Police State

When a Saudi Princess forces a woman to work against her will, it's called human trafficking, and she is prosecuted. I call it slavery. When government does it, it's called jury duty, and the perpetrators are considered paragons of virtue.

It's nice to see that significantly more people think the government's terrorism policies have gone too far than thought so in 2010, but 45 percent is still horrendously low. The other 55 percent must be ostriches.

In Norway police search man's home because he paid for stuff in cash.

"It all started one Saturday morning when Jarl Syvertsen, a 59-year-old disabled Norwegian man, purchased a PC, TVs, and washing machines for 80,000 kroner (roughly US$13,000) which he paid in cash. The store immediately alerted the police about the large cash payment. On Sunday a male and a female police officer appeared on Mr Syvertsen’s doorstep. Upon seeing them, Mr. Syvertsen at first feared that something may have happened to his mother, who is 86 years old and resides in a nursing home. But the police were there with a warrant to search his home, charging that the cash he had spent was money that “came from a criminal offense.” In fact, the money was actually part of an approximately one-million dollar advance on an inheritance he had received. Mr. Syvertsen attempted several times to explain to the officers where the money had come from and to show them a letter confirming that fact, but they would have none of it and proceeded to invade his home and his privacy."

Talk about escalating the war on cash.

"Although the police now admit that they investigated Mr. Syvertsen prior to the warrant being issued and found that he had never been implicated in any criminal activity, they insist that “there were reasonable grounds to suspect” criminal activity given the “sum of the information available,” that is,  the large cash payment."

So using cash is now probable cause.

Claim the Waco revelations could bring down Democrats today.

"Hillary Clinton’s role in the assault on the Davidian campus and its subsequent cover-up has never been fully disclosed.  McNulty says that his information indicates that Mrs. Clinton was not only involved, but in command, directing the FBI’s actions from the White House, and leading the subsequent cover-up.  The Texas Rangers have said that their objections to the destruction of the Waco evidence were squelched directly by the White House.  Texas Governor Rick Perry would do well to sit down and have a candid conversation with those Texas Rangers and then seriously consider pursuing prosecutions.

When Clinton’s close friend and former law partner, Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, was found dead, his widow told FBI investigators that she believed that “Foster was horrified when the Branch Davidian complex burned,” and that “Foster believed that everything was his fault.”

Somehow Mrs. Foster’s statement to the FBI has been almost totally overlooked by the media – and even by most of those insisting that his death was murder.  The obvious question that never seems to have been asked is, why would Vince Foster, whose primary role in the White House was to support and protect the Clintons, feel responsible for the deaths at Waco?

At the time of Foster’s death, the FBI ordered that his office be sealed as part of their standard homicide investigation, but at least 2 boxes of files were removed from Foster’s office and taken to the residence area of the White House.  Those files were never recovered, and their removal from Foster’s office was never officially investigated."

They were removed by Hillary's chief of staff.

"The boxes of documents removed from Foster's office by Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Margaret Williams, were taken to the private residence area of the White House! Eventually, only 54 pages emerged.
One set of billing records, under subpoena for two years, and thought to have originated in Foster's office, turned up unexpectedly in the private quarters of the White House, with Hillary's fingerprints on them"

We know the Democrats won't bring this stuff up in the primary, but it'll be interesting to see if Republicans bring it up. I doubt they will. Just like McCain refused to bring up Obama's past, I bet the Republican nominee will refuse to bring up Hillary's past.

The judge, who works for the same state as the prosecutor, helped the prosecutor out in the Zimmerman trial by deciding the jury can consider the compromise verdict of manslaughter. This is an admission the prosecutor failed to prove his murder case. It's an attempt by the judge to help the prosecutor salvage some sort of conviction.

"Zimmerman’s lead attorney, Mark O’Mara, told reporters Wednesday after resting his case that the jury’s only option should be the second-degree murder charge brought by prosecutors. If jurors are unable to convict Zimmerman of murder, then he should be acquitted, O’Mara said, because the shooting on Feb. 26, 2012 was intentional.
“What George did was an intentional act that he knew he was pulling the trigger, the reason why he did it was self-defense and that doesn’t suggest the manslaughter charge would be appropriate,” O’Mara said."

O'Mara is correct, but judges often aid the prosecutor by allowing lessor, compromise charges to entice jurors to convict on something.

"O'Mara told CNN on Wednesday night that he believes there is "overwhelming evidence" that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, but that he has concerns about jurors returning "a compromise verdict." Some legal analysts have suggested that the jury could convict Zimmerman of a lesser offense of manslaughter."

Exactly.

Tech companies hide the extent of their cooperation with the NSA. But they have no real choice. They could go to court, but if the government didn't destroy them before they got their day in court, they would almost certainly lose. They are owned by the government, so they do what they're told.

"Through its open-source Android project, Google has agreed to incorporate code, first developed by the agency [the NSA] in 2011, into future versions of its mobile operating system, which according to market researcher IDC runs on three-quarters of the smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter. NSA officials say their code, known as Security Enhancements for Android, isolates apps to prevent hackers and marketers from gaining access to personal or corporate data stored on a device. Eventually all new phones, tablets, televisions, cars, and other devices that rely on Android will include NSA code, agency spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines said in an e-mailed statement."

It's unlikely that's a backdoor because Android is open source. That means anybody can read the code and access the backdoor.

Microsoft gives NSA access to data pre-encryption.

"Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport"."

You can't make this stuff up.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court refused to disbar a prosecutor who withheld evidence and wrote false subpoenas in capital cases on the grounds that many prosecutors do the same.

Cops' obsession with officer safety, while understandable, is inconsistent with their supposed mission to protect and serve and with heroism. The myth about cops is that they put the safety of others first would be heroic, but that's not how they're trained, and it's not their culture. This article tells the story of the cops who accosted a man who had committed no crime, then shot his dog when his dog came to protect him.

A would-be underwear bomber, not the one stopped by passengers from blowing up a plane in flight to the US, worked for the CIA.

"A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged."

I remember hearing about this at the time, but I don't know why we haven't heard more about it.