But he argued that, as far as voter-approved laws, all that changed in 1998 with enactment of the Voter Protection Act.

"That balance of power is different,'' Peters said.

The justices gave no indication when they will rule.

Peters acknowledged after Tuesday's hearing that he could win his legal argument and still have a problem.

The high court could rule that lawmakers cannot ignore the 2000 law. But the justices have consistently refused to actually order the Legislature to find the additional dollars to fully fund the formula.

That could result in a situation where schools get the higher per-student funding as the formula requires, at least until the cash appropriated by the Legislature runs out. But Peters said he doubts lawmakers are willing to endure the wrath of voters if schools need to shut their doors before the end of the school year.

FDA must approve drugs used to murder????

Source

Court: FDA erred in allowing Arizona to import execution drugs

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 23, 2013 5:20 PM

A U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has upheld a lower-court ruling that the Food and Drug Administration broke the law by allowing Arizona and two other states to illegally import drugs used to carry out executions by lethal injection.

In October 2010, days before Arizona inmate Jeffrey Landrigan was to be executed, The Arizona Republic revealed that the state corrections department had obtained some of the execution drugs from overseas.

The FDA insisted there was no legal mechanism to import the drug, a fast-acting barbiturate named sodium thiopental. The Arizona Department of Corrections denied it had obtained the drug illegally.

Landrigan was executed with the drug.

By December of that year, the FDA changed its story and claimed it would exercise “enforcement discretion” and not enforce laws prohibiting the drug’s import. Meanwhile, the British and Italian governments banned the export of thiopental for executions.

Freedom of Information Act requests by The Republic and others later revealed that the FDA officials and the White House were aware of and facilitating the imports.

But in June 2011, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Adminstration told the Arizona Department of Corrections that it could no longer use thiopental, one day before it was to execute murderer Donald Beaty. The execution was performed using the drug pentobarbital.

Then, in March 2012, reacting to a lawsuit filed on behalf of death-row prisoners in Arizona, California and Tennessee, a U.S. District Court Judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the FDA had violated the law by allowing those states to bypass regulations to import the unapproved drugs for executions.

The FDA appealed the ruling on the grounds that its ability to admit and reject drug shipments into the country is not subject to judicial review and that it indeed has enforcement discretion. Part of that discretion, it argued, was to deal with domestic shortages, as had occurred with thiopental, an older-generation drug used for anesthesia.

Because the FDA had not tested or analyzed the imported drug, and because there was no mechanism for its import, it was classified under law as an unbranded or unapproved new drug.

The three Arizona plaintiffs initially named in the federal lawsuit, Beaty, Eric King and Daniel Cook, have all been executed since the lawsuit was filed.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the lower-court decision, stating that the FDA has duties under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and that “The FDA acted in derogation of those duties by permitting the importation of thiopental, a concededly misbranded and unapproved new drug, and by declaring that it would not in the future sample and examine foreign shipments of the drug despite knowing they may have been prepared in an unregistered establishment.”

The Court of Appeals, however, vacated the lower-court ruling that the FDA collect all remaining quantities of the drug that had been allowed into the country.

By and large, thiopental has been replaced in clinical settings by the newer drug propofol. Arizona and most other states that carry out execution by lethal injection now use pentobarbital, but the European manufacturer of that drug has curtailed sales for executions, and the Arizona supply has reportedly passed its expiration date.

Key Homeland official facing ethics inquiry

Source

Key Homeland official facing ethics inquiry

By Alicia A. Caldwell Associated Press Tue Jul 23, 2013 10:31 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s choice to be the No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department is under investigation for his role in helping a company run by a brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Associated Press has learned.

Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is being investigated for his role in helping the company secure an international investor visa for a Chinese executive, according to congressional officials briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the investigation.

Mayorkas was named by Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office as a target in an investigation involving the foreign investor program run by USCIS, according to an e-mail sent to lawmakers late Monday.

In that e-mail, the IG’s office said, “At this point in our investigation, we do not have any findings of criminal misconduct.” The e-mail did not specify any criminal allegations it might be investigating.

White House press secretary Jay Carney referred questions to the inspector general’s office, which said that the probe is in its preliminary stage and that it doesn’t comment on the specifics of investigations.

The program, known as EB-5, allows foreigners to get visas if they invest $500,000 to $1 million in projects or businesses that create jobs for U.S. citizens. The amount of the investment required depends on the type of project. Investors who are approved for the program can become legal permanent residents after two years and can later be eligible to become citizens.

If Mayorkas were confirmed as Homeland Security’s deputy secretary, he probably would run the department until a permanent replacement was approved to take over for departing Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The e-mail to lawmakers said the primary complaint against Mayorkas was that he helped a financing company run by Anthony Rodham, a brother of Hillary Clinton, to win approval for an investor visa, even after the application was denied and an appeal was rejected.

Mayorkas, a former U.S. attorney in California, previously came under criticism for his involvement in the commutation by President Bill Clinton of the prison sentence of the son of a Democratic Party donor. Another of Hillary Clinton’s brothers, Hugh Rodham, had been hired by the donor to lobby for the commutation. Mayorkas told lawmakers during his 2009 confirmation hearing that “it was a mistake” to talk to the White House about the request.

Hillary Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of State on Feb. 1, is considered a possible contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

According to the Inspector General’s e-mail, the investigation of the investor visa program also includes allegations that other USCIS Office of General Counsel officials obstructed an audit of the visa program by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The e-mail did not name any specific official from the general counsel’s office.

The e-mail says investigators did not know whether Mayorkas was aware of the investigation. The FBI’s Washington Field Office was told about the investigation in June after it inquired about Mayorkas as part of the White House background investigation for his nomination as deputy DHS secretary.

The FBI in Washington has been concerned about the investor visa program and the projects funded by foreign sources since at least March, according to e-mails obtained by the AP.

The bureau wanted details of all of the limited liability companies that had invested in the EB-5 visa program. Of particular concern, the FBI official wrote, was Chinese investment in projects, including the building of an FBI facility.

“Let’s just say that we have a significant issue that my higher ups are really concerned about and this may be addressed way above my pay grade,” an official wrote in one e-mail. The FBI official’s name was redacted in that e-mail.

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent the FBI a lengthy letter Tuesday asking for details of its review of the foreign investor visa program and Chinese investment in U.S. infrastructure projects.

Chinese investment in infrastructure projects has long been a concern of the U.S. government. In September, the Obama administration blocked a Chinese company from owning four wind farm projects in northern Oregon that were near a Navy base used to fly unmanned drones and electronic-warfare planes on training missions. And in October, the House Intelligence Committee warned that two leading Chinese technology firms, Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp., posed a major security threat to the U.S. Both firms have denied being influenced by the Chinese government.

The most routine users of the EB-5 program are Chinese investors. According to an undated, unclassified State Department report about the program obtained by the AP, the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, processed more investor visas in the 2011 fiscal year than any other consulate or embassy. The document says “applicants are usually coached and prepped for their interviews, making it difficult to take at face value applicants’ claims” about where their money comes from and whether they hold membership in the Chinese Communist Party. Party membership would make an applicant ineligible for the investor visa.

Anthony Rodham is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Funds Management LLC in McLean, Va. The firm is one of hundreds of “Regional Centers” that pool investments from foreign nationals looking to invest in U.S. businesses or industries as part of the foreign investor visa program.

There was no immediate response to an e-mail sent to Gulf Coast requesting comment.

It is unclear from the IG’s e-mail why the investor visa application was denied. Visa requests can be denied for a number of reasons, including a circumstance where an applicant has a criminal background or is considered a threat to national security or public safety.

Former Tempe police officer gets 90 days, probation in theft case

Former Tempe police officer gets 90 days, probation in theft case

Associated Press Fri Jun 7, 2013 2:27 PM

A former Tempe police officer has been sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years’ probation for stealing police property and cash.

Aaron Smith was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to one count of theft, Maricopa County prosecutors sai.

Smith was arrested in July after a month-long internal investigation on suspicion of theft, burglary and tampering with physical evidence.

Police said they began to get reports of missing items in early July.

Investigators said Smith had access to the areas where the property disappeared and his swing-shift hours matched up with when the items went missing.

Detectives found two stolen police bicycles when they served search warrants at Smith’s home, vehicles and work locker.

Smith had been with Tempe police for 7½ years and resigned after his arrest.

Is it time to end the war on drugs????

Napolitano heading further west than Arizona good for this state

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Richardson: Napolitano heading further west than Arizona good for this state

Posted: Wednesday, July 24, 2013 5:13 am | Updated: 9:37 am, Wed Jul 24, 2013.

Commentary by Bill Richardson

Considering all the bad news we’ve had in Arizona lately, we are finally getting some good news. Ex-governor Janet Napolitano has resigned her job as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security and is moving to California to take over the struggling University of California system.

Thank goodness she isn’t moving back here.

Her time here as United States Attorney, state attorney general and governor left Arizona in a giant hole. When President Barack Obama called, she quit the governor’s job mid-term and took the first fast train to Washington.

Napolitano, a well-known micro-manager and political calculator, turned law enforcement upside down when she dictated federal law enforcement policies as Arizona’s U. S. Attorney. She set a weak tone that encouraged the Mexican drug cartels to grow into hemispheric mafias and put down deep and forever roots in Arizona. Arizona became the gateway for contraband into the United States.

In the 1990s, as the chief federal prosecutor, she also blew off a chance to go after Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for civil rights violations. She chose to use civil sanctions on Arpaio who then was allowed to grow into a modern day Sheriff “Bull” Connor, the notorious Alabama sheriff who turned the attack dogs lose on civil rights marchers in the 60s.

After getting a sweetheart deal from Napolitano, Arpaio, who at the time was the most popular politician in Arizona, made the decision not to run for governor, the job Napolitano wanted. Arpaio crossed party lines and supported her.

One can only wonder what kind of state Arizona would be today had Napolitano busted Arpaio?

Her time as attorney general wasn’t much better. With her goal to get to the governor’s office her every move was premeditated to get her up and out of one office and into the next and eventually out of Arizona and to Washington. I always thought she was only using Arizona to satisfy her quest for greater political power.

Napolitano micromanaged and further politicized the Department of Public, an agency that’s been in steady decline ever since she got her hands on it.

Along the way Napolitano brought with her the now disgraced ex-United States Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke.

Burke, a long time political operative, was Napolitano’s confidant and right hand man throughout her time in Arizona. When Napolitano went to Washington, Obama appointed Burke to her old job. It wasn’t long before Burke, another micro-manager, gave the United States and Mexico the Fast and Furious fiasco that we all know contributed to the murder of U. S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. No telling how many Mexican innocent citizens, police officers and soldiers have been murdered thanks to the Burke sanctioned gunrunning program?

Burke reportedly lied to U. S. Department of Justice investigators about Fast and Furious and leaked confidential information to a reporter to allegedly retaliate against a Special Agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

For all the claims Napolitano and Obama have made about the border being safer after the feds spent more than $100 billion, there still seems to be an endless supply of illegal drugs going north and billions of dollars in profits from ill-gotten gains going south. Arizona is still a major link in the supply chain of Mexico based organized crime groups. Arizona continues to be major transshipment point for the drugs that fuel the ongoing murder spree in Obama’s Chicago.

Then there are the questions about how Napolitano and her agency botched the process that should’ve helped to identify and possibly stop the Boston Marathon bombers?

There’s no way we’re safer thanks to Team Napolitano and she and the president would have us believe.

For all my friends in California I wish you better luck with Napolitano than we had with her in Arizona and dealing with homeland security issues. I’m glad she’s your problem now and not ours.

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Janet Napolitano has found her niche????

Jensen: Ex-Arizona Gov. Napolitano Lands a Job She's Qualified For

Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 5:03 am

Commentary By Rick Jensen | 12 comments

Janet Napolitano has finally used her political connections to land a job for which she's qualified.

The problem with Napolitano's tenure as the inept secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is not the list of failures that could mar even a competent professional's service record in that position. It's her ideology.

It's the ideology of believing failure equals success.

On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up Northwest Flight 253. Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen sewed a plastic bag filled with 80 grams of explosives into his underwear. He then tried to ignite the powder by injecting a detonating liquid with a syringe.

"The explosive material burned but apparently did not produce enough of an explosion or fire to bring down the Airbus 330," CBS reported.

It was enough to start a fire on the airliner wall next to his seat. A Dutch film director grabbed him while flight attendants extinguished the fire.

In a news interview, Janet Napolitano said this was evidence that "the system worked." Apparently, she wanted you to believe she trained flight attendants and Dutch film directors to capture terrorists. After 72 hours of criticism from the public and some of the media, she confessed, in a rather befuddled manner, that the system did not actually work.

There have been the usual problems that would beleaguer even a law enforcement professional in such a mammoth bureaucracy: infinite delays in enforcing laws requiring installation of equipment capable of scanning port containers for radioactive material used in "dirty bombs," and hundreds of weapons and thousands of unscreened bags floating past screeners while the TSA molests children, seniors and wounded troops.

The ideology driving Napolitano is the reason abuses exist in airports.

Addressing complaints from parents around the country when a 6 year-old's frisking was nothing less than molestation, Napolitano responded, saying, "I make no apology. The procedures were appropriate and within Department guidelines. Let's not overlook the fact that secreting weapons or explosives in the body cavities of children is just the sort of diabolical tactic we should expect from those hoping to perpetrate man-caused disasters in this country. We all ought to be willing to sacrifice a little personal privacy and dignity if it means we can be safer."

Yes, Napolitano said your children need to be fondled for the good of the country.

To fight Al Qaeda, she spent millions of dollars installing flat screen TV's in Walmart stores playing a recorded message of herself instructing shoppers to report anything suspicious to their Walmart manager.

Yes, Janet Napolitano believes the battle for the caliphate is inside Walmart and the managers are her highly trained special forces.

Really. Walmart.

At Fort Hood, Major Nidal Hasan screamed "Allah Akbar" as he shot and killed 14 people in cold blood. Napolitano and the Obama administration called the massacre an instance of "workplace violence."

Obviously an act of terror by a domestic terrorist, whose business card identified him as a "Soldier of Allah" and inspired by Anwar Awlaki, it would take serious ideology to believe such an attack is "workplace violence."

Napolitano does have intelligence and skills. They simply are not in security, law enforcement or being honest with the American people.

She does have wicked good political contacts in the Democratic Party.

The University of California needs this.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, Napolitano's qualifications for her new job as President of the University of California include "an interest in education" and the ability to "aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas." This is translated as: fundraising!

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau says his school receives so much federal money that it is a federal school, not a state school.

Friends in academia tell me the days of public University Presidents being academics are quaintly passé.

Now they're seeking salespeople with political contacts.

Janet Napolitano has found her niche.

Rick Jensen is an Award-Winning Conservative Talk Show Host, Streaming live on WDEL.Com from 1pm — 4pm EST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @JensenVoiceover.

Janet ducks another tough job

Posted on July 12, 2013 7:46 am by Linda Valdez

Janet ducks another tough job

When the going gets tough, Janet Napolitano gets going.

She dumped her job as governor of Arizona as financial disaster was about to strike. She said ”adios” to the Grand Canyon State to join Barack Obama’s bright new administration.

Ah, but the glow has faded. Things are tough there now.

So Janet’s packing again.

She’s leaving her job as secretary of Homeland Security in the middle of a pitched battle for immigration reform. The border’s never been more secure, you know. So what the heck? Adios, Obama!

Her new employer, the University of California, had better understand this: If you ever face challenges that require a leader to step up and take some real heat, Janet Napolitano will be ready to step down.

The problem isn't the Patriot Act, it's the people that passed it.

Source

House votes to continue NSA surveillance program

Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:02 PM

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to continue the collection of hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records in the fight against terrorism.

The chamber rejected a measure to end the program’s authority. The vote was 217-205 on Wednesday.

Republican Rep. Justin Amash had challenged the program as an indiscriminate collection of phone records. His measure, if approved by the full House and Senate and signed by the president, would have ended the program’s statutory authority.

The White House, national security experts in Congress and the Republican establishment had lobbied hard against Amash’s effort.

Libertarian-leaning conservatives and some liberal Democrats had supported Amash’s effort.

The vote was unlikely to settle the debate over privacy rights and government efforts to thwart terrorism.

"Speed Enforced By Drones"

Man behind North Bay highway drone signs steps forward

By Mark Prado, Marin Independent Journal

Posted: 07/25/2013 08:26:59 AM PDT

Napa artist Stephen Whisler says he is the person who put up signs last week on Highway 101 and Highway 37 in Marin reading "Speed Enforced By Drones," complete with a missile firing from the craft.

Whisler said the prank was a political statement on the controversial drones -- used for spying and warfare -- and a general comment on government spy activities.

"I wanted to start a conversation," Whisler, 59, said. "On the one hand, the signs are funny, but they also address a very serious topic, surveillance, with the whole NSA thing and these drones being used all over the world."

The signs in Marin, discovered July 15, were found on eastbound Highway 37 near Novato Creek and along north and southbound Highway 101 at the Marin City/Sausalito exit. A fourth was placed along Highway 37 near Highway 121.

"I wanted to get as much exposure as I could, that's why I did Highway 101 at Sausalito," Whisler said. "I thought about Berkeley, but that was too crowded. I thought I might get caught."

Whisler said he and an unnamed accomplice set out in broad daylight and put up the signs without any problem.

"We dressed in reflective vests and hard hats and put out cones," he said. "I also have a white pickup truck, something that a road crew would use."

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the case. It is a violation of the California Vehicle Code to put up unauthorized signs on highways and Whisler could face a penalty.

"You can't help but get a chuckle, it's pretty entertaining," said CHP Officer Andrew Barclay. "I can appreciate the humor behind it."

Contact Mark Prado via email at mprado@marinij.com

Fountain Hills gets its 1st marijuana clinic

Fountain Hills gets its 1st marijuana clinic

By Edward Gately The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:46 PM

Scottsdale resident Todd Middleman plays bass guitar four nights a week in a local rock band called the Instant Classics.

The 45-year-old suffers chronic pain as a result of a spinal-cord injury he suffered when a car door fell on him at work.

“I’m holding a relatively heavy guitar and the pain gets pretty bad after a four-hour show,” Middleman said. “I tried multiple medications when my back got hurt and literally nothing worked. The first thing that worked was medical marijuana and I’ve used it ever since.”

Middleman was one of the first patients at the northeast Valley’s first medical-marijuana dispensary — Nature’s AZ Medicines Inc. in Fountain Hills.

The dispensary’s Monday opening at 16913 E. Enterprise Drive was emblematic of medical marijuana’s pervasive reach less than three years after Arizona voters sanctioned it.

State Department of Health Services officials said Wednesday that there are 43 dispensaries operating statewide; of those, 22 are in Maricopa County.

Scottsdale resident Mark Steinmetz opened the Fountain Hills dispensary, as well as another with the same name at 2439 W. McDowell Road in Phoenix.

Nature’s AZ Medicines won’t have a monopoly on the northeast Valley for long.

Scottsdale’s first medical-marijuana dispensary, near Pima Road and Via de Ventura, has received final approval from the Arizona Department of Health Services, but hasn’t announced an opening date.

In addition, a dispensary is close to final approval in Cave Creek.

The Fountain Hills dispensary garnered opposition from Mayor Linda Kavanagh and parents worried that it would make access to marijuana easier for children and teenagers.

On its first day, it drew eight patients, and Middleman was the first patient on its second day.

Different ailments, ages

The dispensary resembles an upscale medical office, with a reception area, a patient-consultation area with a high-definition monitor displaying various medical-marijuana selections and prices, as well as shelves displaying rolling papers, pipes, bongs, vaporizers and other paraphernalia. The entrance remains locked at all times and an armed security guard sits at the front desk.

“They’ve taken it to a whole other level; this is dispensary chic,” Middleman said. “The guys here seem really informed; everybody’s really friendly and out to help you.”

Dispensary manager Doug Shaughnessy said the first day went well and patients were “in and out of here, and they felt secure.

“They came with different ailments and different age ranges but all local residents of Fountain Hills and nearby communities. It’s been just all very positive feedback, glad to see us here so they can continue to confidently get some medicine to treat what is bothering them on a daily basis.”

As for parents’ concerns about children obtaining access, Shaughnessy said “all we can do is warn (patients) and make sure that they take the proper precautions to store the medication in a safe area.”

Douglas Roemer owns Showcase Plastics, the business next door to the dispensary. He said it will be a “great addition to the community.”

“We are a little lacking on businesses right now, so I think this is going to be an excellent income stream from the taxes generated by this,” he said. “It seems like a very good business to be here to add to the town coffers.”

‘Strained selections’

The dispensary offers many “strained selections,” or types of marijuana grown to address various ailments and patients’ needs. The selections include N.Y. Diesel, Blue Widow, Dead Head OG, Sweet Deep Grapefruit and Sour Grape.

Josh Ford, a “budtender” at the Fountain Hills dispensary, acts as a patient-care service provider, assessing patients’ symptoms and recommending medical-marijuana strains for their ailments.

“A lot of patients have been taking prescription medications for years and they’re just not getting what they want out of it,” he said.

Middleman purchased one-eighth of an ounce of N.Y. Diesel, which cost $65, and a medical-marijuana brownie at a cost of $15.

“I just want to smoke it and feel better,” he said of the marijuana. “The people who are complaining about it aren’t aware of the culture of it. I don’t come here, buy marijuana and then head to the schools to sell it to kids. I don’t want to share it with anybody, frankly.”

Mexico’s drug war boils over again

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Mexico’s drug war boils over again

Associated Press Wed Jul 24, 2013 2:55 PM

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s rough western state of Michoacan, producer of avocados and waves of migrants, is proving just as painful a thorn in the side of President Enrique Pena Nieto as it was for his predecessor, Felipe Calderon.

Coming off a stunning success with the capture of Zetas cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, Pena Nieto almost immediately was plunged back into the bloody reality of Mexico’s drug war this week as gunmen believed to be working for the Knights Templar cartel staged a coordinated series of ambushes on federal police convoys Tuesday.

Attacks continued on Wednesday, wounding at least five federal police officers. The death toll from Tuesday’s clashes stood at 20 gunmen and two federal police. About 15 people were injured in the attacks, in which gunmen hijacked trucks and buses to block highways.

Pena Nieto sent thousands of troops and federal police to the area two months ago seeking to regain control of the state from the Knights Templar, just as his predecessor periodically deployed forces to Michoacan, which is Calderon’s home state. While residents initially cheered the latest arrival and some recently formed self-defense groups agreed to put down their arms, the calm was short-lived.

The cartel’s deep local roots and proven capacity for violence could make Michoacan the graveyard of Pena Nieto’s pledge to reduce drug violence.

“They are challenging the Mexican state on an equal footing,” said Edgardo Buscaglia, a senior scholar at Columbia University who studies organized crime in Latin America, noting that in many areas of Michoacan the Knights Templar gang is the de-facto law. “You have state vacuums in Mexico that are not covered by any kind of institutional framework … and the cartels are moving in to capture pieces of the state.”

The government has defended its plan to restore order, even though officials have never made very clear what that plan is.

“We know that for certain we are on the right path to regaining public safety, even though it’s quite clear that won’t be easy,” Michoacan state Gov. Jesus Reyna said after Tuesday’s attacks.

So far the government doesn’t seem to have a different strategy than Calderon’s for the complex, bloody, multi-sided battle in Michoacan that pits the pseudo-religious Knights Templar against police, vigilante groups and the rival New Generation Jalisco cartel. New Generation, which authorities say is aligned with some vigilante groups, is looking to take over Michoacan by casting itself as a cartel interested only in moving drugs and criticizing the Knights Templar for their kidnappings and extortions of everyday people.

Vigilantes tired of crime are fighting back with self-defense groups they call “community police.” The emergence of such groups has been one factor in the new flare-up of violence.

“They’re ambushing federal police and us, the community police,” said Misael Gonzalez, a leader of vigilantes in the town of Coalcoman, one of whose squad members was killed in clashes with the Knights Templar earlier this week. “They’re desperate and surrounded.”

On Wednesday, dozens of masked gunmen took over the police headquarters in the Michoacan city of Aquila, brandishing assault rifles and wearing white T-shirts with the slogan “For a Free Aquila” — the same slogan that has been used by self-defense squads that have sprung up in a half dozen Michoacan towns since February to try to kick out the Knights Templar.

Aquila city council secretary Regulo Hernandez Chavez said about 40 gunmen had seized the town police headquarters in the pre-dawn hours.

“They took some of the (police) rifles and some of the patrol cars,” Hernandez Chavez said. “We’re trying to establish communication with them.”

Such self-defense squads have arisen in a line of towns along the border with the neighboring state of Jalisco, home to the New Generation gang.

“Every day there are more towns rising up in arms,” Gonzalez said.

New Generation, meanwhile, appears to be waging a public relations campaign against the Knights Templar. In a video released in late May, about 50 masked gunmen posed with assault rifles as man’s voice said: “We are proud to say we are a cartel … but we don’t kidnap people or extort money from them and that is why we’re asking President Enrique Pena Nieto to leave us alone and let us do our work.”

Michoacan authorities have said they can’t confirm the source of the video.

“They are marketing themselves to the federal government — ‘We are only selling drugs … go after the other guys, who are committing all the violence,’” Buscaglia said.

Pena Nieto’s administration delivered its first major blow against an organized crime leader last week, when Mexican marines captured Trevino Morales, the notoriously brutal leader of the feared Zetas cartel. The troops intercepted a pickup truck carrying him and two other men, along with $2 million in cash, on a dirt road in the countryside outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo, which has long served as the Zetas’ base of operations.

Yet Pena Nieto has said he doesn’t want to target drug lords, which was the strategy under Calderon, and instead will focus on crime prevention and reducing violence.

Former presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, whose father and son both served as governors of Michoacan, said the current situation in the state reflects the same problems under Calderon: a lack of intelligence work.

“Talk to people in any town, and they’ll tell you that such-and-such is happening here, and that so-and-so lives behind that hill or over on that farm,” Cardenas said. “If they’ll tell you that, if they’ll tell the doctor or the veterinarian or the farmer or the neighbor, then the authorities should certainly know that.”

Comedian shocked the sheriff? Off-color jokes stir controversy

Comedian shocked the sheriff? Off-color jokes stir controversy

By Joel Rubin and Robert Faturechi

July 25, 2013, 8:08 a.m.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department apologized to anyone who might have been offended by a comedian's racist and off-color stand-up routine at a luncheon and said it will be "reviewed."

About 600 to 700 people, many in uniforms, attended the Sheriff's Day Luncheon, where comedian Edwin San Juan delivered a 30-minute performance that was filled with sexually explicit and racist humor, people in attendance said.

"He managed to insult every ethnic group," said one attendee, who requested that his name not be used. "There was a lot of cringing and nervous laughter.... I was sitting there thinking, 'Are you kidding me?'"

The event was hosted by a law enforcement association and was not an official Sheriff's Department event.

"If anyone was offended, that was not the intent and certainly apologies are extended," Baca's spokesman Steve Whitmore said, adding that he wasn't at the event so he couldn't comment on the specifics of the routine.

San Juan could not be reached to discuss the performance, but posted two photos of himself with Baca on his Facebook page. He also linked to a Times story about the controversy, saying only: "WOWZERS ?!"

On Twitter, he said, "Best one yet!" in response to another comedian's tweet wondering if San Juan's favorite Bob Marley song is "I Shocked the Sheriff."

In a photograph posted on San Juan's Twitter and Facebook pages, Baca and William McSweeney, chief of the agency's detectives, are shown smiling with San Juan as they present him with a plaque.

Whitmore said he spoke to Baca, and the sheriff said he "became concerned that people would complain" but decided to give the comedian the plaque anyway "to thank him for volunteering to come to the luncheon."

Baca "wants to remind everyone this is a comedian," Whitmore said. "No one in the department would say this."

San Juan, who described himself on his Twitter feed as Filipino, made fun of the accents of Asians, Indians and other ethnic groups, the attendee said.

Among other things, San Juan made jokes evoking stereotypes about Koreans and used the N-word in a joke in which he mocked a thick Filipino accent.

But one Sheriff's Department official who attended the lunch said the event sends a mixed message:

"It is perplexing that, as much as we fight racism on the department, the sheriff would embrace and seemed to condone the completely racist monologue. The sheriff even presented him with a small trophy of appreciation afterward."

The event in Montebello was hosted by the Peace Officers Assn. of Los Angeles County, a nonprofit group that works "to advance the interests of public safety and professional law enforcement in Los Angeles County," according to its website.

joel.rubin@latimes.com

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

Senate pushes sanctions on nations aiding Snowden

Senate pushes sanctions on nations aiding Snowden

Associated PressBy BRADLEY KLAPPER | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. sanctions against any country offering asylum to Edward Snowden advanced in Congress on Wednesday as the 30-year-old National Security Agency leaker remained in a Moscow airport while Russia weighed a request for him to stay permanently.

The measure introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., demands the State Department coordinate with lawmakers on setting penalties against nations that seek to help Snowden avoid extradition to the United States, where authorities want him prosecuted for revealing details of the government's massive surveillance system. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the proposal unanimously by voice vote as an amendment to next year's $50.6 billion diplomacy and international aid bill.

"I don't know if he's getting a change of clothes. I don't know if he's going to stay in Russia forever. I don't know where he's going to go," Graham said. "But I know this: That the right thing to do is to send him back home so he can face charges for the crimes he's allegedly committed."

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered Snowden asylum since his arrival at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport a month ago, shortly after identifying himself as the source of a series of news reports outlining the NSA's program to monitor Internet and telephone communications. It was believed he would then fly to Cuba. The U.S. then canceled his passport, stranding him, with Russia yet to authorize his request for temporary asylum or allow him to fly on to another destination.

Snowden wants permission to stay in Russia, his lawyer said Wednesday after delivering fresh clothes to his client. It's unclear how long the Kremlin will take to decide on the asylum request.

Graham said Snowden's revelations have had "incredibly disturbing" implications for national security.

The Obama administration says the surveillance has foiled a number of terrorist plots against the United States. It says the public outing of its programs are helping terrorist groups change their tactics.

The case also has sparked tension between Moscow and Washington at a sensitive time, less than two months before President Barack Obama's planned talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and again at a G-20 summit in St. Petersburg.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday the U.S. was "seeking clarity" about Snowden's status. The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, warned that "providing any refuge to Edward Snowden will be harmful to U.S.-Russia relations."

The relationship is already strained by a Russian crackdown on opposition groups, American missile-defense plans in Europe and the former Cold War foes' opposing views of the civil war between Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and rebels.

Greg Stanton seeks to end pension ‘spiking’ - Yea, sure!!!!!! - Trust me!!!!!

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Mayor seeks to end pension ‘spiking’

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 24, 2013 10:15 PM

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and two City Council members have asked the city manager to end a policy that allows pension “spiking” by police officers and firefighters, but no changes are imminent because the city must honor its labor-contract obligations until next fiscal year.

The practice of pension spiking in Phoenix, disclosed by The Arizona Republic in 2010 and earlier this year, has allowed a few senior public-safety retirees to become millionaires by adding the value of some unused benefits into final salary calculations, substantially elevating their annual pension payments. The practice is prohibited for most other city employees.

“We want to end any of the abuses in the system,” Stanton said in an interview this week with The Republic.

The mayor said he wants to change the practice, put in place at least a decade ago by city management, through labor negotiations that will begin later this year between City Manager David Cavazos and public-safety unions.

A police-union official said if the city takes away pension benefits, then Phoenix must increase other forms of compensation for public-safety officers. The firefighters’ union president said upper-level managers are typically receiving the large pensions, which puts rank-and-file employees in a negative light with the public.

The city allows public-safety officers at the end of their careers to cash in unused sick leave and vacation, deferred compensation, payment for emergency shifts, bonuses, and vehicle and cellphone allowances, counting all as compensation. The inflated compensation significantly increases or “spikes” annual retirement benefits — and the cost to taxpayers. All public-safety employees are allowed to spike, though the most costly cases have been top managers at the high end of the pay range.

The Republic in early May reported that the spiking, which may violate state law, allowed 10 retirees to boost their lump-sum retirement benefits to more than $700,000 each through the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. All also receive annual pensions greater than $114,000 a year, and some also cashed out additional unused sick leave and vacation for more than $100,000 each.

Stanton spoke to The Republic about ending the practice after he sent a memo to Cavazos last week calling for a handful of fiscal reforms and compensation enhancements for some exceptional city employees.

The memo took to task “executive level” employees who, it said, have abused the pension system and “given a bad name to all employees.” But the City Council and City Manager’s Office until now have allowed the pay spiking to occur for all other public-safety employees as well through contract negotiations with labor groups.

Councilman Sal DiCiccio, a vocal critic of spiking, said the city could immediately end the practice for upper-level public-safety managers because they are not subject to union contracts.

“The people at the top are the beneficiaries of spiking, and they’re winning,” he said. “Everyone on the bottom doesn’t win and it’s taking their money away.”

The memo to Cavazos said spiking “inflates costs, harms the city’s long-term financial health and seriously undermines public confidence that the city’s compensation for employees is fair.” It was signed by Stanton and council members Thelda Williams and Daniel Valenzuela.

The letter is the most aggressive public stance Stanton and the two council members have taken on pension reform for public-safety officers, many of whom supported Stanton’s 2011 mayoral campaign. It also comes after the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, in late May threatened to sue the city if Phoenix did not end the legally questionable policy allowing pension spiking.

“We are very glad to see that the mayor is asserting that pension spiking is unacceptable,” said Jon Riches, an attorney for Goldwater. “But it is still our position that the practice of pension spiking is illegal.”

Riches said his organization continues to do research on a potential lawsuit against the city.

State law says “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” cannot be used as compensation to compute retirement benefits.

State law also says that only “base salary, overtime pay, shift differential pay, military differential wage pay, compensatory time used by an employee in lieu of overtime not otherwise paid by an employer and holiday pay” may be used to calculate pension benefits.

A prospective Arizona retiree’s ending pay and length of service are key components in determining the amount of the public pension. Salary spiking, therefore, increases pensions.

Cavazos said he does not believe the city is breaking the law by allowing pension spiking, but he added, “That does not mean it’s the best practice.

“What we need to do is focus on the relationships we have with collective bargaining — we have contracts in place,” Cavazos said.

Cavazos cited an opinion by the city’s legal department that employees are receiving a higher salary in exchange for a “lessened benefit package,” and therefore that counts as the “definition of compensation” by state law.

However, public records obtained by The Republic show Phoenix has calculated pension benefits for public-safety officers by counting pay in lieu of vacation accrual and pay in lieu of sick accrual (unused sick leave), and other fringe benefits such as vehicle and cell-phone allowances.

DiCiccio believes state law is clear and that what the city is doing is illegal.

“What the city of Phoenix is doing in allowing pension spiking is robbing taxpayers,” DiCiccio said. “It needs to stop altogether.”

The city’s public-safety retirement cost is budgeted at roughly $129 million this fiscal year. In fiscal 2003, the city paid $7.2 million. Investment losses have been one of the biggest reasons for the increased cost, though pension spiking also has contributed.

Joe Clure, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, said the union of more than 2,000 members never would have agreed to the practice of pension spiking had officers thought it was illegal.

Clure said if city managers do not like the way public-safety officers receive pension benefits, they should find other ways to compensate officers.

“Unless you are willing to talk about an alternative pay and benefits package, then you fundamentally believe police officers make too much money,” Clure said. “I don’t think they do.”

Pete Gorraiz, president of the United Phoenix Fire Fighters Association, said it was curious that Stanton would send out a letter six months before labor negotiations started. But, he added, firefighters will come to a “reasonable agreement” with the city.

Arizona Taxi drivers now subject to random drug testing

Arizona Taxi drivers now subject to random drug testing

Posted: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 11:31 am

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

For the first time ever, drivers of taxi cabs and limousines in Arizona will soon be subject to random drug testing.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed legislation which will require those who own or lease out taxis and other vehicle for hire to screen applicants for drugs at the time they are hired or allowed to lease one of the vehicles. That is on top of an existing requirement for a criminal background check. And drivers also will be subject to random tests at least once a year.

The measure takes effect later this year.

Kevin Tyne, director of the Department of Weights and Measures, stressed this is not some new government program with the state going out and stopping drivers. Instead, he said it's designed to make the owners of these vehicles more responsible.

But he said it is up to them to decide what to do with that information: Nothing in the new law prohibits a company from hiring or refusing to fire a driver who tests positive. That mirrors the existing laws on background checks, with no prohibition against hiring certain felons.

Tyne said, though, this is a big step for Arizona.

"Nearly every other jurisdiction that regulates and oversees and licenses 'for hire' vehicles like taxis and liveries and limousines have some sort of a basic drug testing requirement,'' he said. "Arizona was noticeably absent in that regard.''

He said many people use taxis and limousines, both local residents and visitors.

"Patrons ought to have some basic sense that the driver has at least been drug tested,'' Tyne said.

The legislation is unrelated to the mishap Saturday where five people riding in a limousine on the San Mateo Bridge south of San Francisco were killed in a fire. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation and there has been no indication at this point that the driver, who also was burned, was in any way responsible.

California officials said it appears the vehicle, which was licensed for eight passengers, had one more than the permitted number. There appears to be no similar laws in Arizona governing how many passengers can be in any particular vehicle.

Government snooping is going too far

Government snooping is going too far

By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:43 PM

The conflicting interests of national security and public safety on the one hand and individual liberty on the other both have sound arguments that can trump one another.

But these are fast-changing times where these interests are concerned, and a couple of the arguments on the security side are losing credibility.

Such as: If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

Or: The program is extremely limited in scope and narrowly tailored.

Ever since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden began releasing his cache of stolen state secrets, questions about the extent of spying by federal agencies have multiplied. The more we learn about what the feds have learned about us, the more this story is turning against federal snooping.

Last week, top NSA officials testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the hot-button program dedicated to collecting “metadata” from every telephone call made in the United States — a program far more extensive than previously understood.

If the Obama administration has its way, it could grow to include government databases of credit-card purchases, hotel records and Internet use. The committee was not impressed.

“You’ve already violated the law as far as I am concerned,” John Conyers, the panel’s ranking Democrat, told the NSA officials.

Conyers’ provocative declaration was seconded by Republicans, many arriving at the same conclusion: Government snooping agencies are going too far.

Metadata collection is not the exclusive preserve of federal agencies, nor is it restricted to records of telephone calls. As technologies such as image capturing become more sophisticated and cheaper, local police agencies are buying systems that allow them to record and store vast data files on vehicles, including their license plates and their locations at given times.

Since 2005, police agencies in Arizona have purchased such surveillance systems, including Mesa, Peoria, Chandler and Phoenix, as well as the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Calculated strictly in terms of return on investment, the purchases can turn a healthy “profit.” Mesa bought a system in 2005 for $25,000. Since then, the city has used its image-capturing system to recover more than $2 million worth of stolen vehicles.

Does that justify a program that gives the government knowledge of your every coming and going?

We have reached an age in which an incident not captured on video is seen as the exception, not the norm. You mean with all those people around, no one had a phone camera running?

This “self-surveillance” culture, which has evolved naturally as technology advances, has proved invaluable at times. The images and video produced in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing come to mind.

The distinction between government databases and information held in private hands was raised at Wednesday’s Judiciary hearing. Why not ask phone companies to retain their own metadata longer, asked Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. The NSA fellows said they would think about that.

Think about it they should. Americans have a right to expect their government to act to keep them safe from foreign-sponsored harm. That federal duty is enshrined in the Constitution.

Also enshrined in the Constitution is the right to the pursuit of liberty.

There is a tipping point between the two contrasting interests. The intersection of technology and the insatiable desire of governments to exert control tells us we are teetering toward the side of the government simply knowing too damned much.

Chandler Vice Mayor Lowell Huggins arrested

Former Chandler Vice Mayor Lowell Huggins arrested in gunshot incident, police say

By Thomas Hawthorne The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed Jul 24, 2013 1:30 PM

Lowell Huggins, a former vice mayor of Chandler, was arrested Tuesday after being accused of disorderly conduct, according to a court document.

According to Huggins’ wife, the 70-year-old said he attempted to shoot himself after he and his wife argued about financial issues, the document states.

Huggins and his wife had been arguing when he told her to call 911 before walking into their backyard, police said. When his wife was on the phone with an operator, she heard a gunshot from the backyard. Moments later Huggins returned to the home and told her he had tried to shoot himself in the chin.

Officers responding to the call persuaded Lowell to leave the home, but he refused to be handcuffed and was subsequently forced into handcuffs, police said. A small handgun was found in his front pocket, police said.

It is unknown whether Huggins injured himself.

Huggins, who left his final term in office in January 2009, went down in municipal history as the only person to serve three terms as vice mayor. He served on the council from 1988 to 1996 and was re-elected in 2000 and 2004.

A resident of the city since 1956 and a Chandler High School graduate, he is a former Chandler police officer and worked as a barber since 1960.

Prosecutor carving notches on his gun???

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Driver ordered to stand trial in electrocution deaths

By Veronica Rocha and Jason Wells

July 25, 2013, 12:05 p.m.

A 19-year-old driver who crashed into a utility pole in Valley Village has been ordered to stand trial for manslaughter in the deaths of two women who tried to come to his aid, only to be electrocuted by downed power lines.

Arman Samsonian of Glendale slammed his sport utility vehicle into a light pole and nearby fire hydrant last Aug. 22. After the violent crash, two women ran toward the SUV to render aid, officials said.

Both of the would-be rescuers, Irma Zamora and Stacey Schreiber, were killed instantly when they stepped into a pool of water that had been electrified by 4,800 volts from the fallen power line.

Six others were injured when they also made contact with the water and were shocked.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that there was enough evidence for Samsonian to be tried on two felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.

“He was definitely driving negligently, he definitely had disregard for others,” Superior Court Judge Karen Nudell said.

She made the ruling after witnesses took the stand to relay the horrible, fast-moving events of that summer night.

Daniel Woloszyn testified that he had pulled over to call 911 after witnessing the crash. Meanwhile, his wife, Irma Zamora, jumped out of their vehicle to see if “whoever was in the accident was OK.”

As he got out to investigate, Woloszyn said he saw his 40-year-old wife lying on the ground, dead after stepping into the electrified water.

He stepped in to grab her, but was immediately shocked himself.

“My train of thought wasn't about the motorist, it was about my wife's death,” Woloszyn said during the preliminary hearing.

Schreiber, 39, of Valley Village was electrocuted trying to assist Samsonian.

Samsonian, who was 19 at the time of the incident, offered little reaction as he sat in the Van Nuys courtroom.

Officials allege Samsonian was driving at a high rate of speed on Magnolia Boulevard that night at about 8:20 p.m. before losing control and striking the light pole and fire hydrant at Ben Avenue in Valley Village, officials said.

Witnesses testified seeing Samsonian’s Chevrolet Traverse driving recklessly prior to the crash.

Samsonian’s attorney, Andrew Flier, didn’t argue that his client may have been driving recklessly on Magnolia, but said there was no way to know that the “intervening acts” would occur once he turned onto Ben and crashed.

The defense attorney also argued that the people on the scene should have known the inherent dangers associated with downed power lines and standing water.

Even police pay has limits

Even police pay has limits

By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 25, 2013 6:43 PM

Police officers — indeed, all first responders — perform dangerous, difficult work for which they justifiably should earn fair, even generous, compensation from the citizens they protect and serve.

But there are limits. Or should be.

In fiscal 2003, taxpayers in Phoenix spent $7.2 million toward public-safety pension plans. This fiscal year, the tab is $129 million. It is expected to grow further, and fast. Should taxpayers simply accept whatever costs they are instructed to shoulder? Or should there be limits?

The limits question gains still more clarity when a couple of related issues are thrown in:

Pension “spiking” is one. The practice allows soon-to-retire officers, especially supervisory officers, to add the value of unused benefits to their base salary to spike their retirement income. As reported by The Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris, pension spiking has allowed a handful of retired police and fire officials to become millionaires.

It scarcely seems wrong for taxpayers to wish to limit that practice, which on its face appears to violate Arizona law prohibiting “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” to be used to compute retirement benefits.

Yet it has taken years for City Hall to take pension-spiking reform seriously. And, even now, Mayor Greg Stanton has declared his intent to end spiking ... when the current contract expires in another year. If it’s illegal, a contract doesn’t protect it.

The other cost issue is union-negotiated “release time” for union activities, which allows sworn officers to conduct union business on city time.

However dubious or unjustified, release-time clauses in union contracts are fairly common, although evidence shows that Phoenix’s primary police union has thoroughly abused it by lobbying the Legislature in opposition to City Council-set policies, campaigning for candidates and urging unrest against the police chief, according to Goldwater Institute litigator Clint Bolick, who sued to stop the practice.

If they want to do that on their own time, the First Amendment protects them. But doing it on the taxpayers’ dime? That’s an affront.

In April, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge found that using taxpayer money to fund union activity was not in the public interest and ordered an end to release-time activity on the part of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, or PLEA.

According to Judge Katherine Cooper, the practice cost taxpayers $852,000 a year, thus diverting “resources away from the mission of the Phoenix Police Department.”

The union is appealing.

Pension spiking and release time for PLEA officers are, obviously, related issues. They involve contracts between public-sector unions and city officials that raise troubling questions about who, if anyone, represented the interests of taxpayers during negotiations.

If PLEA had not so obnoxiously abused the release-time benefit, it is possible it may have escaped the scrutiny of critics, even the spending hawks at Goldwater.

Which brings us back to the question of limits. Do taxpayers have a right to ask for reasonable limits on what they pay their first responders? The line-of-duty officers who risk their lives on their behalf?

It is not an easy question to ask, considering the jeopardy public-safety officers face every day.

But here is the part of the equation that union officials and their abettors at City Hall are missing: By defending the indefensible, they are making the answer to that question easier for taxpayers every day.

Police body cameras won't stop police crimes

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Scottsdale arming officers with body cameras

By Haley Madden The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:23 AM

The Scottsdale Police Department is starting to implement a new on-the-body video camera into its standard protocol for officers.

About two months ago, the department purchased 10 Axon Flex body cameras and equipped police officers throughout the downtown Scottsdale area with them. Officers can wear them on their hats, glasses or collars and it gives them the option to record any and all incidents throughout their shifts, said Sgt. Mark Clark of the Scottsdale Police Department.

“There have been studies that have found that when officers are using cameras to videotape contacts, that both the officer’s behavior and the person’s they’re contacting behavior is better because they know they are on camera,” Clark said.

The cameras and software cost nearly $10,000, or about $995 for each, Clark said.

When an officer presses the record button, the camera automatically records the 30 seconds before he or she hit the button and then continues filming from there. The camera is always on before the officer hits the record button because they may not have anticipated needing it before the incident, said Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser International.

The Axon Flex camera is a flexible, lightweight product made by Scottsdale-based Taser International Inc.

Tuttle said the idea for the on-the-body camera came nearly a decade ago when the company added cameras to the x26 Taser.

Officers were missing a lot of recording opportunities because not every incident required the use of a Taser. Taser International realized that putting the camera on the officer’s head would allow a better range of evidence and a more consistent point of view.

In collaboration with sunglasses maker Oakley, the Taser team designed the Axon Pro, their first model. The Axon Pro was a small camera that looked much like the Axon Flex and could be attached to sunglasses. While the camera had several helpful components, such as GPS and video playback, Tuttle and the Taser team knew it was ahead of its time.

“We came up with three big issues and that was size, wires and the comfort,” Tuttle said. “You need to find smaller, down-sized equipment when dealing with law enforcement.”

Nearly two years ago, the Axon Flex was born. The new camera lost the immediate playback capability, but instead, a Bluetooth system that could send the video back to the officer’s cellphone was put in place.

From 2011 to 2012, the Lake Havasu City Police Department conducted a case study that measured how effective the Axon Flex cameras were in the department. After six months, the study showed an officer’s chances of receiving a complaint decreased by 58.2 percent when wearing the camera.

In Scottsdale, officers were chosen to participate based on their area of coverage and if they had an interest in trying out the camera.

Brian Amrine, a Scottsdale police officer since 2002, has been using the camera for about six weeks.

“It’s business as usual, it’s just that I have the ability to record my contacts,” Amrine said.

Amrine said he thinks occasions will arise when the camera will affect how either party acts, possibly preventing them from doing something they might later regret.

“If there is an incident and it is captured on video, then that is certainly able to be released,” Clark said. “It will add to the transparency of what we do as a police department.”

Clark explained that a DUI officer recently had a complaint filed against him. He was wearing the Axon Flex camera and because he recorded the encounter with the citizen, he was able to clear his name. The complaint was dismissed. [Hey, in almost every complaint filed against the police the complaint is dismissed when it's the cops word against a civilian. So it probably wasn't the camera that caused the complaint to be dismissed]

Overall, the officers involved in the trial have given positive feedback, Clark said.

“The good side of the camera is that it may capture evidence pertinent to criminal and civil cases that will help convict guilty suspects while protecting innocent victims,” [that's the real purpose of the cameras, to gather evidence to make it easier for the city to convict people of crimes, not to protect the public from crooked cops] Amrine said. “The camera can be a big aid to officers in writing their reports and assisting those in the legal field.”

While Amrine sees the camera’s benefits, he does have a few concerns.

“I’ve had citizens turn away from me when I have the camera on and make statements that ‘Big Brother’ is watching in yet another way,” Amrine said. “One thing that I know is that no matter how much benefit the cameras have, there will always be those that are against them.”

While there are competing opinions on the camera, the goal is simple: keeping both sides honest.

“There was a Cambridge University study that showed not only did it improve behavior, but it reduced use of force,” Tuttle said. “It’s improving behavior on both sides of the badge and that is now being documented.”

The Scottsdale Police Department’s trial period is expected to last about a year and based on the overall success, the department will decide if it wants to purchase more of the cameras.

About Taser

Brothers Tom and Rick Smith joined forces in 1993 to create a non-lethal, lifesaving weapon after their friends were gunned down in a road-rage incident.

The two started working with Jack Cover, who created the first Taser in 1970, and together they developed the Air Taser 34000. They established Air Taser Inc. and began selling their Tasers in late 1994.

About four years later, the company changed its name to Taser International Inc. to represent the company’s worldwide market. Its headquarters is near Scottsdale Airpark, and the company continues to provide non-lethal weapons and on-the-body cameras to police agencies worldwide.

More information: taser.com.

A jobs program for Scottsdale Police Officers

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Latest draft of Scottsdale public-safety ordinance for bars unveiled

By Edward Gately The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:45 AM

The latest draft of a proposed public-safety ordinance prompted by two stabbings at a downtown Scottsdale nightclub addresses concerns raised by residents, bars and other establishments.

However, concerns remain among some establishments in regard to the ordinance’s widespread applicability and extensive new requirements. Businesses with an occupancy of fewer than 50 patrons are not subject to the ordinance.

The newest version of the ordinance was presented Wednesday at the second public-outreach meeting, in the community room of the Scottsdale District 3 Police Station.

A third meeting has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 8 in the Pinnacle training room of the Scottsdale Human Resources building, 7575 E. Main St., east of City Hall.

The ordinance requires establishments to file new public-safety plans, includes minimum standards for security personnel and requires those with felony incidents to hire off-duty peace officers. [the ordinance is a government welfare program for off duty Scottsdale cops to make overtime] If any establishment is found in repeated violation of the ordinance, it could be forced to shut down.

The ordinance is the result of Mayor Jim Lane, other city officials and downtown bar owners coming together to examine the issue of safety in the aftermath of the January fatal stabbing of Tyrice Thompson outside Martini Ranch, 7295 E. Stetson Drive. He was a bouncer there.

A second stabbing occurred at Martini Ranch in June.

“We’re not trying to be overreaching,” Lane said. “We want a cooperative environment.”

Erik Love, a bartender at the Rogue Bar in south Scottsdale, said the ordinance shouldn’t be “such a unilateral approach, but should be taken on a case-by-case basis.”

He also said it’s a “little heavy-handed to demand that we spend $10,000 or $15,000 over three months (on off-duty peace officers) because we have one issue when we’ve never had one before.” [Hey, it's not about safety or the welfare of us citizens, it's a jobs program to allow off duty Scottsdale police officers to make big bucks working overtime in bars]

“There are some issues with certain establishments in town, and we keep hearing their name, and yet they keep having issues, so they need to concentrate more on the problem than they do with just the folks who are running a business,” he said.

John Miller, a partner with Papago Brewing Co., at Scottsdale and McDowell roads, had numerous concerns about the “unintended consequences to small establishments,” including the cost of having to hire off-duty peace officers if “some idiot comes in off the street and pulls a knife.” [Again, it's not about safety or the welfare of us citizens, it's a jobs program to allow off duty Scottsdale police officers to make big bucks working overtime in bars]

The latest revisions include:

The applicability portion no longer includes a business that “provides live entertainment.” It would apply to any establishment, such as a bar, nightclub, restaurant, bowling alley or arena, that engages in one or more of the following activities: serves liquor consumed on the premises, provides a DJ, is a strip club, is a teen dance center or uses a promoter.

All security personnel would be required to receive training provided by the Police and Fire departments within 30 days, as opposed to 60 days. [Sounds like a government welfare program for police and fire department trainer]

Security personnel who complete the training would be required to carry proof of it and present it to any Scottsdale police officer on demand.

The meat and potatoes of the ordinance remain intact, including:

Requiring a minimum number of security officers per number of patrons for establishments with at least 50 patrons during peak hours. [Translation - a jobs program for off duty Scottsdale cops to make overtime working in bars]

Establishments with two or more public-safety incidents within a one-week period or three or more incidents within a month are required to hire at least two off-duty peace officers to supplement security personnel during peak times for at least three months. [Again - a jobs program for off duty Scottsdale cops to make overtime working in bars]

Sonnie Kirtley, chair of the Coalition of Greater Scottsdale, said the ordinance is a good start.

“I was really pleased to see that they made corrections that we recommended,” she said. “The one that the employees not wait (60 days) to get training is excellent.

“We would like to see the violations increased; $500 (for a first violation) for a bar is really cheap.”

Police raid Phoenix compassion club

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Police raid Phoenix compassion club

By Matthew Longdon and Jason Sillman The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Jul 25, 2013 9:37 PM

Phoenix police arrested at least five people at a Phoenix “compassion club” Thursday night where marijuana was illegally sold as if it were a medical dispensary, said Sgt. Steve Martos of the Phoenix Police Department.

A police investigation into marijuana sale lead officers to the location at 43rd Avenue and Dunlap Road, Martos said. Customers gave “donations” to the store, Vapor Lounge, and in return got marijuana edibles and liquid THC, illegal substances in Arizona, Martos said.

Compassion clubs are unregulated places where people exchange medical marijuana. Sometimes these clubs advertise themselves as medical marijuana dispensaries although they are not certified. The clubs opened in the Valley after medical marijuana advocates became frustrated by the long delay between the state Medical Marijuana Act passing in 2010 and dispensaries opening.

On July 20, Phoenix police raided a compassion club near 32nd Street and Cactus Road where three people were arrested.

Police seized medical marijuana plants and edible products containing the plant at the Arizona Vapor Room Dispensary that had no signage outside the building.

From the July 20 raid, Kenneth George Winans, 52, Hernan Andre Vega, 40, and Jeremy Lee Buford Skidmore, 34, face charges of illegal control of an enterprise, possession of marijuana for sale and possession of narcotic drugs for sale, Phoenix police said. Skidmore also faces a charge of possessing a firearm during a drug offense, police said.

Montini loves cops and unions

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EJ Montini | azcentral opinions

Institute insults first reponders -- again

Posted on July 25, 2013 5:10 pm by EJ Montini Institute insults first reponders — again

This time around the high-priced suits at the Goldwater Institute waited until the funerals had been held before publicly trashing first responders.

That isn’t how the institute operated in May.

Back then the folks at Goldwater didn’t seem to understand the etiquette of tragedy, the decorum of honoring sacrifice.

After the deaths but before the funerals of Phoenix Firefighter Brad Harper, who was crushed between two vehicles while fighting a fire, and police Officer Daryl Raetz, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver while investigating a possible DUI accident, one of Goldwater’s senior staff members posted an article on the pensions of first responders on the think tank’s website.

The headline read: “Pension systems looting the taxpayer.”

I can’t imagine a person with any sense of deportment suggesting that first responders like Harper and Raetz were “looters.” [Well EJ, that is a violation of Arizona law. But I suspect you think cops are above the law and can do anything they want to???]

And I certainly couldn’t imagine them suggesting such a thing before those two brave young men were buried.

But that was a few months ago. Lessons were learned.

The institute waited a little longer this time.

It kept quiet until the last of the public funerals for the 19 hotshots who died in the Yarnell Hill Fire had been held and the big public memorial services were over.

The Goldwater people apparently figure enough time has passed and it now is okay to ridicule a group of local first responders. [Well to be honest it should be OK to ridicule corrupt cops and firemen 24/7]

This week the institute sent out a press release concerning a lawsuit it filed involving part of the contract between the city of Phoenix and its police officers. It reads in part:

“The Goldwater Institute is challenging the city’s contract with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), the local police union, arguing that release time violates the gift clause found in the Arizona state constitution. Earlier this year, a judge issued an injunction against the practice, finding that release time likely is unconstitutional. Nearly all 50 states contain gift clauses in their constitutions, which means a final win by the Goldwater Institute in this case could prevent taxpayers across the country from being scammed by government unions. “

Police, firefighters and other “government unions” are scamming us? [Why yes, the cops and firemen are breaking the law. What part of illegal don't you understand EJ???]

To scam means to swindle, to defraud.

Are we supposed to believe our cops are robbers? [Why yes, they are, and not only in this issue. Ask a Black man what DWB means. That's an imaginary crime racist cops invented just for Black people called Driving While Black]

The “release time” mentioned in the institute’s statement refers to a negotiated agreement between the city and the union in which some union officials are freed from police duty to pursue union work.

The city knew exactly what it was getting into. No one tried to hide anything. Contract negotiations are an exchange of proposals, a complex, multi-faceted form of give and take. [Just because the city of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police are doing something illegal openly in the eyes of the public doesn't mean it's right!!! It's still a violation of the Arizona Constitution]

I don’t see release time as a “gift,” but that is something for the courts to decide.

Besides, the institute’s lawsuit isn’t simply about release time.

The folks at Goldwater disdain public service unions. They’ve tried for years to do break them, attacking their pensions, their contracts. [Well EJ, a lot of us don't like union, because unions are often criminal enterprises run by a bunch of thugs. Like the Phoenix Police Union called PLEA]

A bigwig at Goldwater, speaking of public service pensions, once told a reporter from The Arizona Republic, “It’s nice they have figured out a way to rob us.”

The lawsuit involving release time goes before a judge Friday and the Goldwater folks are very excited about the possibility of getting on TV. The institute included a “note to national networks” in its press release saying Goldwater has an in-house studio from which it could produce an “immediate remote satellite feed hook-up.”

That’s very convenient, but I believe it would make better television if a nationally-televised segment was filmed out on the street. There are plenty of good locations in Phoenix.

All around the city, in many different neighborhoods, there are memorial markers noting the sites where police officers and firefighters have lost their lives in the line of duty. There are dozens of them.

If the top dogs at the Goldwater Institute believe our first responders are looters, scammers and robbers they should stand beneath one of those memorials and say it. [Well no, they should do what they are doing - Suing the city of Phoenix in court and demanding the practice be stopped]

$250,000 for moving your bogus business to Arizona???

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Security firm head pleads guilty to 2 felony counts

By Peter Corbett The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 25, 2013 4:01 PM

The president of a security company has pleaded guilty to two felony counts in a scheme that netted him nearly $750,000 from the state and his Scottsdale landlord.

Jacques Davis, 26, who was facing 12 felony counts, pleaded guilty last week in Maricopa County Superior Court to theft and illegal control of an enterprise.

Operating as AT Security Service, Davis obtained a $250,000 grant in September 2011 from the Governor’s Office of Economic Recovery to relocate his security company from Irvine, Calif., to Scottsdale.

The Arizona Commerce Authority and Greater Phoenix Economic Council in a news release announced that AT Security was initially bringing 100 jobs for security guards and support staff to Scottsdale and would create 100 more within three years.

But there was no AT Security office in California and Davis created phony employee files to mislead the state, according to an Arizona Auditor General report issued in October 2012, following a six-month investigation.

The Arizona Republic began investigating AT Security a year earlier, acting on a tip from a former employee.

Davis was also accused of misusing nearly $500,000 that his office landlord earmarked for AT Security’s relocation and tenant improvements.

The office complex landlord, affiliated with Desert Troon Cos., won a $5.8 million default judgment against Davis in May 2012.

The state auditor’s report said Davis spent some of the money from the state and his landlord on a $65,000 Lincoln Navigator, a $36,642 Lexus IS 250 and $15,000 on a Hawaiian vacation.

The report criticized the Governor’s Office of Economic Recovery for failing to perform an adequate background check on AT Security. The job-creation funds given to AT Security were part of $1 billion allocated to Arizona through the federal Recovery Act of 2009.

Davis’ sentencing is scheduled Aug. 21 before Judge Daniel Kiley in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Under the plea agreement, Davis will be sentenced to serve a prison term of 2 1/2 years and up to five years of probation upon his release. Davis will also be required to pay restitution of $250,000 to the state and $493,765 to Desert Troon Cos., said Theodore Campagnolo, Arizona assistant attorney general.

Davis’ attorney, Chris Winchell, did not return calls for comment.

Puritans on San Jose city council don't like 'Bikini bar'

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'Bikini bar' in downtown San Jose worries leaders ahead of opening

By George Avalos

Oakland Tribune

Posted: 07/28/2013 12:00:00 PM PDT

SAN JOSE -- Even before its opening next month, a "bikini bar" slated for downtown San Jose has stirred opposition and angst.

The Gold Club San Jose, whose grand opening hosted by porn star Katie Morgan is scheduled for Aug. 8 to 10, will feature scantily clad dancers on platforms that double as tables for guests. City rules prohibit nudity in clubs, but it remains unclear just how little the dancers will wear and what entertainment they would perform.

"San Jose is a great city, but it doesn't have an upscale club like this in that market," Mike Rose, chief executive officer of the South Carolina-based PML Clubs, which has licensed the operator of the club to use The Gold Club brand, told this newspaper. "There A bikini bar called the Gold Club is set to open in August 2013 in the old San Jose Building and Loan Association building on Santa Clara Street in downtown San Jose. (Sal Pizarro) is a demand for upscale-type entertainment such as ours."

But the prospect of a bikini club in the heart of downtown on Santa Clara Street has drawn criticism from some, including Councilman Sam Liccardo, who represents the downtown area.

"Nothing about The Gold Club is consistent with the common ambition we have in San Jose to take the city and the downtown to the next level," Liccardo said in an interview. "Put simply, this is a lame idea. We already have no shortage of men in their 20s with ample testosterone."

Liccardo is consulting with city staff members to explore what measures might be taken to greatly limit the scope of entertainment at the club.

"The focus would be health and safety issues," Liccardo said, noting that the city can't impose an outright ban on exotic dancing. U.S. Supreme Court rulings have defined that sort of entertainment as protected expressions under the First Amendment.

"We don't regulate dancing, but we do regulate nudity and there will be no nudity as defined by what is allowed under city ordinances," said Laurel Prevetti, San Jose's assistant planning director. "The Gold Club is working closely with the Police Department to get a permit. This is definitely a new type of enterprise coming to San Jose that we haven't seen before."

Sharing Liccardo's concerns about the club is Matthew Mahood, president of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. "We're disappointed that this type of business would be allowed to operate in the downtown city core," he said.

The owner of the club is Jenny Wolfes, who operated the former Vault nightclub at the same historic bank building where The Gold Club will open. Wolfes also owns Studio 8, a nightclub on South First Street near Santa Clara Street.

Rick Jensen, spokesman for the Downtown San Jose Association, declined to take a position on the club, though he said he expects it to be "good neighbors" with other downtown businesses. But Edwing Flores, owner of Picasso's, a restaurant across the street from the new club, is doubtful.

"It will be a big problem for the downtown and it may bring prostitution to this area," Flores said. "Customers will see a girl they like, have a drink, then have more entertainment after the doors close for the evening."

Tasha Mistry, a Fremont resident who works in downtown San Jose, agrees that the club is "inappropriate" at that location. "This area is supposed to be more corporate. I didn't even know this was going to be here," she said.

The Gold Club, which will operate across the street from a future residential high-rise that is under construction at Market and West Santa Clara streets, will likely have about 100 employees, Rose estimated. It is advertising online for cocktail waitresses, cashiers, bartenders and security personnel.

Contact George Avalos at 408-373-3556 or 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.

Criminal shot in marijuana robbery!!!

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Police: Phoenix homeowner shoots intruder in face

By D.S. Woodfill and Jaclyn Schultz The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:28 AM

A home intruder took a bullet in the face after breaking into a house full of marijuana plants in a north Phoenix neighborhood, police said.

Phoenix Police spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson said the suspect broke in along with several others by smashing through a sliding glass door with a rock at about 12:30 a.m. Friday.

The intruder, a 32-year-old man, then tried to kick in a door to the bedroom. That’s when the homeowner fired a gun several times through the door, striking the suspect in the face, authorities said.

Thompson said police suspect the robbers were after the marijuana plants.

Thompson said the homeowner is also under investigation after the incident. Thompson said he had a legal marijuana card, but the 45 to 50 plants found in the house exceeded the legal limit of 12 plants.

The bullet entered the suspect’s cheek and exited the other side, possibly taking out several teeth, Thompson said. The name of the suspect has not been released.

When police arrived, the suspect was on the ground near the bedroom door, he said. His accomplices fled after the shots were fired and police are still looking for them.

The suspect was taken to the hospital and is good condition, he said. It’s not clear if the homeowner knew the suspects.

SWAT teams love the war on drugs

Rise of the Warrior Cop

By RADLEY BALKO

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart's basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart's father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such police units are trained in methods similar to those used by the special forces in the military. They learn to break into homes with battering rams and to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are designed to blind and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

The country's first official SWAT team started in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there were approximately 500 such units. Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted by the criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983. By 2005, the figure was up to 80%.

The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 (the last year for which Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.

A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.

The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a unit. None of these federal departments has responded to my requests for information about why they consider such high-powered military-style teams necessary.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and monarchs.

The idea for the first SWAT team in Los Angeles arose during the domestic strife and civil unrest of the mid-1960s. Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had grown frustrated with his department's inability to respond effectively to incidents like the 1965 Watts riots. So his thoughts turned to the military. He was drawn in particular to Marine Special Forces and began to envision an elite group of police officers who could respond in a similar manner to dangerous domestic disturbances.

When A strike force raided the home of Matthew David Stewart, one officer was killed.

Mr. Gates initially had difficulty getting his idea accepted. Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker thought the concept risked a breach in the divide between the military and law enforcement. But with the arrival of a new chief, Thomas Reddin, in 1966, Mr. Gates got the green light to start training a unit. By 1969, his SWAT team was ready for its maiden raid against a holdout cell of the Black Panthers.

At about the same time, President Richard Nixon was declaring war on drugs. Among the new, tough-minded law-enforcement measures included in this campaign was the no-knock raid—a policy that allowed drug cops to break into homes without the traditional knock and announcement. After fierce debate, Congress passed a bill authorizing no-knock raids for federal narcotics agents in 1970.

Over the next several years, stories emerged of federal agents breaking down the doors of private homes (often without a warrant) and terrorizing innocent citizens and families. Congress repealed the no-knock law in 1974, but the policy would soon make a comeback (without congressional authorization).

During the Reagan administration, SWAT-team methods converged with the drug war. By the end of the 1980s, joint task forces brought together police officers and soldiers for drug interdiction. National Guard helicopters and U-2 spy planes flew the California skies in search of marijuana plants. When suspects were identified, battle-clad troops from the National Guard, the DEA and other federal and local law enforcement agencies would swoop in to eradicate the plants and capture the people growing them.

Advocates of these tactics said that drug dealers were acquiring ever bigger weapons and the police needed to stay a step ahead in the arms race. There were indeed a few high-profile incidents in which police were outgunned, but no data exist suggesting that it was a widespread problem. A study done in 1991 by the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute found that less than one-eighth of 1% of homicides in the U.S. were committed with a military-grade weapon. Subsequent studies by the Justice Department in 1995 and the National Institute for Justice in 2004 came to similar conclusions: The overwhelming majority of serious crimes are committed with handguns, and not particularly powerful ones.

The new century brought the war on terror and, with it, new rationales and new resources for militarizing police forces. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Department of Homeland Security has handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much of the money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In 2011 alone, a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law enforcement gave away $500 million of equipment, an all-time high.

The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams. When the craze for poker kicked into high gear, a number of police departments responded by deploying SWAT teams to raid games in garages, basements and VFW halls where illegal gambling was suspected. According to news reports and conversations with poker organizations, there have been dozens of these raids, in cities such as Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and Dallas.

In 2006, 38-year-old optometrist Sal Culosi was shot and killed by a Fairfax County, Va., SWAT officer. The investigation began when an undercover detective overheard Mr. Culosi wagering on college football games with some buddies at a bar. The department sent a SWAT team after Mr. Culosi, who had no prior criminal record or any history of violence. As the SWAT team descended, one officer fired a single bullet that pierced Mr. Culosi's heart. The police say that the shot was an accident. Mr. Culosi's family suspects the officer saw Mr. Culosi reaching for his cellphone and thought he had a gun.

Assault-style raids have even been used in recent years to enforce regulatory law. Armed federal agents from the Fish & Wildlife Service raided the floor of the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville in 2009, on suspicion of using hardwoods that had been illegally harvested in Madagascar. Gibson settled in 2012, paying a $300,000 fine and admitting to violating the Lacey Act. In 2010, the police department in New Haven, Conn., sent its SWAT team to raid a bar where police believed there was underage drinking. For sheer absurdity, it is hard to beat the 2006 story about the Tibetan monks who had overstayed their visas while visiting America on a peace mission. In Iowa, the hapless holy men were apprehended by a SWAT team in full gear.

Unfortunately, the activities of aggressive, heavily armed SWAT units often result in needless bloodshed: Innocent bystanders have lost their lives and so, too, have police officers who were thought to be assailants and were fired on, as (allegedly) in the case of Matthew David Stewart.

In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in which innocent people were killed in raids to enforce warrants for crimes that are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such as drug use or gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily). These victims were bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the victim was being investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by an Atlanta narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old accidentally shot by a California SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps, killed in a 2011 raid on his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation.

What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures? The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in American law enforcement.

Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely available on YouTube), which often feature cops rappelling from helicopters, shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects. Such campaigns embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated, confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the wrong reasons.

If you browse online police discussion boards, or chat with younger cops today, you will often encounter some version of the phrase, "Whatever I need to do to get home safe." It is a sentiment that suggests that every interaction with a citizen may be the officer's last. Nor does it help when political leaders lend support to this militaristic self-image, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in 2011 by declaring, "I have my own army in the NYPD—the seventh largest army in the world."

The motivation of the average American cop should not focus on just making it to the end of his shift. The LAPD may have given us the first SWAT team, but its motto is still exactly the right ideal for American police officers: To protect and serve.

SWAT teams have their place, of course, but they should be saved for those relatively rare situations when police-initiated violence is the only hope to prevent the loss of life. They certainly have no place as modern-day vice squads.

Many longtime and retired law-enforcement officers have told me of their worry that the trend toward militarization is too far gone. Those who think there is still a chance at reform tend to embrace the idea of community policing, an approach that depends more on civil society than on brute force.

In this very different view of policing, cops walk beats, interact with citizens and consider themselves part of the neighborhoods they patrol—and therefore have a stake in those communities. It's all about a baton-twirling "Officer Friendly" rather than a Taser-toting RoboCop.

Corrections & Amplifications

The Consumer Products Safety Commission does not have a SWAT team. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that it does.

Mr. Balko is the author of "Rise of the Warrior Cop," published this month by PublicAffairs.

A version of this article appeared July 19, 2013, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: rise ofthe warrior cop.

Border statistics demanded by Arizona's congressional delegation

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Border statistics demanded by Arizona's congressional delegation

By Daniel González The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:19 AM

Several members of Arizona’s congressional delegation have called on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to release data the government collects about immigrants crossing the border illegally but refuses to make public.

The demands for more information about illegal immigration along the southern border follow an article in The Arizona Republic published July 21.

The article reported that the Department of Homeland Security routinely points to data about the number of Border Patrol apprehensions as a measure of success in reducing illegal immigration. However, the DHS refuses to release or discuss other information gathered on how many migrants evade capture, how many are caught multiple times, and what percentage of migrants successfully enter the U.S. illegally.

Republicans and Democrats from the Arizona delegation expressed concern that the refusal to release data about illegal crossings creates an incomplete and possibly misleading picture of border security. The information is particularly important now as Congress debates an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system. Part of that overhaul includes giving undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship contingent on improvements in border security.

“This important article illustrated the fact that one of the most devastating contributors to an unsecure border is the shortage of information,” U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., wrote in a July 25 letter to Napolitano.

His letter, prompted by the article, asks for DHS data and studies pertaining to border-crossing recidivism rates, apprehensions and the effectiveness of several strategies the government used to deter illegal immigration and drug trafficking, including fencing, vehicle barriers, electronic alert systems and additional Border Patrol agents.

Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican, and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, also said they plan to contact the DHS asking that more information about illegal border crossings be released.

“In Congress, there is finally a bipartisan, common-sense effort to address immigration reform. Let's seize this moment, it's good for Arizona,” Kirkpatrick said in an e-mail. “I expect a rigorous debate around measurability standards and what constitutes a secure border. Let’s make sure we have all the data and information in front of us, so we can craft good and fair policy.”

Republican Reps. David Schweikert and Trent Franks and Rep. Ron Barber, a Tucson Democrat whose district includes Arizona’s southeastern border with Mexico, said they believe the DHS needs to do a better job of sharing information to ensure that border security is achieved.

“I have been raising this issue since I went to Congress one year ago,” Barber said in an e-mail. “As a ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee, I have questioned officials of the department about their poor communications with the American public and repeatedly called for greater transparency and accountability.”

Barber said he has filed amendments to a border-security bill pending in the House that would require the DHS to hold public meetings to provide critical information to border residents, other community members and the media. The bill would require the DHS to develop a comprehensive strategy for securing the border.

“This process must be followed as DHS develops its border-security strategy and establishes credible and honest measurements of success,” Barber said in the e-mail.

DHS acting press secretary Peter Boogaard said the department would respond directly to members of Congress requesting information about illegal border crossings, “not through the media.”

He said, however, that the DHS relies on multiple methods to measure border security, “each of which paints a different portion of the overall border-security picture and each of which informs tactical decision making.

“In line with this broad focus, the Administration has made significant investments in border security on a number of fronts,” Boogaard said in a written statement. “While no single metric can individually assess the state of border security, the dozens of metrics we use every day clearly demonstrate significant progress and improved quality of life at the border.”

The Republic article by reporter Bob Ortega reported that the DHS has refused to respond to the newspaper’s request for data on the number of migrants who were turned back after crossing the border illegally or got away from the Border Patrol and thus were able to successfully enter the U.S. illegally.

The Border Patrol releases information on the number of apprehensions by agents, but not on the number of migrants apprehended more than once or how many of those apprehensions are the same migrant caught multiple times. The Border Patrol does not release data on “turn-backs” or “got-aways” — people detected by agents or surveillance equipment but not caught.

The article also showed that the DHS has refused to release the same data to outside researchers, including a panel of leading statisticians, economists and demographers at the National Academy of Sciences that conducted a taxpayer-funded study on illegal immigration at the request of the DHS.

The DHS also has refused to release the results of a 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute that studied border-crossing recidivism and the likelihood of apprehending migrants attempting to cross the border illegally, the article reported. That study, which has been updated annually, also was federally funded.

The article quoted critics who say the DHS’ failure to fully release information about illegal border crossings makes it difficult for outside researchers to analyze the effectiveness of the department’s strategy for securing the border at a time when spending on border security has soared. In the past seven years, the DHS has spent more than $106 billion on border security.

The immigration bill passed by the Senate in late June, and now languishing in the House, would provide an additional $46 billion in border-security spending and add 19,200 more Border Patrol agents along the Mexico border over the next eight years, doubling the current number.

The additional spending and agents would be used to achieve the bill’s goal of achieving an effectiveness rate of “90 percent,” meaning the DHS would capture or turn back nine migrants for every person who got away and successfully entered the country illegally.

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said McCain has “long been troubled by the failure of DHS to develop and make public appropriate metrics to measure our success in border security.”

“This lack of disclosure has exacerbated the lack of trust in DHS and this Administration,” Rogers said in an e-mail.

McCain and Arizona’s other senator, Republican Jeff Flake, helped add language in the immigration bill passed by the Senate that includes provisions that require the Border Patrol to report to Congress on a biannual basis objective metrics to help Congress and the public determine how successful the Border Patrol is at apprehending illegal border-crossers.

When he was a member of the House, Flake also tried to get the DHS to develop better ways to measure border security.

“It’s going to be impossible for Congress to tackle immigration reform without achieving operational control of our southern border, and the federal government can’t achieve operational control if they aren’t even using it as a metric,” Flake said in a press release in November 2012, after the House passed a bill requiring the DHS to create for congressional approval a strategy for gaining operational control of the northern and southern U.S. borders.

Glendale denies unlawful ‘meetings’

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Glendale denies unlawful ‘meetings’

By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:00 AM

Glendale’s interim city attorney responded Friday to the state’s investigation of possible Open Meeting Law violations by the Glendale City Council by saying no “meetings” took place.

Glendale interim City Attorney Nick DiPiazza called them “meet and greet opportunities,” rather than meetings as defined by state law.

The attorney general’s investigation focuses on a series of private back-to-back meetings on May 28 at City Hall among council members, National Hockey League executives and the prospective buyers of the Phoenix Coyotes franchise.

Six of the council’s seven members participated in the meetings in groups of one, two or three, which avoided a four-member quorum and the Open Meeting Law.

The Arizona Republic wrote about the potential violation last month.

Attorney General’s Office spokesman Doug Nick declined to provide details about the inquiry.

“That investigation is ongoing, and that’s all I can say right now,” he said.

The state launched the investigation in response to several complaints, according to a July 2 letter by assistant Attorney General Christopher Munns to interim City Manager Dick Bowers.

“The complaints allege that the council violated the Open Meetings Law by conducting sequential meetings of council members in a number less than a quorum in order to discuss official town business without needing to comply with the requirements of the law,” Munns states in the letter.

Mayor Jerry Weiers met with the hockey executives at 9 a.m. Bowers was next at 10 a.m. Vice Mayor Yvonne Knaack and Councilman Ian Hugh went at 11 a.m. Council members Sam Chavira, Manny Martinez and Gary Sherwood followed at noon.

Councilwoman Norma Alvarez was invited to the 11 a.m. meeting, but declined to attend and later criticized her colleagues for agreeing to meet with the hockey executives.

The group included NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, other top NHL executives, and prospective Coyotes buyers George Gosbee and Anthony LeBlanc.

The meetings set into motion negotiations that resulted in the council approving a 15-year, $225 million contract with the prospective team owners to operate Jobing.com Arena, which is owned by the city.

The council approved the contract on a 4-3 vote on July 2, the same day the Attorney General’s Office opened the investigation.

DiPiazza, in his letter of response, said the separate meetings with small groups of council members were “to avoid the appearance that a meeting within the meaning of the statute was being conducted.”

State law defines a meeting as a gathering of a “quorum of members of a public body at which they discuss, propose or take legal action, including any deliberations by a quorum with respect to such action.”

Later in the letter, DiPiazza said the gatherings were “not serial meetings of Councilmembers in a number less than a quorum conducted to circumvent the law.”

DiPiazza said meetings were “simply for the NHL Commissioner and his Deputy to personally introduce (the potential team buyers) to city officials.”

He said no business was conducted: “Councilmembers knew to not to conduct any deliberations at the gatherings.”

Weiers previously told The Republic that the prospective Coyotes buyers outlined their financial requirements in broad terms during the private meeting he attended.

Following the meetings, the NHL issued a statement that said, in part: “Everyone involved in today’s discussion shares the desire and ultimate objective of transitioning the ownership of the Coyotes and safeguarding the franchise’s long-term future in Glendale.”

The crux appears to be whether the council splintered a quorum, a practice then-Attorney General Bruce Babbitt discussed in a 1975 legal opinion.

“Discussions and deliberations between less than a majority of the members of a governing body ... when used to circumvent the purposes of the Act, would constitute a violation,” Babbitt wrote.

That standard should be applied to all discussions among a majority of the members of a governing body when those matters may lead to a final action or final decision by the members, Babbitt wrote.

If violations are found, penalties could include removal from office, fines of $500 per person and assessment of the state’s attorney fees, the Attorney General’s Office said.

It appears Glendale’s sequential meetings were scheduled to keep the public in the dark, said media attorney David Bodney, of the Phoenix office of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson.

“It is difficult to know if any violation occurred because we don’t know what they discussed and whether they discussed the same things when they met sequentially with different members of the council,” said Bodney, who represents The Republic in First Amendment matters.

“If they discussed the same matters, albeit sequentially, then there would appear to be a violation of the Open Meeting Law.”

Source

State opens meeting law probe of Glendale

By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:16 PM

The State Attorney General’s Office has launched an investigation into possible violations of Arizona’s Open Meeting Law by the Glendale City Council.

The investigation focuses on a series of private back-to-back meetings at Glendale City Hall among council members, National Hockey League executives and the prospective buyers of the Phoenix Coyotes franchise on May 28.

The Attorney General’s Office launched the investigation in response to several complaints, according to a July 2 letter by Assistant Attorney General Christopher Munns to interim City Manager Dick Bowers.

“The complaints allege that the council violated the Open Meetings Law by conducting sequential meetings of council members in a number less than a quorum in order to discuss official town business without needing to comply with the requirements of the law,” Munns states in the letter.

Munns asked Bowers to provide additional information about the serial meetings by July 26.

The Arizona Republic, which wrote about the potential violation last month, obtained Munns’ letter through a public records request.

Attorney general spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham declined to specify how many people filed complaints about the matter.

“It’s an ongoing investigation, so we won’t be making any comments about it,” she said.

In general, Open Meeting Law investigations take one to six months to complete, Grisham said.

If violations are found, penalties could include fines of as much as $500 per person, assessment of the state’s attorney fees and removal from public office, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Six of the council’s seven members participated in the serial meetings, but in groups of one, two and three, which maneuvered around the Open Meeting Law by avoiding a four-member quorum.

The meetings set into motion negotiations that resulted in the council approving a 15-year, $225 million contract with the prospective Coyotes owners to operate Jobing.com Arena, where the team has played since 2003.

The council approved the contract on a 4-3 vote on the day the Attorney General’s Office opened the investigation.

Munns’ letter notes that no agendas were posted for the serial meetings, nor were minutes from the meetings made available for the public.

Councilwoman Norma Alvarez was invited to one meeting, but declined to attend. Later, she criticized her colleagues.

Glendale interim City Attorney Nick DiPiazza said he interviewed the council members who participated in the meetings and is preparing a response to the Attorney General’s Office.

“I don’t believe any meetings were conducted within the meaning of a meeting under the Arizona Open Meeting Law,” he told The Republic. “The meetings were — as described by council members — meet and greet. They were introductions and I don’t believe any business was conducted and I don’t believe any violations of the law were intended or occurred.”

Mayor Jerry Weiers previously told The Republic that the prospective Coyotes buyers outlined their financial requirements in broad terms during the private meeting he attended.

Glendale resident Ken Sturgis, who said he filed a complaint, believes the private meetings amounted to far more than introductory sessions.

“It’s hard to believe that this kind of contract that was put together and presented later wasn’t talked about. I find that very hard to believe,” he said.

Judge to decide if Phoenix Police have to obey the law

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Judge to rule on pay for Phoenix officers’ union work

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:03 AM

The long-running dispute about whether Phoenix police employees should be compensated for work they do on behalf of a labor union is finally in the hands of a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

Those involved, including two competing conservative think tanks and one representing the police union and Phoenix, presented their final arguments Friday before Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper, who cut off several of the attorneys during their presentations to ask the same question: Why should I rule in your clients’ favor?

The city’s agreement with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, approved on a split council vote last year, authorizes the labor group to place six police officers in full-time roles with the union and allows a bank of hours those union officials can offer to other officers to perform union work.

The bank of hours includes more than 1,800 for training and conferences, and the contract authorizes full-time union employees to receive straight-time pay when they work overtime. Estimates put the cost of the practice at about $850,000 each year.

Cooper enjoined the practice before the union’s contract expired last year, following a lawsuit from the Goldwater Institute, and she again halted “release time” after a new contract was approved in 2012 that reauthorized the practice.

Goldwater sued the city and the union, arguing that the practice violated the state Constitution’s gift clause. The gift clause requires that public entities receive substantial benefit from any public money they spend.

The trio of attorneys representing the city, police union and conservative-advocacy group Judicial Watch argued that the City Council has the authority to approve such agreements. The attorneys told the judge that the release-time payments are a pittance compared to the entire labor agreement and that release time is part of the union members’ overall compensation package, like an insurance policy, which they should control.

The Goldwater Institute has invoked the gift clause in the past five years to oppose shopping developments, financing for a professional hockey team and tax incentives for an aquarium in Tempe.

State law prohibits public entities from making donations, grants or subsidies to private corporations or associations. But the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that public bodies do not violate the clause if the expenditure has a public purpose and does not amount to an abuse of the government’s discretion.

Putting payments to police officers in the same category as tax incentives to real-estate moguls seems odd to supporters of the union’s position, but Goldwater Institute attorney Clint Bolick told Cooper on Friday that release time clearly fits the clause’s definition.

“Release time is a gratuity for PLEA,” Bolick said. “Release time is owned by PLEA, controlled by PLEA and used for the benefit of PLEA. As a result, it must be analyzed under the gift clause.”

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the labor union that represents the majority of Phoenix officers and negotiates the contract with the city, has had the agreement allowing release time in place for 37 years, Mike Napier, the group’s attorney, told Cooper.

Other jurisdictions around the nation take different approaches to allow officers time off to represent one another during grievance proceedings, to respond to emergencies such as an officer-involved shooting and to conduct negotiations with city officials.

Some cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, allow labor groups to reimburse the city for the union release time, according to court documents the Goldwater Institute filed. Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, have a bank of release-time hours to which officers can donate vacation time.

In Dallas, where Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia rose to the rank of assistant chief in a 33-year career, the leaders of the largest labor group request “business leave” from their supervisors to conduct union business and are paid for their time through union dues.

After Cooper’s initial injunction, Phoenix officials proposed a system that would require full-time union officers to create a log of their hours and activities and that would require the union to reimburse the city for hours spent doing work that was not determined to be for a public purpose.

The union rejected those proposals, and the contract was approved through 2014 with few changes.

Attorneys for the union, the city and Judicial Watch said Cooper would need to determine that the City Council abused its discretion when it kept release time in the contract.

“Do not substitute your judgment for that of the council,” Napier said.

Cooper didn’t indicate when she might rule on the case.

Pot use inches higher in Scottsdale district

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Survey: Pot use inches higher in Scottsdale district

By Mary Beth Faller The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:35 AM

The results of a survey on teen drug use showed a decline in alcohol, cigarette and prescription-drug use but an uptick in marijuana use in the Scottsdale Unified School District.

The district also reported more violations of its drug policy in the first part of the 2012-13 school year compared with the year before, and school officials surmise that is due to increased use of marijuana.

The Arizona Youth Survey 2012, released in the spring, found that among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders in the Scottsdale district, about 19 percent reported using marijuana in the previous 30 days, up from about 18 percent reported in the 2010 survey and 14 percent in 2008.

For lifetime usage, about 34 percent had tried it, compared with about 32 percent in 2010 and 28 percent in 2008.

Marijuana was the only substance that showed an upward trend, and Scottsdale’s rates were slightly higher than the statewide rates.

Drug violations in schools increased from 90 incidents in 2011-12 to about 120 in 2012-13, according to district data.

Alcohol is by far the most-used drug in Scottsdale, as well as statewide. About 58 percent of those polled in Scottsdale said they had tried alcohol, down from about 60 percent in 2008 and 2010. Thirty-day use has been steady over the last three surveys at about 36 percent.

Milissa Sackos, executive director of student services for the Scottsdale district, reported the results this spring to the governing board.

“We were very pleased,” Sackos said of the overall picture. “There’s still a lot of work ahead but we’re moving in the right direction.”

The good news is that most general risk factors, such as access to handguns and drugs, family conflict and academic failure, declined statewide and locally. And most “protective factors,” such as school and community engagement and family attachment, increased.

John Balles, a psychologist and clinical services coordinator for the district, credits the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports system with helping to boost protective factors. That system will be used in 19 district schools this year.

“PBIS helps to increase school connectedness, and as students feel more connected to school, they’re less likely to engage in risky behaviors like using drugs or alcohol or binge drinking,” he said.

The positive-reward system also was credited for a decrease in tardiness, unexcused absences, and alcohol and cigarette violations this past school year compared with the previous year.

Balles said the schools work with law enforcement to promote education on marijuana, as well as all drugs.

School officials also talk to students.

“We get good information from our students on the best time to educate them about not using marijuana and the best way to deliver that message,” he said.

Statewide, the survey showed that lifetime use of alcohol, cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, cocaine, inhalants, methamphetamine, heroin, ecstasy, prescription medication and over-the-counter drugs decreased from 2008 to 2012. The survey also showed declines in binge drinking, driving while drunk or getting into a car with someone who was drunk.

Statewide, the number of teens who had ever tried marijuana decreased from 2010 to 2012, but was higher than in 2008.

In addition, statewide 30-day use of marijuana was nearly the same as in 2010, and up from 2008. About 12 percent of respondents said they got the drug from someone with a medical marijuana card.

The survey polled about 63,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders in 349 schools across the state.

--------------

Drug use in schools

The Arizona Youth Survey 2012 results, released this past spring, showed these results for Scottsdale Unified School District teens, and for teens statewide.

Ever tried marijuana: 34 percent in SUSD/29 percent statewide.

Used marijuana in past 30 days: 19 percent/14 percent.

Ever tried alcohol: 58 percent/52 percent.

Used alcohol in past 30 days: 36 percent/28 percent.

Ever tried a cigarette: 25 percent/29 percent.

Smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days: 11 percent/12 percent.

Stop Russia’s affront

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Stop Russia’s affront

Fri Jul 26, 2013 6:32 PM

Russia’s new anti-gay laws are an affront to human rights. They classify anything deemed “homosexual propaganda” as pornography and permit the state to arrest/fine anyone, gay or straight who denies homosexuality is evil. Russian police may arrest and detain gay, lesbian, or pro-gay tourists. Adoption of Russian-born children by anyone in a country with same sex marriage is banned.

Economic pressure is the only way to back Putin down. We must ask our national leaders to condemn the anti-gay pogrom and demand repeal of the laws before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

If the laws are not rescinded, we must ask the Olympic Committee to boycott the Games rather than inject millions into Russia’s economy. If the Games proceed and Putin’s actions are not condemned, it will appear that Putin is being rewarded for his anti-gay stance. What group will he next ostracize and outlaw in his push for power?

— Susan Hurley, Mesa

Cops kill 95 year old man armed with butter knife

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Authorities: 95-year-old dies after confrontation with Park Forest police

11:06 a.m. CDT, July 27, 2013

A 95-year-old resident of a Park Forest senior living community who was wielding a 12-inch blade and a cane was shocked with a Taser and then hit by bean-bag rounds from police before later dying at a south suburban hospital, according to authorities.

According to an e-mailed press release from Park Forest police, officers were sent to 101 Main Street in Park Forest about 8:42 p.m. to help a private ambulance company with a "combative" resident of the home there. The Victory Centre of Park Forest, a supportive living community for adults 65 and older according to its website, is at that address.

The resident of the faculty was being "involuntarily" committed for medical treatment by staff at the Victory Centre, the release said.

When police arrived, the man was threatening staff and paramedics with a metal cane and a 2-foot metal shoehorn, the release said. Police demanded that he drop the cane and shoehorn, but he did not comply and then picked up a "12-inch butcher type kitchen knife."

Police continued to command the man to surrender and follow their orders and eventually used a Taser on him. That failed to subdue him and he continued to threaten others, the release said. Police then fired bean bag rounds at the man to get him to drop the knife and surrender. He did so and was taken into custody.

The man was conscious and talking to officers and staff before being transported to a local hospital by the paramedics. He was later taken from St. James Hospital and Health Centers in Chicago Heights to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he died about 2:30 a.m., according to authorities.

The man was later identified by the Cook County medical examiner's as John Warna, who lived at the Victory Centre.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

A good alibi won't keep you out of prison???

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State inmate Deon Patrick hopes for freedom as co-defendant exonerated

By Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune reporter

July 27, 2013

MENARD, Ill. — On the day late last month that an exonerated Daniel Taylor walked out of the state prison here, Deon Patrick held an emotional farewell meeting with his close friend, expressing hope that he, too, would be freed soon.

After all, both were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 1992 double murder. The cases against them and six co-defendants were built on confessions in which all eight incriminated each other.

Patrick and his lawyers believe that the fatal flaw in Taylor's case — that he was being held in a police station lockup when the murders took place — would unravel Patrick's conviction as well since the cases were so tightly intertwined through the interlocking confessions.

In a lengthy interview this week at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, Patrick struck a bittersweet note, elated for his friend but frustrated that he remains locked up.

"It was hard to watch him leave," said Patrick, 41, who has been imprisoned for about half his life. "But by the same token I wanted this to happen because it meant finally somebody was listening."

Patrick finds himself in the same position as other inmates whose co-defendants had been exonerated — left behind but not without hope.

After death row inmate Aaron Patterson was pardoned by then-Gov. George Ryan in 2003, co-defendant Eric Caine waited eight years until his release, even though both cases were built on confessions obtained by the police through torture. Just this week the Chicago City Council approved a payout of $10 million to Caine to settle his wrongful-conviction lawsuit.

Herbert Whitlock was released in 2008, four years after co-defendant Gordon "Randy" Steidl was set free, despite the fact that the evidence against both in a 1986 double murder in Edgar County in east central Illinois depended on witnesses whose testimony had been undermined.

For Patrick, much like in those cases, the lion's share of attention had long been directed at Taylor, whose alibi that he was in custody at the time of the murders was unusual and powerful.

After Taylor's release June 28, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said her office began an in-depth review of Patrick's conviction and vowed to work with urgency since Patrick remains in prison.

Alvarez's words are cold comfort for Patrick, though. He said he had watched with dismay as prosecutors fought for close to two decades to keep Taylor in prison, despite police records showing he was locked up when the murders occurred.

"It sometimes makes you wonder how they do the things they do and then go to sleep at night," Patrick said in a small prison room separated by glass from a reporter.

Patrick is a thick-set man with gray creeping into his neatly trimmed beard. He has a deep voice, and his dark eyes sometimes give him an almost baleful expression. But that is belied by the easy smile that frequently breaks out across his face and his warm manner.

Patrick recalled how after the death of his mother when he was 16 he spent a lot of time on the street, at one point picking up a robbery conviction that sent him to a boot camp for four months.

"It changed the course of my life," he said of her death. "It made me have to become grown when I wasn't ready for it."

Patrick was 20 when he was arrested with Taylor and six others for the fatal shootings of Jeffrey Lassiter and Sharon Haugabook in Lassiter's apartment, not far from Clarendon Park on Chicago's North Side.

Patrick said he asked police to call a lawyer who had represented him on another case but they refused. [5th Amendment rights??? You ain't go no stinking 5th Amendment rights around cops!!!] He said the detectives and a prosecutor, Assistant State's Attorney Joe Magats, pressed him to admit his role in the murders but that he repeatedly refused.

"I'm telling them I didn't know nothing about the crime," he said.

Patrick said the detectives showed him statements from some of his co-defendants implicating him in the murders and even brought some of them into the interrogation room and told him they had identified him as being involved in the crime. Still, Patrick said, he insisted he was innocent. After about 30 hours in custody, though, Patrick said he started to lose all hope of ever being released and signed a four-page confession that Magats wrote out for him. [This sounds like a typical confession obtained using the "9 Step Reid Method". The police question the suspect for many long hours, and get this promise to let them go home after they sign a confession. Yea, sure they get to go home - home to prison. But the pressure exerted by the cops is usually enough to get the confession and for the cops all they care about is the confession so they can get another raise by saying they solved another crime.]

"It was a mental strain, the threats of never seeing your kids again, the threats of going to death row," Patrick said.

Magats, who also took Taylor's longer formal confession, now is a deputy chief of the criminal prosecutions bureau, a high-ranking post in the state's attorney's office. He declined to comment for this story through an office spokeswoman.

In the confession, Patrick identified himself as a member of the Conservative Vice Lords street gang since he was about 9 and said that he, Taylor and two others went inside Lassiter's apartment while four other teens stayed outside and acted as lookouts. According to Patrick's confession, co-defendant Dennis Mixon gave him a gun and Patrick shot Lassiter. Mixon then shot Haugabook, the confession said.

Taylor's confession, though, claimed that Patrick shot both victims.

"The sole piece of evidence against Deon was his confession. There wasn't any physical evidence. And nothing else," said Nicole Auerbach, Patrick's attorney. "And what we know now is that this couldn't possibly have happened the way they said it happened."

Patrick said he could not offer police an alibi after his arrest two weeks following the murders because he could not recall where he was that night. Later, though, he said he remembered he had been at the home of a friend's sister watching a football game on TV.

At Patrick's trial, his attorney did not call the friend's sister as a witness to support his alibi, and Patrick did not testify in his own defense. Years later, the woman provided Patrick an affidavit confirming his alibi.

Patrick was convicted by a jury. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but he was sentenced to life in prison.

Three of the co-defendants either had their charges thrown out or were acquitted at trial, but Taylor, Mixon and two others were convicted with Patrick. The two others received shorter sentences and are free. But Mixon, who is serving a life sentence, has since admitted taking part in the murders and absolved the other seven of involvement. He has even named another man as an accomplice in the killings.

Prison, according to Patrick, has been "miserable." He missed his two young children growing up and has had few visits from his family or friends. His hopes were raised when a 2001 Tribune investigation, while focusing largely on Taylor and uncovering additional evidence of his innocence, suggested that the entire case was flawed. But prosecutors continued to fight.

Patrick's hopes were raised again when Alvarez's predecessor, Dick Devine, launched an investigation into the prosecution in response to stories in the Tribune. But Patrick said officials from the office tried to get him to implicate another man in the murders and showed no interest in his claim of innocence. Documents that were later turned over to Taylor's attorneys suggested Devine's inquiry was focused on preserving the convictions.

"It was almost like we were back at the police station," Patrick said of the officials who talked with him at the time. "They were yelling."

Now, Patrick has a newfound hope. After Taylor's goodbye, he said he turned off his TV and began studying his case again. By chance, that same day he received in the mail a copy of a new appeal that his lawyers were filing. What's more, he learned that Alvarez's conviction integrity unit would review his case after throwing out Taylor's conviction. He was reluctant to be optimistic, he said, but hope crept in anyway.

He has begun to let himself daydream about seeing his children — now adults — in the outside world. He has also let himself think of seeing Taylor again.

"I know that one day I'll be able to be out there with him," Patrick said.

smmills@tribune.com

Firetruck kills passenger in Asiana Flight 214 plane crash

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Attorney: 'Multiple' firefighters knew Asiana Flight 214 passenger was in a position of danger before fire truck killed her

By Dan Nakaso and Mark Emmons

Staff writers

Posted: 07/26/2013 05:39:35 PM PDT

SAN FRANCISCO -- "Multiple" San Francisco firefighters knew that a 16-year-old passenger from Asiana Flight 214 had been taken from the crashed plane's wreckage and placed in harm's way on the tarmac, where she was run over and killed by a fellow firefighter, the lawyer for the family of the dead girl said Friday.

Ye Mengyuan was "left unattended and not properly protected, tended to or properly cared for. She did not have fatal injuries or injuries that would have resulted in death before she was run over by that truck," said attorney Anthony Tarricone, a partner with the New York-based law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler.

The firm represents the families of all three Chinese teenage girls who died and a dozen other injured passengers from the Boeing 777. The firm, which has a team of lawyers in town conducting its own investigation of the July 6 crash, has handled cases involving some of the world's biggest aviation disasters, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all 259 on board along with 11 people on the ground.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said Asiana Flight 214 came in too low and too slow before it slammed into the seawall that abuts San Francisco International Airport's Runway 28 Left. Mengyuan, 16, was alive and covered in firefighting foam when she was run over by a San Francisco fire truck responding to the burning plane, according to San Francisco police, who continue to investigate her death.

Although Ye had been seated in the back of the Boeing 777 when it crashed, her body was discovered in front of the left wing of the plane after she had been run over. Investigators have not explained how she ended up near the front of the plane.

"We know that multiple firefighters knew she was there, and she was left there to fend for herself before the foam was put down," Tarricone told this newspaper.

ABC7, citing unnamed sources, first reported Thursday that a firefighter pulled Ye from the plane and put her on the ground near the wing. The station said that another firefighter, Elyse Duckett, 49, was out getting food for the SFO fire station when Asiana Flight 214 crashed. When Duckett returned to the station, she found everyone had gone to the crash scene, so she got into a reserve truck, Mobile 37, and drove alone, without a spotter or rider to help navigate, according to ABC7.

The station reported that it was Duckett's truck that ran over the girl.

According to an earlier report by the San Francisco Chronicle, the truck was not equipped with Forward Looking Infrared, which uses heat-sensing technology to detect body temperatures.

While not disputing the details in the ABC7 report, the San Francisco Fire Department blasted the story in a statement Friday.

"This news outlet distastefully disclosed personnel information, as well as released incomplete information," the statement said. "Out of respect for the family of Ye Mengyuan and the investigative processes, the department will await the outcome of the investigations prior to commenting any further about the accident."

Ye's family is "heart-broken and devastated," Tarricone said. "It appears that the truth is starting to come out. But I don't believe it's all been told at this time. The bottom line is that there are many unanswered questions about what happened and many unanswered questions about the versions that have been told by various officials at various times."

San Francisco police officials said on Friday they will not comment while their investigation is underway.

Ken Willette, division manager of the Public Fire Protection Division of the National Fire Protection Association, had never heard of a similar firefighting tragedy "in 35 years of fire service."

Willette called Ye's death a "tragic accident during an amazing response to a disaster where lives were saved."

"Imagine responding to an incident, and you see a plane burning," Willette told this newspaper. "You're driving an apparatus to get there and put out the fire. And you see people coming toward you to escape the crash. Your goal is to get as close as possible to lay down a blanket of foam so people escaping are protected from the fire. So you have to focus on the fire and avoid the crowd. It's usually mass chaos in situations like this."

Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/dannakaso.

It's impossible to fire a crooked police chief????

Glendale Police Chief Greg Dominguez threatens to burn down store and kill employees

Sounds like it.

Glendale’s assistant police chief Greg Dominguez threatened to burn down Spanky’s Smoke Shop in Peoria for selling “stuff” to his son. Assistant police chief Greg Dominguez also threatened to kill a store employee.

If a civilian threatened to burn down the Glendale City hall and kill the mayor of Glendale for giving the Coyotes millions of our tax dollars that civilian would be in prison right now. But when the Glendale police chief does the same thing it's no big deal.

Source

Board: Glendale's former assistant police chief should be reinstated

By Miguel Otarola The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Jul 25, 2013 5:32 PM

Glendale’s former assistant police chief should get his job back, so said a personnel oversight board Wednesday after reviewing his demotion.

The city’s Personnel Board voted 3-1 to recommend Greg Dominguez’s reinstatement after a four-and-a-half hour appeal hearing that ended at 10:45 p.m.

Dominguez was bumped down to commander in April following accusations that he threatened to burn down Spanky’s Smoke Shop in Peoria for selling “stuff” to his son. That stuff, Dominguez later said, was the synthetic drug known as “spice.”

The police report said Dominguez returned to the store and threatened to kill an employee if the store kept selling to his son. Dominguez was off-duty during the incidents and did not announce he was an officer, said David Leibowitz, spokesman for the Glendale chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. Leibowitz added Dominguez was not wearing his police uniform or driving a patrol car. [So since he didn't commit the crimes while he was wearing the Glendale Police Chief's uniform that means everything is OK????]

In addition to his demotion, Dominguez was suspended for five days without pay by Chief Deborah Black in April following a internal affairs investigation.

The board listened to arguments from the city attorney and Dominguez’s lawyer, Neil Landeen, as well as testimony from Black Wednesday night. In the end, those voting in favor of Dominguez said the punishment was too harsh. [What rubbish!!! Since when is firing a crooked cop for threatening arson and murder too harsh of a punishment. If he was a civilian he would be sitting in jail waiting to go to trial for threatening arson and murder]

The personnel board hears appeals regarding disciplines, according to the Glendale city website. It is made up of five residents appointed by Glendale City Council. [Yea, and they are probably all cops or ex-cops?]

The board’s recommendation will go to City Manager Brenda Fischer, who began her position earlier this week. Fischer has the choice of upholding Black’s demotion or reinstating Dominguez as assistant police chief.

“I’m sure she will want to go forward ... and make a decision sooner rather than later,” said Julie Pendergast, president of the Glendale Chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.

The police department has two assistant police chief positions. Currently Rick St. John is the only sitting assistant chief and the other position is unfilled. Commander Matthew Lively is serving in the interim.

Dominguez has served with the Glendale Police Department for 28 years, according to the department’s website.

Leibowitz said Wednesday’s recommendation was still not a reason for Dominguez to celebrate.

“This is not time for a victory lap. This is an intermediate step,” he said. “(Greg) is obviously very grateful to have the opportunity to have the city manager decide this case.”

Justin Harris, president of the Glendale Law Enforcement Association, called the personnel board’s decision, “the right call.” [Yea, let one crooked cops be fired, and next thing you know other crooked cops will be fired. Can let that happen. Any member of the police union will tell you it's wrong to fire crooked cops.]

Department officials did not return several calls requesting interviews.

“He is not looking to avoid responsibility of what happened,” Leibowitz said. “He just loves his job.” [What rubbish!!! He is a criminal who should have been fired from his job]

Mexicans outraged by humiliation of Indian boy

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Mexicans outraged by humiliation of Indian boy

Mexico outraged by official's humiliation of Indian boy - Whatsupic

MEXICO CITY — A 10-year-old Indian street vendor whose humiliation by a city inspector tugged on the heart strings of Mexicans after a video of it appeared on social media was showered Friday with attention and the offer of a scholarship.

The video shows the poor, sandal-clad Tzotzil boy selling candy, cough drops and apparently cigarettes out of a wicker basket in Villahermosa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. State officials say the boy, Manuel Diaz Hernandez, was trying to earn money to buy his own school supplies.

A city inspector, identified as Juan Diego Lopez, spots the boy, confronts him and takes several packs of cigarettes from his basket. It is prohibited in Mexico for minors to buy or sell cigarettes.

In the video, Manuel can be seen weeping inconsolably as the inspector forces him to take all the candy in his basket, handful by handful, and toss it on the pavement. The cost of the candy and cigarettes could well be more than the boy would earn with a week’s work.

As the inspector walks off with the boy’s cigarettes, another man steps forward to help him try to pick up the sweets, and Manuel collapses into a squatting position, covering his face with his arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing loudly. The encounter took place on Monday.

The video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the last few days, and on Friday the governmental National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city announced on Wednesday that it has fired the inspector.

It was the latest victory for social media in winning some measure of justice in Mexico. In recent years, social media have exposed a number of scandals and instances of mistreatment that often would have gone overlooked in the past.

“Any form of violence against children is totally unacceptable, especially when directed against Indians, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the country,” the rights commission said in a statement.

Street vendors in Mexico frequently sell single cigarettes to passers-by at twice their original price, for people who don’t have the time or money to buy a full pack. Officials agreed that the punishment meted out to the boy for selling cigarettes was out of line, especially in the southeast, a part of the country where Indians were routinely enslaved a century ago.

The Tabasco state prosecutors’ office said the boy’s aunt, Maria Diaz Diaz, said she had brought Manuel to Villahermosa about 10 days earlier. She said the boy lives with his grandparents in the Tzotzil Indian village of San Juan Chamula, in neighboring Chiapas state, and wanted to work during his summer vacation to raise money for school supplies in the fall. Mexican children get free textbooks, but often have to buy their own pencils, paper and uniforms.

Tabasco state Gov. Arturo Nunez announced Thursday his administration would give Manuel and his family “a scholarship, as well as all medical and psychological help for the boy.”

Lupita Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Chiapas state child welfare agency, said Manuel speaks only limited Spanish. His age is listed as 10, but in rural communities like his hometown births are often not registered until much later.

They boy, who appears short for his age, had returned to his village following the incident, apparently fearing retaliation by Villahermosa officials.

“The boy is doing well,” Santiago noted. He didn’t suffer physical harassment, but it was harassment.”

The child welfare agency is also providing the boy “all necessary help,” she said.

The Tabasco state prosecutors’ office said Friday it had detained another municipal employee who participated in the incident and is investigating both workers on suspicion of abuse of authority and theft.

ACLU to court: Begging in Arizona is not a crime

ACLU to court: Begging in Arizona is not a crime

Citing First Amendment, group sues to stop panhandling arrests

• Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX - The American Civil Liberties Union wants a federal judge to block police in Arizona from enforcing a law making begging a crime, calling it an infringement on free speech.

ACLU attorney Dan Pochoda said the measure is unconstitutional because it makes people subject to arrest not because they are loitering, but because of what they are saying. He contends asking someone for money is no different from politicians seeking support on the same public streets.

The lawsuit is most immediately aimed at the city of Flagstaff which, in an effort to help local merchants, has used the law to arrest hundreds of people. Pochoda wants those arrests halted.

But he also wants U.S. District Judge Neil Wake to rule the state law itself is void, making it unenforceable anywhere in Arizona.

Attorney General Tom Horne declined to comment.

"It's being reviewed," he said. And Kimberly Ott, spokeswoman for Flagstaff, said city officials would have nothing to say until the council gets a chance to review the lawsuit next month.

The law has been on the books for years. But it was not until 2008 when Flagstaff police, responding to complaints by merchants, started to use it to have undercover officers make arrests.

Police admit the idea is to sweep the streets of panhandlers early in the day, before they can cause more problems later. The department even said Operation 40, as it has been called - both after Interstate 40, which bisects the city, and the 40-ounce bottles of beer popular with some - has resulted in an overall decrease in crime.

Pochoda said police remain free to arrest those who commit specific crimes. What they cannot do, he said, is this kind of pre-emptory approach.

"There's no doubt that peaceful begging is speech, fully protected under the First Amendment," he said.

His position is backed by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2006 striking down a Las Vegas ordinance banning soliciting for money in particular areas of that city.

The judges in that case acknowledged the ordinance was designed not so much to stop the begging but to control "the secondary effects of solicitation." But the appellate court said the law was invalid because it affected only a particular kind of speech, in this case, begging.

Two years later, U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver used that to strike down a Cave Creek ordinance making it illegal to stand on or near a road to beg or solicit a job.

"It prohibits solicitation speech, but not political, religious, artistic or other categories of speech," Silver wrote.

"It also prohibits solicitation on the topics of employment, business or contributions, while allowing solicitation of votes or ballot signatures."

Pochoda, in his request for an injunction, said the state law, and the way it is enforced, has the same problem.

"A solicitation to vote for a candidate or attend a concert, join an organization or eat at a particular restaurant, delivered in the same manner and tone as that for money, would not result in violation or arrest," he told Wake in the request for the injunction.

No date has been set for a hearing on the injunction request.

"There's no doubt that peaceful begging is speech, fully protected under the First Amendment."

John McCain is against the "military police state"???

Source

McCain: More transparency on NSA

By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 7:51 PM

U.S. Sen. John McCain says last week’s narrow U.S. House vote on the National Security Agency’s phone-record collecting demonstrates the need for President Barack Obama’s administration to better explain the controversial anti-terror program to an anxious public.

The Republican-controlled House voted 217-205 Wednesday to defeat an amendment that would have drastically curtailed the NSA’s snooping practice, which has rattled privacy advocates and civil libertarians across the political spectrum since it was disclosed in early June.

“I think it’s a combination of right and left, but I think it’s a little more than that. And that is, there’s suspicion out there,” McCain, R-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic. “Because I don’t think there has been enough communication with the American people as to exactly what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. In other words, it concerns all of us that the government might be invading our privacy. So there’s going to have to be legislation that calls for greater transparency and sharing of methodology without compromising our ability to defend this country.”

The split in Arizona’s House delegation illustrates how the NSA issue has blurred traditional partisan and ideological lines. Republican U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon and David Schweikert joined Democratic U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ed Pastor in voting to curb the NSA surveillance operation. Democratic U.S. Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema [looks like the allegedly anti-war peacenik Kyrsten Sinema now supports the police state and military industrial complex] and Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks opposed the amendment to essentially kill the program, which was developed as part of the war against terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“I doubt if there would have been that vote on Sept. 12, 2001,” McCain said.

In other developments:

McCain is continuing to push bipartisan legislation that over four years would phase out the $1 bill and replace it with a $1 coin. He argues the transition would modernize U.S. currency while saving taxpayers billions of dollars and reducing the deficit.

But a gossip columnist for the Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, last week asked him about one constituency that has been cool to the coin idea: strippers and exotic dancers who collect dollar bills as tips during their stage performances.

“Then I hope that they could obtain larger denominations,” McCain told The Hill, eventually adding, “Fives, tens, one hundreds!”

On Friday, McCain clarified to The Republic that he weighed in only when “pressed about the predicament” by the media.

“I was asked about it. ... I don’t frequent those establishments,” McCain said. “I don’t presume to know what’s best. I think I’m an expert on a lot of national-security issues, but that’s one that I’m not really well-versed in.”

McCain’s “a la carte” cable television bill got a boost last week when U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut announced that he would sign on as its lead Democratic co-sponsor.

McCain this year revived legislation that would encourage cable and satellite TV providers to offer customers the ability to purchase only the channels they want to watch instead of having to buy an expensive bundle. The bill, which faces stiff resistance from the influential telecommunications industry, remains a longshot to become law, but Blumenthal’s participation could help its chances in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

“We’re having a lot of fun with it,” McCain said. “We’re making those lobbyists earn their salaries.”

Nowicki is The Republic’s national political reporter.

John McCain and Barack Obama working together???

Source

Barack Obama and John McCain: Washington's newest odd couple

Posted: Sunday, July 28, 2013 1:14 pm

Associated Press

There was no conciliatory phone call, no heart-to-heart talk to soothe the tensions. No one knows exactly when President Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain went from bitter rivals in the 2008 presidential campaign and foes over health care and national security to bipartisan partners.

Yet in recent months, an alignment on high-profile domestic issues — not to mention an eye on their respective legacies — has transformed Obama and McCain into Washington's most unexpected odd couple. The Arizona senator is a regular visitor to the West Wing and in near-daily contact with senior White House officials.

McCain, in an Associated Press interview, said that he and Obama "trust each other." White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, among the Obama advisers who speak regularly with McCain, praised the lawmaker as a "refreshing" partner who "welcomes a debate and welcomes action."

Like any good business arrangement in the nation's capital, the secret to the new Obama-McCain alliance ultimately comes down to this: Both sides believe that working together is mutually beneficial and carries little political risk.

For Obama, the senator has become a rare Republican backer of important elements on the president's second term agenda, including immigration overhaul, stricter background checks for gun buyers, and perhaps a fall budget deal.

In return, McCain has secured increased access to the White House and an opportunity to redeem his reputation as a Capitol Hill "maverick." That image was tainted when McCain tacked to the right during his failed 2008 presidential run against Obama.

"I've told the people of Arizona, I will work with any president if there are ways I can better serve Arizona and the country," McCain said. "That seems to be an old-fashioned notion but it's the case."

Indeed, the level of attention lavished on a functional working relationship between the Democratic president and the Republican senator underscores how rare such partnerships have been during Obama's tenure.

Lawmakers, including some Democrats, long have chafed at Obama's distant dealings with Capitol Hill and his supposed lack of understanding about how Congress operates.

It's unlikely that Obama and McCain's partnership will lead to a larger detente between the White House and congressional Republicans. While McCain may have sway over some like-minded members of the Senate Republican caucus, he has considerably less influence with his party's more conservative wing, particularly in the GOP-controlled House.

Still, the White House is hopeful that forging policy breakthroughs with McCain and other Senate Republicans will isolate the House GOP and perhaps persuade them to act.

The first test of that strategy probably will be the White House-backed immigration overhaul. McCain helped write and shepherd the bill through the Senate last month. Its future in the House is deeply uncertain.

The administration also will try to work with McCain ahead of impending budget battles, McDonough said, given that the senator and the White House agree there is a negative impact from across-the-board federal budget cuts, particularly on the military and defense industry.

McDonough said it's not just a shared view on policy that has made McCain an attractive partner to Obama on these and other issues. It's their mutual disdain for Washington meetings that never move beyond the standard talking points.

"Part of what's great to work with him is his impatience with that," McDonough said. "You can kind of get into the meat of the matter very quickly"

Obama and McCain were never close during the president's brief tenure in the Senate. While McCain is a creature of Capitol Hill, Obama largely saw Congress as a stepping stone to bigger things. The relationship deteriorated during frequent clashes in the 2008 presidential campaign, and it often appeared during Obama's first term like it would never recover.

In 2010, the two sparred during a televised negotiating session on health care. McCain chastised Obama for brokering deals behind closed doors, to which the president snapped, "We're not campaigning anymore. The election is over."

McCain replied: "I'm reminded of that every day."

White House advisers still bristle over McCain's accusations that the administration covered up details of last year's deadly attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, as well as his relentless criticism of former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's role in that alleged effort.

McCain's criticism contributed to Rice's decision to withdraw from consideration as Obama's secretary of state. She now serves as White House national security adviser, a post that does not require Senate confirmation.

McDonough acknowledged that McCain's role in keeping the Benghazi controversy alive has been a source of frustration. But he credited the senator with largely shelving his criticism of Rice once she joined the White House staff.

"The way he's worked with her since she became national security adviser speaks to his interest in making sure that even where we disagree, we're finding a way to work together when we can," McDonough said. "I know the president has appreciated that."

McCain said his stronger ties with the president on domestic issues won't keep him from challenging the president on national security issues, including Syria, where McCain backs a more aggressive U.S. response than does the administration. But he said there's a way to strike an appropriate balance.

"He is the president of the United States," McCain said. "You can strongly disagree and still be respectful."

Low-level staff have access to ‘invasive’ surveillance

Source

Greenwald: Low-level staff have access to ‘invasive’ surveillance

By Aaron Blake, Published: July 28 at 10:57

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who has worked with Edward Snowden to reveal sensitive national security information, said Sunday that low-level National Security Agency staff and contractors have access to a powerful and invasive tool that can provide them the e-mails and phone calls of basically anybody — up to and including the president.

“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and e-mails in their databases that they’ve collected over the last several years,” Greenwald said on ABC’s “This Week.”

He then detailed the program, which he said only require an e-mail or an IP address to return data on Americans.“It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the e-mails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that e-mail address or that IP address do in the future,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald, who is set to testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, suggested intelligence officials are lying when they say low-level staff have no such access to that information. He said he “defies” intelligence officials to deny the program’s existence.

“It’s an incredibly powerful and invasive tool — exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described,” Greenwald said.

Appearing on the same show, Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) cast doubt on Greenwald’s reporting.

“I was back out at NSA just last week, spent a couple hours out there with high-level and low-level NSA officials, and what I have been assured of is there is no capability … at NSA, for anyone without a court order to listen to any telephone conversation or to monitor any e-mail,” Chambliss said.

Chambliss also said any access that low-level staff had to such personal information would be accidental.

“In fact, we don’t monitor e-mails. That’s what kind of assures me is that the reporting is not correct. Because no emails are monitored now,” Chambliss said. “They used to be, but that stopped two or three years ago. So I feel confident that there may have been some abuse, but if it was it was purely accidental.”

A push in Mexico City to legalize marijuana use

A push in Mexico City to legalize marijuana use

By Fernando Gómez Mont and Jorge G. Castañeda, Published: July 26

Fernando Gómez Mont was Mexico’s interior minister in the administration of Felipe Calderón. Jorge G. Castañeda was minister of foreign affairs in the administration of Vicente Fox.

Last year, voters in Colorado and Washington state approved initiatives legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. While the details are being worked out, those watching the developments are in not only the United States. Mexico, too, is taking note, having paid an enormous price waging a costly — and, to a certain degree, futile — years-long crusade against drugs in consonance with the international community’s punitive approach.

A growing number of Mexicans are asking logical questions: Why should their leaders follow a path that provokes violence, generates human rights violations, erodes the country’s image abroad and costs a fortune — mainly to stem the northern flow of drugs? Why spray and uproot marijuana fields in the hills of Oaxaca, search for tunnels in Tijuana and incarcerate “weed” traffickers in Monterrey if consumption is made legal in parts of the United States? Why deploy such an enormous effort to deter drug trafficking if Washington does virtually nothing to stop the flow of firearms to Mexico — and has concluded that it can, and should, prevent migrants from Mexico and Central America from entering the United States? If Congress can “secure” the border against people, using walls and drones, why can’t it do the same against drugs or guns and, in the process, respect Mexico’s right to design its own policies?

These sentiments are part of the reason for a change in Mexican attitudes toward drugs in general and marijuana in particular. Two former presidents — Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox, who both vigorously fought drug trafficking and consumption while in office — have concluded that this approach is doomed and that a better policy would include decriminalizing marijuana use and commerce. Then-President Felipe Calderón called on the U.N. General Assembly last year to change its focus, eliminating the perverse incentives that strengthen transnational organized crime and gravely affect the rule of law and democracy in some countries.

Mexico is a highly conservative country whose population remains largely opposed to legalizing marijuana. But an increasing number of business, political and academic leaders are shifting their views. The city council of Mexico City, which has authority to legislate health and law enforcement issues, is contemplating a measure that would, in effect, allow the regulated possession and use of marijuana. Already, Mexicans can legally possess five grams of marijuana, an amount much smaller than what is commonly sold, bought or shared. Effectively decriminalizing marijuana would be in line with liberal attitudes in the capital and laws that rest on the firm belief that the right to privacy includes certain personal choices, even — or especially — when not shared by the majority.

We and other former cabinet secretaries — Pedro Aspe, finance minister to Carlos Salinas, and Juan Ramón de la Fuente, health minister to Zedillo — have joined with Mexico’s leading public intellectual and a prominent social activist to push for legalization in Mexico City. The four of us occupied senior posts directly related to the drug issue in Mexico’s previous four administrations. Along with Héctor Aguilar Camín, editor of the monthly Nexos, and Maria Elena Morera, founder of México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (Mexicans United Against Crime), we are encouraging Mexico City authorities to proceed promptly.

For practical and political reasons, our effort is limited to decriminalizing the use of marijuana in the federal district, though some believe that the same case can be easily made for other drugs in the whole country. A reform that restrains its effects to marijuana is achievable; going furtherdoes not seem feasible today. Another reason for moving slowly, though firmly, is the impact this decision would have on the relationship between Mexico and the United States.

President Enrique Peña Nieto opposes legalization but seems open to a broad debate and to whatever consensus would emerge — locally, nationally or regionally. He may accept Mexico City’s decision even if he doesn’t like it, much as President Obama seems to have resigned himself to the Colorado and Washington legislation. Mexico has ratified treaties banning illicit substances, but these international agreements allow governments to set their own policies within certain limits; consider Dutch and Portuguese leniency. The United States should support its neighbor as it seeks leeway for its own stance, even if that conflicts with U.S. policy.

Mexicans have paid a high cost in the struggle against drugs. We know that this war cannot be won. This fight should be waged by physicians rather than armed forces. Decriminalization of marijuana is not a silver bullet, but it would be a major step away from a failed approach. Mexico City is the place to start, thanks to the example set in Colorado and Washington state.

NYC Mayor candidate likens "stop and frisk" to suspicions that killed Trayvon Martin

Source

Thompson Likens Police Stops to Suspicions That Killed Trayvon Martin

By MICHAEL BARBARO

Published: July 28, 2013

William C. Thompson Jr., a Democratic candidate for mayor, likened the policies of the New York City Police Department to the suspicions of George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, in an unusually personal and provocative speech on Sunday, saying that both had led to injustice for young black and Latino men.

“Here in New York City, we have institutionalized Mr. Zimmerman’s suspicion with a policy that all but requires our police officers to treat young black and Latino men with suspicion, to stop them and frisk them because of the color of their skin,” Mr. Thompson said at the AbundantLife Church in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

The remarks were by far his most forceful of the campaign on the contentious issue of stop-and-frisk policing, a widely used tactic that the city’s police force has credited with reducing gun violence, even as a growing number of elected officials have criticized it as overused and abusive.

Of what Mr. Thompson said were the 600,000 blacks and Latinos stopped by the New York police in 2011, he said a vast majority were innocent — “profiled as Trayvon was profiled.”

“If our government profiles people because of skin color and treats them as potential criminals, how can we expect citizens to do any less?” Mr. Thompson asked, as members of the small storefront church loudly applauded him and occasionally interrupted with cries of “amen.”

Mr. Thompson said he had endured criticism for declaring, after Mr. Zimmerman’s acquittal on July 13, that Mr. Martin, an unarmed teenager, was killed because of his skin color. But he reiterated that belief again on Sunday.

“Trayvon Martin did die because he was black,” Mr. Thompson said. Of that, there is no doubt.”

But he added, “the verdict in Florida was a verdict — but it was not the verdict.” He called on New Yorkers of all races to engage in a spirited and thoughtful discussion about the shooting and its meaning.

“Let the verdict of these days instead be this: that in protest on our streets, in quiet conversation with our families, or in the halls and chambers of our government, we will ask the hard questions, face the hard truths and honor our fathers’ and mothers’ dreams.”

Revealers of government secrets share how their lives have changed

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After the whistle: Revealers of government secrets share how their lives have changed

By Emily Wax, Published: July 28 E-mail the writer

The former high-ranking National Security Agency analyst now sells iPhones. The top intelligence officer at the CIA lives in a motor home outside Yellowstone National Park and spends his days fly-fishing for trout. The FBI translator fled Washington for the West Coast.

This is what life looks like for some after revealing government secrets. Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing, according to those who did it. Jeopardizing national security, according to the government.

Who is Edward Snowden?: A 30-year-old government contractor has been charged with espionage for recent leaks of classified intelligence. He has vaulted from obscurity to international notoriety, joining the ranks of high-profile leakers such as Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.

Heroes. Scofflaws. They’re all people who had to get on with their lives.

As Edward Snowden eventually will. The former NSA contractor who leaked classified documents on U.S. surveillance programs is now in Russia, with his fate in limbo. The Justice Department announced last week that it won’t seek the death penalty in prosecuting him, but he is still charged with theft and espionage.

Say he makes it out of there. What next, beyond the pending charges? What happens to people who make public things that the government wanted to keep secret?

A look at the lives of a handful of those who did just that shows that they often wind up far from the stable government jobs they held. They can even wind up in the aisles of a craft store.

Peter Van Buren, a veteran Foreign Service officer who blew the whistle on waste and mismanagement of the Iraq reconstruction program, most recently found himself working at a local arts and crafts store and learned a lot about “glitter and the American art of scrapbooking.”

“What happens when you are thrown out of the government and blacklisted is that you lose your security clearance and it’s very difficult to find a grown-up job in Washington,” said Van Buren, who lives in Falls Church and wrote the book “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.” “Then, you have to step down a few levels to find a place where they don’t care enough about your background to even look into why you washed up there.”

The Apple Store employee

“Let’s sit in the back,” Thomas Drake says when choosing a booth at Parker’s Classic American Restaurant in downtown Bethesda during his lunch break from Apple. “I have a lot to say. I was a public servant. That’s a very high honor. It’s supposed to mean something.”

Drake was prosecuted under the World War I-era Espionage Act for mishandling national defense information.

His alleged crime: voicing concernsto superiors after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks about violations of Americans’ privacy by the nation’s largest intelligence organization (the NSA) and later, in frustration, speaking to a reporter about waste and fraud in the NSA intelligence program. (He says he revealed no classified information.)

He lost his $155,000-a-year job and pension, even though in 2011 the criminal case against him fell apart. The former top spokesman for the Justice Department, Matthew Miller, later said the case against Drake may have been an “ill-considered choice for prosecution.”

Drake, now 56, is tall and lanky and dresses as though he’s ready, at any moment, to go on a gentle hike. He is the type of person who likes consistency. He went to work at Apple the day after the charges against him were dropped, surprising his co-workers who thought he would at least take a day off. In 2010, he got an adjunct professor job at Strayer University but was fired soon after, he says, while he was under government investigation.

“I was just blacklisted,” he said, adding that he started his own company but has only had minor work. “People were afraid to deal with a federal government whistleblower.”

Drake long planned to be a career public servant. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1979 and flew on spy planes and once was a CIA analyst and an expert in electronic intelligence missions. On Sept. 11, 2001, he reported for his first day of work as a senior executive at the NSA’s Fort Meade campus, and shortly thereafter, he voiced “the gravest of concerns” regarding a secret domestic surveillance program that, he says, was launched shortly after the attacks.

Who is Edward Snowden?: A 30-year-old government contractor has been charged with espionage for recent leaks of classified intelligence. He has vaulted from obscurity to international notoriety, joining the ranks of high-profile leakers such as Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.

In 2006, he was reassigned from the NSA to be a professor at the National Defense University, but he was forced to leave in 2007 when his security clearance was suspended.

Ironically, he was teaching a class called “The Secret Side of U.S. History.”

Now working at the Apple Store and living in Howard County, he is extremely grateful for his hourly wage retail job. He has no choice. He has massive legal debts and a son ready to go to college.

Last year, he was working when he spotted an unlikely customer: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who came in to check out iPhones.

Drake introduced himself and asked: “Do you know why they have come after me?”

“Yes, I do,” Holder said.

“But do you know the rest of the story?,” he asked.

Holder quickly left with his security detail, Drake said.

“It’s not every day you get to talk to the chief law enforcement officer of the land about your case,” Drake said, “or at least try.”

The author in Oregon

Sometimes Washington is just the last place you can stand to be.

Sibel Edmonds was once described by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the most gagged person in the history of the United States.” And she was a regular on Washington’s protest circuit.

She was fired from her work as a translator at the FBI for trying to expose security breaches and cover-ups that she thought presented a danger to U.S. security. Her allegations were supported and confirmed by the Justice Department’s inspector general office and bipartisan congressional investigations, but she was not offered her job back.

She also published a memoir, “Classified Woman — The Sibel Edmonds Story.”

Then last summer, Edmonds, 43, decamped with her 5-year-old daughter and husband to Bend, Ore., which is known as the sunny side of the state. The July weather is 77 degrees without humidity, and there are 33 independently owned coffee shops and nine microbreweries.

“I am touring every single one. Plus, we don’t even have air conditioning here,” she said. “We open the windows and feel the breeze.”

For years before she left, Edmonds found Washington’s atmosphere suffocating. Many of her neighbors in Alexandria were lobbyists and contractors, who she says stopped talking to her after her name appeared in the newspaper.

Luckily, her husband of 21 years is a retail consultant and can live anywhere. She says that most whistleblowers have spouses who work in the same agencies, which typically puts pressure on their marriages.

She is still dedicated, she says, to the cause of exposing injustice and making information free. She spends hours running “Boiling Frog Post: Home of the Irate Minority,” a podcast and Web site that covers whistleblowing and tries to create broader exposure for revelations. She is also founder and director of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“I think in the current climate, Congress and Washington is a last resort,” she said. “We are going directly to the people and focused on releasing information. And I don’t have to do that from Washington.”

Who is Edward Snowden?: A 30-year-old government contractor has been charged with espionage for recent leaks of classified intelligence. He has vaulted from obscurity to international notoriety, joining the ranks of high-profile leakers such as Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.

The alienated fly fisherman

“The connection is really bad, it must be the NSA surveillance program,” Richard Barlow says jokingly when speaking to a reporter on his cellphone from his motor home outside Yellowstone National Park.

“I’m out here with the grizzly bears,” he says. “But this is where I’m comfortable. I’m a 58-year-old seriously damaged, burned-out intelligence officer.”

Barlow says he suffers from chronic PTSD, which makes it hard for him to deal with stress and sometimes other people. He finds comfort in his three dogs: Sassy, Prairie and Spirit.

His supporters say that shouldn’t be surprising considering what he went through.

Barlow started his career as a rising star tasked with organizing efforts to target Pakistan’s clandestine networks for acquiring nuclear materiel. He won the CIA’s Exceptional Accomplishment Award in 1988 for work that led to arrests, including that of Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.

He testified before Congress under direct orders from his CIA superiors, but he says he later became the target of criticism from some people in the CIA who were supporting the mujahideen (including Osama bin Laden at the time) in efforts to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

He says he chose to leave the CIA, and in early 1989, he went to work as the first weapons-of-mass-destruction intelligence officer in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. Barlow continued to write assessments of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He concluded that Pakistan already possessed nuclear weapons, had modified its F-16s to deliver these weapons and had continued to violate U.S. laws.

The intelligence would have legally precluded a sale of $1.4 billion worth of additional F-16s to Pakistan.

But in August 1989, Barlow learned that the Defense Department had asserted that the F-16s were not capable of delivering Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Barlow said that Congress was being lied to, and he objected internally.

Days later, he was fired.

“Back then I was disgustingly patriotic and I thought the government is allowing Pakistan to develop and spread nuclear weapons and I got destroyed for trying to stop it,” he said.

He was 35 at the time. His marriage to his 29-year-old wife, who also worked at the CIA, was shattered.

After a 1993 probe, the inspector general at the State Department and the CIA concluded that Barlow had been fired as a reprisal. The Defense Department maintained that the Pentagon was within its rights to fire Barlow. A 1997 GAO report largely vindicated Barlow, and his security clearances were restored. But, he says, he was unable to get rehired permanently by the government because his record was smeared.

He eventually found some work as a consultant, helping to start and run the FBI’s counterproliferation program out of Sandia National Laboratories.

Meanwhile, he has been trying for years to collect the $89,500 annual pension and health insurance that he thinks he is owed.

Who is Edward Snowden?: A 30-year-old government contractor has been charged with espionage for recent leaks of classified intelligence. He has vaulted from obscurity to international notoriety, joining the ranks of high-profile leakers such as Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.

Much of what he tried to report about Pakistan’s nuclear program is common knowledge today, and several national security bestsellers have included his story, including George Crile III’s 2003 book “Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History,” which describes Barlow as a “brilliant young analyst who gave devastating testimony.”

Today, the consulting work has dried up. He has run out of money and thinks he is about a month from being homeless.

“I served my country for 23 years. I could go get a job for $10 at Wal-Mart,” he said. “But that’s not the issue, the issue is where’s my money?”

Despite efforts by senators and various legislative committees to get him compensated for his loss, the issue has never been resolved, for political and bureaucratic reasons.

He thinks part of the problem is that there’s no structure to compensate whistleblowers in the intelligence field. He also says that the Obama administration has criminalized whistleblowing on levels he’s never seen before.

Today, he spends his days in the wilderness, fly-fishing and bird hunting with his dogs.

The advocate

It’s 8 a.m. on the 11th floor of a K Street office building, and Jesselyn Radack, 42, is trying to tame her curly blond hair with a straightening iron.

“Our PR people said, ‘Straight hair is serious hair,’ ” she said, laughing. “But it is like 100 degrees outside.”

Radack is an attorney and former ethics adviser for the Justice Department. Her supervisor told her to find another job after she disclosed after Sept. 11 that the FBI interrogated John Walker Lindh, known as the “American Taliban,” without an attorney present. Her case was closed in 2003, and prosecutors never identified a potential charge against her.

Today, Radack is a mother of three and director of national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblowing advocacy organization.

That means she’s an advocate, attorney and, it turns out, therapist of sorts for whistleblowers who come to her “bankrupt, blacklisted and broken,” she says.

“Once you are labeled that way, you are just radioactive,” she said.

And she can certainly empathize.

Before she decided to make her disclosure, she says she suffered from horrible insomnia. She also has long suffered from multiple sclerosis, and the stress caused flare-ups of her disease.

“I had this knowledge and had to do something,” she said on a recent afternoon at her brick home in Tenleytown. “After law school, I thought the government wears the white hat and is on the right side of the law. I never expected to be a whistleblower.”

But the Yale Law School graduate saw something she thought was wrong and felt compelled to report it.

After her case went public, she noticed a chill in how she and her family were treated. She took her children to the “tot shabbat,” or sabbath celebration for young children, at Temple Sinai in Northwest Washington and noticed that no one would sit near her and her family. It turns out that some of the people she blew the whistle on also attended her temple. The situation got so bad, she said, she had to talk to the rabbi about it.

“We’re inside the Beltway, and it’s a small city,” Radack says. “It’s like high school. They just freeze you out.”

Secret surveillance court overhaul is urged

Source

Secret surveillance court overhaul is urged

By David G. Savage

July 29, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

WASHINGTON — When the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court began in 1978, it was seen as a smart compromise aimed at protecting both national security and civil liberties.

Before, the FBI under Director J. Edgar Hoover or the U.S. attorney general could use secret wiretaps to compile damaging dossiers on perceived enemies, including politicians and activists. Under the new law, the FBI or the CIA had to go before a judge of the special court if it wanted to wiretap an "agent of a foreign power" in this country, such as a Soviet spy.

These days, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is more often seen as a good idea gone sour.

As the U.S. government has shifted away from tracking spies or known terrorists to detecting potential plots linked to terrorism, the judges on the court have been called upon to make momentous decisions, such as approving the mass collection of records and data.

Critics say the judicial process has gone awry. The judges, who once served as a check on the government, now serve as a secret and secure rubber stamp for wide-ranging surveillance policies, they say.

"This court has evolved to serve a very different role than when it began," said Jennifer Granick, a lawyer at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. "It is now making secret interpretations of the law, and no judge, and no court, should play that role."

She was referring to leaks last month that revealed how the government's surveillance has expanded in the last decade. One document released by intelligence analyst Edward Snowden showed that a judge on the secret court had approved an order that required a unit of Verizon to turn over all its phone records for a three-month period.

This revelation surprised many, but not those inside the government. Since 2001, Congress has authorized federal agents investigating "international terrorism" to obtain business records that are "relevant to an authorized investigation."

This read as though it referred to records involving known terrorists or at least suspicious people with links to terrorists.

Instead, the Justice Department under President George W. Bush and now President Obama decided this meant the National Security Agency could collect and store all the dialing records of phone calls made in this country because they might prove relevant to a future terrorism investigation.

The mass collection policy was approved by a judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in a secret hearing with only the government's lawyers present.

This has prompted calls in Congress and elsewhere for changes in the court. Some cite a need for a better mix of judges than those currently serving, who are almost all Republican appointees. Others want to include an advocate who takes the other side and argues for privacy and civil liberties.

"This process needs an adversary," retired Judge James Robertson, who served on the special court, told an oversight board hearing this month. "A judge needs to hear both sides of a case."

By law, the court is made up of 11 U.S. district judges, all of whom are appointed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. They rarely meet as a group. Instead, a judge comes to Washington and serves for a week at a time at the federal courthouse to review and act on the government's requests for surveillance.

Last year, the Justice Department submitted 1,789 requests to "conduct electronic surveillance." One was later withdrawn, and each of the rest was approved by a judge, according to a report sent to Congress.

In addition, the government sought 212 orders for "certain business records." The special court "did not deny, in whole or in part, any such application" last year, the Justice Department said, but there were "modifications" to 200 of those orders.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are proposing measures to change how the judges are named and to require the court to issue unclassified versions of its opinions.

"I think these judges take their jobs very seriously, but we need a more effective set of checks and balances," Schiff said. "Right now, 10 of 11 were appointed by Republican presidents." [Yea, and President Obama, a Democrat, is more or less a carbon copy clone of Republican President George W. Bush.]

Schiff proposes that the judges be nominated by the president specifically for the court and confirmed by the Senate. "If they came before the Senate, we would get a better understanding of how they view the 4th Amendment" and its protection against unreasonable searches, he said. [Yea, like the Senate gives a rats *ss about the Fourth Amendment]

Blumenthal has described the court as "broken. It is unaccountable, secretive and one-sided."

In recent week, lawyers for the Bush and Obama administrations have come to the defense of the special court and its judges. The judges bring a "healthy skepticism" to requests for surveillance, said Steven Bradbury, a top Justice Department lawyer under Bush.

"I want to correct the erroneous claim that the FISA court is a rubber stamp," Robert Litt, counsel for Obama's director of national intelligence, said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. He said the judges made sure each request for surveillance "complies with the law." [Yea, so approving 1,789 of the 1,789 requests to "conduct electronic surveillance" isn't a rubber stamp???]

But University of Virginia law professor Christopher Sprigman, like Granick, says the problem goes beyond how the judges are appointed or how they handle specific requests for wiretapping. He says the major decisions on the nation's surveillance policies should not be made behind closed doors in a one-sided proceeding.

The leaked court orders reveal a mass collection policy that "has no limits," he said. It could include all credit card records or all travel records, he said.

"We need a public debate if we are going to switch to a mass surveillance policy," Sprigman said. "Congress needs to decide — in public — whether it is worth surveilling everyone. This shouldn't be decided in a secret court." [Congress doesn't need a public debate on the best way to side step the Constitution, it needs to start obeying the Constitution!!!]

david.savage@latimes.com

What part of the Constitution makes prostitution a FEDERAL crime????

Source

FBI says it arrested 150 in three days for child prostitution

10:50 a.m. CDT, July 29, 2013

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI arrested 150 people across the United States for holding children against their will for prostitution, a three-day weekend sweep that officials on Monday called the largest-ever operation of its kind.

The suspects were arrested in 76 U.S. cities and are expected to face state and federal charges related to sex crimes and human trafficking, FBI and U.S. Justice Department officials said at a news conference.

FBI agents and local police recovered 105 children during the operation at truck stops, motels, casinos and other places where they were held against their will for prostitution, officials said.

Children who are most vulnerable to being exploited for sex crimes are between 13 and 16 years old without strong ties to family members, officials said.

"We are trying to take this crime out of the shadows and put a spotlight on it," said FBI Assistant Director Ronald Hosko.

Paradise Valley high-school students will be required to wear ID badges

What's next? Will the Jewish students be required to wear a badge with a yellow star on it???

If you ask me I would say it is a violation of the 5th Amendments, forcing kids to wear badges that have their photos and names on them.

Well yea, in addition to a violation of the 13th Amendment, because basically the state of Arizona is forcing the kids into slavery by requiring them to go to high school until they are 16, which is a violation of the 13th Amendment.

Per the 13th Amendment you can only force people into slavery when they have been convicted of a crime, allowing the government to sent them to prison as a slave for punishment of the crime they were convicted of.

Source

Paradise Valley high-school students will be required to wear ID badges

By Amy B Wang The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:20 PM

Starting this school year, all high-school students in the Paradise Valley Unified School District must wear identification badges at all times while on campus.

The new policy is part of an increased “sight security” effort, said PVUSD student services Director Jim Lee. The district’s five high schools and one alternative school will require wearing the badges — affecting about 11,000 students total.

“It’s kind of a safety and accountability measure of who should be on campus,” Lee said. “If a staff member is having an interaction with a student on campus, they can verify who they’re talking to.”

The district already issues photo-identification cards to all of its high-school students at the beginning of each school year. This year will be no different, except the photography companies taking student photos will provide lanyards free of charge, Lee said.

In the past, school officials required students to carry these identification cards with them at all times and students had to produce them if asked. Now, if they don’t wear the badges, they will face a series of warnings that differ at each high school.

Students had mixed reactions to the new policy.

Wyatt Wagner, an incoming junior at Shadow Mountain High School, said he has heard of people posing as different students on campus.

But even though he can see why the district would want to require badges, Wagner thinks it will be too much for schools to enforce the rule.

“I heard about it a couple months before school ended,” Wagner said. “Nobody’s going to actually follow through with it. There’s going to be too much trouble going on.”

“I don’t think it’s really that much of a big deal to have it on you,” said Nick Anderson, a senior at Shadow Mountain High School. “But also, 16- to 18-year-olds should be able to be trusted to be at your own school at your own time.”

Paradise Valley’s new policy is similar to one the Scottsdale Unified School District adopted last year, with mixed success. Not wearing badges in Scottsdale meant a dress-code violation for students, and the district reported that dress-code violations were up 900 percent this year.

Republic reporter Mary Beth Faller contributed to this article.

Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Lake!!!!

Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Toilet!!!!

1) A large part of the time the park is not open to the public, but used for events to raise money for the royal rulers of Tempe. And these events are expensive to attend and most of the working class people that live in Tempe can't afford to attend the events, despite the fact that these people were forced to pay for Tempe Town Toilet with their hard earned tax dollars.

2) These events cause huge traffic jams and parking problems in the downtown Tempe area

3) When these events are concerts they routinely keep people awake late at night in the entire downtown area, and as far north as Roosevelt Road in Scottsdale which is also Continental Drive in Tempe. I am not sure how far south the concerts can be heard.

Also check out:

Source

Tempe to weigh revising Town Lake plan

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:10 AM

The Tempe City Council took a leap of faith more than a decade ago when it sank $44.8 million into building a 2 1/2-mile-long lake in the desert.

The council hoped that risking the debt to create high-profile waterfront property would pay off in the long run for Tempe, then a landlocked city desperate for new development.

But 14 years after the lake opened in 1999, city finance officials say Tempe is faced with a reality check that Town Lake is far from reaching the city’s development goals.

Tonight, the council is expected to consider revising a financing plan for Town Lake.

City finance officials have said the revised plan would give developers a financial break on their share of costs tied to the man-made lake [i.e. - stiff us taxpayers with the cost], make private development more affordable [i.e. stiff us taxpayers with the cost] and, ultimately, advance Tempe’s plans to secure sufficient lakeshore private development to ease the hefty public costs of maintaining Town Lake. [now the last phrase certainly is an oxymoron - give tax dollars private developers to lower the cost to taxpayers - now that's an impossibility - the more we give them the more it costs us]

But critics argue that taxpayers have long carried the financial burden for private lake development.

The new plan offers no guarantee that economic breaks for developers will actually spur construction, argue Joe Pospicil and Art Jacobs, two longtime Tempe residents who regularly question city finances and criticize lake expenses.

If approved, the revised plan also would shift the burden of paying for a new west-end lake dam, which the city has estimated will cost at least $37.4 million, to Tempe taxpayers, freeing developers from sharing the expense to replace the dam. [That a fancy way of saying give boatloads of our hard earned tax dollars out in corporate welfare rich corporations - the rich corporations that give bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions to the members of the Tempe City Council]

Approval of the city proposal would mark the second time a Tempe City Council, aiming to drive development, has tweaked the original 1995 lake-financing plan in favor of developers. The first was in 1997.

Mayor Mark Mitchell said he believes the proposal merits more time in the public realm so that council members may gain sufficient community feedback. [Translation - he wants to make it look like the taxpayers approve of the members of the Tempe City Council giving boatloads of our cash to the rich corporations that gave the members of the Tempe City Council bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]

But it remains to be seen whether Mitchell’s colleagues agree that the council has a responsibility to arrange future forums for the public to question and comment on the proposal.

As of Monday, the proposed changes were included on the agenda for today’s council meeting.

The finance proposal is not set for a two-hearing process, which would have allowed for public comment at the first hearing and then required a vote and a second opportunity for public comment at a future council meeting.

That means the council could choose to approve the revised Town Lake financing plan with little opportunity for public input.

But before the council agenda was posted on the city’s website Friday, Mitchell said he still had questions about the financing plan.

“When we initially developed the lake, we had a plan, but it’s a working document,” he said. “We might change it, we might not. (But) we’ll have enough time to thoroughly review (any formal changes).” [translation - we know how to run your life better then you do, but if we screw it up don't blame us]

Mitchell said he expects staff today to merely explain the long-term impact of the proposed changes. [That pretty simple Mayor Mitchell, you and the other royal members of the Tempe City Council will be giving our hard earned tax dollars out as corporate welfare for years to come to corporations that give you bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]

The proposed finance changes were triggered by an economic reality check, Roger Hallsted, the city finance analyst for the Rio Salado Community Facilities District, told The Arizona Republic.

“From all of our original projections, (we were) thinking really by about this time ... the lake would be built out,” Hallsted said.

Tempe’s goal is for private development on 120 acres to generate assessment fees covering 60 percent of annual operations costs. [So us taxpayers will be forced to pay for 40 percent of the developers costs]

But a Republic analysis last year revealed that in the 13 years since the lake was filled, private development still only covered about 20 percent of operation and maintenance costs, well below the 60 percent envisioned in the original city plan. [So in stead of us taxpayers being stuck with paying 40 percent of the developers costs, we are stuck with paying 80 percent of the developers costs - if you ask me us taxpayers are getting screwed on this deal]

Tempe taxpayers have and continue to pay the majority of the $2 million to $3 million in annual costs for operations and maintenance as well as most of the bill for the $44.8 million in original construction costs. [translation - us taxpayers are getting screwed - also did you know that the city of Tempe spends more on Tempe Town Toilet, aka Tempe Town Lake then on all the other parks in Tempe combined???]

Private investment has spurred construction of about 24 acres of condos, high-rise office and commercial space around the lake. Town Lake supporters blame the recession for slower-than-expected development. [Well why didn't the freaking geniuses on the Tempe City Council figure out this??? I guess they were too busy taking bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions from the rich developers]

The proposed changes to the financing plan are aimed at making land surrounding Town Lake more attractive to private development, Hallsted said. [yea, like giving then 10 times as much corporate welfare as originally planned]

If the council approves the changes, Town Lake developers would pay less toward their share of payments for the original construction costs. [And us taxpayers get screwed again and will have to make up the difference]

The proposal emanated from Tempe’s Enhanced Services Commission, Tempe Finance Manager Ken Jones said. [It sounds more like it came from the developers who will be getting the corporate welfare if you ask me!!!!]

The commission includes representation from Jones; Town Lake developers; Nancy Hormann, the president of the group that manages the downtown Tempe district; and Arizona State University, which owns and is attempting to develop acres of lakeshore property. [yes I was right, it did come from the developers who will are getting the corporate welfare!!!!]

A Republic review of public records from the commission meetings shows that commission members have spent the past year discussing development and maintenance plans for the lake.

At a January meeting, Jones asked for “the logic behind asking the council to cover the cost of replacing the dams,” according to public records of the meeting. [If you remember it was the idiots on the Tempe City Council who get screwed on the damn. The accepted a worthless ORAL 30 year guarantee on the damn, which failed after 10 years causing us taxpayers to get stuck with the replacement costs]

Hallsted said shifting the cost of the dams from being a shared debt with private developers to a taxpayer-only-funded cost is the result of the original rubber dam deteriorating years earlier than expected. [yea, like I just said]

“These new dams, at $38 million to $50 million, if we were to put that in at the true cost, just the (Town Lake) infrastructure replacement budget would have gone from $531,000 (annually) to $2 million,” he said.

The city had to face facts, he said, that it would have to shoulder the dam’s cost rather than “bankrupting every single (lake) property owner,” Hallsted said. [f*ck you!!!! bankrupt the developers for making dumb decisions, not the taxpayers. Or let the members of the Tempe City Council pay for the whole thing.]

The commission questioned whether it’s “more expensive to build at the lake than anywhere else in the Valley” and whether the city was “willing to offer an incentive to level the playing field,” according to public meeting records. [Well maybe the idiots on the Tempe City Council should not have build the lake, since it is a money losing experience]

The commission recommended a plan that would lower an annual “holding fee” of sorts that developers pay until they build on their lake property. [translation - make the taxpayers pay more of the developers expenses - i.e. more corporate welfare for the rich corporations building stuff on Tempe Town Toilet]

If the revised plan is approved, that fee would be reduced from the current 5 percent to the rate of inflation, which is currently 2.2 percent, Hallsted said. [which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]

The financing proposal also includes lowering the annual interest rate developers pay over the 25 years they are allowed to pay back their share of lake construction. [again, which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]

The current interest rate is 5 percent, and the proposal would lower it to 3.64 percent, Hallsted said. He added that the proposal calls for the council to make the rate reduction retroactive to July 1, 2009.

If the council approves rolling back the fee, developers that have built existing commercial and residential development at the lake would receive credits on biannual debt payments they are currently making. [and us taxpayers will be stuck with even bigger bills. Of course the members of the Tempe City Council will get to keep the bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions they accepted from the developers of property at Tempe Town Toilet]

While critics worry that taxpayers are funding too much of the cost for Town Lake, Hallsted reasons that the revised plan will establish a realistic financing plan for the lake and encourage development that will help pay a greater share of the lake’s annual operations and maintenance costs. [why expect the developers to pay for their costs, when they can give small bribes, oops, I mean small campaign contributions to the Tempe City Council members who will stiff the taxpayers with the bill]

“The key thing,” he said, “is being fair to the citizens, but try to make it more enticing for developers to come in.” [translation - the key to this is SCREWING the taxpayers and forcing them to pay the developers bills]

The NSA hears and sees everything you do!!!!!

Unwitting drug mule sues Ford

Source

Unwitting drug mule sues Ford

Associated Press Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:26 AM

EL PASO, Texas — A West Texas man who became an unwitting drug mule for Mexican drug traffickers is suing Ford Motor Co., alleging the auto maker freely gave away the car key codes that allowed the traffickers to plant marijuana in his trunk.

An FBI affidavit from 2011 says traffickers used a locksmith to make copies of their victims’ car keys.

Ricardo Magallanes was convicted of drug trafficking in May 2011 and faced more than three years in prison when he was cleared. His attorney, Louis Lopez, says Ford has no countermeasures to keep criminals from gaining access to keys.

In court documents, Ford says the owner’s manual said replacement keys were available through Ford dealerships and denies Magallanes wasn’t warned the code information could be given to third parties.

Bus on Justin Bieber tour in border pot bust

Source

Bus on Justin Bieber tour in border pot bust

Associated Press Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:35 AM

DETROIT — U.S. border agents say they found marijuana on a bus with singer Justin Bieber's tour as it crossed into Detroit from Windsor, Canada.

The Detroit Free Press reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ken Hammond confirms the bus was stopped Sunday as it attempted to enter the U.S. on the Ambassador Bridge.

The singer was not on the bus at the time and performed later that night at Joe Louis Arena.

Hammond says a police dog indicated the presence of drugs on the bus and that drug paraphernalia and a small amount of marijuana were found. He says the bus driver was cited and that the bus and its passengers were allowed to go.

Student left in DEA cell to get $4 million from US

Student left in DEA cell to get $4 million from US

ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press, By ELLIOT SPAGAT and ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press

Updated 10:31 am, Tuesday, July 30, 2013

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Justice Department will pay $4.1 million to a California college student left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell for four days without food or water last year, two people familiar with the case told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Daniel Chong, 23, was detained in an April 2012 drug raid in San Diego and left in the 5-by-10-foot windowless holding cell. He said he drank his own urine to stay alive and tried to write a farewell message to his mother with his own blood.

The people familiar with the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the settlement before it was announced Tuesday morning at a news conference.

Chong, who was an engineering student at University of California, San Diego, was at a friend's house in April 2012 when a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raid netted 18,000 ecstasy pills, other drugs and weapons. Chong and eight others were taken into custody.

Agents told Chong he would not be charged and had him wait in the cell at DEA offices in San Diego. The door did not reopen for four days, when agents found him severely dehydrated and covered in his own feces.

Chong said he began to hallucinate on the third day. He urinated on a metal bench to drink his urine. He stacked a blanket, his pants and shoes on the bench and tried to reach an overhead fire sprinkler, futilely swatting at it with his cuffed hands to set it off.

Chong said last year that he gave up and accepted death. He bit into his eyeglasses to break them. He said he used a shard of glass to carve "Sorry Mom" onto his arm so he could leave something for her. He managed to finish an "S."

Chong was hospitalized for five days for dehydration, kidney failure, cramps and a perforated esophagus. He lost 15 pounds.

The DEA issued a rare public apology at the time.

Chong's attorney, Eugene Iredale, said Monday that he would announce "an important development" Tuesday, little more than a year after filing a $20 million claim against the federal government.

A DEA spokesman, Rusty Payne, referred questions Monday to the Justice Department, which handled settlement negotiations. A call to the Justice Department's public affairs office was not returned.

Eugene Robinson: Snowden deserves our thanks, not our derision

Eugene Robinson: Snowden deserves our thanks, not our derision

Updated: 29 July 2013 11:44 PM

Edward Snowden’s renegade decision to reveal the jaw-dropping scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance is being vindicated, even as Snowden himself is being vilified.

Intelligence officials in the Obama administration and their allies on Capitol Hill paint the fugitive analyst as nothing but a traitor who wants to harm the United States. Many of those same officials grudgingly acknowledge, however, that public debate about the NSA’s domestic snooping is now unavoidable.

This would be impossible if Snowden, or someone like him, hadn’t spilled the beans. We wouldn’t know that the NSA is keeping a database of all our phone calls. We wouldn’t know that the government gets the authority to keep track of our private communications — even if we are not suspected of terrorist activity or associations — from secret judicial orders issued by a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law.

Snowden, of course, is hardly receiving the thanks of a grateful nation. He has spent the last five weeks trapped in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow. Russian officials, who won’t send him home for prosecution, wish he would move along. But he fears that if he takes off for one of the South American countries that have offered asylum, he would risk being intercepted en route and extradited. It’s a tough situation, and time is not on his side.

You can cheer Snowden’s predicament or you can bemoan it. But even some of the NSA’s fiercest defenders have admitted, if not in so many words, that Snowden performed a valuable public service.

Less than two weeks ago, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement to announce that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect metadata about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the … collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program. We wouldn’t know it exists.

The new position espoused by President Barack Obama and those who kept the NSA’s domestic surveillance a deep, dark secret is that of course we should have a wide-ranging national debate about balancing the imperatives of privacy and security. But they don’t mean it.

I know this because when an actual debate erupted in Congress last week, the intelligence cognoscenti freaked out.

An attempt to cut off funding for the NSA’s collection of phone data, sponsored by an unlikely pair of allies in the House — Justin Amash, a conservative Republican, and John Conyers, a liberal Democrat, both from Michigan — suffered a surprisingly narrow defeat, 217-205.

The Amash-Conyers amendment was in no danger of becoming law — the Senate would have killed it, and if all else failed, Obama would have vetoed it. But it put the intelligence establishment on notice: The spooks don’t decide how far is too far. We do.

At the heart of the Fourth Amendment is the concept that a search must be justified by suspicion. Yet how many of those whose phone call information is being logged are suspected of being terrorists? One in a million?

Equally antithetical to the idea of a free society, in my view, is the government’s position that we are not even permitted to know how the secret intelligence court interprets our laws and the Constitution. The order that Snowden leaked — compelling a Verizon unit to cough up data on the phone calls it handled — was one of only a few to come to light in the court’s three decades of existence. Now there are voices calling for all the court’s rulings to be released.

We’re talking about these issues. You can wish Edward Snowden well or wish him a lifetime in prison. Either way, you should thank him.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson may be contacted at eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Arizona DPS officer convicted in embezzlement case

Arizona DPS officer convicted in embezzlement case

Associated Press Tue Jul 30, 2013 11:31 AM

NOGALES, Ariz. — An Arizona Department of Public Safety officer and his wife face multiple years in prison on convictions stemming from the wife's embezzlement of $175,000 from her employer.

A Santa County Superior Court jury in Nogales on Monday convicted Horacio and Carmen Lomeli of conspiracy, money laundering and theft.

The Attorney General's Office says the Lomelis face mandatory prison terms of between 4.5 and 23 years on each count.

Sentencing is set for Sept. 3.

According to prosecutors, Carmen Lomeli embezzled the money by fraudulently writing business checks for Sierra Seed and depositing them in the couple's joint checking account.

The DPS put Horacio Lomeli on paid administrative leave after he was indicted in June 2012. Spokesman Bart Graves says DPS will review Lomeli's job status now that he's been convicted.

LAPD officer pleads no contest to charges of molesting two young girls

LAPD officer pleads no contest to charges of molesting two young girls

By Andrew Blankstein

July 30, 2013, 12:32 p.m.

A veteran Los Angeles police officer pleaded no contest to sexually molesting one girl and attempting to molest a second after luring them to his home, authorities said Tuesday.

Miguel Angel Schiappapietra Jr., 28, pleaded no contest in a downtown courtroom to two felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 years of age.

The officer is due back in court Sept. 6 and is expected to be sentenced by Judge Michael Abzug to three years in state prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.

The six-year veteran was arrested in May after the girls, ages 5 and 8, told detectives the officer had sexually molested them.

Authorities did not elaborate on the nature of the crimes or the exact relationship the officer had to the girls, other than to say they were not family members.

Schiappapietra, assigned to the Foothill Division, was off-duty at the time of his arrest. The case was investigated by the sheriff's Special Victims Unit.

LAPD had no immediate comment on Schiappapietra's job status, although convictions are tantamount to firing offenses. The officer will remain free until his sentencing, prosecutors said.

A gun and badge means I can have sex with any woman!!!!!

Sheriff's deputy charged with soliciting sexual bribes while on duty

By Samantha Schaefer and Robert Lopez

July 30, 2013, 12:03 p.m.

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy allegedly offered not to arrest two women he pulled over in exchange for sex, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Jose Rigaberto Sanchez, 28, is accused of raping women and soliciting bribes while on duty. He was arrested at his home Monday night without incident after a nearly three-year investigation.

Sanchez is charged with soliciting a bribe from a woman he pulled over in Palmdale while on duty Sept. 22, 2010, according to the district attorney's office. The deputy allegedly offered not to arrest her on an outstanding warrant in exchange for sex, an investigation by district attorney’s Justice System Integrity Division showed.

Two nights later, he solicited a bribe in the form of sexual activity from a woman he pulled over on suspicion of driving under the influence, the district attorney’s office said.

Sanchez, a seven-year department veteran, was most recently assigned to patrol duties at the Palmdale Station.

He has been charged with 11 counts including sexual penetration under the color of authority, soliciting a bribe from alleged victims, and rape under fear or distress, according to agency spokesman Steve Whitmore.

"He was trying to coerce them [alleged victims] into doing something," Whitmore said. "This all happened on duty."

The Sheriff's Department launched an investigation in 2010 after receiving a tip from an informant, Whitmore said. Sanchez was relieved from duty with pay in September 2010 after the tip was received, and his pay was suspended after he was arrested at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Whitmore said.

Sanchez was being held Monday night in lieu of $1.45-million bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday morning in downtown Los Angeles. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

robert.lopez@latimes.com

Samantha.Schaefer@latimes.com

Enjoying that wonderful feeling of security in America

Ariz. ruling says police can temporarily take guns

Source

Ariz. ruling says police can temporarily take guns

Posted: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 10:05 am

Associated Press

A new Arizona court ruling says police can take temporary custody of a person's gun for officer-safety reasons even if the person's contact with police was voluntary.

A man appealing a firearms misconduct conviction argued that Phoenix police wrongfully took his gun after he agreed to talk with officers on a street in a high-crime area. [Of course any defense attorney will tell you to NEVER talk to the police]

An Arizona law allows police to take temporary custody of firearms during encounters with people, and the Court of Appeals ruled that includes times when a person is not in custody and merely in consensual contact with police.

The ruling says that gives police flexibility while safeguarding the rights of lawfully armed individuals. [Rubbish. The ruling flushes the Second Amendment down the toilet.]

A dissenting judge argued that the law only applies when there's an "investigative" stop based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. [In English the judge said the police can only take your guns when it is also legal for them to "arrest" or "detain" the person. The police are only allowed to "arrest" a person when they have "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause"]

Government Tyrants 1 - Freedom Fighters 0

Bradley Manning acquitted of most serious charge, convicted of others

By Richard A. Serrano

July 30, 2013, 8:51 p.m.

FT. MEADE, Md. — Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was convicted Tuesday of violating the Espionage Act and faces up to 136 years in prison, but his acquittal on the even more serious charge of aiding the enemy was hailed as a victory for the press and the Internet against the government's crackdown on leaks of classified information.

Manning's leak of more than 700,000 State Department cables, terrorism detainee assessments, combat logs and videos was the largest breach of classified secrets in U.S. history. Among the information was a now-infamous 2007 video of an Apache combat helicopter attack in Iraq in which U.S. soldiers fired on civilians and killed 12, including two Reuters journalists.

Manning becomes one of only two people ever convicted under the Espionage Act for making classified data available to the public; the other, Samuel L. Morison, a government security analyst convicted in 1985, was pardoned by President Clinton on his final day in office.

"We won the battle, now we need to go win the war," said chief defense lawyer David Coombs, who was greeted by applause and thanks from Manning supporters when he left the courtroom. "Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire."

Under the aiding the enemy charge, Manning, 25, could have been sent to prison for life with no parole. The military judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, heard the case without a jury and did not explain her verdicts. She appeared to have accepted defense arguments that Manning did not understand that releasing the material could allow Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations to use the information to harm the United States.

The government's theory — that even if Manning did not directly convey information to an enemy, he could be charged with that crime because information released to the public could be obtained by U.S. adversaries — had serious implications for whistle-blowers and those who provide information about classified programs to journalists.

Prosecutors "pushed a theory that making information available on the Internet — whether through WikiLeaks, in a personal blog posting, or on the website of the New York Times — can amount to 'aiding the enemy,'" said Widney Brown, senior director for international law and policy at Amnesty International. That, Brown said, "is ludicrous."

A conviction for aiding the enemy would have "severely crippled the operation of a free press," said Thomas Fiedler, dean of the College of Communication at Boston University.

At Tuesday's hearing, Manning wore a blue dress uniform, wire rim glasses and a prison pallor after three years in pretrial confinement. He stood at ramrod attention and listened without emotion as the judge read the guilty and not-guilty verdicts on about two dozen charges.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin Wednesday, with each side expected to present about 10 witnesses. Manning's lawyers may put him on the stand.

If so, it would be the second time he has addressed the court. In February, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges of mishandling classified data. He said then that after collecting intelligence on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "I began to become depressed with the situation we had become mired in year after year."

After the sentencing, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, commander of joint forces in the capital region, has the authority to toss out some or all of the guilty verdicts and, theoretically, release Manning. On Friday, Manning supporters rallied outside the gate of Ft. McNair in Washington, where Buchanan is stationed. They carried balloons and a 20-foot banner that read, "Maj. Gen. Buchanan, Do the Right Thing. Free Bradley Manning."

Manning was arrested in spring 2010 after the documents he took from government computer databases began appearing in sensational posts on the WikiLeaks website. For months he was held incommunicado, and his lawyers complained he was kept naked and tortured emotionally before his trial began in June.

Manning elected to allow Judge Lind to hear the case without a jury, probably worried that a panel of fellow soldiers weighing his fate would not be pleased that some of the material he gave to WikiLeaks was found in Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan after the Al Qaeda leader was killed by Navy SEALs in May 2011.

Military prosecutors presented evidence that Manning underwent extensive training about safeguarding classified data before becoming an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq, and that he instructed other soldiers in security procedures.

"He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it," Maj. Ashden Fein, the chief prosecutor, told the judge.

The defense, however, portrayed Manning as a small-town youth from Oklahoma who joined the Army with good intentions, only to become deeply bothered when he discovered what he believed to be government misconduct. Coombs said Manning was a whistle-blower, a "young, naive, good-intentioned soldier."

The soldier has spawned a worldwide group of sympathizers who have rallied in his defense, urged his release and floated his name for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On Tuesday morning, hours before Manning learned his fate, two dozen supporters, many wearing black "TRUTH" T-shirts, hoisted signs and waved at workers arriving at Ft. Meade, where the court-martial has been held, and which also houses the highly secretive National Security Agency and the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was asked before the verdicts whether a long prison sentence would be worth it to Manning.

"That's something Bradley Manning has to weigh up," Assange told CNN. "He was willing to take that risk because he believes apparently that the result is so important."

richard.serrano@latimes.com

Egyptian military plays Uncle Sam as Uncle Sap

Posted on July 30, 2013 5:20 pm by Robert Robb

Egyptian military plays Uncle Sam as Uncle Sap

Egyptian General Sisi is sure making it hard for his U.S. apologists.

According to the apologists, the military was simply channeling the Rousseauian General Will of the Egyptian people. They were tired of being governed by President Mohamad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, so the military ousted him.

The fact that Morsi had been elected to the position was a triviality. The military would turn civilian power over to a technocratic government, new elections would be held shortly. Nothing to see here. Keep the $1.3 billion in military aid flowing.

Then last week, Sisi gave a public speech exhorting the Egyptian people to flood the streets to give the military a mandate to crush the Brotherhood. So much for the façade of a technocratic civilian government.

Egypt is now run by a military junta. In reality, it has been since a coup by another general, Gamel Nasser, in 1952.

The Egyptian military is grossly oversized. There is no external threat to Egypt’s territorial sovereignty that requires a military of its size and lethality. Its primary mission is clearly internal control.

Nor is the military a neutral force. It controls a huge swath of Egypt’s private sector economy. It has a privileged position it will act to protect.

The United States has heavily subsidized Egypt’s oversized military. According to U.S. law, the aid should be cut off if the military has conducted a coup against a democratically-elected government.

Morsi was elected. The military ousted him, and still holds him hostage. It was a coup.

Moreover, the repression in Egypt mounts. Trumped up charges are being leveled against Morsi. The military has reasserted the Mubarak-era power to arrest civilians. Mubarak’s secret police are being unleashed against internal dissent, principally the Brotherhood.

Yet, the Obama administration says that nothing in the law requires it to decide whether what has happened in Egypt amounts to a coup, so it isn’t going to. Which means that the U.S. military aid will continue to flow to a repressive military junta.

According to the foreign policy “realists” in both political parties, the aid needs to continue so that the United States can retain “leverage” on the junta. Not sure how much leverage we’re buying, but to the extent we are, to what end?

The aid originated in the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Supposedly, it is necessary to keep Egypt honoring the agreement. But Egypt doesn’t pose a threat to Israel. The last thing the Egyptian military wants to do is fight someone with the capability of actually fighting back. Nor does it have an incentive to aid Hamas’ or Hezbollah’s efforts against Israel. They are on the other side of the Arab divide.

So, what might we want to achieve with our leverage in terms of Egyptian domestic affairs?

The Obama administration wants the Muslim Brotherhood to be part of the new political process. But the Brotherhood has already won three national elections. Why should it play a game the military has made clear they will not be permitted to win? And the military is obviously committed to suppressing and enfeebling the Brotherhood, not giving it a role in the country’s future.

U.S. foreign policy should advance our interests, not necessarily our ideals. But there should be clear interests at stake when we trash our ideals.

The coup was supposedly in our national interest because the Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t really interested in democratic governance, but in imposing some sort of Islamist state. But in the worst nightmare of the realists, the Brotherhood wouldn’t impose as repressive a theocratic regime as exists in Saudi Arabia, which the realists regard as an ally.

The geopolitical crosscurrents in the Middle East are powerful, dangerous and blindingly complex and intricate. There is the Sunni-Shia conflict. There is the conflict between the royalists and those, such as the Brotherhood, whose governing philosophy is murky but doesn’t include hereditary succession. Where U.S. interests lie in this maelstrom is far from clear.

What is clear is that no important national interest is being served by continuing to give a repressive military junta $1.3 billion a year. The Egyptian military is playing Uncle Sam for Uncle Sap.

Why marijuana, estate planning don’t mix

Why marijuana, estate planning don’t mix

June 24, 2013, 6:29 PM

By Matthew Heimer

Life insurance is an important retirement-planning tool for many people age 40 and up — whether they’re using it to protect their a family’s savings in case of an untimely death, or to help defray estate and inheritance taxes for their heirs. But there’s one group that may find that tool to be increasingly expensive, or even inaccessible: Marijuana users.

This may sound like a set-up for an excruciating Cheech & Chong sketch, but it’s becoming a bigger issue as marijuana use moves closer to the mainstream. In a detailed piece on the trade website LifeHealthPro earlier this month, life insurance blogger Brad Cummins noted that with 18 states and the District of Columbia having legalized medical marijuana (and two states, Washington and Colorado, taking even broader steps toward decriminalization), life insurance companies are scrambling to figure out how to “rate” pot smokers. And in a walk through the rules of 15 major insurers, Cummins finds results that are all over the map.

A few carriers essentially apply no penalty to customers who are using the drug with a prescription. But in most cases, using marijuana more than two or three times a month would mean paying the same rates as regular cigarette smokers – a fairly stiff penalty since, all other things being equal, a smoker can expect to spend anywhere from 2 to 4 times as much as a nonsmoker for the same amount of life insurance. (One insurer imposes smoker status on anyone who has used marijuana even once in the previous 12 months.) [I suspect the insurance companies are just using this as an excuse to raise rates. It's a documented fact that tobacco use kills about 6 million people a year world wide, alcohol use kills another 2.5 million people a year world wide. Of course marijuana use kills zero people worldwide. Even the marijuana haters that dispute the zero yearly marijuana deaths that say marijuana use only kills a few hundred people yearly compared to the 8 million killed by tobacco and liquor. Last all my life the Federal government has been spending millions yearly trying to prove marijuana causes serious health problems and they still have not come up with anything concrete other then their propaganda lines that marijuana will kill you]

Such stances don’t go over well with marijuana legalization activists, who argue that pot smoking hasn’t been definitively linked to health problems the way that tobacco has (and who also note that many medical users ingest pot by healthier means than smoking). Cummins’s article suggests that now that some of the social stigma around marijuana is fading, insurers may be able to fine-tune their underwriting, as they get a more accurate profile of the risks associated with using the drug. In the meantime, it’s already possible for ganja fans to shop around to find an insurer willing to cut them a deal, just as tobacco users and skydivers can.

Only about 5% of adults over 26 identify themselves as users of marijuana, according to the most recent federal studies, but that number is likely to increase as decriminalization continues. Cummins stresses that anyone who’s using marijuana for any reason should fess up on an application before submitting a blood test: Without such an admission, the presence of THC (the primary active ingredient in cannabis) in your lab results can get you rejected outright.

Want a marijuana prescription? Get in line

Source

Want a marijuana prescription? Get in line

By Jen Wieczner

Last week, New Hampshire became the 19th state to legalize medical marijuana—meaning that doctors will in effect be able to prescribe pot for their patients.

But people waiting for a prescription shouldn’t hold their breath: Even after medical marijuana comes to a state, it can take months to find a doctor willing to recommend the treatment. The waiting list for an appointment at MarijuanaDoctors.com, a booking site for physicians specializing in weed, is already up to 650 patients in New Hampshire—even though doctors there aren’t permitted to sign off on pot for another year. In Illinois, where a medical marijuana bill still awaits the governor’s signature, there are 1,800 patients on the appointment waiting list. In Massachusetts, where the waiting list is some 3,000-people long, many patients are still waiting to see a doctor since legalization took effect Jan. 1. “The phone has been ringing nonstop,” says John Nicolazzo, COO of The Medical Cannabis Network, the parent company of MarijuanaDoctors.

Part of the reason for the long lines is that patient demand far overshadows the number of doctors willing to recommend marijuana, especially in states that have only recently allowed it. In Massachusetts, only seven doctors are currently listed on MarijuanaDoctors, though a few more offer the services without publicizing them, Nicolazzo says. In New Hampshire, two doctors may be ready to start seeing patients as soon as mid-August, he says. Meanwhile, four or five Midwest doctors with medical marijuana practices in legal states like Michigan have expressed interest in traveling to see patients in Illinois. “There is a huge demand for physicians to recommend this kind of treatment to their patients,” Nicolazzo says.

The shortage of pot docs is mostly due to physician skepticism and ambivalence from medical societies towards marijuana, which the government still considers a Schedule 1 controlled substance, or a drug “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Because of that status, physicians can’t technically prescribe marijuana like they would other pharmaceuticals; rather, they can recommend it or certify that a patient would benefit from getting high — and patients take that recommendation to a dispensary to get the “prescription” filled. Still, many doctors refuse: “We feel that marijuana is an untested treatment,” says Travis Harker, a family medicine physician and president of the New Hampshire Medical Society. “This is uncharted territory, it’s still not a legal drug under federal law, so I think a lot of physicians will be rightly cautious about recommending this.”

The American Medical Association doesn’t endorse marijuana or cannabis programs but believes more clinical studies are needed on the use of marijuana in medicine, and supports review of marijuana’s controlled substance status in order to facilitate that research.

Even though a federal appeals court unanimously ruled in 2002 that doctors’ licenses can’t be revoked for recommending medical marijuana, “A lot of doctors have an anxiety about this,” says Dan Riffle, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project. Indeed, there are so few docs willing to prescribe marijuana that when a physician first signs up on MarijuanaDoctors.com, patients often request appointments within 30 to 45 minutes, Nicolazzo says.

Of those pioneering physicians, some find the grass is actually greener in the weed business, and abandon traditional medicine altogether. Patients pay $150 to $300 per marijuana prescription, as insurance doesn’t cover the appointment or the drug, doctors say. One physician left his family medicine practice because he was getting more patients through the medical marijuana program, Nicolazzo says. While patients can ask their primary-care physician or regular disease specialist to authorize their use of medical marijuana—in fact, some states, including New Hampshire, require a pre-existing doctor-patient relationship for pot scripts—more often, doctors who do so operate clinics dedicated to the herb. “Most of the time, you’ve found a new market that’s been created for physicians willing to write the recommendations, and they end up building a business around that,” says Adam Bierman, CEO of Medmen, a marketing and consulting firm for marijuana dispensaries.

To limit the market for pot doctors, the New Hampshire Medical Society pushed for restrictions in the state law, so marijuana can only be prescribed for people with debilitating health conditions and symptoms. “The bill was narrowly tailored so we wouldn’t have an explosion of patients getting therapeutic cannabis,” Harker says. A patient must also have an ongoing relationship with the prescribing physician for at least three months, “so that should alleviate pressure to have these marijuana mills where people walk in and see someone for three minutes and walk out with a marijuana certification.”

But patients who get on the waiting list for a doctor may be a step closer to getting their medical marijuana card, since they will have a chance to develop that relationship by the time state laws kick in allowing the doctor to sign off. “It is so hard to find those doctors, so patients can start to see the doctor now as they would a primary-care physician,” Nicolazzo says. “By having a pre-existing relationship there, we think it helps to legitimize the industry further and also helps protect the doctor and patient from any liability issues.”

Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld

Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Published: July 30, 2013 88 Comments

The ruling is the first that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of the historical location data stored by cellphone service providers.

The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.

The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a warrant to track a suspect’s whereabouts in real time. That decision relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.

The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether cellphone location data is protected by the Constitution. The case, which was initially brought in Texas, is not expected to go to the Supreme Court because it is “ex parte,” or filed by only one party — in this case, the government.

But the case could renew calls for the highest court to look at the issue, if another federal court rules differently on the same question. And two other federal cases involving this issue are pending.

“The opinion is clear that the government can access cell site records without Fourth Amendment oversight,” said Orin Kerr, a constitutional law scholar at George Washington University Law School who filed an amicus brief in the case.

For now, the ruling sets an important precedent: It allows law enforcement officials in the Fifth Circuit to chronicle the whereabouts of an American with a court order that falls short of a search warrant based on probable cause.

“This decision is a big deal,” said Catherine Crump, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a big deal and a big blow to Americans’ privacy rights.”

The group reviewed records from more than 200 local police departments last year, concluding that the demand for cellphone location data had led some cellphone companies to develop “surveillance fees” to enable police to track suspects. [so the police are getting private businesses to monitor us to the 4th Amendment which forbids police spying without a warrant]

In reaching its decision on Tuesday, the federal appeals court went on to agree with the government’s contention that consumers knowingly give up their location information to the telecommunications carrier every time they make a call or send a text message on their cellphones.

“That means it is not protected by Fourth Amendment when the government goes to a third-party service provider and issues something that is not a warrant to demand production of those records,” said Mark Eckenwiler, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked on the case and is now with the Washington law firm Perkins Coie. “On this kind of historical cell site information, this is the first one to address the core constitutional question.”

Historical location data is crucial to law enforcement officials. Mr. Eckenwiler offered the example of drug investigations: A cellphone carrier can establish where a suspect met his supplier and how often he returned to a particular location. Likewise, location data can be vital in establishing people’s habits and preferences, including whether they worship at a church or mosque or whether they are present at a political protest, which is why, civil liberties advocates say, it should be accorded the highest privileges of privacy protection.

The decision could also bear implications for other government efforts to collect vast amounts of so-called metadata, under the argument that it constitutes “business records,” as in the National Security Agency’s collection of Verizon phone records for millions of Americans.

“It provides support for the government’s view that that procedure is constitutional, obtaining Verizon call records, because it holds that records are business records,” said Mr. Kerr, of George Washington University. “It doesn’t make it a slam dunk but it makes a good case for the government to argue that position.”

An important element in Tuesday’s ruling is the court’s presumption of what consumers should know about the way cellphone technology works. “A cell service subscriber, like a telephone user, understands that his cellphone must send a signal to a nearby cell tower in order to wirelessly connect his call,” the court ruled, going on to note that “contractual terms of service and providers’ privacy policies expressly state that a provider uses a subscriber’s location information to route his cellphone calls.”

In any event, the court added, the use of cellphones “is entirely voluntary.” [Yea, and so is going to the bathroom. But that doesn't mean the government has a God given right to listen to your cell phone call or watch you go to the bathroom]

The ruling also gave a nod to the way in which fast-moving technological advances have challenged age-old laws on privacy. Consumers today may want privacy over location records, the court acknowledged: “But the recourse for these desires is in the market or the political process: in demanding that service providers do away with such records (or anonymize them) or in lobbying elected representatives to enact statutory protections.” [I think what is happening here is the government is requiring private businesses to spy on us, and then saying it isn't a violation of the 4th Amendment because a private business is doing the spying, not the government.]

Cellphone privacy measures have been proposed in the Senate and House that would require law enforcement agents to obtain search warrants before prying open location records. Montana recently became the first state to require a warrant for location data. Maine soon followed. California passed a similar measure last year but Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed it, saying it did not strike what he called the right balance between the demands of civil libertarians and the police.

Joanna Allhands thinks Tempe Town Toilet will be a disaster

Also see:

Tempe Town Toilet
and
Tempe Cesspool for the Arts

Joanna Allhands | azcentral opinions

Posted on July 30, 2013 3:12 pm by Joanna Allhands

Incentives for Tempe Town Lake? Yeah, because that worked so well before

Truth: Tempe Town Lake development has never met its financial expectations. It doesn’t generate anywhere near the revenue necessary to cover the lake’s significant operational costs.

Truth: Over time, it’s smart to re-evaluate the city’s approach to speed lakeside development — even more so after a prolonged economic downturn. We must ensure that deals are fair to residents and enticing for businesses.

But is offering incentives the best way to do that? I’m skeptical, and Tempe residents should be, too. Let’s not forget:

– The previous City Council set a policy not to offer incentives unless they were for specific uses, such as historical preservation and environmental cleanup. That was under former Mayor Hugh Hallman, and I get that things are different now. But so different as to abandon that policy? I need convincing.

– Tempe has a poor track record of incentives and development deals, particularly when it comes to the lake. The city was embroiled in lawsuits and failed deals in the lake’s early days, which took years and cost millions of dollars to resolve. Do we really want to go down that road again, especially without specific performance expectations from businesses that receive the incentives?

Let me be clear: I was skeptical of plans city leaders floated to fund replacement Town Lake dams solely with land sales and private development. There just isn’t that much land left to produce the kind of cash we’re talking about.

But I’m equally skeptical of plans to have businesses pay less, if anything at all. Not so long ago, lakeside land at Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway was named the Valley’s most desirable.

Has the market really changed so much that that’s no longer the case without giving businesses a financial break? Maybe. But I’d like proof.

Tempe OKs controversial lake plan

Tempe City Council sells out to special interest groups

Well it's a little bit more complex then that. A $1,000 bribe, oops, I mean $1,000 campaign contribution to a Tempe City Councilman will get you $1 million in corporate welfare if you want to build something on the Tempe Town Toilet, which they call Tempe Town Lake. No I didn't document that, that's just my estimate of how corrupt the Tempe city government is.

The members of the Tempe City Council that sold us out to the developers are: Mark Mitchell [His daddy is former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell and Congressman Harry Mitchell, I think his brother is Robert Mitchell, a Tempe cop I sued in Federal court for false arrest and civil rights violations], Onnie Shekerjian, Robin Arredondo-Savage [yes I think she is related to convicted crooked Tempe City Councilman Ben Arredondo], Shana Ellis, Kolby Granville [he seems think he is the nut job neat freak Felix Unger of the Odd Couple and seems to be on a crusade to rid Tempe of messy yard criminals], Joel Navarro and Corey Woods

Source

Tempe OKs controversial lake plan

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:56 AM

The Tempe City Council voted Tuesday to revise the city’s Town Lake financing plan to offer greater incentives for developers. [translation bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions in exchange for millions of dollars in corporate welfare]

The plan was unanimously approved despite a small window for public review and little opportunity for public comment on changes that would shift millions of dollars in lake costs to taxpayers. [That because the crooks on the Tempe City Council want as little media coverage of this theft as possible]

Early Tuesday, Tempe resident Ron Tapscott, a member of a city neighborhood association, sent Mayor Mark Mitchell and the council an e-mail pleading on behalf of taxpayers for a delay on the vote.

“I strongly encourage you to postpone a decision on this matter until it has been discussed and considered with community input,” Tapscott said.

Mitchell had earlier pushed to postpone a vote and allow input from taxpayers and businesses.

“This is something that’s important,” he said. “We’re going to have plenty of opportunity for (public) engagement.”

But Tuesday, Mitchell shifted his position and voted with the rest of the council to approve the changes.

The mayor asked Tempe Finance Manager Ken Jones to clarify the plan and note that it would not directly increase residents’ taxes nor delay improvements to community parks. [Those numbers are usually done using "politician math" which any 5th grader will tell you isn't the same math the rest of us use. "Politician math" can be call math that uses smoke, mirrors and lies to justify the users points]

Jones contended the developer incentives were “clarifications” to the lake finance plan. ["clarifications" my *ss, they are just more corporate welfare]

City finance officials have said the revised plan would give developers a financial break on their share of costs tied to the man-made lake and make private development more affordable. [That's government double talk that says the revised plan will make the TAXPAYERS pay the developers BILLS] The goal is to advance Tempe’s plans to secure sufficient lakeshore private development to ease the hefty public costs of maintaining Town Lake, finance officials said. [That's an oxymoron. Stealing money from the taxpayers and giving it to the developers isn't going to reduce the taxpayers costs. In fact it's going to increase the taxpayers costs. It's just smoke, mirrors and lies from the city of Tempe to cover up this outrageous corporate welfare]

While the plan was pushed as a solution to spur development that slowed as a result of the the Great Recession, the incentives for developers would come as the Tempe and national economy are improving.

Today, Tempe and state leaders were scheduled to attend a celebration in Tempe to mark the beginning of construction on Marina Heights, a $600 million project touted as the state’s largest office development.

Developers unveiled renderings of the 2 million-square-foot project that city leaders have boasted would drive Town Lake commercial and residential development.

Town Lake critics say that taxpayers have long carried the financial burden for private lake development, and the new plan offers no guarantee that economic breaks for developers would actually spur construction.

The revised plan would shift the burden of paying for a new west-end lake dam, which the city has estimated will cost at least $37.4 million, to Tempe taxpayers, freeing developers from sharing the expense of replacing the dam. [Again, when the damn was built the royal rulers of Tempe got screwed with a ORAL 30 year guarantee on the damn. When the damn failed 10 years after being built the guarantee was worth as much as the hot air that it was created with.]

Developers would pay a lower annual “holding fee,” which they typically begin paying when they build on their lake property.

The financing proposal also includes lowering the annual interest rate that developers must pay over the 25 years that they are allowed to pay back their share of lake construction.

Tapscott counted himself among the many Tempe residents who have endured community-service cuts. Under the revised lake-financing plan “substantial costs will be shifted to Tempe residents,” he wrote to council members.

Some Tempe residents have criticized the city for shifting millions of dollars to the Town Lake dam costs from spending that was approved by voters in a past bond election for community parks.

“The Alta Mira (Goodwin Park) neighborhood has diligently worked to improve our park, acknowledging the effects of a restricted city budget,” Tapscott wrote. “We sacrificed hours of master planning and hopeful expectation to accommodate the loss of city revenues from the economic recession.”

3 hops - A lame excuse to nullify the 4th Amendment

With 3 ‘hops,’ NSA gets millions of phone records

Associated Press Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:26 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s national security team acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that, when investigating one suspected terrorist, it can read and store the phone records of millions of Americans.

Since it was revealed recently that the National Security Agency puts the phone records of every American into a database, the Obama administration has assured the nation that such records are rarely searched and, when they are, officials target only suspected international terrorists. [Yea, sure!!!!]

But testimony before Congress on Wednesday showed how easy it is for Americans with no connection to terrorism to unwittingly have their calling patterns analyzed by the government.

It hinges on what’s known as “hop” or “chain” analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people.

If the average person called 40 unique people, three-hop analysis would allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist. [Give me a break. It would be IMPOSSIBLE for a small team of FBI cop to investigate 2.5 million Americans for every person they suspect is a terrorist. This 3 hop double talk is just a lame excuse to justify spying on millions of Americans]

The NSA has said it conducted 300 searches of its telephone database last year. Left unsaid until Wednesday was that three-hop analysis off those searches could mean scrutinizing the phone records of tens or even hundreds of millions of people.

“So what has been described as a discrete program, to go after people who would cause us harm, when you look at the reach of this program, it envelopes a substantial number of Americans,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

John Inglis, the NSA’s deputy director, conceded the point but said NSA officials “try to be judicious” about conducting hop analysis.

“And so while, theoretically, 40 times 40 times 40 gets you to a large number, that’s not typically what takes place,” he said. “We have to compare the theory to the practice.” [So in reality the FBI doesn't investigate 2.5 million Americans for every suspected terrorists. But the FBI does want to use that lame 3 hop theory to give it an excuse to wire tape the phones of the 300+ millions Americans]

Such reassurances have done little to quell the sharp criticism from both parties over the once-secret program. Last week saw a close vote in the House on a measure that aimed to kill the phone surveillance program. [Yea, and they DIDN'T kill the program!!!]

On Wednesday, the administration acknowledged some limitations to its sweeping surveillance powers are inevitable.

“We are open to re-evaluating this program in ways that can perhaps provide greater confidence and public trust that this is in fact a program that achieves both privacy protections and national security,” Robert Litt, counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told skeptical members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This newest privacy-vs.-security debate was touched off when former government contract systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified documents exposing National Security Agency programs that store years of phone records on every American. That revelation prompted the most significant reconsideration yet of the vast surveillance powers Congress granted the president after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The administration intended to keep the telephone program a secret, and for more than a decade few in Congress showed any interest in limiting the surveillance. Snowden’s leaks abruptly changed the calculus on Capitol Hill. [Snowden should be a national hero for exposing our corrupt government masters in the US House and Senate who have flushed the 4th Amendment down the toilet]

“We have a lot of good information out there that helps the American public understand these programs, but it all came out late,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, said in a rebuke of government secrecy. “It all came out in response to a leaker. There was no organized plan for how we rationally declassify this so that the American people can participate in the debate.” [Translation - we got caught flushing the Fourth Amendment down the toilet and I am trying to justify it with this double talk]

The telephone program is authorized under a provision of the USA Patriot Act, which Congress hurriedly passed after the Sept. 11,2001 attacks against the U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration said then what Obama’s administration says now: that in order to connect the dots, it needs to collect lots of dots. [Yea, using the unconstitutional Patriot Act which pretty much flushes the Bill of Rights down the toilet] Sen. Patrick Leahy was skeptical.

“There’s always going to be dots to collect, analyze and try to connect,” he said. “Government is already collecting data on millions of innocent Americans on a daily basis based on a secret legal interpretation of a statute that does not on its face appear to authorize this kind of bulk collection. So what’s going to be next? When is enough enough?” [The Patriot Act was enough. Congress should have repealed it, because it is unconstitutional. The courts should have struck it down because it is unconstitutional. I suspect the only way for it to end is an armed revolt by the people.]

Several Democrats promised bills that would provide tighter controls or more transparency. Proposals include eliminating the FBI’s ability to seize data without a court order, changing the way judges are appointed to the surveillance court and appointing an attorney to argue against the government in secret proceedings before that court. Another measure would force the government to reveal how many Americans have had their information swept up in surveillance. [All which is double talk and BS to justify the unconstitutional Patriot Act. The solution is simple - Repeal the Patriot Act!!!!]

Inglis said the NSA was willing to reconsider whether it needed to keep phone data for five years. And Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department was considering whether and how to allow an outside attorney into the secret court to argue against the government. [Again the solution is simple - Repeal the unconstitutional Patriot Act!!!!]

Leaked docs give new insight into NSA’s searches

Leaked docs give new insight into NSA’s searches

Associated Press Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:35 PM

LONDON — Documents published by the Guardian newspaper are providing new insight into the National Security Agency’s surveillance of world data, giving an over-the-shoulder look at the programs and techniques U.S. intelligence analysts use to exploit the hundreds of billions of records they gather each year.

Dozens of training slides published Wednesday divulge details about XKeyscore, one of a family of NSA programs that leaker Edward Snowden says has given America the ability to spy on “the vast majority of human communications.”

Some of the slides appear to carry screenshots showing what analysts would see as they trawled the intercepted conversations, including sample search queries such as “Show me all encrypted word documents from Iran” or “Show me all the word documents that reference Osama Bin Laden.”

In an indication of the program’s scope, one slide says that XKeyscore has led to the capture of more than 300 terrorists. In a statement, the NSA said that figure only included captures up to the year 2008, and pushed back against any suggestion of illegal or arbitrary collection of data.

“These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully — to defend the nation and to protect U.S. and allied troops abroad,” the statement said.

How and from where the program draws its data isn’t completely clear, but one slide said XKeyscore was supported by 700 servers and 150 sites across the globe. Another slide seemed to show the program drawing data from a body codenamed SSO — an apparent reference to the NSA’s Special Source Operations, which previous Guardian articles have described as capturing large numbers of communications between the United States and other countries.

The volume of data available to analysts through XKeyscore appears to be vast. The Guardian quoted one slide as saying that nearly 42 billion records had been captured by the system during a one-month period in 2012 — a rate of half a trillion records every year. So much content was being collected, the newspaper said, that it could only be stored for short periods of time — generally just a few days.

“At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours,” the Guardian quoted one document as saying.

In a message forwarded to The Associated Press by Guardian spokesman Gennady Kolker, journalist Glenn Greenwald said the article about XKeyscore drew on half a dozen documents supplied to him by Snowden in Hong Kong. One of them — a 32-page overview of the program — was published in its entirety, albeit with several pages redacted.

The documents are the first to have been published in the Guardian since Snowden, who remains stuck at a Moscow airport, applied for temporary asylum in Russia on July 16.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’d be inclined to accept on condition that Snowden agreed not to hurt U.S. interests — implying that the American would have to stop leaking secrets. But Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said Wednesday that the material for the article was provided long before Snowden promised to stop leaking.

“He warned me that he had already sent to the press an array of revealing information and secret documents and, unfortunately, could not stop its publication,” Kucherena was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

GOP lawmakers urge crackdown on illegal pot clubs

Source

GOP lawmakers urge crackdown on illegal pot club

Associated Press Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:45 PM

A dozen Republican lawmakers are urging law enforcement officials to crack down on illegal marijuana clubs that operate outside of the state’s medical marijuana law.

The letter sent to state Attorney General Tom Horne, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio last week asks them to “vigorously enforce” the state medical marijuana law and close the shops and clubs operating outside the law.

The letter obtained by the Arizona Capitol Times says licensed dispensaries are operating within Arizona law and “are doing their best to fully comply with both the spirit and letter of our laws” but the clubs do not.

Some of the more conservative members of the Legislature signed the letter. They include many who sponsored failed legislation to tighten the medical marijuana law approved by voters in 2010.

Horne was largely responsible for a yearlong restraining order that barred the Arizona Department of Health and Human Services from processing dispensary applications as a federal lawsuit worked through the courts. He wanted a federal court to declare Arizona’s medical marijuana program unconstitutional because it violated federal drug laws, but he was rebuffed.

Illegal clubs began sprouting up while the dispensary licensing process was delayed by Horne’s lawsuit. They typically allow people, sometimes with and sometimes without a proper state medical marijuana certification, to share, buy or sell marijuana outside the state’s rigorous tracking system.

Montgomery is still engaged in a nearly identical legal battle in state court. Montgomery also has argued that Maricopa County cannot process zoning permits for the dispensaries, because doing so would violate federal drug laws. Montgomery is awaiting a state appeals court hearing after losing in Maricopa County Superior Court. In the meantime, the county’s zoning office has been ordered by the courts to process dispensaries’ zoning requests.

The letter was signed by Republican Sens. Judy Burges and Chester Crandell, Reps. Jeff Dial, David Livingston, Kelly Townsend, Steve Montenegro, Darin Mitchell, Bob Thorpe, Ethan Orr, Steve Smith, David Stevens, Justin Olson and Livingston’s wife, a Peoria school board member.

Half of the lawmakers supported failed bills this past legislative session that dispensary industry advocates said would have hurt their business and encouraged black-market marijuana sales.

Advocates for the full implementation of the licensed marijuana dispensary portion of the law said these efforts represented a desire to squeeze the industry out of business with onerous regulations, based only on an ideological opposition to marijuana as medicine. Supporters of the bills said they were simply intended to clean up the laws where problems might arise.

Townsend, of Mesa, said her signature on the letter does not mean she endorses medical marijuana, but that she wants law enforcement to focus on going after bad actors in the system, not those abiding by the state’s medical marijuana laws.

“What I signed said we want to shut down the illegal dispensaries and enforce the law . That does not mean I give my endorsement to legal dispensaries,” she said. “I don’t like any of it, but it’s the law.”

Montgomery said he has already prosecuted charges against illegal clubs that have been passed to him by local police, and he intends to continue doing so.

“If you’re not operating within the narrow confines of the (Arizona Medical Marijuana Act), you will be prosecuted,” Montgomery assured.

Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

By Michael McGough

July 31, 2013, 12:42 p.m.

They call it the “Snowden effect.” Whatever you think of fugitive former National Security Agency consultant Edward J. Snowden -- hero, traitor, something in between -- his revelations about electronic surveillance programs have inspired a debate about broad questions of policy that was impossible because of the secrecy that enshrouded the programs themselves and their legal rationale. And that debate in turn has prompted defenders of the program to acknowledge that it can be reformed.

In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee and a dogged defender of the NSA programs, says that she intends “to work with members of the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees to consider changes to the NSA call-records program in an effort to increase transparency and improve privacy protections.” That is the program under which the government collects so-called metadata -- information about the source, destination and duration of telephone calls.

Among other changes, Feinstein would have the government make public on an annual basis the number of Americans’ phone numbers “submitted as queries of the NSA database,” as well as the number of warrants obtained by the FBI to examine the actual content of phone calls. She also would reduce from five to two or three years the length of time phone records would be retained.

The improvements Feinstein proposes fall short of abolishing the bulk collection of telephone metadata unrelated to a specific terrorism investigation. But would even these refinements be on the table if Snowden hadn’t released information about the metadata program? Would President Obama be inviting congressional critics of the program (along with supporters) to the White House? According to Politico, the president will host a powwow on the surveillance program Thursday.

And without Snowden’s revelations, which continued Wednesday with a report in the Guardian about a versatile search program called XKeyscore, would the Senate Judiciary Committee be discussing changes in the way the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates and in how its judges are selected? Would the administration have released key documents about the metadata program, as it did Wednesday?

As they say in England, not bloody likely.

Even Obama, in the aftermath of the first Snowden leaks, said that he welcomed a debate over surveillance policy and whether it infringed on civil liberties. Without Snowden, that debate wouldn’t exist.

For that reason, some of Snowden’s supporters argue that he should be spared prosecution or even be given a presidential pardon. (Talk about “not bloody likely.”)

That doesn’t necessarily follow, for several reasons. Even if you don’t accept the notion that those who engage in civil disobedience should be willing to accept punishment, there is the question of whether some of Snowden’s leaks went beyond blowing the whistle on surveillance of Americans to compromise purely foreign intelligence.

But the “Snowden effect” is real, and salutary.