Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Media

I've been reading headlines all day about how the House finally agreed to a compromise on lowering student loan rates, trying to fool people into believing Republicans were holding this up. The only problem is, the House passed the bill first. The Senate held it up. Finally the Senate passed it, and now the House is passing the final version which is very similar to what the House passed first.

When Manning and Snowden release classified documents, talking heads claim they are putting the lives of the troops and others at risk. When Obama does it, nobody says the same.

Federal Reserve

Female congressional Democrats think the most important quality of a Fed chairman is gender. Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe they know the Fed chairman has no choice but to print money, and gender plays no role.

Foreign Policy

More positive signs for US-Iranian relations.

Regulation

Now that Google is running fiber and becoming a Internet Service Provide, it suddenly argues for property rights instead of Net Neutrality.

Police State

You don't have to be a software engineer to figure out that third party encryption will not stop the NSA. You have to encrypt yourself using open source encryption tools.

New documents released by The Guardian about NSA spy program XKeyscore support NSA whistleblower Snowden's claim NSA technicians can digitally tap anybody at any time, a claim previously disputed by our rulers, busting them for lying again.
"XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.
Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity."
This is more verification that NSA is most powerful blackmail organization in the world. Even the president and the Rockefellers are not immune.

Government study finds TSA misconduct up 26 percent in the last three years.
"Most have heard of the problems such as stealing, but the report also notes that some employees are sleeping on the job, taking bribes, and letting friends/family through the checkpoints without screening."
I'm sure they under-reported before and after that period.

Federal Court of Appeals allows warrantless tracking of cell phone location data.
"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.''"
I don't know about this. Cell phone companies have no interest in keeping this data. I think they only keep it because the government tells them to. So this is circular reasoning.

San Francisco Airport personnel are making citizens arrests against ride-share services to protect taxi companies.

US to test two spy blimps over Washington D.C. Blimps like this make sense to me for monitoring the Mexican border, but this is just another way to spy on Americans.

How to improve your passwords.

Local

The voluntary West Carrollton Merchants Association sounds like a good idea, but there's a ominous threat in the article.
"Ross said the city is being supportive of the newly formed group but plans to take a back seat as the group works to define its goals and mission."
What happens after that?

After their last four money grabs have failed, Beavercreek schools try to grab more money for a fifth time in November. Kettering wants more loot too. The looters never stop.

Taxpayers will pay for sickening breakfast and lunch for Dayton Public School students. This will ensure the quality of their health and education is reduced even more, and families are more undermined than ever.
"As the state’s school funding formula is largely based on a district’s economic makeup, 71 percent of Dayton schools funding came from state and federal sources and 13 percent from local sources in 2012, according to district records."
This is nuts.

Montgomery County Treasurer is trying to steal the Dayton Executive Inn property. I bet the owners want to sell it, but they can't because of back property taxes.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Global Warming and Energy

A UN bureaucrat accidentally told the truth, explaining the UN redistributes the world's wealth by climate policy.

The generally rabidly alarmist Guardian prints a fair article about skeptics. Even this leftist media organ has been forced to moderate its position by climate and political reality.

China bans plastic bags. This will have consequences.

Tax and Spend

Obama proposes cutting corporate tax rates and increasing spending on jobs programs. This sounds exactly like George Bush, but Republicans reject it. Bush and Obama only propose these things because they know spending is what matters. Taxes, and printing money, are a symptom of spending.

War

The Taliban frees 248 prisoners in jailbreak in north-west Pakistan. The NSA failed was unaware of this and other jailbreaks because its wasting fantastic resources spying on Americans.

Bradley Manning acquitted of aiding the enemy, but convicted on most other counts. The acquittal is good news because it sets a precedent.
"Pfc. Manning's conviction on all but one of the 21 charges other than aiding the enemy ensured he would face a substantial prison sentence but denied prosecutors a clear-cut win."
He still faces over 100 years in prison. I doubt he'll get that.

Media

Some leftist talking head advocates Obama break Republicans over the budget battle, but he should learn some recent history first.
"A prominent Democrat once stated: "The budget is a profoundly moral document." That statement referred to the last truly titanic budget battle, the government shutdown of the mid-1990s, one in which a Democratic president stood firm, and a chastened Republican majority backed down."
That's baloney. Bill Clinton vetoed four balanced budgets, but he finally backed down and signed the fifth. Sure, he gained politically. The public blamed Republicans for shutting down a small portion of the government, as if that was a bad thing, but Republicans got their spending cuts that balanced the budget, and that was good for the country. The budget is a profoundly immoral document since it is funded by theft.

Police State

The Pink Panther jewel heist group has broken three members out of Swiss prisons in three months. Talk about a failure of government.

Moscow police to implement devices in subways that read cell phone data and track cell phones. This is probably already in place in big US cities. Government has made cell phones useless as incoming devices. If you care about privacy, take your battery out and only put it back in if you need to make an emergency call.

Real cops seeming like fake cops brazenly rob people in Detroit.

Politics

The 217 congressmen who voted for NSA spying on Americans received twice as much money from defense and intelligence donors than the 205 who voted against it.

Pro-abortion satanists chant, "Hail, Satan," at rally in front of Texas capitol.

Federal Reserve

Thailand bans bitcoins. Central banks must be running scared.

Local

City government and the DDN is promoting the false premise that a single payer system for electricity will lower prices. It won't, just like it doesn't in health care. But the city plans a referendum to push this fraud. This is just another attempt to advance the same socialism that's destroying our city, state and country. Competition for power will lower prices and increase quality.

Cityfolk cancels next year's festival, blaming rain in 2012. As the Celtic Festival has proved, if you put on a great show, you can make money in the rain. We've been to Octoberfest and Hispanic festival in the rain too.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

A new anti-gun super-pac that uses Gabby Giffords as a political pawn comes to Ohio, but the DDN headline pretends its a pro-gun group.

A school district in Arkansas licenses teachers and staff to carry firearms at school.

Misc

Claim that earthquakes are correlated with lack of sunspots caused by changing electrical forces. If so, weak solar cycle 24 doesn't just signal global cooling, but an era of increased earthquake activity.

Health Care

Monsanto's Roundup and Glyphosate worse for people than thought because they damage intestinal flora.

Slashdot pushes the insect eating baloney today.  Mark Sisson pushes it today. This coordinated propaganda is getting ridiculous.

Doctors increase Medicare payments by clinging to outdated models.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Regulation

Plutocrats ask FCC to block Pandora from buying a regular radio station to protect themselves from competition. This is why government exists.

Freedom of Speech

Hackers can hack cars to unlock and steal them, but a judge won't allow a scientist to publish the exploit regarding Volkswagon. Every week I read something new that reinforces my belief that I will buy only used cars from now on.

Misc

Rothbard reading list.

Monogamy may have evolved to prevent infanticide. That sounds reasonable.

Global Warming and Energy

I saw a headline the other day about the North Pole having melted again. I didn't bother clicking on the article because I knew it was a lie. Here's the proof.

NASA goes further off the rails with a prediction that US temperatures will rise by eight degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Hansen was already fired. Somebody else should get fired.
"The interesting part is that they chose the years 1970 to 1999 to calibrate the models.   Calibrate them to what?"
NASA calibrated the models to the political climate in Washington, the masters they serve, so they could receive more money stolen from taxpayers. This a rational, self-serving decision.

Global warming belief tracks the weather. The frauds know this, or at least suspect it, that's why they try to take advantage of every weather event to push the fraud.

War

The US fought in Korea on behalf of a brutal dictator.
"We were fighting on behalf of Syngman Rhee, the US-educated-and-sponsored dictator of South Korea, whose vibrancy was demonstrated by the large-scale slaughter of his leftist political opponents. For 22 years, Rhee’s word was law, and many thousands of his political opponents were murdered: tens of thousands were jailed or driven into exile. Whatever measure of liberality has reigned on the Korean peninsula was in spite of Washington’s efforts and ongoing military presence. When the country finally rebelled against Rhee, and threw him out in the so-called April Revolution of 1960, he was ferried to safety in a CIA helicopter as crowds converged on the presidential palace. "
Sounds familiar.
"The standard neocon-cold war liberal line is that the North Koreans, in league with Moscow and Beijing, launched a war of aggression on June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops poured across the disputed border. What this truncated history leaves out is that, in doing so, they preempted Rhee’s own plans to launch an invasion northward."
So the North Koreans launched a preemptive war. That also sounds familiar.
"The only reason Rhee didn’t launch an attack was due to American reluctance to supply him with the arms and aid he would need: war, when it came, would be on America’s terms, and our leaders had good reason to think it would come sooner rather than later. Washington’s policy was to keep Rhee supplied with just enough arms to control the South."
That also sounds familiar. It's like we're living in a bad groundhog day movie.
"As to who did in reality fire that shot, Bruce Cumings, head of the history department at the University of Chicago, gave us the definitive answer in his two-volume The Origins of the Korean War, and The Korean War: A History: the Korean war started during the American occupation of the South, and it was Rhee, with help from his American sponsors, who initiated a series of attacks that well preceded the North Korean offensive of 1950. From 1945-1948, American forces aided Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do – where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee’s US-backed forces.
Rhee’s army and national police were drawn from the ranks of those who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation during World War II, and this was the biggest factor that made civil war inevitable. That the US backed these quislings guaranteed widespread support for the Communist forces led by Kim IL Sung, and provoked the rebellion in the South that was the prelude to open North-South hostilities. Rhee, for his part, was eager to draw in the United States, and the North Koreans, for their part, were just as eager to invoke the principle of "proletarian internationalism" to draw in the Chinese and the Russians."
Because of US interventionism, the tail is still wagging the dog in the Middle East.

90 killed, 266 wounded in Iraq.

Media

Major broadcasting corporation to drop Limbaugh and Hannity, but it looks like a money issue, not a philosophy issue given they're going to replace them with other warmongers.

Politics

Rand Paul criticizes Chris Christie's big spending and authoritarianism in 2016 presidential race preliminary.

Republicans prove what I've said all along by dividing over whether to defund Obamacare. Republicans don't want to get rid of Obamcare. They want to share in the looting. Symbolic votes to repeal it mean nothing because they know it won't be repealed. There are no consequences. But shutting down the government in a fight to defund it will have consequences, good ones for Republicans who vote to defund.

Ron Paul wisely warns against trusting law to rein in the NSA.
"The NSA has been massively increasing the size its facilities, both at its Maryland headquarters and in its newly built (and way over-budget) enormous data center in Utah. Taken together, these two facilities will be seven times larger than the Pentagon!"
It's built, and they will use it against us. There's a lot of good information here.

Police State

FBI arrests 150 and claims to have rescued 105 children from the sex trade in nationwide sting. I bet there's much more to this story that we'll never read.

I don't support any hate crime prosecutions, but it's about time a group of black men are charged with a hate crime for attacking a white guy. If this becomes common, maybe we can get rid of these thought crime charges.
"Holder’s strange promise may have been designed to undercut Snowden’s bid for asylum, but it also reminded the world of America’s abysmal behavior on human rights."
No kidding. Reasonable people can disagree on the details of what constitutes torture, but nobody can disagree that the US is brutal on prisoners.

Florida police shoot unarmed man in his own driveway. That's the big story here, but the press wants it to be about race because the victim was black. If they had shot an unarmed white man, we'd never hear about it.

Foreign Policy

Government security agencies ban China's Lenovo computers for fear of backdoors. Apparently only NSA is allowed to have backdoors.

This is a great spook story. A CIA agent named Lady kidnaps a guy, does a terrible job of covering his trail,
"His Agency associates proved to be the crew that couldn’t spook straight. They left behind such a traceable trail of five-star-hotel and restaurant bills, charges on false credit cards, and unencrypted cell phone calls that the Italian government tracked them down, identified them, and charged 23 of them, Lady included, with kidnapping."
Then disappears.
"Lady fled Italy, leaving behind a multimillion-dollar villa near Turin meant for his retirement. (It was later confiscated and sold to make restitution payments to Nasr.)"
The CIA must pay really well. He prosecuted in absentia in Italy, and the other day he was captured. The US grabbed him out of Panama, then he disappeared again. Compare that to the plight of NSA whistleblower Snowden.
"Don’t make the mistake, however, of comparing Washington’s positions on Snowden and Lady and labeling the Obama administration’s words and actions "hypocrisy.""
That's because the Obama administration, like all governments, operate out of pure self-interest. They're very consistent that way.

Rumor has it Russian President Putin may grant Snowden at least temporary asylum. AG Holder was probably forced to promise the US would neither torture nor execute Snowden to stop this from happening. Government has turned our world upside-down.
"Russia occupies the high moral ground, helped immeasurably by the behavior of the Bush and Obama administrations, which have squandered the moral advantage the U.S. used to enjoy."
This is what I mean by turning our would upside-down.

There are two fundamental problems with empire. First, can never last. It's impossible to oppress people forever. Eventually, either the oppressor wipes out the oppressee, or the oppressee ousts the oppressor. Second, there's lots of money to be made from looting in the short term. That means no matter how impossible empire is to maintain, looters have great incentive to build empires for personal gain.
"there is a chance we may see Putin take Snowden to asylum in Latin America on his own plane, overflying Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Panama en route."
I doubt Putin would want to embarrass the US that badly. That could sour relations for a generation. But it would be entertaining.

Local

Obamacare pushes up Green County employee health care premiums over 11 percent.

New tax proposed for government pool maintenance. Why wasn't that budgeted when the pool was built? Rhetorical question.

The state cuts taxes for two local companies so they can create jobs. Politicians know cutting taxes enable companies to create jobs. That's why we all need tax cuts.

Despite $13 million, local government can't maintain water pipes.

Economy

LexisNexis to lay off 500 workers including an unknown number locally.

Health Care

The dangerous cholesterol myth grows with new cholesterol medicine.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Politics

Obama has worsened race relations in the US as many predicted.

It took five years, but Sarah Palin confirms she was banned from exposing Obama by talking about Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, 

War

Pentagon plans different training for women than men.

US switches to environmentally friendly bullets.

It looks like the leaders of the US instigated coup in Egypt have declared war on the Muslim Brotherhood. This is going to get Americans killed.

Tax and Spend

In 2008, 1.1 million Ohioans were on food stamps. That was double the number from 2001. In 2013, 1.9 million Ohioans are on food stamps. A lot of people look at this as growth in welfare state. I look at it as the decline of our economy and our country.

Phil Mickelson puts house on market hopefully to move out of high tax California.

Local

Another I-75 construction wreck.

Record low temperature tied this morning.

Hovercraft golf car debuts.

Clearcreek Twp. in court for secret meetings. They all do it. Because government is predatory but the prey can take its power away at any time, government must be secret.

Police State

Democrat Senator Ron Wyman from Oregon, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the surveillance state is as bad as Snowden says.

More on the fallout from the defeat of the Amash Amendment to limit NSA.
"Even in the frightening aftermath of 9/11, when large majorities told pollsters they were ready to trade in some personal protections for greater security, any effort to monitor phone calls or emails of average people was considered a step too far. In a Pew Research Center survey the week after the terrorist attacks, 70 percent said no to that."
Apparently it hasn't changed, but the government did this stuff in secret anyway. Snowden exposed that secret, and the people are pushing back.

NSA is not allowed to spy on NSA personnel. The law won't stop them.

You know how government officials keep telling us that red light and speeding cameras are for safety, not revenue? This article exposes that lie.
"Some Ohio cities and villages, already hurting from recent state changes that reduce their funding, will lose millions more if a proposed ban on automated traffic cameras goes through."
The article pays lip service to safety - that's probably required by law - but it's all about money.
"Traffic cameras netted around $16.5 million for eight Ohio cities and villages that had them in 2012, according to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, the state legislature’s research arm. That doesn’t count camera revenues in six other communities — including Elmwood Place, the Hamilton County village that inspired the ban after raking in $1.5 million in just six months before a judge shut ordered its cameras shut down — for which the LSC couldn’t obtain 2012 full-year data.
“If we pass this bill as is, this is going to be a tax increase, because communities are going to have to make up that (loss of revenue) somehow,” Rep. Rex Damschroder, R, Fremont, said last month before voting against the ban."
How about cutting spending?
"Traffic cameras raised about $2.4 million for Dayton in 2012, or about 1.5 percent of the city’s $155.1 million general revenue fund."
And the looters don't want to give it up.
"“The combination of cutting funds and eliminating tools we can use — taken in total — places additional pressure on local budgets trying to provide public services with less resources,” Biedenharn said. “In this particular case, the loss of the camera enforcement tool could end up diverting police away from more serious crime issues to address speeding and red-light violations.”"
It's as if the police never managed before the cameras. And our job is to have more of our money stolen to make life easier for police.
"West Carrollton Police Chief Rick Barnhart said turning off the cameras would have a substantial impact on the city’s budget. Cameras brought in $112,000 to the city’s general fund, which funds city operations, in 2012.
“There’s no doubt it would be at least an overall $100,000 a year cut. So, that would be kind of like losing another major business in the city,” Barnhardt said."
It's as if these guys don't understand this money comes out of the economy. It harms the economy and makes everybody poorer. That has a negative effect on local budgets too. This motivates people to move elsewhere, doing even more damage. But never fear. If the cameras are banned, local government will figure new ways to steal our money.

Health Care

Hacker who showed hackers can take control of medical devices and was scheduled to expose his findings about this, suddenly died.
"The San Francisco medical examiner's office said Jack, 35, died in the city on Thursday – but did not provide details on the circumstances surrounding his death."
"Jack was due to speak at the Black Hat conference, which starts Saturday in Las Vegas. His presentation, "Implantable medical devices: hacking humans," would have explained how these devices could be compromised and would have suggested ways to improve device security."
That doesn't sound fishy.
"Jack had exposed a security flaw in insulin pumps that could be made to dispense a fatal dose by a hacker 300ft away, pushing some medical companies to review the security of these devices."
The only possible reason to connect medical devices to the internet is to allow remote control of them. How is this a good thing?

Curcumin, an ingredient in Turmeric, is as effective against depression as Prozac. Probably more so. Without the side effects like suicide.

High fat, low carb diet enables mute girl to speak.

Kerrygold feeds their cows GMO soy and corn. Oops. That's going to cost some sales.

I'm skeptical that oranges must be genetically modified to resist and incurable disease. How about we just reintroduce some natural genetic variation from other types of oranges.
"“In all of cultivated citrus, there is no evidence of immunity,” the plant pathologist heading a National Research Council task force on the disease said."
Help me, Monsanto. You're my only hope. I find this very hard to believe. In millions of years, no such bacteria has ever existed, but one just happened to show up just in time to make Monsanto our only hope. This strikes me as a propaganda piece for Monsanto and GM crops in general. Actually, there's another little piece of info hidden in this article that could explain it. Iran is facing the same problem. The government - meaning Monsanto - could have engineered a bug to wipe out Iran's orange crop, and that bug could now be wiping out the US crop.
"And a seedless midseason orange recently adopted by Florida growers emerged after breeders bombarded a seedy variety with radiation to disrupt its DNA, a technique for accelerating evolution that has yielded new varieties in dozens of crops, including barley and rice. "
What could go wrong except maybe also creating a bacteria that wipes out oranges.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Global Warming and Energy

Climate models produce different results when run on different computers. You can't make this stuff up.

Politics

Another statist poll claims about half of Americans, left and right, support NSA spying.
"A study released this morning by the Pew Research Center, a major U.S. polling agency, revealed that 57 percent of Democrats approve of government spying, along with 44 percent of Republicans."
According to the headline, this mirrors the recent vote in the House, but that's a lie. More Democrats voted to defund spying on Americans that Republicans. This is another lying statist poll and lying statist article.

The leadership of both parties voted for NSA spying on Americans.

Misc

Why is the government promoting an ancient, black community in Maryland. Isn't that segregation?

War

Since the US and its NATO allies instituted lawlessness in Libya, 1,000 prisoners escaped. You can bet a number of them will commit terrorist attacks against the US, just like our rulers want. The jailbreak is by Benghazi. Imagine that.

Media

NBC announces mini-series to help Hillary get elected. If her competitors did the same, they'd face campaign finance aggression.

Greg Gutfeld proves he's not a libertarian at all despite what people say about him. Kudos to Eric Bolling, which I never expected to say.

Education

In another case of every administrator does it but few get caught, American Academy of Arts and Sciences president busted for resume inflation. Usually this is swept under the rug, but this woman got fired. She must have angered the wrong people.

What an incredible debacle it will be when education predators give every student an iPad. This will be entertaining.

War

Japanese military wants marines and drones. I imagine it will get them.

Regulation

The proposed UK porn filter filters more than porn.
"users will also be required to opt in for any content tagged as violent material, extremist and terrorist related content, anorexia and eating disorder websites, suicide related websites, alcohol, smoking, web forums, esoteric material and web blocking circumvention tools."
Too funny. This is a good reminder than any time you give government even the smallest bit of power, it expands and abuses that power to harm the people.

Police State

Russia also made AG Holder promise the US wouldn't torture Snowden.

Socialism

The USPS proposes raising rates on DVD delivery to loot more wealth from Netflix and other successful DVD mailing businesses.
"The US Postal Service estimated in 2007 that hand-sorting DVD mailers from Netflix and Blockbuster was costing the US Postal service tens of millions of dollars in labor costs, and that number could grow to more than $30 million or more by 2010."
That sounds terrible until...
"The new proposed rates for DVD mailers would increase by 7%, and according to NewTeeVee's calculations, the increase could cost Netflix $50 million or more in increased postage costs (Netflix spends more than $600 million per year on postage)."
The post office is making 20x its cost on Netflix, but that isn't enough. This is another reminder that government is a parasite which feeds on economic success.

Collegiate student ballot riggers busted for being labor leaders who made millions from the federal government. They're still rigging elections for Democrats today.

Local

Turner must be scared of his opponent. He's using Obama's trick of filing complaints against him.

War on Drugs

Ohio Highway Patrol lies, claiming it's getting drugs off the street. Drugs are more common than ever. Like all government employees, cops tell these lies to get more money.

Health Care

Farm subsidies contribute to increasing obesity.

Another consequence of government's war on families is sibling fighting.

FDA says companies must guarantee the safety of food they import. Duh. Why is this new? I doubt they face full liability yet.

War

500 sexual assaults a week in the military.

Tax and Spend

The Chinese government bans new government buildings for five years. Too bad we're not that smart.

DHS to build new headquarters on site of former insane asylum.

Media

Ron Paul is starting his own TV channel.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Global Warming and Energy

With IPCC report ar5 coming up, the global warming frauds are between a rock and a hard place. Either the report can ignore the latest studies showing that the planet is not very sensitive to CO2, making the report a laughing stock, or it can incorporate that info and expose the fraud.

Long ago, to expose an economic fallacy, Bastiat wrote a sarcastic petition on behalf of candle makers for government to block the sun. Today the Spanish government decreed to tax sunlight.

NOAA admits that the heat wave of March 2012 was natural variability, not global warming.

Alarmist prediction of ice-free arctic and catastrophic methane warming so bad it's panned by other frauds.

More people concerned about inactivity of solar cycle 24. They should read about the electric sun and universe.

Foreign Policy

Former Egyptian president recently ousted arrested for murder and more. Too bad nobody will do that to Obama.

Politics

The depraved nature of politics attracts depraved people like the current San Diego mayor who refuses to resign but agrees to go into rehab for being a serial sexual harasser. Do you think you could keep from being arrested, prosecuted and fired for seven counts of sexual assault and be allowed to just go into rehab?

Misc

Researchers implant false memory in mice.

Hackers take over cars to expose security flaws.

Regulation

Ohio Supreme Court to hear complaint against racinos.
"The anti-gambling group, Ohio Roundtable, filed a lawsuit challenging Kasich’s decision to allow VLTs at the state’s seven horse tracks. The group charged that the state was letting the racetracks keep too much of the proceeds from slot machines — two-thirds — compared with other lottery games and that installing thousands of electronic slot machines was not an expansion of the Ohio Lottery, which is the state’s justification for allowing the VLTs into racetracks without a public vote, among other issues."
Sounds shady but typical for government.
"Both a Franklin County Common Pleas judge and the 10th District Court of Appeals dismissed the suit because they determined the opponents do not have standing to bring an action against the governor, the racinos and others."
They probably won't have standing until the racinos are in operation, then it'll be a fiat accompli

Sports

What in the world at the Bengals doing practicing next to a pile of rocks and a drainage ditch?

Police State

AG Holder claims US will not seek death penalty for NSA leaker Snowden in an attempt to get Russia to extradite him. I don't trust him.

NSA not only demanding SSL encryption access, now its demanding user passwords and the password encryption algorithms.

A Zimmerman juror admits she did the right thing.
"The second juror to speak publicly told ABC News in an interview made available Thursday that she feels George Zimmerman got away with murder for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, but that there wasn't enough evidence at trial to convict him under Florida law."
This is how it's supposed to work. The system is supposed to be designed to allow 10 guilty men to go free before one innocent man is convicted. But it almost never works that way. Hundreds if not thousands of innocent people get convicted for every guilty one who goes free.

Suspicious package shuts down Bay Bridge.
"Authorities reopened the westbound lanes, then the eastbound side, around 3:30 p.m. when San Francisco police neutralized the threat.
No further details on the device were released."
Very scary. And very hush-hush. Thankfully chaste government knights neutralized the package of melted ice cream or whatever it was. If it had actually been dangerous, they would have made sure it was at the top of the headlines for a month or more. Terrorists don't need to attack anything any more. Americans terrorize themselves over nothing every day.

Local

The war on drugs has failed so badly, drug dealers send huge shipments of marijuana through USPS mail.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Foreign Policy

Top US general blames lack of peace in the Middle East on Israeli settlements.

Here's a sad update on Israel.
"Developments in Syria and Egypt have been a godsend for Israel. The bloodshed and political turmoil have meant that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can continue with business as usual, with no one paying much attention to what is going on as he dismembers Palestine. Amidst all the fun and games, Israel launched a new air attack on Syria, the fourth such incident this year and an act of war, which was scarcely reported in the media while Netanyahu characteristically signaled his contempt for the Obama Administration by announcing a new settlement expansion just as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived to jump start a new round of pointless peace talks with the Palestinians. Israel’s government is also simultaneously moving ahead with the Prawer Plan, which will remove as many as 70,000 Palestinian Bedouin from their ancestral homes in the Negev Desert, the latest phase in the ethnic cleansing of Arabs which has been going on since 1947."
All backed and funded by the US.

War

Prosecutor accuses Bradley Manning of seeking notoriety in closing argument. You have to be kidding me. Some notoriety he obtained.

Freedom of Speech

Web site of porn censoring British MP hacked and filled with porn.

Socialism

Showing that the socialist postal service has no means to make rational decisions, the Post Office is planning to end door to door service and replace it with curb to curb or mailbox cluster to mailbox cluster for new neighborhoods. Since its customers won't like this, this will harm its revenue.

Only on socialist roads could somebody put up highway sign quality fake signs about drones monitoring speed.

Police State

NSA pressuring internet companies for master encryption keys. This is why people need to do encryption locally. I think they've already compromised at least some SSL certificates.

New NSA Utah facility has lower capacity than previously estimated, but this article misses the point. The NSA doesn't collect all information itself. It forces internet and telecom companies to do that. It just selects what it wants to process.

NSA leaker Snowden did what the government said: he saw something and he said something.

Politics

House votes to continue funding NSA's spying on Americans. Here's the roll call. Turner voted against defunding.

The battle over the Amash Amendment exposes the real political divide in America.
"In the aftermath of the Amash Rebellion, there are two new parties in Congress: the authoritarians and the Americans. The vote on Rep. Justin Amash’s LIBERT-E Act, which would have gutted the National Security Agency’s phone records dragnet, drew a clear line of demarcation that will only widen in the coming months as civil libertarians continue their push to roll back the Surveillance State. "
I wouldn't get too excited. I'm sure many of those who voted for the amendment did so out of political expediency knowing the amendment would be defeated. They would switch their vote to continue the funding if necessary. The good news is the American people have the power to threaten their jobs if they don't defund the NSA dragnet.
""During the debate few lawmakers stood to defend NSA’s surveillance programs, while speaker after speaker rose to denounce them.""
Hope.

More on the NSA's secret meeting to kill the amendment.

White House statement urging defeat of amendment.

53 percent of Americans want to repeal Obamacare while only 40 percent want to keep it.

Obama DHS nominee investigated for using influence to aid Hillary Clinton's brother. This is what politics is all about. Everybody does it.

Misc

Cyber-crooks increasingly use Tor.

Dolphins have names for each other. Wolves have unique howls that identify them.

Tax and Spend

The US government has 7,000 data centers.

Education

The Senate finally passes a student loan bill similar to the bill the House passed a while back which was similar to a plan Obama suggested then refuted after Republicans embraced it. Too funny.

Local

Edgewood schools allow teachers and administrators to carry concealed weapons at schools.

Look at all these central planning bureaucracies.

Amish man sentenced to prison for 16 years for cutting beards off other Amish men is still in prison. Whatever happened to punishment is supposed to fit the crime? Why not cut his beard off?

Fire causes power outage at Green County fair.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Regulation

Here's another economic fallacy story claiming new regulations - this time a supposed auto safety mandate - could boost the economy. As usual, this story fails to mention that wealth for this project must first be stolen from producers to meet the mandate.

Local

Centerville threatens school children if voters don't pass levy in November.
"If the levy fails, the board said “real dramatic types of things” will hit the classroom."
Cutting bureaucrats never crosses their minds.

Miamisburg water and sewer systems need $60 million in upgrades. This highlights that socialists cannot manage services economically because they have no prices or profits to guide them.

Here's a similar story. The headline reads:
"New playground equipment will be appreciated by many"
Appreciation can't be measured. Prices, sales, profits, and losses can be measured. Because government has no prices or profits, there's no way to know if the benefit of this expenditure is greater than the cost. Even if it is, because wealth is created in voluntary exchange, no wealth is created here. It can only be destroyed. This playground was allocated for political gain, not economic reasons.

Congressman Turner's ex-wife, formerly employed at Kettering Health Network, takes a job in Indiana. This whole thing still stinks of corruption.

Health Care

Farmed fish production surpasses beef.

Ohio infant mortality rate among worst in nation.
"State health department director, Dr. Ted Wymyslo, says it's a community problem. He says many deaths can be prevented by improving health even before conception."
Getting help from state government is like asking the executioner to help save lives.

Socialism

California to recycle sewer water into potable water, but supposedly only to be used for non-drinking water. I have no confidence in government recycling sewage. It might work at first, but like everything government controls, it will degrade.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

War

Drone submarines.

Al Qaeda busts 500 prisoners including senior al Qaeda operatives out of Iraqi prisons.

Al Qaeda growing but less focused on US.

Global Warming and Energy

Study discovers the earth's climate system self-regulates CO2, meaning there are negative feedbacks to changing CO2 levels, just as rational people would expect and skeptics have claimed.

Education

Article describes how schools brainwash children about global warming and everything else.

Federal Reserve

Inflation is going nuts in Brazil. Coming to the US soon.
"Brazil’s sky-high costs can be attributed to an array of factors, including transportation bottlenecks that make it expensive to get products to consumers, protectionist policies that shield Brazilian manufacturers from competition and a legacy of consumers somewhat inured to relatively high inflation, which remains far below the 2,477 percent reached in 1993, before a drastic restructuring of the economy.
But economists say much of the blame for the stunningly high prices can be placed on a dysfunctional tax system that prioritizes consumption taxes, which are relatively easy to collect, over income taxes."
Talk about Big Lies.

Police State

Cop leaks pictures of Boston Marathon suspect 2, bloodied from being shot by police despite being unarmed, as he surrenders from boat to protest Rolling Stone cover. This is intended to be more bias for the prosecution.

Will Rolling Stone lose sales for cover of Boston Marathon bombing suspect 2?

Pictorial evidence that the black backpack carried by the Craft International security guy was not the one that exploded.

Florida state attorney drops charges against man arrested for barking at police dog. He probably only dropped them because he's a Gators fan.

The source of the Trayvon Martin protests.
"We also are informed that the demonstrations for Trayvon are not spontaneous grassroots events. They are being organized by Dream Defenders, which has connections to the SEIU union, ACORN, Occupy, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Dream Defenders plans, funds, and prints the signs for these demonstrations. In an interview, one of its directors stated: “We are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today, because it’s not working for any of us.” But even though Dream Defenders has carefully orchestrated false demonstrations, they are not attracting the following they expected. We have also learned that the Justice Department used our tax dollars to fund anti-Zimmerman protests. We wait, hopefully not in vain, for Congress to redress this action. "
It's in vain. Those are Obama's Marxist cronies. DOJ helped organize protests.

Secret police and secret courts mimic Kafka.

NSA claims it doesn't have the technology to search its own emails. You can't make this stuff up.

Politics

We know we're screwed when 49 percent of Americans still approve of Obama. It's not the economy anymore. Call it 47.9 percent. This poll says it's only 41 percent.

Any couple should be able to be buried together - its ridiculous that anybody should have to go to court to make this happen - but what law did the judge follow to make this order? Judges can't just ignore laws. They have to obey them.
"The death certificate for ailing John Arthur can show James Obergefell as his surviving spouse, U.S. District Judge Timothy Black in Cincinnati said yesterday. The couple wanted the ruling for purposes including being able to be buried next to each other in an Arthur family plot that allows only descendants and spouses, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. "
It sounds like the family created their own problem. This isn't about being buried together. They could have been buried together anywhere, and they family should have the last say in the family plot, not a judge. This is activists exploiting the illness of a man to make the law.

House libertarian and co-sponsors hopes to rein in the NSA with amendment to the defense appropriations bill.
"With liberal Democrat John Conyers signed on as a co-sponsor, and 32 members of Congress from both parties on board, the libertarian movement’s brightest star in the House has thrown a real monkey wrench into the campaign to minimize and whitewash the vast and unaccountable surveillance system secretly set up by the NSA.
And he’s got the Regimists in a real panic. Just reading that Huffington Post headline – "NSA’s Keith Alexander Calls Emergency Private Briefing To Lobby Against Justin Amash Amendment Curtailing Its Power" – was so thrilling that I had to stop writing this column, for a moment, and just bask."
It sounds great, but I doubt it passes.
"This morning I read a headline in the Financial Times exclaiming: "Libertarian Republicans Block Pentagon Bill"! Yes, libertarian Republicans – of varying degrees of consistency – in Congress, a small but growing and highly visible vanguard of liberty, which calls itself the Liberty Caucus. And in the fight against the Surveillance State, they are getting support from progressives with a conscience, who are daring to break with this administration over its draconian approach to civil liberties."
I've advocated libertarians take over the Republican party for years, so I'm happy to see this small movement making the establishment sweat, but after the way Republicans cheated Ron Paul last year, I don't think taking over the party will succeed.
""The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. ‘The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only,’ reads the invite.""
I guess they are scared. NSA is going to tell them details of plots it supposedly foiled, but nobody will ever be able to verify them because of the clearance and the war on whistle-blowers.

Arguments against sexual integration. I have one. Boys are different than girls. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I have another one. Women are much more valuable to the species, and this is almost certainly why nature made men and women so different. We should celebrate the differences, not pretend they don't exist.

Leftist pretends to support George Zimmerman and claims to be a racist.

Freedom of Speech

Copyright causes confusion in 3D printing world.

Analysis of recent decision saying the state could compel reporters to reveal their sources. I don't see why this is a big deal. Courts have been imprisoning reporters for failing to testify for decades if not more. It doesn't seem to me like anything has changed.
"The federal Fourth Circuit covers the geographical area where most of the U.S. government’s intelligence, surveillance and top-level military agencies – including the NSA and CIA – are headquartered. The ruling "pretty much guts national security journalism in the states in which it matters," Marcy Wheeler writes."
Somebody needs to explain why that wasn't the case before. Here's a story about a reporter facing jail.
"A Fox News reporter who could be ordered to jail if she does not reveal her sources for a story about the Aurora theater shooting has filed an affidavit pleading with the judge in the case to cancel her subpoena.In the affidavit, filed Tuesday, reporter Jana Winter writes that she has suffered panic attacks and nightmares as a result of the subpoena. She writes that she has received harassing phone calls from supporters of theater shooting suspect James Holmes and that she's been afraid to live in her house. And she writes that she had to abandon reporting on "a high profile national security investigation" and "allegations of serious misconduct by senior officials" because sources will no longer talk to her."

This has been going on for as long as I can remember. Back to the original.
"Over the weekend, some news accounts described Friday’s court decision as bad timing for Attorney General Eric Holder, who has scrambled in recent weeks to soothe anger at the Justice Department’s surveillance of journalists. "The ruling was awkwardly timed for the Obama administration," the New York Times reported. But the ruling wasn’t just "awkwardly timed" – it was revealing, and it underscored just how hostile the Obama White House has become toward freedom of the press."
Become? Like all tyrants, he's always been that way. Remember his attacks on Fox News? He loves the press when they're printing what he wants, which they usually do, but they're finally doing a little more of their job, and he doesn't like it. The good news is, the more he angers the press, the more honest they'll be about him and his policies. Maybe they'll even report on Obama's affair.

Misc

Scientists, discovering the obvious, just figured out that dogs mimic behavior like apes and humans.

More criticism of Lincoln.
" Jefferson Davis was an enlightened slave holder who said that once the Confederacy gained its independence, it would mean the end of slavery. The Confederate Cabinet agreed to abolish slavery within five years after the cessation of hostilities in exchange for recognition by Britain and France. Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery, but simply and solely because they were being invaded. And the North certainly did not invade to abolish slavery. "
It seems this is becoming more widely known.
"Emancipation laws in the antebellum North were designed to rid the North of its African population. They typically declared that the children of slaves born after a certain date would, upon reaching a certain age, be emancipated. This meant that adult slaves were not freed and that families could be sold South before children reached the age of emancipation. Emancipation led to a reduction of the African population in the North, not to an increase, as it did in the South. Lincoln’s own solution to the race problem was mass colonization of Africans, and he proposed securing land in Africa and elsewhere for the purpose. Even abolitionists were careful to point out that it was not the slave they loved but the slaveholder they hated, and that emancipation did not at all mean social and political equality with whites. "
I doubt that is well known.

Tax and Spend

Ohio Gov. Kasich's proposed highway programs to cost $3 billion, much of which will be paid for by bonds covered by increased tolls on the Ohio Turnpike. The state is learning the value of tolls. They're looting Turnpike customers to pay for all the other highway projects. This is another way politicians are looting the future to make money for themselves today. And we pay for it today too because government seizes resources from the private sector, making us all poorer. Article lists all the projects.

24 Ohio governments and six school districts under state supervision to avoid bankruptcy. This is even with the phony recovery supposedly underway.

Article claims Republicans have finally become bold enough to block funding of Obamacare, effectively shutting down the government. I don't believe it.

Florida county turns some employees to part time to avoid Obamacare expenditures.

Cleveland is one of 19 cities with more government workers per capita than Detroit. Eight more cities in danger of going bankrupt include Cincinnati and four from California.
"The city bankruptcy epidemic is likely to spread around the country, resulting from years of overspending on wages and pensions in order to keep public employee unions happy and city politicians re-elected."
That's exactly what happened.

Local

If a cop goes hopping fences and chasing through back yards, he's going to encounter pets. This cop shot somebody's pet hybrid wolf-dog. This is another conflict and problem created because the government doesn't respect property rights. Why are Wright-Patt personnel engaged in crime fighting? The wolf-dog died.

Dayton home prices highest since 2008, when the last housing bubble burst.

Mosquito pool tests positive for West Nile virus.

Health Care

Criticism of Monsanto and GM foods.

Bee hives still being killed off.

Iodized salt credited with raising US IQ 15 points.

Cheap, artificial hymen.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Media

Boston mayor sends letter to Rolling Stone criticizing its cover of Boston Marathon suspect 2. This keeps the biasing going.

Foreign Policy

Great description of Mideast peace talks.
"Here we go again, another round of Mideast peace talk kabuki.
A process in which Washington, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization hold intense talks over holding talks, a ritual as stylized as the traditional Japanese dance. In the end, it’s the same empty, cynical ritual, year after year."
None of the participants want peace because they all profit from conflict.
"Israel holds all the cards, and knows it. Jewish settlements, roads, and security walls are roaring ahead, relentlessly gobbling up the occupied West Bank, Golan and their water resources. West Bank Palestinians are being crammed into future native Bantustans patterned after South Africa’s apartheid-era reservations for blacks." 
Apartheid eventually collapsed in South Africa, so there's hope, but I'm not aware of a black South African group that profited from apartheid the way Hamas profits from conflict with Israel. Maybe Bushed pushed for Palestinian elections to promote Hamas and institutionalize the status quo.

More cynicism about the Mideast peace charade.
"The political peddlers, think-tank experts and media professionals are all back in full force. They want us to believe that US Secretary of State John Kerry has done what others have failed to do. On his sixth trip to the Middle East during his post, and following intense shuttle diplomacy likened to that of Henry Kissinger, Kerry managed to create a modest common space between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA), thus securing their agreement to resume the so-called peace process. "
This sounds like they're trying to boost Obama's poll numbers, and it boosts Kerry relative to Clinton too.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The leftist theme of the Zimmerman case is carrying guns and exercising self-defense increases deadly conflicts. The plummeting crime rates as concealed carry swept the land over the last 30 years exposes that as a lie.

Regulation

Federal judge blocks new abortion restrictions in South Dakota, calling them clearly unconstitutional. I wonder how he decided that since the Constitution is silent on abortion. Abortion is going to be a big issue again. Because of the inherent conflicts in the nature of creating babies, it will never go away.

War

Perpetual war has left the Air Force is short of pilots.

Police State

Here's an interesting analysis of Florida self-defense law.
"(You don´t like my looks and spit in my face. I punch you in the nose. You pull a switchblade and lunge at me, whereupon I shoot you dead.  That´s legitimate self-defense, because I believed myself to be in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, this being the threshold for use of deadly force. That I threw the first punch doesn´t matter.) "
The person who spit is the aggressor, so the shooter can claim self-defense. I would be surprised if the shooter could claim self-defense without the spitting. That's probably why spitting is included in this example.

George Zimmerman helps family escape from car wreck.

New Zealand illustrates how government works. First it illegally spies on citizens, then instead of punishing the law breakers, it makes spying legal. Laws are for serfs, not rulers.

Witness claims Michael Hastings was not burned from the chest down.

RICO allows cops to steal your money

Politics

The attacks on Rand Paul claim their first victim, forcing advisor to resign.

Health Care

Fear of vaccination blamed for outbreak of measles.

Education

Texas schools abandoned RFID tracking of students, but they're using high def camera surveillance instead.

Economy

More than three quarters of small businesses say they will cut employees and move some from full time to part time to avoid Obamacare penalties. This is exactly what Obama wanted, but he wanted to happen after the 2014 election.

Local

Dayton bomb squad called to investigate a plastic bag of personal hygiene items. Be very afraid.

Gov. Kasich supports extending a third lane of I-70 to Springfield. The plans for the whole state, listed, would cost billions of dollars.

Butler County Sheriff says drug busts prove border is not secure. Exactly. There's no way to secure the border because the war on drugs makes the Mexican drug cartels so rich, they can always get across it. The government has been fighting the war on drugs for nearly 100 years, and it can't succeed.

Last week, gas was over $3.90. Today it's about $3.40. These price fluctuations are wild.

Wright-Patt gets kick-butt new supercomputer and the DDN uses undergraduates as reporters.

Tax and Spend

Obama appointee implicated in IRS scandal.

Ohio budget creates more tax loopholes including forgiving the Toledo Mud Hens half a million dollars sales tax bill. The state should forgive everybody's sales tax bill.

Detroit to cut pensions in bankruptcy.
"Detroit’s pension shortfall accounts for about $3.5 billion of the $18 billion in debts that led the city to file for bankruptcy last week. How it handles this problem — of not enough money set aside to pay the pensions it has promised its workers — is being closely watched by other cities with fiscal troubles. "
Cries of betrayal and hardship don't create wealth. People were foolish to put their retirement in the hands of others.

As multiple courts get involved, Detroit's bankruptcy is going to be a mess.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Economy

In many ways, life was better for Americans in 1905.
"The working person of 1905 kept his or her money. They ended up saving somewhere between a quarter and a half of everything they made – after living expenses."
Not today.
"The next time you drive through an old part of town and see the grand old houses, remember that people were able to build and buy them because their paychecks weren’t stripped bare. There were no income taxes in 1905, no sales taxes, no state taxes, and not much in the way of property taxes."
I can't imagine. Here's what government theft has done to our savings.
"Your great grandfathers faced very few of the taxes that we face. (The government survived on tariffs.) There was no social security either, and – believe it or not – the streets were never full of starving old people. Families were able to take care of their own – it’s not that hard when you’re saving half of your income!"
Exactly.

Local

Probation of former sheriff cut short. I wonder how often that happens for non-rulers.

Media

MSNBC host wears tampon earrings to protest Texas abortion restrictions.

Tax and Spend

Food stamp recipients shipping food to foreign relatives. Obama is laughing in glee.

Detroit is just the first of the giant bankruptcies coming down the road.

Regulation

Government to require black boxes in all cars by 2014. Buy used.

Health Care

How to prevent chronic inflammation.

Modern medicine is the greatest threat to our health.
"Mendelsohn went on to boldly say “that more than ninety percent of modern medicine could disappear from the face of the earth – doctors, hospitals, drugs and equipment – and the effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial.” "
That's pretty bold. Includes list of books critical of modern medicine.

Obamacare database worse than NSA. I'd call it supplemental, not worse.

Poll after poll has warned that doctors are going to retire early, but those polls don't mean anything. We haven't seen mass retirements yet.
"She told WND that doctors already have started leaving the profession through early retirement. Among those who remain, some will seek alternatives to what they see coming in the federal government’s takeover of health care."
Anecdotal evidence doesn't cut it. You have to show me the numbers.
"The same percentage say the practice of medicine is in jeopardy as medical experts lose control of their clinics and compensation with the implementation of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, or Obamacare."
This is absolutely true. This is one of the major reasons medical care suffers so badly wherever socialized medicine is implemented.

The White House never had an edge on Obamacare.

Here's another article demonizing supplements as Dick Durbin's Big Pharma legislation winds its way through the Senate.

Education

British student sent home from school trip for eating chocolate.
"Her school’s headmistress found out about the confectionary crime only by snooping on a private letter that Holli McCann had written to her mother."
"Teachers ransacked Holli’s room and went through her things. They even removed the lining of her suitcase."
"Holli said she was really upset because they emptied her toiletry bag into the sink and pulled out the lining in her suitcase."
This woman should home school.

More info on doctors prescribing stimulants to poor children with poor academic performance even though they haven't been diagnosed with ADHD.

The history of government schools institutionalizing ignorance and class structure and how the US adopted that structure for the same purpose.

Poliitcs

Boehner says Congress should be judged by how many laws it repeals. I agree, and like Boehner, it's a tremendous failure.

Wouldn't it be ironic if story of the creation of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, was a lie? It wouldn't negate the document, but it would highlight that everything government tells us is a lie.

The Declaration of Independence was a declaration of states rights, a declaration of secession from England, and therefore acknowledges the right of people to have their state secede from the union. Lincoln didn't like that.

After five years in office, Obama is going to lay out an agenda for the economy. That's just funny.

Misc

Right now 75 percent of American adults prefer reading paper books to ebooks, but that will quickly change.

Packs of feral dogs are another sign of the decivilizing effect of government.

Police State

Man arrested for barking at police dog.

Article chronicles how police forces turned into deadly military units. It was written by Radley Balko.

LA government cremates Michael Hastings's body against the wishes of his family, insuring no evidence can be obtained from it.
""Despite the LAPD's categorization of the Hasting fatal accident as a 'no [evidence of] foul play,' LAPD continues to ignore FOIA [CPRA in Calif.] requests made by San Diego 6 News for the police report, 9/11 call, autopsy, bomb squad and toxicology reports, or make the Mercedes available for inspection which only fuels conjecture," added Dvorak.

Dvorak also claimed that she has been threatened for investigating Hastings’ death.
For unknown reasons, the LAPD and Los Angeles firefighters were told not to talk to the media about Hastings’ death."
Nothing fishy here.

Another case where the government has put a defendant in double jeopardy. That they are getting away with this is another sign of growing tyranny.

Criticism of Zimmerman's prosecutors.
"Fifty years ago, in Brady v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court established that a prosecutor’s responsibility was “to seek justice fairly, not merely win convictions by any means.”"
And prosecutors ignored that duty before and after.

The Director of National Intelligence asks a stupid question.
"Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?"
Because private companies serve us. Government is a coercive, corrupt institution that funds itself by robbing us and with a monopoly on violence. I can share any information I want with anybody. That doesn't give government the power to collect that information. These are two separate things.

NSA leaker Snowden's official title is infrastructure analyst:
"It is a title that officials have carefully avoided mentioning, perhaps for fear of inviting questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics: an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world."
Another secret.
"Of course they carefully avoid mentioning it, because it gives away their game. The NSA isn’t breaking into French, German, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, etc., computers because they’re gunning for "terrorists," on that you can bet the farm. They’re doing it because they can – and because there’s nobody to stop them, since it’s all done in the dark. What the Snowden revelations underscore is an under-appreciated fact that is now staring us all in the face: the US is at war with the world."
The same for them breaking into our computers and capturing our information.
"They claim it’s all in the interest of protecting us from our enemies – but who is the real "enemy" here when the NSA is busy setting up our allies for cyber-attack, as well as spying on millions of innocent Americans?"
Everybody is the enemy to the world's most successful criminal organization.

Even if Congress passes a law limiting NSA spying, which I doubt, it won't change anything. The law doesn't limit spying. Only technology limits spying. Laws are for serfs, not rulers.

CEO of a small ISP tells his story of being ordered by FISA to set up monitoring equipment for one of his customers.

Claim the Boston Marathon suspects tried to surrender.
"An image showed Tamerlan trying to surrender. He was lying prone with his arms outstretched. He held no weapon. None was near him. No blood was visible. He was murdered in cold blood. His body was riddled with bullets from head to toe.
Dzhokhar likely tried to surrender. Local and/or federal assassins tried to kill him. He was shot multiple times. He survived. A throat wound prevented him from speaking for weeks.
In late May, he did so for the first time. He called his mother in Dagastan. They had an emotional six-minute conversation. His wounds are healing. He can walk. He's much better now. He said he and Tamerlan are innocent.
They were set up. Police, FBI, other federal agencies, and private military contractor firm Clarity International bear full responsibility."
This contradicts the claim he wrote a confession and left in the boat.
"A complete text of the note, which could be used during the trial against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, wasn’t released."
Of course not. They only released the info necessary to bias potential jurors against him.
"After his capture, he allegedly admitted to the bombings and said he and his brother acted alone. According to reports, he told investigators they were motivated by the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Apparently he miraculously did that even though he had been shot in the throat and the hand while hiding, unarmed, in the boat. He had no gun, but he had pen and paper. This article is a pack of lies. I still think the Rolling Stone was done to bias more jurors and bias them further because the government's case against him is so weak. We know the backpack carried by suspect 2 isn't one of the ones that blew up.

Cincinnati cops are fitting suspects with GPS bracelets because the jail is too full. They can arrest everybody and track them that way.