Land Of The Flea

NYPD lied under oath to prosecute Occupy activist

"An Occupy Wall Street activist was acquitted Thursday after jurors were presented with video evidence that directly contradicted the NYPD’s story. Prosecutors working on behalf of the NYPD have insisted that Premo tackled an NYPD officer and broke a bone during a protest. This week, Premo’s attorney presented a video that showed officers charging into the defendant unprovoked. The video shows a NYPD officer was filming the arrest as well, but prosecutors told Premo’s attorney that no such footage existed. The Manhattan District Attorney's office had presented Premo with a deal that would have let him off the hook by pleading guilty to lesser charges." Continue reading →

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7-Year-Old Suspended, Teacher Says He Shaped Pastry Into Gun

"Academics are hard for Josh, who suffers from ADHD, but he excels in art class. It is Josh's own creativity that may have gotten him into trouble. At Park Elementary school, Josh was enjoying his breakfast pastry when he decided to try and shape it into a mountain. Josh's dad received a phone call from the school saying that Josh has been suspended for two days because he took his breakfast pastry and fashioned it into a gun. Josh's dad was astounded to learn the school chose such a harsh punishment, even after no one was hurt. Late Friday afternoon a letter went home with students explaining the incident saying, 'A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture.'" Continue reading →

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Why Is the Navy Building a Shiny Drone Base in Sunny Malibu?

"Don't you think of red Corvettes, sunglasses, coconut oil, and Hellfire missiles? It's perfect, right? The Navy is inclined to agree. All that, and you get to fly drones. But not just any drones—state-of-the-art drones. The Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton is at the fore of robotic surveillance, and the Navy wants their 131-foot wings and spiffy 360-degree sensors cruising around the Pacific Ocean in the name of American supremacy. The goal is 24/7 surveillance—an American eye over the water at all times, during wartime, during peacetime, and all the time." Continue reading →

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Let’s Look a Little More Closely at What Bernanke Told Congress

"In Congressional testimony last week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke slipped something in that no one much noticed. He said that the Fed might eventually choose to exit from its current monetary expansion binge, not by selling US government securities, but by letting them mature. So what happens if the Fed holds a bond to maturity? In that case, the Fed presumably receives the principal payment from the Treasury and then sends that back to the Treasury too. In effect, the government has simply canceled its own debt. Bernanke has in effect announced an intention to cancel US bonds, and it doesn’t cause a ripple." Continue reading →

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Sequester solved: Sell national parks, stop foreign aid, leave Germany

"Before you head for the bunker or put a down payment on a famous bridge, I’d like to offer some sensible alternatives to sequestration calamity. Here are three that would solve the sequestration problem with billions to spare. These are just a few alternatives to the disaster that will supposedly accompany giving the federal government a smaller raise this year. Tragically, most people would view these proposals as crazy but view borrowing money to give away to others as perfectly sane. That’s when you know the end is nigh." Continue reading →

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Homeland Security built domestic surveillance tech into Predator drones

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show. The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department's unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States' northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: Bradley Manning: the face of heroism

"The combination of extreme government secrecy, a supine media (see the prior two columns), and a disgracefully subservient judiciary means that the only way we really learn about what our government does is when the Daniel Ellsbergs - and Bradley Mannings - of the world risk their own personal interest and liberty to alert us. Daniel Ellberg is now widely viewed as heroic and noble, and Bradley Manning (as Ellsberg himself has repeatedly said) merits that praise and gratitude every bit as much." Continue reading →

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GOP Governors Continue Caving In to ObamaCare Mandates

"Republican governors once so ferocious in their fight against ObamaCare now seem content to roll over and play dead. Perhaps their new agreeable attitude is inspired by the fact that President Obama was reelected in November while their own political futures remain in jeopardy. As the Associated Press reported last Sunday, 'nearly two dozen GOP governors elected in 2009 and 2010 could face the voters again.' There's more than just electoral pragmatism at work, however. Governors know better than anyone that they rely on federal largesse for the bulk of their state budgets and would hardly be in their best (read: re-election) interest to bite the hand that feeds them." Continue reading →

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