13 Thursday Jun 2013
Posted in Freedom of Speech, Politics
Tags
government corruption, freedom of speech, institute for justice, 1st amendment, Public Disclosure Commission, washington, freedom of redress, robin faris
She did it, and you can, too. Here’s a nice informational video from the Institute for Justice:
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in Freedom of Speech, Politics
≈ Comments Off
25 Monday Mar 2013
Tags
1st amendment, civil rights, dan coats, dean heller, government corruption, gun control, john mccain, mark kirk, police state, susan collins
Not content to have assaulted your First Amendment rights (Incumbent Protection Campaign Finance Reform Act0, or your Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights with the NDAA’s stipulating the use of the military to pick up American citizens without due process or a speedy trial, John “Angry Gnome” McCain has emerged — unsurprisingly, to me — as the lead Republican helping his Democratic big-government buddies in their push for gun control.
This massive bullet we dodged in 2008 is likely to join with Susan “No, really, I’m a Republican” Collins of Maine, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Dan Coats of Indiana, and Dean Heller of Nevada. Contact them if you are one of their constituents and remember this in the next election, GOP rank and file; these people are not your friends.
15 Saturday Sep 2012
Posted in Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Terrorism
≈ Comments Off
Tags
1st amendment, 4th amendment, 5th amendment, govenrment corruption, national defense authorization act, police state
Some good news, for once, on the endless war on [your pet cause here]: U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 was unconstitutional not due to the obvious issue — the breach of due process and the right to a speedy trial, but because law wasn’t “specific enough.”
Obama supporters might note that the administration is fighting the ruling, so if you think the Lightbringer gives a crap about your civil rights, you are delusional.
Additionally, Justice Forrest writes,
“First Amendment rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be legislated away…This Court rejects the Government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention….That is no small question bandied about amongst lawyers and a judge steeped in arcane questions of constitutional law; it is a question of defining an individual’s core liberties…”
07 Thursday Jun 2012
Posted in Law Enforcement
≈ Comments Off
Nashville, Tennessee is showing their respect for constitutional law with their public nuisance suit against a Kurdish street gang, preventing them from congregating. “Police claim that the gang’s use of public parks and private parking lots hurt the community, and they cite an instance in which a security camera was cut down in a park and the gang’s initials spray-painted.”
More interesting: I didn’t know Nashville had the largest Kurdish population in the United States.
26 Saturday May 2012
Posted in Freedom of Speech, Law Enforcement, Politics
≈ Comments Off
Tags
21 Monday May 2012
Posted in Law Enforcement
≈ Comments Off
Background: there’s a bunch of the “Black Bloc” in Chicago protesting the NATO summit…when they’re not complaining about Starbucks, the World Trade Organization, nuclear power, sunspots, and hair loss. They’re so called because, being young and relatively affluent, they don’t want to get in trouble with their mummies and daddies, so they wear characteristic black hoodies, masks, sunglasses — the really hip wear V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks (most likely without knowing the historical background, but they’d still think Fawkes was cool.) Like all Western spoiled brats, they’ve never actually experienced privation, other than a time out from their XBox, so of course they think it’s cool to rile up the police.
Except the Chicago Police are not renowned for their restraint, which led to a lot of heads getting cracked. Some people are, rightly, outraged by the police action. And while I think they’re response was probably excessive, I suspect were I dressed in riot gear with a hundred other officers and had to face down annoying, uneducated tits I’d probably want to do the South Side two-step on them with my favorite baton. That said, here’s ex-police chief Joseph McNamara’s take:
Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on “officer safety” and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.
Yes, police work is dangerous, and the police see a lot of violence. On the other hand, 51 officers were slain in the line of duty last year, out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York’s highest crime precincts, when the total number of cops in the country was half that of today. Each of these police deaths and numerous other police injuries is a tragedy and we owe support to those who protect us. On the other hand, this isn’t Iraq. The need to give our officers what they require to protect themselves and us has to be balanced against the fact that the fundamental duty of the police is to protect human life and that law officers are only justified in taking a life as a last resort.
But the police were just getting started…
Some of the Occupy livestreamers found themselves being stopped, detained, and interrogated by Chicago’s “finest” without cause.
The police never explained why the men were being detained but handcuffed and interrogated them, searched their car, repeatedly slammed one of their computer hard drives against the car floor, and attempted to delete their footage of the incident before it could be archived at Ustream.
According to Firedoglake, Pool tweeted a couple of hours later that “the police were still following them on the police scanner around 2 am. They allegedly wanted the targeted journalists to announce where they were staying for the night so they could raid where the journalists were staying.”
18 Friday May 2012
Posted in Freedom of Speech, Law, Politics, Terrorism
≈ Comments Off
Tags
1st amendment, 5th amendment, carl levin, john mccain, national defense authorization act, ndaa, police state
This is by no means the end, but U.S. District Judge (New York) Katherine B. Forrest suspended enforcement of Paragraph 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act — brainchild of Senators John “Angry Gnome” McCain and Carl “Evil Bugger” Levin — that allowed for persons deemed by the president to be aiding terrorism could be arrested (by the military, no less, in CONUS), and held without probably cause or due process indefinitely.
“Virginia already has passed a law that states it will not cooperate with such detentions, and several local jurisdictions have done the same. Arizona, Rhode Island, Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Washington also have reviewed such plans.” What’s more shocking is that more states haven’t reacted forcefully toward the legislation. Something like this sort of action spurred a little revolution about 236 years ago. But we had stones back then.”
The judge explained that the plaintiffs alleged paragraph 1021 is “constitutionally infirm, violating both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment as well due process rights guaranteed by the 5th Amendment.”
Normally, I’m reticent to use WND as a source due to their extreme partisanship — it’s not “Obama’s citizen-detention plan” but was written by McCain and Levin — but in this case, they’re one of the few places reporting this legal finding.
14 Monday May 2012
Posted in Law Enforcement
≈ Comments Off
…and minors. And no, in California, you are not required to “carry ID at all times.” (Or as my mother used to tell me in a bad German accent, “Always carry your papers!”) And without probable cause, you just violated his 1st and 4th amendment rights, officer…but you probably didn’t learn that in LA public schools, did you?
Maybe the issue here was Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputies flirting with what they described as minors, and the photographer interrupted them before they could close the deal.
02 Thursday Feb 2012
Here’s an old bit of Crossfire (back when CNN didn’t completely suck) discussing this with Frank Zappa. Got this one from the boys over on Hot Air:
My answer: no, they are not. The panel’s right — this is about ideas, and trying to quash ideas. In that you will always fail.
