"After 9/11, President George W. Bush turned to Civil War precedents to create military tribunals for trying alleged 'terrorists.' But in applying those draconian rules to a worldwide battlefield, he created the nightmarish potential for a global totalitarianism, as retired U.S. Army JAG officer Todd E. Pierce explains." Continue reading →
"Drivers in New Jersey were left stunned, after state Appeals Court judges found that when a driver is texting and causes an accident, the recipient of the texts can also be held liable for negligence. As CBS 2’s Hazel Sanchez reported Tuesday night, the decision stemmed from a 2009 accident where a 17-year-old girl texted a friend just before that friend crashed his pickup truck into a Morris County couple on a motorcycle. A state Appeals Court ruled 'that a person sending text messages has a duty not to text someone who is driving if the texter knows, or has special reason to know, the recipient will view the text while driving.'" Continue reading →
"More than 50 large U.S. cities have adopted 'anti-camping' or 'anti-food sharing' laws in recent years, and police are strictly enforcing these laws. Sometimes the goal appears to be to get the homeless people to go away. Apparently heartless politicians believe that if the homeless can't get any more free food and if they keep getting thrown into prison for 'illegal camping' they will eventually decide to go somewhere else where they won't be hassled so much. This is yet another example of how heartless our society is becoming. The middle class is being absolutely shredded and poverty is absolutely exploding, but meanwhile the hearts of many Americans are growing very cold." Continue reading →
"For example, they might send info to the DEA about a likely drug deal, and the DEA would then tell its agents that they should come up with a pretense to stop a certain truck at a certain truck stop at a certain time. The agents would work with local police to concoct a reason to pull the truck over, and voila, drugs found. But, most importantly, at no point would the fact that such information was used to lead to the stop be revealed, and that's unconstitutional. If you're accused, you're supposed to have access to all of the evidence being used against you. Continue reading →
"At the top of the executive branch, President Obama and his team favor Orwellian euphemism, preferring wordblobs like 'disposition matrix' to the harsh Anglo-Saxon of 'kill list' -- mumbling 'kinetic military action' when what they really mean is 'war.' But further down the administrative ladder, the language sometimes gets admirably blunt. The National Security Agency has programs with names like 'TRAFFICTHIEF' and 'PANOPTICON.' And DHS has even expressed interest in 'Gorgon Stare,' a drone-mounted camera array under development by the Air Force that can watch whole cities at a time (and turn the inhabitants to stone?)." Continue reading →
"While much has been said about Blomkamp’s use of Elysium to raise concerns about immigration, access to healthcare, worker’s rights, and socioeconomic stratification, what I found most striking and unnerving was its depiction of how the government will employ technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace, especially dissidents. Mind you, while these technologies are already in use today and being hailed for their potentially life-saving, cost-saving, time-saving benefits, it won’t be long before the drawbacks to having a government equipped with technology that makes it all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful far outdistance the benefits." Continue reading →
"Any time you give a state agency a goal with an extremely broad, malleable definition, the agency is going to tend to interpret its mission as broadly as possible. And when that goal is inherently incompatible with a free society, the agency’s powers will inevitably grow at the expense of individual liberties and the rule of law. We shouldn’t trust the IRS to take as much money as it wants; we shouldn’t trust the military to invade the countries it thinks need to be invaded; and we shouldn’t trust the state security apparatus to 'keep us safe from terrorism.' The best thing that can happen to an agency trusted with such a goal is that it will fail. The worst is that it will succeed." Continue reading →
"1. Those that talk about 'individual liberties'; 2. Those that advocate for states’ rights; 3. Those that want 'to make the world a better place'; 4. 'The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule'; 5. Those that are interested in 'defeating the Communists'; 6. Those that believe 'that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations'; 7. Anyone that holds a 'political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable'; 8. Anyone that possesses an 'intolerance toward other religions'; 9. Those that 'take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals'; [..] " Continue reading →
"A small hole in a tail light does not justify a traffic stop, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled last week. A three-judge panel said the evidence against Brad Kroft should have been suppressed because police should not have stopped his Jeep Commander on April 22, 2012. At around 1:30am, Kroft had been driving with his wife Heidi on 96th Street near Hague Road in Indianapolis. There was a crack in his passenger-side tail light that created a dime-size hole in the otherwise fully functional stop light. A passing police officer saw it and decided he could issue a ticket." Continue reading →
"Most prisoners are parents of children under 18 years of age. Two-thirds of incarcerated parents are nonviolent offenders, often locked up on minor drug-related charges. They make up the majority of parents in prison, and they and their children are the ones criminal justice reform will most affect. One in 28 kids in the United States (as of 2010) has a mother or father, or both, in lockup – a dramatic change from the one in 125 rate a quarter of a century ago. One in nine black children have an imprisoned parent, four times as many 25 years ago. 14,000 or more children of the imprisoned annually enter foster care, while an undetermined number enter juvenile detention and adult prisons." Continue reading →