Homeless in Arizona

Bad, Incompetent, Lousy Government

Sacrifice a politician????

 

Only criminals speak Arabic????

Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down????

Source

Lawsuit over stop for Arabic flashcards tossed

Associated Press Wed Dec 25, 2013 1:42 PM

PHILADELPHIA — An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union says he finds it perplexing that a federal appeals court has rejected a former college student’s lawsuit over his detention at an airport after he was found to be carrying Arabic language flashcards.

Nicholas George says the Transportation Security Administration and FBI agents violated his constitutional rights during the August 2009 stop at Philadelphia International Airport.

A district judge rejected the agents’ assertion of immunity. But the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed Tuesday and said the agents were justified in detaining him briefly to investigate.

ACLU attorney Benjamin Wizner says the decision could be appealed to the full 3rd Circuit or to the U.S. Supreme Court and didn’t affect legal action against Philadelphia police or the federal government.


The sledgehammer justice of mandatory minimum sentences

I guess another title for this article could be "Plea bargains gut your right to a jury trail".

I think that slightly less then 1 percent of the people arrested for crimes result in a trial. The other 99+ percent of the people arrested for crimes accept plea bargains rather then go to trial and face draconian sentences that could put them in prison for almost the rest of their lives.

I know two people who claim to be innocent, but accepted plea bargins to avoid going to trial and receiving a draconian prison sentence for the crimes they are alleged to have committed.

They are Kevin Walsh and Laro Nicol. Kevin Walsh accepted a 1 year plea bargain sentence in the Arizona State Prison instead of go to trial and risk getting a 20+ year prison sentence if he was convicted.

Laro Nicol accepted a plea bargain that put him in the Federal Prison system for 2 years rather then go to trial and risk getting a 40+ year prison sentence.

Source

The sledgehammer justice of mandatory minimum sentences

By George F. Will, Published: December 25 E-mail the writer

Federal Judge John Gleeson of the Eastern District of New York says documents called “statements of reasons” are an optional way for a judge to express “views that might be of interest.” The one he issued two months ago is still reverberating.

It expresses his dismay that although his vocation is the administration of justice, his function frequently is the infliction of injustice. The policy of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses has empowered the government to effectively nullify the constitutional right to a trial. As Lulzim Kupa learned.

Born to Albanian immigrants, he was convicted in 1999 and 2007 of distributing marijuana. Released from prison in 2010, he again engaged in trafficking, this time with enough cocaine to earn him charges involving a sentence of 10 years to life. On March 5, 2013, prosecutors offered this: In exchange for a guilty plea, he would effectively be sentenced within the range of 110 months to 137 months — but the offer would expire the next day. Kupa rejected the offer, so on March 15 prosecutors filed a “prior felony information,” a.k.a. an 851 notice, citing the two marijuana convictions. So, 10 days after saying a sentence of perhaps less than eight years (assuming good time credits) would be appropriate, prosecutors were threatening a sentence of life without parole. This gave him no incentive to plead guilty.

Then, however, they immediately proposed another plea agreement involving about nine years’ imprisonment. Given a day to decide, he acted too slowly, so prosecutors again increased the recommended sentence. Finally, Kupa caved: “I want to plead guilty, your Honor, before things get worse.” If, after the 851 notice, he had insisted on a trial and been found guilty, he would have died in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. He is 37.

Tyquan Midyett, a high school dropout from a broken home and foster care, began using marijuana at 14. He was 26 when he was arrested for selling less than four ounces of crack. Because this was his second offense, the best he could do pleading guilty was a 10-year sentence. When he hesitated, the government gave him a date to agree or it would file an 851 notice, which would double the mandatory minimum to 20 years. He went to trial, was convicted and is serving 240 months for an offense that, without the escalating coercions aimed at a guilty plea, would have received a sentence of 46 months to 57 months.

In 2008, an 851 notice was filed against Charles Doutre, based on two prior convictions for distribution of $50 worth of drugs and simple possession of drugs. The judge who was required to sentence him to life in prison said, “I’ve imposed a life sentence six times, and it was for a murder each time.” Doutre is 32.

Eleven years ago, Dennis Capps, 39, a methamphetamine addict, pleaded guilty to two instances of trafficking involving a quantity of drugs he could hold in his hand. He conquered his addiction for a long time, then relapsed, and in this year was convicted of another drug offense. Because he insisted on a trial, the government filed an 851 notice. He was convicted and is serving life without parole.

Kenneth Harvey was 24 in 1989 when he committed a crack cocaine offense. He had two prior offenses that qualified as felony drug convictions even though they were not deemed serious enough for imprisonment. They, however, enabled the government to make an 851 filing. He will die in prison. Harvey is 48.

Thousands of prisoners are serving life without parole for nonviolent crimes. Gleeson, who is neither naive nor sentimental (as a prosecutor, he sent mobster John Gotti to die in a supermax prison), knows that most defendants who plead guilty are guilty. He is, however, dismayed at the use of the threat of mandatory minimums as “sledgehammers” to extort guilty pleas, effectively vitiating the right to a trial. Ninety-seven percent of federal convictions are without trials, sparing the government the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Mere probable cause, and the meager presentation required for a grand jury indictment, suffices. “Judging is removed,” Gleeson says, “prosecutors become sentencers.” And when threats of draconian sentences compel guilty pleas, “some innocent people will plead guilty.”

Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Sens. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are questioning the regime of mandatory minimum sentences, including recidivism enhancements, that began with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Meanwhile, the human and financial costs of mass incarceration mount.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.


AIDS vaccine test results faked

It's ain't about good government, it's about cold hard Federal cash!!!

I'm not psychic or anything, but don't expect anybody to be punished for this, or even for the money to be returned.

Source

AIDS vaccine test results faked

Tony Leys, The Des Moines Register 10:13 p.m. EST December 23, 2013

DES MOINES -- An Iowa State University assistant professor resigned after being accused of spiking rabbit blood to falsely show that an AIDS vaccine was working in the research animals.

Dong-Pyou Han was an assistant professor of biomedical sciences. He resigned in October after admitting responsibility, an ISU spokesman said.

The fraudulent results helped an ISU research team gain millions of dollars in federal money, according to James Bradac, who helps oversee AIDS vaccine grants for the National Institutes of Health.

Bradac said in a phone interview Monday that Han apparently added human blood components to the rabbit blood to skew experiments' results. He said this was the worst case of research fraud he'd seen in his 24 years at the federal agency.

The human blood came from people whose bodies had produced antibodies to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Bradac said. The presence of these antibodies in the rabbits' blood made it appear that the vaccine was spurring the animals to build defenses against HIV.

"This positive result was striking, and it caught everybody's attention," Bradac said.

Federal documents released Monday show the rabbit-blood results were presented at numerous scientific meetings over several years. But researchers at other institutions became suspicious after they were unsuccessful in duplicating the ISU results.

The ISU team is led by Michael Cho, a biomedical professor who came to Ames several years ago from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

Bradac said Cho started receiving federal grants for the research in 2008, when he was at Case Western. Cho does not face discipline in the matter, said ISU spokesman John McCarroll.

Bradac said Han worked for Cho for about 15 years and transferred to ISU with him. In all, the team was awarded about $19 million in multi-year grants, which also financed related research at several institutions. About $10 million of that money was awarded after Cho's team reported "exciting results" that now appear to have been fraudulent, Bradac said.

McCarroll said Cho was alerted in January to possible problems with his team's experiments.

"At Iowa State's request, the research samples in question were examined by researchers at another university; they confirmed samples had been spiked," McCarroll wrote in an email. to

Han was identified in August as the likely suspect, McCarroll said.

"He later admitted responsibility and resigned from Iowa State, effective Oct. 4, 2013," McCarroll said.

Han could not be reached for comment. Cho did not respond to requests for comment.

Bradac, the federal administrator, said Han apparently acted without the knowledge of the rest of his team.

"A large amount of what they were focusing on was flushed down because of this one guy," he said.

The vaccine testing was central to the $19 million in grants, but other activities also were covered by the money, Bradac said. About $4 million has yet to be spent.

The federal agency is talking to ISU leaders about whether that money still will be disbursed. Bradac said he didn't know whether a refund might be requested.

It's unusual for a university to have to repay research grant money, he said.

Ivan Oransky, a physician and medical journalist, wrote about the sanctions against Han Monday morning on a blog called "Retraction Watch."

Oransky, who works in New York, said it's important for researchers to be held accountable for misconduct. The Han case stands out from most others, he said.

"It's unusual to see someone fake results this brazenly," Oransky said.

Most incidents of misconduct involve someone writing down false data, not altering physical evidence, he said.

The federal documents, which were posted on a government website, say Han agreed to be banned from participating in any federally financed research for three years. Oransky said that's an unusually strong penalty for a scientist.

Oransky said the federal documents suggest ISU officials promptly looked into the suspicions of fraud and reported their findings.

That's a good sign, he said. Too often, he said, research institutions cover up misconduct or publish opaque accounts that fail to make clear what happened.

However, he said, senior faculty should be held accountable in such cases, because they're supposed to monitor their staff members' work.

Oransky said he hoped federal prosecutors would look into the allegations that millions of taxpayer dollars were awarded based on lies.

"This is fraud, and the question is whether it's a big enough case for the government to go after," he said. "…I think it's time for the government to criminally prosecute more of these cases." Source

Iowa State University researcher accused of faking AIDS vaccine test results

Dec. 23, 2013

Written by Tony Leys

An Iowa State University assistant professor resigned after being accused of spiking rabbit blood to falsely show that an AIDS vaccine was working in the research animals.

Dr. Dong-Pyou Han was an assistant professor of biomedical sciences. He resigned in October after admitting responsibility, an ISU spokesman said.

The fraudulent results helped an ISU research team gain millions of dollars in federal money, according to Dr. James Bradac, who helps oversee AIDS vaccine grants for the National Institutes of Health.

Bradac said in a phone interview Monday that Han apparently added human blood components to the rabbit blood to skew experiments’ results. He said this was the worst case of research fraud he’d seen in his 24 years at the federal agency.

The human blood came from people whose bodies had produced antibodies to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Bradac said. The presence of these antibodies in the rabbits’ blood made it appear that the vaccine was spurring the animals to build defenses against HIV.

“This positive result was striking, and it caught everybody’s attention,” Bradac said.

Federal documents released Monday show the rabbit-blood results were presented at numerous scientific meetings over several years. But researchers at other institutions became suspicious after they were unsuccessful in duplicating the ISU results.

The ISU team is led by Dr. Michael Cho, a biomedical professor who came to Ames several years ago from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.

Bradac said Cho started receiving federal grants for the research in 2008, when he was at Case Western. Cho does not face discipline in the matter, said ISU spokesman John McCarroll.

Bradac said Han worked for Cho for about 15 years and transferred to ISU with him. In all, the team was awarded about $19 million in multiyear grants, which also financed related research at several institutions. About $10 million of that money was awarded after Cho’s team reported “exciting results” that now appear to have been fraudulent, Bradac said.

McCarroll said Cho was alerted in January to possible problems with his team’s experiments.

“At Iowa State’s request, the research samples in question were examined by researchers at another university; they confirmed samples had been spiked,” McCarroll wrote in an email to the Register.

Han was identified in August as the likely suspect, McCarroll said.

“He later admitted responsibility and resigned from Iowa State, effective Oct. 4, 2013,” McCarroll said.

Han could not be reached for comment. Cho did not respond to requests for comment.

Bradac, the federal administrator, said Han apparently acted without the knowledge of the rest of his team.

“A large amount of what they were focusing on was flushed down because of this one guy,” he said.

The vaccine testing was central to the $19 million in grants, but other activities also were covered by the money, Bradac said. About $4 million has yet to be spent.

The federal agency is talking to ISU leaders about whether that money still will be disbursed. Bradac said he didn’t know whether a refund might be requested.

It’s unusual for a university to have to repay research grant money, he said.

Dr. Ivan Oransky, a physician and medical journalist, wrote about the sanctions against Han Monday morning on a blog called “Retraction Watch.”

Oransky, who works in New York, said it’s important for researchers to be held accountable for misconduct. The Han case stands out from most others, he said.

“It’s unusual to see someone fake results this brazenly,” Oransky said.

Most incidents of misconduct involve someone writing down false data, not altering physical evidence, he said.

The federal documents, which were posted on a government website, say Han agreed to be banned from participating in any federally financed research for three years. Oransky said that’s an unusually strong penalty for a scientist.

Oransky said the federal documents suggest ISU officials promptly looked into the suspicions of fraud and reported their findings.

That’s a good sign, he said. Too often, he said, research institutions cover up misconduct or publish opaque accounts that fail to make clear what happened.

However, he said, senior faculty should be held accountable in such cases, because they’re supposed to monitor their staff members’ work.

Oransky said he hoped federal prosecutors would look into the allegations that millions of taxpayer dollars were awarded based on lies.

“This is fraud, and the question is whether it’s a big enough case for the government to go after,” he said. “… I think it’s time for the government to criminally prosecute more of these cases.”


Holy sighting on Scottsdale cheesecake?

I wonder can this cheesecake turn water into wine??? Or since I don't drink, it would be nice if it could turn low grade Tobasco Sauce into high quality Chalula hot sauce!!!!

Source

Holy sighting on Scottsdale cheesecake?

By Krystle Henderson 12 News Wed Dec 25, 2013 3:34 PM

A Scottsdale family on Wednesday said their cheesecake is a Christmas miracle.

When they pulled the dessert out of the oven, it cracked as it cooled. According to the family, the cake crack resembles a crucifix.

Family members say they won’t be eating the cheesecake. Instead they plan on selling it and donating the money to a local charity or church.


Scottsdale museum may renew city’s ties to Old West

A $13.6 million waste of tax dollars. Of course in the end it will be a much bigger waste of money because these projects always start with low ball figures and usually end up costing several times the initial guess.

Source

Scottsdale museum may renew city’s ties to Old West

By Beth Duckett The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 25, 2013 8:11 PM

Scottsdale hopes to reinforce its image as “The West’s Most Western Town” when it embarks on a $13.6 million Scottsdale Museum of the West project next year.

The museum, designed to be a tourist attraction in Scottsdale’s arts district, has been in the works for more than a decade.

Now, dirt could begin flying at the downtown site in January, when the Scottsdale City Council is expected to sign off on a multimillion-dollar contract for construction northwest of Marshall Way and First Street.

“We hope to be under construction by the third week of January,” said Gary Meyer, project manager with the city.

The two-story, 40,000-square-foot museum, which likely will house six art galleries, could open as early as this fall.

Scottsdale’s elected officials recently approved a land rezoning as well as development and site plans to accommodate the art museum.

The site is next to an underground parking garage and shuttered transit center, which the city plans to incorporate into the project.

Supporters envision the publicly funded museum as a cornerstone of Scottsdale’s Western brand, complementing the trove of art galleries and Old West-themed shops in the downtown district, south of Chaparral Road and north of Osborn Road.

Mike Fox, executive director of the non-profit Museum of the West organization, said the museum is progressing on many fronts, including fundraising, procurement of art collections and exhibit planning.

“The success of these efforts will determine the extent the museum will fulfill its mission and demonstrate its ability to incorporate state-of-the-art exhibit designs and technologies,” Fox said this week.

But it comes at a price. Taxpayers are footing the museum’s capital costs after the Scottsdale City Council agreed to commit $13.6 million in bond debt, backed by revenue from Scottsdale’s bed tax, imposed on visitors who stay at the city’s hotels.

Scottsdale voters in 2010 approved an increase in the hotel checkout rate, adding about $2 to the cost of a $99 room.

Half of the tax revenue goes toward destination marketing for Scottsdale, and the other half goes toward support of tourism-related events, research and capital projects, the Western museum included.

While critics have argued that $13.6 million is a high price for taxpayers, supporters say the cost is well worth it to construct a downtown destination aimed at attracting more tourists and tax revenue to Scottsdale.

Fox said the museum bolsters Scottsdale’s competitive edge and Western heritage, which some argue is fading after the loss of businesses including Rawhide Western Town, which relocated to the Gila River Reservation near Chandler.

“Unfortunately, over the years, the range of ways a visitor or resident can experience these Western themes has continued to decline, with very few venues providing a year-round experience, as the new museum will,” Fox said in a June interview with The Republic.

The non-profit Museum of the West will be the sole operator of the city-owned museum.

Plans also include redevelopment of an abandoned transit center at Second Street between Marshall Way and Goldwater Boulevard.

The goal for the project is to redevelop and reuse as much of the the Loloma Transit Center as possible, including a building, plazas and ramadas, according to the city.

Meyer said the construction contract could go to the Scottsdale City Council on Jan. 14.


Grand Avenue: New life envisioned for old tracks

Grab your wallet here comes another one of those wonderful mass transit schemes which will cost big bucks and do nothing to improver our transportation.

Source

Grand Avenue: New life envisioned for old tracks

By Lesley Wright The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 25, 2013 10:41 PM

Hurried drivers approaching Glendale and 59th avenues sometimes find themselves in a little circle of hell.

Drivers on Grand Avenue at this intersection swoop unimpeded under a wide overpass, but not the drivers on 59th or Glendale.

Up to 12 times a day, both streets are blocked by slow-moving freight trains running parallel to Grand.

The delays can last 20 minutes or more.

“It can be a hassle,” said Jack Kenyon, 23, who waits two or three times a week as he heads to service calls for his grandfather’s plumbing business at 60th and Glendale avenues.

“I take a different route through the neighborhoods if I’m squeezed for time. It’s irritating.”

The trains can seem to be an annoying relic of the past — they’ve been running alongside Grand Avenue since 1895 — but they may hold promise for the future. Some West Valley leaders imagine those tracks bringing in employers, workers and new residents. The rails could be the foundation of the Valley’s next major mass-transportation project.

“You’re going to need an economic driver here,” said Peoria Mayor Bob Barrett. He is the steward for one of Grand Avenue’s most blighted neighborhoods, a stubborn eyesore for a city that is transforming into one of the most upscale west of Interstate 17.

“That driver would be commuter rail, running from Wickenburg to Phoenix,” Barrett said. “That would be the rebirth of Grand Avenue.”

Heavy-rail trains have not moved people around metro Phoenix since the early 20th century. But the unexpected success of light rail in Phoenix and the East Valley has encouraged advocates who want more public transportation along Grand Avenue.

The only diagonal road in a region of traffic grids, Grand Avenue cuts through six municipalities — Phoenix, Glendale, Peoria, El Mirage, Youngtown and Surprise — and passes the retirement communities of Sun City, Sun City West and Sun City Grand before heading to Wickenburg.

A group of elected city officials, engineers and state and county representatives are developing a comprehensive plan for Grand’s future and are studying how the road functions for traffic, economic redevelopment and mass transit. Some of the mayors in the group want commuter rail to be part of that plan.

Unlike light rail, commuter rail runs on fixed tracks that also carry heavy freight and passenger trains. In large cities, commuter lines run all day. In the Valley, those lines would likely run south in the morning to bring commuters to Phoenix and north toward the suburbs in the evening.

West Valley leaders have talked about commuter rail for years, hoping it would bring an economic boost around future stations. But no agency or city has the money for the initial expense.

And issues concerning coordination with the BNSF Railway and competing demands from the Valley’s light-rail system have kept the idea on hold, despite the railroad’s history along Grand.

Grand aligns in many areas with an old stagecoach route that helped territorial Arizonans get around their embryonic state. Glendale founder William J. Murphy laid out the first 18 miles of Grand Avenue in 1887, but from Glendale north to Wickenburg, the railroad was moving people and goods long before the road took shape.

Surprise Mayor Sharon Wolcott looks at the BNSF (Burlington, Northern and Santa Fe) rail lines and envisions a thriving Grand Avenue corridor.

“We want to bring workers back to Grand,” she said. “We want research and development, clusters of corporate headquarters. Rail is the way to move people to work and goods to market.”

The railroad already moves tons of goods from Wickenburg to the Mobest rail yard in downtown Phoenix.

In its heyday, it moved plenty of people, too. Railroad lines took a circuitous route through the state as powerful mining and political leaders dictated where they should run. Murphy, a 19th-century businessman who had a stake in railroads, needed lines through Wickenburg to carry ore from his gold mine. Trains continue through there today.

Marc Pearsall, a longtime train aficionado who works for the Maricopa Association of Governments in Phoenix, said that when he waits for a lengthy freight train to pass, he imagines the cars are transparent. Then, he can see all the goods that come to Phoenix by rail.

“You would be surprised what was in them,” Pearsall said.

They hold chemicals, beer, building materials, ketchup, televisions, lumber and cement, he said. Even thousands of cars for sale come in by train each week.

“They’ve been doing that for 100 years, ever since the Model T,” Pearsall said. “It’s everything.”

Commuter rail

Today, nearly 1.4 million people live west of I-17, and thousands more are expected to move in to planned housing developments in coming years.

Some transportation experts argue that the West Valley must start investing in commuter trains on the BNSF rail lines now for future residents.

The study, due in the summer, is called COMPASS, for the Grand Avenue Corridor Optimization, Access Management and System Study.

Representatives from state and county agencies, along with the mayors of the six municipalities that line Grand Avenue, are taking a holistic view of the arterial road. The group is trying to figure out how to make Grand work better as an expressway, how to encourage economic development and how to bring in public transportation.

Some mayors participating in the study have pointed to mass transit as a way to accomplish the first two goals. Commuter rail, light rail or even express bus service in a dedicated traffic lane could move people and goods and bring jobs and development to Grand Avenue. Mass-transit advocates said that for the road’s economy to prosper, workers will need a fast way to get around.

“It may not come in my lifetime,” said El Mirage Mayor Lana Mook. “But we know that commuter rail will come someday.”

Expensive system

Commuter rail has been extensively studied, but the expense of the projects, which often need federal dollars, has kept most studies on the shelf.

In 2009, three studies indicated commuter rail could carry 18,000 passengers a day by 2030. MAG, a regional planning agency leading the study to revive Grand Avenue, recommended a 105-mile commuter-rail system with 33 stations running from Queen Creek to Buckeye and from Chandler to Wittmann.

At the time, costs were estimated to be from $10 million to $18 million per mile. The existence of the BNSF tracks makes the project less expensive than light rail, which cost $70 million per mile. Eventually, the line could link with systems going from Phoenix to Tucson and from Phoenix to Las Vegas.

“America in general and Arizona in particular has lagged behind in developing rail services,” said Robert Bohannan, a railroad expert who consulted on the 2009 commuter-rail study. “Rail has proven to be an effective industrial-development and economic-development tool. Bus service doesn’t have the power to attract industry the way rail does.”

Commuter rail differs from light rail, such as the trains that make frequent stops through parts of Phoenix and the East Valley. While light rail has multiple tracks running down streets, commuter rail would run on heavy tracks and make infrequent stops. It would also have limited hours, bringing suburbanites to downtown Phoenix in the morning and back in the evening. And the trains would share the track with freight trains, similar to rail systems in Seattle, Chicago and Minneapolis, said DJ Mitchell, an assistant vice president with BNSF.

It works in those cities, which can run more than 100 trains a day. Metro Phoenix may be the last region still suitable for commuter rail because of extensive existing tracks, Mitchell said.

BNSF executives are in the process of running numbers from past studies to bring cost estimates up to date. Those results should be available within the next few months.

Taxpayers would have to fund the construction of any additional lines or modifications and equipment for commuter-train operations, Mitchell said.

“They have a plan and we will tell them what is necessary to implement that plan” Mitchell said. “Once you sail down this path, it’s terribly expensive to build and operate. ... This is a major decision (for) metropolitan Phoenix.”

As with light rail, tax watchdog groups might object to any move to create a permanent funding source for commuter rail in the form of taxes or bonds.

But others, especially drivers who avoid Grand Avenue because of the traffic, would welcome it.

Retiree Sandy Barbu, 69, lives in Sun City West, near Grand Avenue. But the lights and congestion along parts of Grand send her in search of other streets.

“I would love it if the train came through here,” said Barbu, who moved to the Valley from New Jersey. “We could use it to go down to Phoenix.”

Possible ridership

Population and employment along Grand Avenue may have to grow before commuter rail could have enough advocates to gain strength, according to others involved in the study.

The Grand Avenue study group also is exploring express buses, which would run in a dedicated lane on Grand Avenue, and possibly even light-rail extensions into Glendale and other cities.

Wolcott, who worked on commuter rail when she was a state legislator in Minneapolis, cautioned against trying to get trains running before their time.

The Surprise mayor would prefer starting with high-speed buses. If advocates move too fast with a rail campaign and are defeated, the loss could set back the cause for years. Wolcott is unsure whether enough people live and work in the West Valley now to reach a critical mass of public-transit riders.

“We need more ridership,” she said. “You can’t just make up the numbers.”

Rail has a long lead time, however. When BNSF worked with Seattle for a commuter-rail system, it took nearly a decade from planning until the first train carried passengers.

“You need to start planning for it and building it now,” Bohannan said. “These things don’t get built overnight. If the population isn’t there now, it will be by the time it’s done.”

Many of those riders would come from future employers along Grand if improvement projects draw in more employers, Wolcott said.

Surprise acquired its first corporate headquarters on Grand Avenue this year, when the non-profit Sun Health moved into a building north of Bell Road. Executives said they wanted to be close to hospitals and senior independent and assisted-living communities the non-profit runs in the northwest Valley.

“We did want some community visibility, and Grand really provides that as well as any thoroughfare,” said Ron Guziak, president and CEO of Sun Health.

About 45 employees commute to the office each day. They get stuck at the bottleneck at Bell Road and Grand Avenue and are slowed by traffic lights.

Better transportation would help Sun Health workers and tens of thousands of older residents in the area, executives say.

“Whether it’s commuter rail or light rail, having effective mass transit makes sense,” Guziak said.


FBI participates in drug war murder and drug rip off???

This article kind of reminds me of a famous quote from the Vietnam war when some brilliant spin master for the US Military came up with the line "We have to destroy the village to save it" to justify the American military's burning down of villages that sympathized with the Viet Cong.

It sounds like the FBI and DEA are doing the same thing for their "drug war" in Mexico.

This article also alludes to the fact that most of the spying the CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA and other Federal government agencies are doing is not to protect us from terrorists as they claim the Patriot Act laws are doing, but to hunt down people for victimless drug war crimes.

"the FBI began using foreign counter-intelligence methods to investigate drug cartels domestically after the 9/11 attacks."

I have posted other articles that say less then 1 percent of the people arrested for Patriot Act crimes are arrested for so called "terrorist" crimes the Patriot Act pretends to protect us from. According to the Federal governments figures over 50 percent of the people arrested under the Patriot Act are arrested for victimless "drug war" crimes. Arrests for victimless firearm registration crimes is second after arrests for "victimless drug war" crimes under the Patriot Act.

Source

Agent: FBI key in border agent Terry slaying

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 25, 2013 9:22 PM

A federal agent who exposed the Justice Department’s flawed gun-trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious says the FBI played a key role in events leading to the 2010 murder near Nogales, Ariz., of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

John Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, contends that the bandits who killed Terry were working for FBI operatives and were sent to the border to do a drug rip-off using intelligence from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I don’t think the (FBI) assets were part of the rip-off crew,” Dodson said. “I think they were directing the rip crew.” [Either way the FBI agents involved were criminals]

Dodson’s comments to The Arizona Republic amplify assertions he made in his recently released book, “The Unarmed Truth,” about his role as a whistle-blower in the Fast and Furious debacle.

Terry belonged to an elite Border Patrol tactical team sent to a remote area known as Peck Canyon, roughly a dozen miles northwest of Nogales, where violence had escalated because criminal gangs were stealing narcotics from drug runners known as mules. He was slain in a shootout with several bandits. Two assault-type rifles found at the scene were subsequently traced to Fast and Furious.

The operation, based in Phoenix, was launched in 2009 to identify and prosecute drug lords, but instead allowed guns to be “walked” into the hands of Mexican criminals. ATF agents encouraged licensed firearms dealers in Arizona to sell more than 2,000 weapons to known “straw buyers” who were working for cartels. Instead of arresting suspects immediately, surveillance agents took notes and let them disappear with the guns. [Sounds a lot like Vietnam to me]

After the Terry slaying and an attempted cover-up within the Justice Department, Dodson provided evidence and testimony to Congress. His revelations, later verified by an Office of the Inspector General’s report, ignited a national scandal over Fast and Furious that resulted in a congressional contempt citation against Attorney General Eric Holder and the replacement of top ATF and Justice Department officials.

In his book, Dodson uses cautious language to characterize his account of circumstances surrounding Terry’s death, saying the information is based on firsthand knowledge, personal opinion and press reports. He asserts that the DEA had information about, and may have orchestrated, a large drug shipment through Peck Canyon that December night. He alleges that DEA agents shared that intelligence with FBI counterparts, who advised criminal informants from another cartel that the load would be “theirs for the taking.”

“Stealing such a shipment would increase the clout of the FBI informants in the cartel organization they had penetrated,” Dodson wrote, “and thus lead to better intel for them in the future.” [Sounds like the FBI, DEA and BATF cops are just as corrupt as the alleged drug dealers they want to arrest]

Representatives of the FBI, ATF and DEA declined to discuss that agent’s assertions or to answer questions about Terry’s death.

Some of Dodson’s narrative is documented in the Justice Department inspector general’s review, which described how Fast and Furious became tangled with collateral cases under the FBI and DEA. The inspector general’s report says the agencies’ failure to appreciate the significance of the inter-connected cases was “troubling.” However, it does not allege that the DEA knew of a drug shipment going through Peck Canyon, or that the FBI passed such information to informants.

The primary target of Fast and Furious was a Phoenix man named Manuel Celis-Acosta, who federal authorities believe was responsible for more than 1,500 weapons purchases during the 15-month probe. After the operation began in 2009, DEA officials informed ATF that they had a wiretap on Celis-Acosta and were monitoring his firearm activities. About the same time, according to congressional documents, two of Celis-Acosta’s associates who had financed gun purchases were cultivated as FBI informants.

Dodson alleges in his book that they even used “FBI money to ultimately purchase a significant portion of the firearms.”

Of the five men accused in the shooting, two are awaiting trial, one is reportedly in the custody of Mexican authorities and two remain at large. U.S. District Court records concerning the case have been sealed at the request of the Justice Department. [Nothing like a secret government]

Dodson told The Arizona Republic that ATF administrators unsuccessfully tried to block publication of his manuscript and insisted that he qualify allegations about the Terry homicide to indicate they were not based upon classified information he gained as an agent. “They were very strict and stern about that,” he noted.

Dodson, who worked on an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force after Fast and Furious, said the FBI began using foreign counter-intelligence methods to investigate drug cartels domestically after the 9/11 attacks. He said agents sometimes allow or encourage criminal conduct by operatives to help them rise within organizations, and thus to produce better intelligence. He alleged that the attempted border rip-off that ended in Terry’s death was one such case.

“If they can get these guys (informants) in a position so they’re closer to the Tier 1 or Tier 2 guy (in the cartel), they’ll do it,” he said. “They want to make these guys (operatives) rock stars” in the eyes of drug lords.

Dodson said the practice is justified in the bureau by a perception that “it doesn’t matter what they (informants) are doing; these crimes are going to be happening anyway.” However, he added, the result is that agents strengthen a cartel to gain intelligence — and other agents or informants may do the same for rival crime syndicates.

“Essentially, the United States government is involved in cartel-building,” Dodson said.

A high-ranking cartel official facing trial in Chicago has made similar allegations in seeking to have charges against him thrown out. Jesus Zambada-Niebla, an associate of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and son of another narcotics boss, filed federal court motions claiming the Sinaloa Cartel leaders had a longtime arrangement with U.S. law enforcement.

“(They) were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and United States authorities capture or kill thousands of rival cartel members,” the motion stated.

Zambada-Niebla asserted that he was granted immunity during a 2011 meeting with DEA agents and their operative, cartel attorney Humberto Loya-Castro. Federal prosecutors admitted to a longtime informant relationship with Loya-Castro, and confirmed he was allowed to participate in criminal conduct “as specifically authorized” by Justice Department officials.

Zambada-Niebla is awaiting trial. A judge has rejected his motion for a dismissal based on informant immunity.

Dodson, who remains an ATF agent, is now based in Tucson, where he says he is treated as a pariah. “The Unarmed Truth” is a personal account of his saga as a whistle-blower, but also a critique of Fast and Furious that portrays colleagues as a gang that couldn’t think straight.

The book contains few revelations beyond the assertions about Terry’s death. The narrative style sometimes resembles prose in a detective novel, as when Dodson describes his decision to go public on a televised news broadcast.

“I didn’t start this war and I sure as hell wasn’t the cause of it,” he wrote. “But now that I was in it, I’d rather go down charging the pillbox than be sniped while sitting on my ass in the hedgerow. Here I come.”

During a phone interview, Dodson was asked whether cartel operatives would have been able to smuggle guns out of Arizona — as they’d been doing for years — even if the government had not aided them with Fast and Furious.

“Yes,” he answered. “But would it have happened in the same numbers? No, I don’t think so.”

He also was asked if a “gun-walking” strategy would have been justified if Fast and Furious had included some method of tracking the weapons to cartel kingpins.

“Does sometimes the ends justify the means? Yeah, I guess it does,” Dodson said. Phoenix investigators, however, had no such plan, he said, “and there was no way we were going to take down a cartel with what we were doing.”


Tempe Messy Yard Cops mixing government and religion????

From this article is sure sounds like the Tempe Messy Yard cops (Neighborhood Services Office) are mixing govenrment and religion by collecting Christmas lights for people to install on their homes.

Source

Tempe homes receive donated holiday lights

The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 20, 2013 8:23 AM

Non-profit Tempe Neighbors Helping Neighbors helped brighten the holidays for some seniors by installing donated holiday lights on seven homes of those who may no longer be able to decorate them.

“We talked to our friends in the Neighborhood Services Office at the city of Tempe and asked them if they could help us get this off the ground, and they jumped in without hesitation.” said Gary Roberts, president of Tempe Neighbors Helping Neighbors. “They sent out our flier to all the neighborhood chairs and asked them to forward the name of a senior in their neighborhood to us.”

Donation boxes were distributed to the multigenerational centers around Tempe and a few calls, e-mails and Facebook posts later, there were plenty of lights to decorate the homes.

“Next year, with a little more lead time to get the word out, we hope to really take this to the next level,” Roberts said.


Merry Christmas from the folks at the NSA

 
 


The problem isn't the NSA, the problem is CONGRESS!!!!

The problem isn't the NSA, the problem is CONGRESS!!!!

Congress passed the unconstitutional Patriot Act which allows the NSA, police and government to more or less flush the Bill of Rights down to toilet and illegally do what ever they want.

The solution isn't to get the NSA to obey the law, the solution is to get Congress to obey the law and repeal the unconstitutional Patriot Act.

I am sure U.S. Rep. David Schweikert knows that, but like most of the tyrants in Congress he simply doesn't care.

Congress says that the Patriot Act is protecting us from terrorists, but that is a bunch of BS!!!!!

Less then one percent of the arrests for Patriot Act crimes are for so call "terrorist crimes" which the Patriot Act pretends to protect us from.

Over 50 percent of the arrests from Patriot Act crimes are for victimless drug war crimes.

That is followed by arrests for victimless weapons possessions crimes.

Source

NSA is lying: Congress must hold it accountable

Schweikert: USA Freedom Act would end the secrecy

By U.S. Rep. David Schweikert My Turn Mon Dec 23, 2013 4:26 PM

Every week, new revelations are exposing how the NSA and other intelligence agencies misled Congress and the American people about invasive data gathering that violates our fundamental principles of privacy.

Just last week, a D.C. Circuit Court judge ruled that the NSA’s phone data-collection practices likely violate constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The court proceedings provided a window into operations at the NSA that should give every citizen reason for concern and even more compelling reasons why Congress must work together to reign in the NSA’s abuse of power.

At the heart of the issue is “metadata” collection. Current law allows the NSA to request phone records and analyze calling patterns of a person if a judge agrees there is reasonable cause to classify the individual as a suspected terrorist.

But it doesn’t stop there. Not only can the NSA gather this information on the specific target’s phone calls, but also on the callers whom the target has called or been called by -- and the people those people have called or been called by. This data can be retained and queried for years.

As the circuit court pointed out, if a terror suspect calls for pizza delivery, the pizza company’s calling data could be (and is) collected by the NSA. If you call the same pizza company, your data is now fair game, too. In this way, millions of innocent citizens and their calling patterns are finding their way into the NSA database. Once those entries are part of the database, the NSA does not need to get permission to parse through the data in almost any manner it chooses.

The NSA has proven to be unreliable and deceitful stewards of such information. They have been caught repeatedly using the information illegally and lying about it.

Congress has an imperative to act. The House recently introduced several pieces of legislation that I’ve co-sponsored to curtail the NSA’s assault on the Fourth Amendment. The USA Freedom Act (HR 3361) would end the mass collection of phone metadata and give relief to the Americans across the country by allowing companies to publicly disclose the aggregate number of requests made by NSA and the number of users impacted.

Further, this legislation would provide desperately needed transparency by requiring the attorney general to publicly disclose all Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court interpretations of the law. Simply put, the USA Freedom Act would end de facto secret laws, by requiring legal interoperations of the Patriot Act to be disclosed.

Two additional House proposals (HR 2399 and HR 2475) would put similar restrictions on the FBI.

The Senate is taking a different approach. Members there are working on a measure (S.1631) that would grant explicit authorization for metadata collection and put surveillance measures into law. As currently written, this measure, which passed the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a move in the wrong direction.

The intelligence community, Justice Department and President Obama have failed to justify the mass expansions of surveillance that have occurred since 2006. Congress has a responsibility to hold the administration accountable for violations of personal privacy rights.

Conducting information collection on innocent Americans is not a responsible move. It is not enough to make minor adjustments or institute reporting on agencies who by their very nature are masters at concealing information; we need substantial reforms, like those in the USA Freedom Act.

U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican, serves Arizona's Sixth Congressional District.


Nueva oficina de Phoenix en México

Phoenix wastes tax dollars opening office in Mexico City

Source

Nueva oficina de Phoenix en México

Phoenix, AZ

por Por Miguel Otarola - Dec. 20, 2013 11:06 AM

La Voz

La Ciudad de Phoenix anunció un plan para establecer una oficina de negocios, inversiones y turismo permanente en la Ciudad de México a principios de 2014. Los funcionarios esperan que la oficina refuerce la relación de negocios entre Arizona y ese país.

Funcionarios de la Ciudad ven la oficina como un paso para mejorar la presencia de los mercados de Phoenix en México. La oficina dará más oportunidades para inversión extranjera y turismo, y creará conexiones directas entre empresas locales y mexicanas.

"(La Ciudad quiere) un recurso más focalizado que represente a Phoenix y sus socios en México solamente", explicó Hank Marshall, ejecutivo de desarrollo económico del Departamento de Desarrollo Económico y de la Comunidad.

De acuerdo a documentos obtenidos por el Ayuntamiento, los funcionarios públicos planean gastar entre 150 mil y 200 mil dólares para implementar la oficina en la Ciudad de México. El dinero se usará para contratar un consultor en negocios de las dos regiones, coordinar con agencias gubernamentales de México y Phoenix y contactar empresas locales con empresas mexicanas.

"El primer año estará dedicado a conocerel área general", dijo Marshall. Esto incluye que las empresas mexicanas conozcan sobre los mercados de Phoenix y que encuentren formas de colaboración de estos mercados con inversionistas Mexicanos.

"Sería pretencioso de nuestra parte decir que sabemos exactamente dónde invertir, y decirle a nuestros socios dónde ir y qué hacer," Marshall dijo.

Según el alcalde de Phoenix, Greg Stanton, su equipo fue inspirado por las oficinas de San Antonio, llamadas Casa San Antonio, que están localizadas en México.

"Si realmente quieres tomar las oportunidades de negociar al siguiente nivel, vas a necesitar una presencia más permanente," dijo Stanton. Esta será la primera oficina de negocios de Phoenix en México".

Socio comercial

El Consejo Regional de la Asociación de Gobiernos de Maricopa aprobó una iniciativa para otorgar 25 mil dólares para ayudar a la Ciudad a establecer la oficina. Esta iniciativa fue aprobada el 4 de diciembre por votación 22-3, de acuerdo a un informe.

De acuerdo a información de la Asociación de Gobiernos de Maricopa, cerca de 13 billones de dólares fueron registrados en negocios de ida y vuelta entre México y Arizona durante el año 2012.

En este año, Arizona exportó cerca de 6.3 billones en mercancías a México, un número que sigue creciendo, de acuerdo a datos obtenidos por el Departamento de Comercio de los Estados Unidos. México es el principal socio de negocios de Arizona.

Sin embargo, este número es pequeño comparado con otros estados del oeste del país. De acuerdo a los datos del Departamento de Comercio, California comercializó más de 62 billones de dólares con México en 2012, y más de 194 billones en negocios fueron registrados entre Texas y México en el mismo año.

"Nosotros sabemos que California y Texas están adelantados respecto de nosotros ... sabemos que tenemos que hacer más para alcanzarlos," dijo el alcalde Greg Stanton.

Marshall aseguró que este es el momento indicado para construir la oficina en la Ciudad de México, porque hay suficiente apoyo político y de negociantes privados dispuestos a invertir.

El alcalde Stanton, con ayuda de los Concejales Daniel Valenzuela, Sal DiCiccio y Michael Nowakowski, crearon a principios de este año un grupo de trabajo para facilitar los negocios entre las dos regiones. El grupo, conformado por Stanton y concejales, tuvo su primera reunión en febrero de este año.


Impact of PHX Sky Train awaited

“People will forget what life was like before Sky Train opened,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said at the train’s opening. - Wow!!!! It sounds like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton has an ego bigger then David Dorn!!!!!

Source

Impact of PHX Sky Train awaited

By Ja’han Jones Special for The Republic Mon Dec 23, 2013 3:58 PM

As the Phoenix Sky Train neared the final stages of construction in early 2013, it stood as a seeming homage to the rail systems of New York; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago. The rail, which opened in April of this year, transports travelers to and from Sky Harbor Airport’s Terminal 4 and the light-rail stop at 44th and Washington streets.

Phoenix hadn’t borne witness to such an embrace of urbanization since the advent of the light rail, and the Sky Harbor Sky Train was billed as a step into the future.

“People will forget what life was like before Sky Train opened,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said at the train’s opening.

Yet there remain questions and skepticism about the train’s measurable impact and whether it will meet expectations.

The Sky Train, officials at Sky Harbor International Airport said, is a project only in “Stage 1” of its completion. For now, its only destinations are the airport’s fourth terminal and 44th and Washington streets, though the city plans to expand the rail’s services to Terminal 3, as well as the rental- car center.

According to Sky Harbor representative Heather Lissner, the Sky Train “cost a total of $644 million for Stage 1.”

Stage 1 was funded using airport revenue and passenger fees, according to airport representatives.

The $644 million is a cost which Sky Harbor officials said falls solely upon airport users, rather than being covered using Phoenix residents’ annual taxes. The subsequent stages of the Sky Train project, officials said, will cost an additional $556million over the next year at least.

Pinning down actual economic impact isn’t easy. The electric train is free to riders, although its ridership reportedly generates revenue in other areas.

“The Sky Train averages roughly 10,000 riders daily,” Lissner said. “And we have seen an increase in users using East Economy Parking since the rail opened.”

Furthermore, airport officials report nearly 8,000 jobs have been and will be committed to completing the first two stages of the Sky Train.

The inability to accurately gauge the rail’s economic influence further, however, is discomforting to some. Phoenix resident Jay Traylor rides the light rail often and is skeptical.

“I’m concerned it won’t be expansive enough,” he said of the Sky Train. “I’m not entirely sure who it’s meant to serve because there is not much along Washington Street. Right now, it seems like a ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’”

Traylor’s sentiment is echoed by some businesses along the light rail, businesses seeking to discover ways in which to capitalize on Phoenix’s newest transit development.

Perhaps benefiting most from smoother transportation between the airport’s busiest terminal and the 44th Street light-rail stop are the hotels situated at the street’s corner.

Keslee Foster, a representative from Aloft Hotel on 44th and Washington, said her hotel is developing ways to better capitalize on the Sky Train’s ridership. “We already offer a free shuttle to and from the airport,” Foster said. “But the Sky Train may be a quicker alternative to the shuttle, so we have been making our customers aware of it.”

The Sky Harbor Sky Train, then, seems to be of proven benefit to businesses within its immediate vicinity.


Edward Snowden - Mission’s accomplished

Source

Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

By Barton Gellman, Published: December 23 E-mail the writer

MOSCOW — The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.

“What time does your clock say, exactly?” he asked.

He checked the reply against his watch and described a place to meet.

“I’ll see you there,” he said.

Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending into a light crowd of locals and tourists. He cocked his arm for a handshake, then turned his shoulder to indicate a path. Before long he had guided his visitor to a secure space out of public view.

During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside. Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on an epic scale.

Late this spring, Snowden supplied three journalists, including this one, with caches of top-secret documents from the National Security Agency, where he worked as a contractor. Dozens of revelations followed, and then hundreds, as news organizations around the world picked up the story. Congress pressed for explanations, new evidence revived old lawsuits and the Obama administration was obliged to declassify thousands of pages it had fought for years to conceal.

Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. One of the leaked presentation slides described the agency’s “collection philosophy” as “Order one of everything off the menu.”

Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.

Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”

‘Going in blind’

Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer’s approach to problem-solving. He had come to believe that a dangerous machine of mass surveillance was growing unchecked. Closed-door oversight by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was a “graveyard of judgment,” he said, manipulated by the agency it was supposed to keep in check. Classification rules erected walls to prevent public debate.

Toppling those walls would be a spectacular act of transgression against the norms that prevailed inside them. Someone would have to bypass security, extract the secrets, make undetected contact with journalists and provide them with enough proof to tell the stories.

The NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf.

“You recognize that you’re going in blind, that there’s no model,” Snowden said, acknowledging that he had no way to know whether the public would share his views.

“But when you weigh that against the alternative, which is not to act,” he said, “you realize that some analysis is better than no analysis. Because even if your analysis proves to be wrong, the marketplace of ideas will bear that out. If you look at it from an engineering perspective, an iterative perspective, it’s clear that you have to try something rather than do nothing.”

By his own terms, Snowden succeeded beyond plausible ambition. The NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever.

The cascading effects have made themselves felt in Congress, the courts, popular culture, Silicon Valley and world capitals. The basic structure of the Internet itself is now in question, as Brazil and members of the European Union consider measures to keep their data away from U.S. territory and U.S. technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo take extraordinary steps to block the collection of data by their government.

For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden’s motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.

On Dec. 16, in a lawsuit that could not have gone forward without the disclosures made possible by Snowden, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon described the NSA’s capabilities as “almost Orwellian” and said its bulk collection of U.S. domestic telephone records was probably unconstitutional.

The next day, in the Roosevelt Room, an unusual delegation of executives from old telephone companies and young Internet firms told President Obama that the NSA’s intrusion into their networks was a threat to the U.S. information economy. The following day, an advisory panel appointed by Obama recommended substantial new restrictions on the NSA, including an end to the domestic call-records program.

“This week is a turning point,” said the Government Accountability Project’s Jesselyn Radack, who is one of Snowden’s legal advisers. “It has been just a cascade.”

‘They elected me’

On June 22, the Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint charging Snowden with espionage and felony theft of government property. It was a dry enumeration of statutes, without a trace of the anger pulsing through Snowden’s former precincts.

In the intelligence and national security establishments, Snowden is widely viewed as a reckless saboteur, and journalists abetting him little less so.

At the Aspen Security Forum in July, a four-star military officer known for his even keel seethed through one meeting alongside a reporter he knew to be in contact with Snowden. Before walking away, he turned and pointed a finger.

“We didn’t have another 9/11,” he said angrily, because intelligence enabled warfighters to find the enemy first. “Until you’ve got to pull the trigger, until you’ve had to bury your people, you don’t have a clue.”

It is commonly said of Snowden that he broke an oath of secrecy, a turn of phrase that captures a sense of betrayal. NSA Director Keith B. Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., among many others, have used that formula.

In his interview with The Post, Snowden noted matter-of-factly that Standard Form 312, the ­classified-information nondisclosure agreement, is a civil contract. He signed it, but he pledged his fealty elsewhere.

“The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy,” he said. “That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not.”

People who accuse him of disloyalty, he said, mistake his purpose.

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

What entitled Snowden, now 30, to take on that responsibility?

“That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model,” he said. “They elected me. The overseers.”

He named the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees.

“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions” in committee hearings, he said. “Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

“It wasn’t that they put it on me as an individual — that I’m uniquely qualified, an angel descending from the heavens — as that they put it on someone, somewhere,” he said. “You have the capability, and you realize every other [person] sitting around the table has the same capability but they don’t do it. So somebody has to be the first.”

‘Front-page test’

Snowden grants that NSA employees by and large believe in their mission and trust the agency to handle the secrets it takes from ordinary people — deliberately, in the case of bulk records collection, and “incidentally,” when the content of American phone calls and e-mails are swept into NSA systems along with foreign targets.

But Snowden also said acceptance of the agency’s operations was not universal. He began to test that proposition more than a year ago, he said, in periodic conversations with co-workers and superiors that foreshadowed his emerging plan.

Beginning in October 2012, he said, he brought his misgivings to two superiors in the NSA’s Technology Directorate and two more in the NSA Threat Operations Center’s regional base in Hawaii. For each of them, and 15 other co-workers, Snowden said he opened a data query tool called BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which used color-coded “heat maps” to depict the volume of data ingested by NSA taps.

His colleagues were often “astonished to learn we are collecting more in the United States on Americans than we are on Russians in Russia,” he said. Many of them were troubled, he said, and several said they did not want to know any more.

“I asked these people, ‘What do you think the public would do if this was on the front page?’ ” he said. He noted that critics have accused him of bypassing internal channels of dissent. “How is that not reporting it? How is that not raising it?” he said.

By last December, Snowden was contacting reporters, although he had not yet passed along any classified information. He continued to give his colleagues the “front-page test,” he said, until April.

Asked about those conversations, NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines sent a prepared statement to The Post: “After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention.”

Snowden recounted another set of conversations that he said took place three years earlier, when he was sent by the NSA’s Technology Directorate to support operations at a listening post in Japan. As a system administrator, he had full access to security and auditing controls. He said he saw serious flaws with information security.

“I actually recommended they move to two-man control for administrative access back in 2009,” he said, first to his supervisor in Japan and then to the directorate’s chief of operations in the Pacific. “Sure, a whistleblower could use these things, but so could a spy.”

That precaution, which requires a second set of credentials to perform risky operations such as copying files onto a removable drive, has been among the principal security responses to the Snowden affair.

Vines, the NSA spokeswoman, said there was no record of those conversations, either.

U.S. ‘would cease to exist’

Just before releasing the documents this spring, Snowden made a final review of the risks. He had overcome what he described at the time as a “selfish fear” of the consequences for himself.

“I said to you the only fear [left] is apathy — that people won’t care, that they won’t want change,” he recalled this month.

The documents leaked by Snowden compelled attention because they revealed to Americans a history they did not know they had.

Internal briefing documents reveled in the “Golden Age of Electronic Surveillance.” Brawny cover names such as MUSCULAR, TUMULT and TURMOIL boasted of the agency’s prowess.

With assistance from private communications firms, the NSA had learned to capture enormous flows of data at the speed of light from fiber-optic cables that carried Internet and telephone traffic over continents and under seas. According to one document in Snowden’s cache, the agency’s Special Source Operations group, which as early as 2006 was said to be ingesting “one Library of Congress every 14.4 seconds,” had an official seal that might have been parody: an eagle with all the world’s cables in its grasp.

Each year, NSA systems collected hundreds of millions of e-mail address books, hundreds of billions of cellphone location records and trillions of domestic call logs.

Most of that data, by definition and intent, belonged to ordinary people suspected of nothing. But vast new storage capacity and processing tools enabled the NSA to use the information to map human relationships on a planetary scale. Only this way, its leadership believed, could the NSA reach beyond its universe of known intelligence targets.

In the view of the NSA, signals intelligence, or electronic eavesdropping, was a matter of life and death, “without which America would cease to exist as we know it,” according to an internal presentation in the first week of October 2001 as the agency ramped up its response to the al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

With stakes such as those, there was no capability the NSA believed it should leave on the table. The agency followed orders from President George W. Bush to begin domestic collection without authority from Congress and the courts. When the NSA won those authorities later, some of them under secret interpretations of laws passed by Congress between 2007 and 2012, the Obama administration went further still.

Using PRISM, the cover name for collection of user data from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and five other U.S.-based companies, the NSA could obtain all communications to or from any specified target. The companies had no choice but to comply with the government's request for data.

But the NSA could not use PRISM, which was overseen once a year by the surveillance court, for the collection of virtually all data handled by those companies. To widen its access, it teamed up with its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, to break into the private fiber-optic links that connected Google and Yahoo data centers around the world.

That operation, which used the cover name MUSCULAR, tapped into U.S. company data from outside U.S. territory. The NSA, therefore, believed it did not need permission from Congress or judicial oversight. Data from hundreds of millions of U.S. accounts flowed over those Google and Yahoo links, but classified rules allowed the NSA to presume that data ingested overseas belonged to foreigners.

‘Persistent threat’

Disclosure of the MUSCULAR project enraged and galvanized U.S. technology executives. They believed the NSA had lawful access to their front doors — and had broken down the back doors anyway.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith took to his company’s blog and called the NSA an “advanced persistent threat” — the worst of all fighting words in U.S. cybersecurity circles, generally reserved for Chinese state-sponsored hackers and sophisticated criminal enterprises.

“For the industry as a whole, it caused everyone to ask whether we knew as much as we thought,” Smith recalled in an interview. “It underscored the fact that while people were confident that the U.S. government was complying with U.S. laws for activity within U.S. territory, perhaps there were things going on outside the United States . . . that made this bigger and more complicated and more disconcerting than we knew.”

They wondered, he said, whether the NSA was “collecting proprietary information from the companies themselves.”

Led by Google and then Yahoo, one company after another announced expensive plans to encrypt its data traffic over tens of thousands of miles of cable. It was a direct — in some cases, explicit — blow to NSA collection of user data in bulk. If the NSA wanted the information, it would have to request it or circumvent the encryption one target at a time.

As these projects are completed, the Internet will become a less friendly place for the NSA to work. The agency can still collect data from virtually anyone, but collecting from everyone will be harder.

The industry’s response, Smith acknowledged, was driven by a business threat. U.S. companies could not afford to be seen as candy stores for U.S. intelligence. But the principle of the thing, Smith said, “is fundamentally about ensuring that customer data is turned over to governments pursuant to valid legal orders and in accordance with constitutional principles.”

‘Warheads on foreheads’

Snowden has focused on much the same point from the beginning: Individual targeting would cure most of what he believes is wrong with the NSA.

Six months ago, a reporter asked him by encrypted e-mail why Americans would want the NSA to give up bulk data collection if that would limit a useful intelligence tool.

“I believe the cost of frank public debate about the powers of our government is less than the danger posed by allowing these powers to continue growing in secret,” he replied, calling them “a direct threat to democratic governance.”

In the Moscow interview, Snowden said, “What the government wants is something they never had before,” adding: “They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?”

Snowden likened the NSA’s powers to those used by British authorities in Colonial America, when “general warrants” allowed for anyone to be searched. The FISA court, Snowden said, “is authorizing general warrants for the entire country’s metadata.”

“The last time that happened, we fought a war over it,” he said.

Technology, of course, has enabled a great deal of consumer surveillance by private companies, as well. The difference with the NSA’s possession of the data, Snowden said, is that government has the power to take away life or freedom.

At the NSA, he said, “there are people in the office who joke about, ‘We put warheads on foreheads.’ Twitter doesn’t put warheads on foreheads.”

Privacy, as Snowden sees it, is a universal right, applicable to American and foreign surveillance alike.

“I don’t care whether you’re the pope or Osama bin Laden,” he said. “As long as there’s an individualized, articulable, probable cause for targeting these people as legitimate foreign intelligence, that’s fine. I don’t think it’s imposing a ridiculous burden by asking for probable cause. Because, you have to understand, when you have access to the tools the NSA does, probable cause falls out of trees.”

‘Everybody knows’

On June 29, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counter­terrorism coordinator, awoke to a report in Der Spiegel that U.S. intelligence had broken into E.U. offices, including his, to implant surveillance devices.

The 56-year-old Belgian, whose work is often classified, did not consider himself naive. But he took the news personally, and more so when he heard unofficial explanations from Washington.

“ ‘Everybody knows. Everybody does’ — Keith Alexander said that,” de Kerchove said in an interview. “I don’t like the idea that the NSA will put bugs in my office. No. I don’t like it. No. Between allies? No. I’m surprised that people find that noble.”

Comparable reactions, expressed less politely in private, accompanied revelations that the NSA had tapped the cellphones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The blowback roiled relations with both allies, among others. Rousseff canceled a state dinner with Obama in September.

When it comes to spying on allies, by Snowden’s lights, the news is not always about the target.

“It’s the deception of the government that’s revealed,” Snowden said, noting that the Obama administration offered false public assurances after the initial reports about NSA surveillance in Germany “The U.S. government said: ‘We follow German laws in Germany. We never target German citizens.’ And then the story comes out and it’s: ‘What are you talking about? You’re spying on the chancellor.’ You just lied to the entire country, in front of Congress.”

In private, U.S. intelligence officials still maintain that spying among friends is routine for all concerned, but they are giving greater weight to the risk of getting caught.

“There are many things we do in intelligence that, if revealed, would have the potential for all kinds of blowback,” Clapper told a House panel in October.

‘They will make mistakes’

U.S. officials say it is obvious that Snowden’s disclosures will do grave harm to intelligence gathering, exposing methods that adversaries will learn to avoid.

“We’re seeing al-Qaeda and related groups start to look for ways to adjust how they communicate,” said Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a former general counsel at the NSA.

Other officials, who declined to speak on the record about particulars, said they had watched some of their surveillance targets, in effect, changing channels. That evidence can be read another way, they acknowledged, given that the NSA managed to monitor the shift.

Clapper has said repeatedly in public that the leaks did great damage, but in private he has taken a more nuanced stance. A review of early damage assessments in previous espionage cases, he said in one closed-door briefing this fall, found that dire forecasts of harm were seldom borne out.

“People must communicate,” he said, according to one participant who described the confidential meeting on the condition of anonymity. “They will make mistakes, and we will exploit them.”

According to senior intelligence officials, two uncertainties feed their greatest concerns. One is whether Russia or China managed to take the Snowden archive from his computer, a worst-case assumption for which three officials acknowledged there is no evidence.

In a previous assignment, Snowden taught U.S. intelligence personnel how to operate securely in a “high-threat digital environment,” using a training scenario in which China was the designated threat. He declined to discuss the whereabouts of the files, but he said that he is confident he did not expose them to Chinese intelligence in Hong Kong. And he said he did not bring them to Russia.

“There’s nothing on it,” he said, turning his laptop screen toward his visitor. “My hard drive is completely blank.”

The other big question is how many documents Snowden took. The NSA’s incoming deputy director, Rick Ledgett, said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” recently that the number may approach 1.7 million, a huge and unexplained spike over previous estimates. Ledgett said he would favor trying to negotiate an amnesty with Snowden in exchange for “assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured.”

Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, later dismissed the possibility.

“The government knows where to find us if they want to have a productive conversation about resolutions that don’t involve Edward Snowden behind bars,” said the American Civil Liberties Union’s Ben Wizner, the central figure on Snowden’s legal team.

Some news accounts have quoted U.S. government officials as saying Snowden has arranged for the automated release of sensitive documents if he is arrested or harmed. There are strong reasons to doubt that, beginning with Snowden’s insistence, to this reporter and others, that he does not want the documents published in bulk.

If Snowden were fool enough to rig a “dead man’s switch,” confidants said, he would be inviting anyone who wants the documents to kill him.

Asked about such a mechanism in the Moscow interview, Snowden made a face and declined to reply. Later, he sent an encrypted message. “That sounds more like a suicide switch,” he wrote. “It wouldn’t make sense.”

‘It’s not about me’

By temperament and circumstance, Snowden is a reticent man, reluctant to discuss details about his personal life.

Over two days his guard never dropped, but he allowed a few fragments to emerge. He is an “ascetic,” he said. He lives off ramen noodles and chips. He has visitors, and many of them bring books. The books pile up, unread. The Internet is an endless library and a window on the progress of his cause.

“It has always been really difficult to get me to leave the house,” he said. “I just don’t have a lot of needs. . . . Occasionally there’s things to go do, things to go see, people to meet, tasks to accomplish. But it’s really got to be goal-oriented, you know. Otherwise, as long as I can sit down and think and write and talk to somebody, that’s more meaningful to me than going out and looking at landmarks.”

In hope of keeping focus on the NSA, Snowden has ignored attacks on himself.

“Let them say what they want,” he said. “It’s not about me.”

Former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden predicted that Snowden will waste away in Moscow as an alcoholic, like other “defectors.” To this, Snowden shrugged. He does not drink at all. Never has.

But Snowden knows his presence here is easy ammunition for critics. He did not choose refuge in Moscow as a final destination. He said that once the U.S. government voided his passport as he tried to change planes en route to Latin America, he had no other choice.

It would be odd if Russian authorities did not keep an eye on him, but no retinue accompanied Snowden and his visitor saw no one else nearby. Snowden neither tried to communicate furtively nor asked that his visitor do so. He has had continuous Internet access and has talked to his attorneys and to journalists daily, from his first day in the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo airport.

“There is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any country other than the United States,” he said. “I have no relationship with the Russian government. I have not entered into any agreements with them.”

“If I defected at all,” Snowden said, “I defected from the government to the public.”

Julie Tate contributed to this report.


El presidente más pobre y la mariguana

I don't agree with all of this, but he is right on a number of points. It's time to re-legalize all drugs including marijuana!!!!

Source

Una Voz Nacional

El presidente más pobre y la mariguana

por Jorge Ramos - Dec. 20, 2013 11:09 AM

La Voz

Es el experimento uruguayo: Acaban de legalizar la mariguana, y en gran parte esto fue posible gracias a su presidente, José Mujica, todo un personaje y un filósofo.

Mujica es, sin duda, uno de los presidentes más pobres del mundo. Regala el 90 por ciento de su salario a obras de caridad y se queda, nada más, con unos mil dólares por mes. No sé de ningún otro mandatario que se quede con tan poco. "Soy sobrio en la manera de vivir, aunque no lo pretendo imponer a nadie," me dijo en una entrevista durante su reciente viaje a Nueva York. "La vida es para andar liviano de equipaje, poco comprometido con las cosas materiales y para asegurarse el mayor margen posible de libertad individual." Como ven, es también un filósofo.

No vive en el palacio presidencial, sino en su casa de siempre; tres habitaciones, cocina y un solo baño, nada más, y él y su esposa no tienen servicio doméstico.

Algunos le llaman el Nelson Mandela de Sudamérica porque, al igual que el recién fallecido líder sudafricano, Mújica se rebeló agresivamente contra una dictadura (militar) y pasó muchos años en la cárcel: 14 para ser exactos. Fue guerrillero tupamaro, recibió seis balazos y en un momento en su vida creyó que el mundo podía cambiarse con violencia. Ya no. Se opuso al reciente plan norteamericano de bombardear Siria. "Les dije que lo bueno era bombardear con leche en polvo, con comida, con atención médica."

Mujica es un demócrata que, a pesar de todo, se resiste a criticar la dictadura de los hermanos Castro. "Yo defiendo a todos los pueblos latinoamericanos." ¿No es hora que se vayan Fidel y Raúl del poder en Cuba? "Se van a ir, no se preocupe que se van a ir."

Uruguay es una de las naciones más liberales del planeta. El aborto es legal, al igual que el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo. Y en los últimos días Uruguay se ha dado a conocer por ser el primer país del mundo en legalizar la producción, distribución, venta y consumo de mariguana. Para el presidente Mújica esto es un "experimento".

Mújica es el único presidente en el mundo en hacer lo que otros hacen cuando dejan el poder. América Latina está llena de expresidentes que ahora apoyan la legalización de las drogas pero que, cuando estaban en el poder, nunca se atrevieron a hacer nada.

La legalización de la mariguana, sin embargo, no tiene el apoyo popular en Uruguay. Seis de cada 10 uruguayos, según varias encuestas, se oponen a esa medida. "Tienen miedo," explica Mujica, "pero nosotros tenemos mucho más miedo a la existencia del narcotráfico. Es mucho peor el narcotráfico que la droga. La droga la puedo controlar."

Mujica dice que nunca ha probado mariguana. "Soy antiguo; he fumado tabaco." ¿La probaría? "Sí, no tendría ninguna clase de prejuicio. Pero yo no creo que la mariguana sea buena. Es más, estoy convencido que es una plaga, como el tabaco y el alcohol." Su lógica es esta: si se regula el alcohol y los cigarros ¿por qué no la mariguana? El temor es que Uruguay se convierta, como Amsterdam, en un destino mundial de narcoturismo. Pero a él no le preocupa; los turistas no podrán comprar mariguana en Uruguay, me dijo.

¿Cuál es el secreto de estar tan bien a los 78 años? "Debe ser genético", me dijo riendo y luego se tocó el corazón. "Yo me siento bastante joven de acá. En mi cuerpito voy sintiendo los años, el reumatismo, todo eso. Pero me siento con fuerza."

Le dije, como despedida, que me daba la impresión que seguía pensando como un joven. "Soy un luchador", coincidió, "un enfermo de sueños."


Listen to Madison on firearms

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Listen to Madison on firearms

Mon Dec 23, 2013 6:59 PM

Regarding “Regulation is permitted, needed” (Opinions, Monday):

I’d like some of those constantly telling us that arms are only intended for the military to explain exactly what James Madison was thinking in this quote from “Federalist No. 46.” (Hey, it looks like he may even be putting in a dig on taxes!)

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

“Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

He knew that citizens were armed and that is was a good thing in the struggle against tyranny.

— Walter Wright, Chandler


Health plan sticker shock ahead for some buyers

Don't think of it as a mandatory health plan. Think of it as a government welfare program for doctors and corporations in the medical business.

And of course it's also a government welfare program for the poor folks who will get free medical care, which will be paid for by the rest of us.

Source

Health plan sticker shock ahead for some buyers

Associated Press Sun Dec 22, 2013 10:09 AM

CHICAGO — As a key enrollment deadline hits Monday, many people without health insurance have been sizing up policies on the new government health care marketplace and making what seems like a logical choice: They’re picking the cheapest one.

Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they’re on the hook for most of the initial cost.

The prospect of sticker shock after Jan. 1, when those who sign up for policies now can begin getting coverage, is seen as a looming problem for a new national system that has been plagued by trouble since the new marketplaces went online in the states in October.

For those without insurance — about 15 percent of the population— “the lesson is it’s important to understand the total cost of ownership of a plan,” said Matt Eyles, a vice president of Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. “You just don’t want to look only at the premium.”

Counselors who have been helping people choose policies say many are focused only on the upfront cost, not what the insurance companies agree to pay.

“I am so deeply clueless about all of this,” acknowledged one new buyer, Adrienne Matzen, 29, an actor in Chicago who’s mostly been without insurance since she turned 21. Though she needs regular care for asthma and a thyroid condition, she says she’s looking for a low monthly premium because she makes less than $20,000 a year.

Hospitals are worried that those who rack up uncovered medical bills next year won’t be able to pay them, perpetuating one of the problems the new health care system is supposed to solve.

The new federal and state health insurance exchanges offer policies ranked as bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The bronze options have the lowest monthly premiums but high deductibles — the amount the policyholder must pay before the insurer picks up any of the cost of medical care.

On average, a bronze plan’s deductible is more than $4,300, according to an analysis of marketplace plans in 19 states by Avalere Health. A consumer who upgrades to a silver plan could reduce the deductible to about $2,500. A top-of-the-line platinum plan has the lowest average deductible: $167.

Comprehensive data on premiums isn’t available, but in one example, a 30-year-old in Chicago would pay an average of $222 per month for a bronze plan, $279 for a silver or $338 for a platinum.

The complexities of insurance are eye-glazing even for those who have it. Only 14 percent of American adults with insurance understand deductibles, according to one recent study.

The danger of a wrong snap judgment is great for those under financial pressure — especially those with modest incomes who make too much to qualify for the government subsidies available under the new health care system. Subsidies aren’t available for individuals making more than $45,960.

Most of the uninsured make less than that, but many still pick the cheapest plans.

“Price rules,” said John Foley, a Legal Aid counselor in Palm Beach, Fla., who has been helping people enroll.

Some applicants see the catch.

“The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family,” said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000 for a family of six for a silver plan he was considering. The monthly premium: $1,400.

While the health law makes many preventive services free — such as vaccines, blood pressure screening and mammograms — most medical care is paid out of pocket until the deductible level is reached. Some of the new plans offer limited coverage for certain services before a patient has met the annual deductible. These services can include primary care, some prescription drugs and routine care for common chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

It’s unclear how many plans provide this feature, and it may not be easy for consumers to tell.

Lynn Quincy of Consumers Union, a public policy group, suggests that consumers narrow their options to five plans, then go to each insurer’s website to read the benefits summary. It spells out who pays what for two common situations: having a baby and managing Type 2 diabetes.

To be sure, the new health law did away with the whopping deductibles in plans previously offered to people without employer-provided coverage. Out-of-pocket costs are now capped at $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for a family.

But some people who have been paying their own medical bills, or leaving them unpaid at the hospital, seem surprised that health insurance doesn’t cover more of the costs.

“They previously had no insurance coverage at all and so they might not be happy,” said Cynthia Rahming, an enrollment counselor in Houston.

Fearing the sticker shock, Loyola University Health System in Chicago is offering payment plans to spread the out-of-pocket costs.

Some who had private insurance policies that were canceled may find that keeping the same deductibles may mean higher premiums.

In California, Diane Agnone complained in an online post on her state’s health marketplace. “How is this affordable? I am a healthy 62-year-old single woman and these new premiums will cost me over $200 more per month than my existing plan.”

The new insurance system requires policies to cover more services than some consumers had chosen to buy in the past.

“It’s all a matter of having a budget and it only goes so far,” said Agnone, an executive with a nonprofit charity based in Fairfield, which is about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. “There is no winning in this.”

———

Associated Press writers Michael Blood in Los Angeles, Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Roger Alford in Frankfort, Ky., contributed to this report.


What prostitutes can teach the Canadian government

While I am for total legalization of ALL victimless crimes including prostitution, this letter is a step in the right direction even if I don't agree with it!

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What prostitutes can teach the Canadian government

By Samantha Majic

December 23 at 8:00 am

The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld/Associated Press - Terri-Jean Bedford talks to reporters at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa Friday morning, Dec. 20, 2013 after learning Canada’s highest court struck down the country’s prostitution laws in their entirety in a unanimous 9-0 ruling. The retired dominatrix is one of the three principles in the Supreme Court case.

The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld/Associated Press – Terri-Jean Bedford talks to reporters at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa Friday morning, Dec. 20, 2013 after learning Canada’s highest court struck down the country’s prostitution laws in their entirety in a unanimous 9-0 ruling. The retired dominatrix is one of the three principals in the Supreme Court case.

This is a guest post by Samantha Majic, a political scientist at CUNY-John Jay and the author of Sex Work Politics.

Canada’s Supreme Court has just declared the country’s anti-prostitution laws unconstitutional. The Canadian Parliament now has one year to rewrite its prostitution laws, and we in the United States should closely watch what happens next. This ruling provides a much-needed opportunity for legislators and sex workers to work together and create a framework that will help adult prostitutes work safely.

In Canada, prostitution is actually legal. However, all of the activities surrounding it, such communicating in public, living off of the earnings or running a bawdy house, were not. Valerie Scott, Amy Lebovitch and Terri-Jean Bedford, the advocates of sex-worker rights who initiated the case Bedford v. Canada, argued that these laws endangered prostitutes by forcing them to work in out-of-the-way locations and conceal their activities from their peers, families and friends. They had ample evidence to support their claims, such as the notorious case of Robert Pickton, who was convicted in 2007 of murdering nearly 50 Vancouver prostitutes.

While many support this ruling, a vast and vocal group of individuals and advocates argue that it opens the floodgates for sex trafficking, community ruin and the victimization of women and girls. However, none of this has to happen, especially if Canadian legislators work closely with sex workers to develop policies that acknowledge adult prostitution as legitimate work.

In the mainstream media, prostitution is almost always conflated with sex trafficking. One only has to look at Nicholas Kristof’s pieces in The New York Times, for example, to learn that women and girls are kidnapped and forced into prostitution against their will. But not all prostitutes are victims. And the tendency to focus on trafficking has not led to policies that keep sex workers safe and healthy. Especially in the United States, the equation of prostitution with trafficking has led to more spending on law enforcement in order to arrest pimps, clients and traffickers. While few would argue against punishing traffickers, these strategies have also resulted in more arrests of sex workers themselves. Meanwhile, policies that would help to ensure sex workers’ health and safety and even help them exit the sex industry — such as affordable housing, living wages and accessible health care — are few and far between.

By listening to prostitutes with varied experiences, legislators could create more comprehensive policies. Yes, we should absolutely punish anyone who coerces someone into prostitution. We should also help those who want to leave prostitution. But what about the many sex workers who fall elsewhere on the spectrum? Prostitutes are actually a diverse group. They are women, men and transgender. They work indoors, outdoors, alone and with others. They do this part time or full time. Some have college degrees and others no high school diplomas. They represent a range of racial and ethnic groups.

This variety in working conditions affects their health and safety. The sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein has found that only 2 to 20 percent of prostitutes work on the street, but those who do disproportionately struggle with substance abuse and violence from police and clients. Those who work indoors or with others are far safer.

Moreover, my own research and that of others shows that sex workers actually have very different opinions about whether their profession should be legal. Some support complete decriminalization, while others believe it should remain a criminal offense. For those who believe the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision will create open-air sex markets and trafficking rings on every corner, this evidence should make them think again.

If policymakers want to make sex workers’ lives safer, there are many organizations they can learn from. Sex workers advocate for their rights through groups like the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. Sex workers also help their peers. In my recent book, I discuss the St. James Infirmary in San Francisco and the California Prostitutes Education Project (CAL-PEP) in Oakland, two nonprofit organizations where sex workers provide occupational health and social services to each other. By hiring and training sex workers, they also help sex workers develop skills for work in the health care field. Canada has some excellent examples of its own, such as Stella in Montreal, the PACE Society in Vancouver, and Maggie’s in Toronto.

These organizations are effective because they view sex work as work. They do not require anyone to leave the sex industry in order to receive services, and they create community among this very marginalized population. If policymakers want to make sex workers’ lives safer, they should learn from organizations like these and welcome them to this year’s legislative hearings.

However, Canada’s current conservative government will likely restrict prostitutes from advocating for their rights. Indeed, Canada’s Justice Minister responded to the Bedford ruling by stating that he was concerned about the harms that flow from prostitution, and pundits have argued that measures should be taken to abolish prostitution instead. However, these responses merely amount to defenses of the status quo, and the status quo hurts prostitutes.

Every year on Dec. 17, sex worker rights advocates worldwide host events to “call attention to crimes committed against sex workers all over the globe.” And every year on Dec. 17, the number of names of deceased sex workers underscore the harm of anti-prostitution policies. This year, a mere three days after Dec. 17, the Canadian Supreme Court has taken an important step towards abolishing the legal conditions that create this violence. We should not roll back the clock.


U.S. Flouts Its Own Advice in Procuring Overseas Clothing

More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters and police???

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U.S. Flouts Its Own Advice in Procuring Overseas Clothing

By IAN URBINA

Published: December 22, 2013 139 Comments

WASHINGTON — One of the world’s biggest clothing buyers, the United States government spends more than $1.5 billion a year at factories overseas, acquiring everything from the royal blue shirts worn by airport security workers to the olive button-downs required for forest rangers and the camouflage pants sold to troops on military bases.

But even though the Obama administration has called on Western buyers to use their purchasing power to push for improved industry working conditions after several workplace disasters over the last 14 months, the American government has done little to adjust its own shopping habits.

Labor Department officials say that federal agencies have a “zero tolerance” policy on using overseas plants that break local laws, but American government suppliers in countries including Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan and Vietnam show a pattern of legal violations and harsh working conditions, according to audits and interviews at factories. Among them: padlocked fire exits, buildings at risk of collapse, falsified wage records and repeated hand punctures from sewing needles when workers were pushed to hurry up.

In Bangladesh, shirts with Marine Corps logos sold in military stores were made at DK Knitwear, where child laborers made up a third of the work force, according to a 2010 audit that led some vendors to cut ties with the plant. Managers punched workers for missed production quotas, and the plant had no functioning alarm system despite previous fires, auditors said. Many of the problems remain, according to another audit this year and recent interviews with workers.

In Chiang Mai, Thailand, employees at the Georgie & Lou factory, which makes clothing sold by the Smithsonian Institution, said they were illegally docked over 5 percent of their roughly $10-per-day wage for any clothing item with a mistake. They also described physical harassment by factory managers and cameras monitoring workers even in bathrooms.

At Zongtex Garment Manufacturing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which makes clothes sold by the Army and Air Force, an audit conducted this year found nearly two dozen under-age workers, some as young as 15. Several of them described in interviews with The New York Times how they were instructed to hide from inspectors.

“Sometimes people soil themselves at their sewing machines,” one worker said, because of restrictions on bathroom breaks.

Federal agencies rarely know what factories make their clothes, much less require audits of them, according to interviews with procurement officials and industry experts. The agencies, they added, exert less oversight of foreign suppliers than many retailers do. And there is no law prohibiting the federal government from buying clothes produced overseas under unsafe or abusive conditions.

“It doesn’t exist for the exact same reason that American consumers still buy from sweatshops,” said Daniel Gordon, a former top federal procurement official who now works at George Washington University Law School. “The government cares most about getting the best price.”

Frank Benenati, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees much of federal procurement policy, said the administration has made progress in improving oversight, including an executive order last year tightening rules against federal suppliers using factories that rely on debt bondage or other forms of forced labor.

“The administration is committed to ensuring that our government is doing business only with contractors who place a premium on integrity and good business ethics,” he said.

Labor and State Department officials have encouraged retailers to participate in strengthening rules on factory conditions in Bangladesh — home to one of the largest and most dangerous garment industries. But defense officials this month helped kill a legislative measure that would have required military stores, which last year made more than $485 million in profit, to comply with such rules because they said the $500,000 annual cost was too expensive.

Federal spending on garments overseas does not reach that of Walmart, the world’s biggest merchandiser, which spends more than $1 billion a year just in Bangladesh, or Zara, the Spanish apparel seller, but it still is in a top tier that includes H & M, the trendy fashion business based in Sweden, Eddie Bauer and Lands’ End, sellers of outerwear and other clothing.

The garment factory in the Codevi industrial park in Haiti makes camouflage clothing for a military

Like most retail brands, American agencies typically do not order clothes directly from factories. They rely on contractors. This makes it challenging for agencies to track their global supply chain, with layers of middlemen, lax oversight by other governments, few of their own inspectors overseas and little means of policing factories that farm out work to other plants without the clients’ knowledge. When retailers, labor groups or others inspect these factories, the audits often understate problems because managers regularly coach workers and doctor records.

The United States government, though, faces special pressures. Its record on garment contracting demonstrates the tensions between its low-bid procurement practices and high-road policy objectives on labor and human rights issues.

The Obama administration, for example, has favored free-trade agreements to spur development in poor countries by cultivating low-skill, low-overhead jobs like those in the cut-and-sew industry. The removal of trade barriers has also driven prices down by making it easier for retailers to decamp from one country to the next in the hunt for cheap labor. Most economists say that these savings have directly benefited consumers, including institutional buyers like the American government. But free-trade zones often lack effective methods for ensuring compliance with local labor laws, and sometimes accelerate a race to the bottom in terms of wages.

Along a dirt road in Gazipur, about 25 miles north of the Bangladeshi capital, riot police fired tear gas shells, rubber bullets and sound grenades in a fierce clash with garment workers last month, sending scores to the hospital. The protesters demanding better conditions included some from a factory called V & R Fashions. In July, auditors rated that factory as “needs improvement” because workers’ pay was illegally docked for minor infractions and the building was unsafe, illegally constructed and not intended for industrial use.

Unsafe and Repressive

Like dozens of other factories in the area, V & R makes clothes for the American government, which is constantly prowling for the best deals. In interviews, workers at a half-dozen of these suppliers described the effect of such cost pressures.

At Manta Apparels, for example, which makes uniforms for the General Services Administration, employees said beatings are common and fire exits are kept chained except when auditors visit. The local press has described Manta as one of the most repressive factories in the country. A top labor advocate, Aminul Islam, was organizing there in 2010 when he was first arrested by the police and tortured. In April 2012, he was found dead, a hole drilled below his right knee and his ankles crushed.

Several miles from Manta, 40 women from another supplier, Coast to Coast, gathered late one night to avoid being seen publicly talking to a reporter. Dressed in burqas, the women said that prices of the clothing they make for sale on American military bases are now so cheap that managers try to save money by pushing them to speed up production. In the rush, workers routinely burn themselves with irons, they said, often requiring hospitalizations.

Work does not stop, they said, when it rain pours through a six-foot crack in the ceiling of the top floor of the factory — a repurposed apartment building with two extra floors added illegally to increase capacity. Even after the manager swipes their timecards, they say, he orders them to keep sewing.

While giving a tour of the plant, the manager described the building crack as inconsequential and too expensive to repair. He denied the workers’ other allegations. The owner of Manta declined to comment.

Conditions like those are possible partly because American government agencies usually do not know which factories supply their goods or are reluctant to reveal them. Soon after a fire killed at least 112 people at the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh in November 2012, several members of Congress asked various agencies for factory addresses. Of the seven agencies her office contacted, Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, said only the Department of the Interior turned over its list.

Over the summer, military officials told Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, that order forms for apparel with Marine Corps logos had been discovered in Tazreen’s charred remains but that the corps had ties to no other Bangladeshi factories. Several weeks later, the officials said they were mistaken and had discovered a half-dozen or so other factories producing unauthorized Marine Corps apparel. On Sunday, the owners of Tazreen and 11 employees were charged with culpable homicide.

President Obama has long pushed for more transparency in procurement. As a senator, he sponsored legislation in 2006 creating the website USASpending.gov, which open-government advocates say has made it far easier to track federal contracting. However, procurement experts fault the website for requiring agencies to name their contractors, but not identifying the specific factories doing the work. Some states and cities already require companies to disclose that information before awarding them public contracts, said Bjorn Skorpen Claeson, senior policy analyst at the International Labor Rights Forum.

Federal officials still have to navigate a tangle of rules. Defense officials, for instance, who spend roughly $2 billion annually on military uniforms, are required by a World War II-era rule called the Berry Amendment to have most of them made in the United States. In recent years, Congress has pressured defense officials to cut costs on uniforms. Increasingly, the department has turned to federal prisons, where wages are under $2 per hour. Federal inmates this year stitched more than $100 million worth of military uniforms.

No sooner had the Transportation Security Administration, or T.S.A., signed a $50 million contract in February for new uniforms for its 50,000 airport security agents and other workers, than the agency was attacked from all sides.

Union officials, opposed to outsourcing work overseas, objected because the Mexican plant making the clothing, VF Imagewear Matamoros, was the same one that had treated uniforms with chemicals that caused rashes in hundreds of T.S.A. agents. Congress called an oversight hearing, where some lawmakers questioned why two-thirds of the uniforms would be made in foreign factories, saying the deal was a missed chance to stimulate domestic job growth. Other lawmakers faulted the agency for spending too much money on clothing, especially on the cusp of a federal budget crisis, no matter where the merchandise was made.

“Bottom line,” John W. Halinski, T.S.A. deputy administrator, told Congress, “we go for the lowest-cost uniform, sir.”

The hunt for lower costs and the expansion of free-trade pacts have meant that more of this work is being done abroad, often in poor countries where the Obama administration is trying to spur competition and development.

In Haiti, for instance, trucks loaded with camouflage pants, shirts and jackets, some of them destined for American military bases, idle in front of a factory called BKI.

By Meridith Kohut

While the Dominican manager of a garment factory in Codevi says the industry is helping improve lives, a worker says conditions are bad for people like him.

Next year, BKI managers hope to double the amount of camouflage clothing made for the American government, part of a contract worth more than $30 million between a division of Propper International, a Missouri-based uniform company, and the General Services Administration, which outfits workers for more than a dozen federal agencies.

Three years ago, much of this camouflage clothing was made in Puerto Rico, where workers earned the minimum wage of about $7.25 an hour. By 2011, many of these jobs moved to a factory in the Dominican Republic called Suprema. Wages there were about 80 cents per hour and unpaid overtime was routine, according to workers in recent interviews and a 2010 audit. Since then, most of these jobs have migrated again, this time to BKI in a Haitian free-trade zone called Codevi. Average hourly wages at BKI are about 8 cents less per hour than those at Suprema, according to workers.

Standing near the factory entrance, several BKI workers said they were proud of the clothes they made for the American government. “We push hard because we know they expect better,” said Rodley Charles, 29, a quality inspector at the factory.

But there is basic math: the average pay of 72 cents per hour (which is illegal and below Haiti’s minimum wage) barely covers food and rent, said Mr. Charles, who has since quit, and two other BKI workers.

These wage pressures may soon intensify. Codevi will soon face new competition from another industrial park called Caracol, which is being built partly with money from the United States Agency for International Development as part of reconstruction efforts after the earthquake of 2010.

American officials predict that Caracol will eventually create 60,000 new jobs. Current wages there? About 57 cents per hour, or roughly 15 cents less than typical wages at Codevi.

Big Business

At a military store in Bethesda, Md., Tori Novo smiled as she looked over a pair of $19.99 children’s cargo pants made in Bangladesh that sell for $39 in most department stores. The best part of living on base, said Ms. Novo, a 31-year-old Navy recruiter, was “savings like these.”

Known as exchanges, these big-box stores on military bases around the world offer a guarantee: to beat or match any price from rivals. That promise puts the exchanges in direct competition with the deep discounts offered by stores like Gap and Target. It also adds to already intense pressure to lower costs by using the cheapest factories, industry analysts say.

These stores, run by the Defense Department, do big business, selling more than $1 billion a year in apparel alone. Exempt from the Berry Amendment, the exchanges get more than 90 percent of their clothes from factories outside the United States, according to industry estimates. The profits from these tax-free stores mostly go toward entertainment services like golf courses, gyms and bowling alleys on bases.

Though the Government Accountability Office criticized the exchanges over a decade ago for exerting less oversight than private retailers and for failing to independently monitor their overseas suppliers, little has improved.

The Marine Corps and Navy still do not require audits of these factories. The Air Force and Army exchanges do, but the audits can come from retailers, and defense officials fail to do routine spot checks to confirm their accuracy.

For example, Citadel Apparels, a factory in a seven-story building in Gazipur, has cut, stitched and shipped more than 11 metric tons of cotton boys’ T-shirts and other clothes for sale at exchanges on Army and Air Force bases in recent months. This summer, lawmakers in Congress asked the Defense Department for proof that Citadel was safe. Defense officials produced an audit conducted for Walmart, another client of the factory, showing that it had an “orange” risk ranking in July 2012, the same high level of alarm that Walmart had given the Tazreen factory before the fatal fire there last year.

While allowing the factory to stay open, the audit offered an alarming statistical snapshot.

Sixty-five percent: number of workers barefoot, some on the building’s roof. Fifty percent: workers without legally required masks to protect against cotton dust. Sixteen percent: workers missing time-sheets, a common sign of forced overtime. Most serious infractions: cracks in the walls that could compromise the building, and partly blocked exit routes and stairwells.

By January, Citadel’s auditors concluded that most of these dangers had been fixed. However, a half-dozen Citadel workers offered a starkly different picture. Virtually none of the original problems had ever been corrected, they said in interviews last month with The Times.

“We aren’t sewing machines,” one worker said. “Our lives are worth more.”

For now, Bangladesh’s garment sector continues to grow, as do purchases from one of its bulk buyers. In the year since Tazreen burned down, American military stores have shipped even more clothes from Bangladesh.


Russian designer of AK-47 dies at age 94

“I sleep well. It’s the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence” - Mikhail Kalashnikov

Just a rehash of the old "Guns don't kill, people kill". And of course it's true.

I like to think of the AK-47 as the gun of "freedom fighters", but it is also a gun used by tyrants.

Source

Russian designer of AK-47 dies at age 94

Associated Press Mon Dec 23, 2013 1:23 PM

MOSCOW — Mikhail Kalashnikov started out wanting to make farm equipment, but the harvest he reaped was one of blood as the designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, the world’s most popular firearm.

It was the carnage of World War, when Nazi Germany overran much of the Soviet Union, which altered his course and made his name as well-known for bloodshed as Smith, Wesson and Colt. The distinctive shape of the gun, often called “a Kalashnikov,” appeared on revolutionary flags and adorns memorabilia.

Kalashnikov died Monday at age 94 in a hospital in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurtia republic where he lived, said Viktor Chulkov, a spokesman for the republic’s president. He did not give a cause of death. Kalashnikov had been hospitalized for the past month with unspecified health problems.

Kaslashnikov often said he felt personally untroubled by his contribution to bloodshed.

“I sleep well. It’s the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence,” he told The Associated Press in 2007.

The AK-47 — “Avtomat Kalashnikov” and the year it went into production — is the world’s most popular firearm, favored by guerrillas, terrorists and the soldiers of many armies. An estimated 100 million guns are spread worldwide.

Though it isn’t especially accurate, its ruggedness and simplicity are exemplary: it performs in sandy or wet conditions which jam more sophisticated weapons such as the U.S. M-16.

“During the Vietnam war, American soldiers would throw away their M-16s to grab AK-47s and bullets for it from dead Vietnamese soldiers,” Kalashnikov said in July 2007 at a ceremony marking the rifle’s 60th anniversary.

The weapon’s suitability for jungle and desert fighting made it nearly ideal for the Third World insurgents backed by the Soviet Union, and Moscow not only distributed the AK-47 widely but also licensed its production in some 30 other countries.

The gun’s status among revolutionaries and national-liberation struggles is enshrined on the flag of Mozambique.

Kalashnikov, born into a peasant family in Siberia, began his working life as a railroad clerk. After he joined the Red Army in 1938, he began to show mechanical flair by inventing several modifications for Soviet tanks.

The moment that firmly set his course was in the 1941 battle of Bryansk against Nazi forces, when a shell hit his tank. Recovering from wounds in the hospital, Kalashnikov brooded about the superior automatic rifles he’d seen the Nazis deploy; his rough ideas and revisions bore fruit five years later.

“Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer,” said Kalashnikov. “I always wanted to construct agricultural machinery.”

In 2007, President Vladimir Putin praised him, saying “The Kalashnikov rifle is a symbol of the creative genius of our people.”

Over his career, he was decorated with numerous honors, including the Hero of Socialist Labor and Order of Lenin and Stalin Prize. But because his invention was never patented, he didn’t get rich off royalties.

“At that time in our country patenting inventions wasn’t an issue. We worked for Socialist society, for the good of the people, which I never regret,” he once said.

Kalashnikov continued working into his late 80s as chief designer of the Izmash company that first built the AK-47. He also traveled the world helping Russia negotiate new arms deals, and he wrote books on his life, about arms and about youth education.

“After the collapse of the great and mighty Soviet Union so much crap has been imposed on us, especially on the younger generation,” he said. “I wrote six books to help them find their way in life.”

He said he was proud of his bronze bust installed in his native village of Kurya in the Siberian region of Altai. He said newlyweds bring flowers to the bust. “They whisper ‘Uncle Misha, wish us happiness and healthy kids,’” he said. “What other gun designer can boast of that?”


Source

Mikhail Kalashnikov dies at 94; creator of the AK-47 assault rifle

By Steve Chawkins

December 23, 2013, 1:18 p.m.

Interviewers always asked Mikhail Kalashnikov the same question and he always gave the same answer: Yes, he could sleep at night. Quite easily, thank you.

Kalashnikov, creator of the AK-47, a cheap, simple, rugged assault rifle that became the weapon of choice for more than 50 standing armies as well as drug lords, street gangs, revolutionaries, terrorists, pirates and thugs the world over, died Monday at a hospital in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia, according to a government spokesman. Kalashnikov was 94.

Over six decades, the AK-47 — sometimes called the Kalashnikov — became a staple in guerrilla raids and gang drive-bys. It was so easy to operate that children as well as professional soldiers could fire 650 deadly bursts per minute.

In Vietnam, the Viet Cong used AK-47s while moisture and muck sometimes jammed more precise American M16s. In Rwanda, some 800,000 Tutsi villagers were slaughtered with machetes and AK-47s. With its distinctive banana-shaped clip, the weapon was a favorite of Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, who had one nearby in almost every photograph. In Africa, Mozambique placed a silhouetted AK-47 on its flag, crossed with a hoe.

A diminutive, white-haired man with the honorary rank of general, Kalashnikov was revered throughout Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union. A Kalashnikov museum in Izhevsk, the once-closed industrial city in the Urals where he spent much of his career, draws 10,000 visitors a month. Anniversaries of the gun's 1947 birth are duly noted; at a ceremony for its 60th birthday in 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin called it "a symbol of the creative genius of our people".

In a November interview with the Los Angeles Times, Russian arms expert Igor Korotchenko called Kalashnikov one of the greatest weapons designers of all time.

"If Colt designed a handgun which made all Americans equal, Kalashnikov invented a weapon which made it possible for many countries to fight for their independence and win it," said Korotchenko, a retired Russian colonel who edits Nastionalnaya Oborona, a Moscow-based national defense magazine.

Historians say the AK-47 and its spinoffs changed combat forever. While they aren't as accurate as other guns or as effective at long distances, they weigh only eight pounds and have few moving parts. Child soldiers can take them apart and put them back together in 30 seconds. They can tolerate sand, grit, mud and humidity. They work just as well in jungle and swamp as on city streets.

"Together these traits meant that once this weapon was distributed, the small-statured, the mechanically disinclined, the dimwitted and the untrained might be able to wield, with little difficulty or instruction, a lightweight automatic rifle that could push out blistering fire for the lengths of two or three football fields," wrote journalist C.J. Chivers in "The Gun", his 2010 book about the AK-47.

On top of that, the AK-47 — short for Avtomat Kaloshnikova 1947 — is everywhere. It can be purchased in some countries for "less than the cost of a live chicken," according to author Larry Kahaner. By some estimates, it is the world's most abundant firearm, with one for every 70 of the men, women and children on Earth.

Its spread "helps explain why, since World War II, so many 'small wars' have lingered far beyond the months and years one might expect," Kahaner wrote in the Washington Post. "Indeed, for all the billions of dollars Washington has spent on space-age weapons and military technology, the AK still remains the most devastating weapon on the planet, transforming conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq."

In news reports over the years, Kalashnikov appeared to be of mixed minds about his brainchild. At one point, he spoke of establishing a fund for gunshot victims.

"I am proud of my weapon but I am sad that terrorists use it," he told the Russian online publication newsru.com in 2009. "I wish I had invented a machine which people could use, which could do good for farmers — for example, a sowing machine."

But for the most part, he vigorously defended his namesake weapon.

"I designed the Kalashnikov for my motherland, for the glory of the Soviet army," he said, choking with emotion during a 1997 interview with the Moscow Times. "If it has fallen into the wrong hands, that is not my business."

In his later years, Kalashnikov was pleased to learn that former rebels in Africa were naming their firstborn sons "Kalash."

And he was proud that his tiny hometown on the Russian steppes had erected a bronze bust of its most famous son.

Newlyweds dropped by to lay flowers beside it, he told the Associated Press in 2007.

"They whisper, 'Uncle Misha, wish us happiness and healthy kids,'" he said. "What other gun designer can boast of that?"

Born on Nov. 10, 1919, in Kurya, a remote village in south central Russia, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was one of 18 children. Only eight survived to adulthood.

A sickly boy who built toy guns, he was the son of an illiterate mother and a barely literate father. After Stalin ordered the collectivization of farms in 1929, local officials slaughtered the Kalashnikovs' animals, seized their hardscrabble property, and sent the family to Siberia, transported in cattle cars with other dispossessed farmers.

Kalashnikov made it through ninth grade, taught by deportees in a school that lacked even paper. His father, broken by the ordeal, died during a blizzard. For days, the family sat indoors with the body. Kalashnikov recalled a man who, in happier times, would break out in song.

"It seemed to me that I was just about to hear him say something softly in his confident, deep voice," Kalashnikov wrote in "From a Stranger's Doorstep to the Kremlin's Gates", a 1997 memoir. "But no, he did not sing of the 'sacred Baikal,' the tramp was not running down a narrow path, and the Cossack was not galloping across a valley.... There was only the vicious snowstorm raging around our hut."

As a teenager, Kalashnikov fled 600 miles to his hometown, gazed at the ashes of his torched family home, and headed with a friend to Kazakhstan. He picked up a job as a clerk for the Turkestan-Siberian Railway and was recruited into the Young Communist League, but for decades afterward feared that his family's exile would brand him an enemy of the state.

With World War II looming, he was drafted into the Soviet Army and was made a tank sergeant. Seriously wounded in 1941, he spent six months recovering, all the while sketching out designs for better Soviet guns. He'd seen his fellow troops struggle on the battlefield with cumbersome, 50-year-old rifles — and even then, they sometimes had to share weapons as Nazi soldiers mowed them down with automatics.

On leave, he returned to his old railroad office in Kazakhstan and, by his account, persuaded machinists there to help him craft a prototype weapon. It was a flop but got him a job in a military design bureau. Over five years, he fine-tuned it, drawing ideas from German and American weapons.

He also relied on colleagues, though historians argue over just who contributed what.

In 1947, he won a secret, state-sponsored contest for design of the Red Army's new mainstay weapon. His prototype assault rifles had made many cuts, having been drenched in salt water, dropped on concrete, and dragged through mud. Soldiers tested its ballistics by firing into dead animals, first requesting vodka for the task.

At last, a breathless assistant told him the Main Artillery Directorate had made its choice: "Today, you must dance, Mikhail Timofeyovich!"

Weeks later, the first AK-47s were in production. Soviet soldiers, who wore them in special pouches to hide their design, used them in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, killing thousands.

With the help of a huge Soviet propaganda campaign, Kalashnikov became known as a larger-than-life patriot. He was given a dacha — a lakeside summer lodge — and was named a deputy in the Supreme Soviet. While official biographies left out portions of his life — like his family's travails under Stalin — he became "an approved symbol of the proletariat," Chivers wrote.

But in later years, he had moments of resignation.

In Afghanistan and Chechnya, after all, the AK-47 had been used against the very Soviet troops it was meant to help.

Kalashnikov insisted his intent had been only to arm his countrymen.

But, as he told a French journalist in 2006, he still had to live with the rest of it.

"Where the goat is tied," he said, citing a favorite proverb, "there she must graze."

Kalashnikov is survived by a son, two daughters and two grandsons.

steve.chawkins@latimes.com

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report from Moscow.


Source

Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 94

By C. J. CHIVERS

Published: December 23, 2013 216 Comments

Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the arms designer credited by the Soviet Union with creating the AK-47, the first in a series of rifles and machine guns that would indelibly associate his name with modern war and become the most abundant firearms ever made, died on Monday in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia, where he lived. He was 94.

Viktor Chulkov, a spokesman for the republic’s president, confirmed the death, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Born a peasant on the southern Siberian steppe, General Kalashnikov had little formal education and claimed to be a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weapons to conceive of a rifle that achieved battlefield ubiquity.

His role in the rifle’s creation, and the attention showered on him by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, carried him from conscription in the Red Army to senior positions in the Soviet arms-manufacturing bureaucracy and ultimately to six terms on the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union’s legislative body.

Tens of millions of Kalashnikov rifles have been manufactured. Their short barrels, steep front-sight posts and curved magazines made them a marker of conflict that has endured for decades. The weapons also became both Soviet and revolutionary symbols and widespread instruments of terrorism, child-soldiering and crime.

The general, who sometimes lamented the weapons’ unchecked distribution but took pride in having invented them and in their reputation for reliability, weathered the collapse of the Soviet Union to assume a public role as a folk hero and unequivocal Russian patriot.

A Soviet nostalgist, he also served as the unofficial arms ambassador of the revived Russian state. He used public appearances to try to cast the AK-47’s checkered legacy in a positive way and to complain that knockoffs were being manufactured illegally by former Soviet allies and cutting into Russian sales.

The weapon, he said, was designed to protect his motherland, not to be used by terrorists or thugs. “This is a weapon of defense,” he said. “It is not a weapon for offense.”

General Kalashnikov’s public life resulted from a secret competition to develop the Soviet infantry rifle for the Cold War. The result was the AK-47 — an abbreviation for “the automatic by Kalashnikov” followed by the year the competition ended.

General Kalashnikov, a senior sergeant at the time who had been injured in battle against German tanks, was credited with leading the design bureau that produced the AK-47 prototype. The Soviet Union began issuing a mass-produced version in 1949.

The true AK-47 was short-lived. It was followed in the 1950s by a modernized version, the A.K.M., which retained its predecessor’s underlying design while reducing its weight and manufacturing time.

Shorter than traditional infantry rifles and firing a cartridge midway between the power of a pistol and the standard rifle cartridges of the day, the Kalashnikov line was initially dismissed by American ordnance experts as a weapon of small consequence. It was not particularly accurate or well made, they said, and it lacked range and stopping power.

It cemented its place in martial history in the 1960s in Vietnam. There, a new American rifle, the M-16, experienced problems with corrosion and jamming in the jungles, while Kalashnikovs, carried by Vietcong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers, worked almost flawlessly.

By this time, in an effort to standardize infantry weapons among potential allies, the Soviet Union had exported the rifle’s specifications and its manufacturing technology to China, Egypt, North Korea and Warsaw Pact nations. Communist engineers would eventually share the manufacturing technology with other countries, including Iraq.

The design was incorporated into arms manufactured in Finland, Israel, South Africa and other nations. The result was a long line of derivatives and copies.

Because Kalashnikov rifles were principally made by secretive governments and often changed hands in nontransparent transfers, it is not known how many have been manufactured. Common estimates put production at 70 million to 100 million; either number would dwarf the production of any other gun.

The rifles eventually filled armories throughout Eastern Europe and Asia and spread from war to war, passing to Soviet allies and proxies, and to terrorists and criminals, aided by intelligence agencies and gray- and black-market sales. The United States became an active purchaser, arming anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s and indigenous Afghan and Iraqi forces in recent years.

General Kalashnikov’s bureau also used the A.K.M. design to develop machine guns for infantry squads, helicopter crews and vehicles. By the 1970s, the rifle’s design had become the basis for a new Soviet rifle, known as the AK-74, that fired a smaller and faster cartridge similar to that of the M-16. That rifle remains the standard weapon of the Russian Army.

The general often claimed that he never realized any profit from his work. But in his last years he urged interviewers not to portray him as poor, noting that he had a sizable apartment, a good car and a comfortable dacha on a lake near the factory where he had worked for decades.

Work and loyalty to country, he often suggested, were their own rewards. “I am told sometimes, ‘If you had lived in the West you would have been a multimillionaire long ago,’ ” he said. “There are other values.”

How essential the general was to creation of the Kalashnikov line has been subject to dispute. A post-Soviet account in the newspaper Pravda challenged his central role, asserting that two supervisors modified his weapon during field trials.

An amiable personality with a biography ideal for proletarian fable, he was given credit for their work, the newspaper claimed. The general disputed suggestions that the design was guided by others, but also said the rifle was the result of the collective that labored beside him.

The Kremlin embraced his version, although a careful reading of the official histories and General Kalashnikov’s many statements and memoirs shows that his accounts of his life, combat service and work repeatedly changed, raising questions about the veracity of the conventional accounts.

Mikhail Timofeyovich Kalashnikov was born in Kurya on Nov. 10, 1919. He was married twice, the second time to Ekaterina Kalashnikova, a technician in his design bureau. He is survived by a son from his first marriage, Viktor Kalashnikov, who is also an arms designer; a daughter from his second marriage, Elena Krasnovskaya; a stepdaughter, Nelya; and several grandchildren.

Later in life, he disapproved of anyone who he thought had hastened the Soviet Union’s downfall, or who had been unable to control the political and economic turbulence that followed. In memoirs and interviews, he was harshly critical of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Boris N. Yeltsin.

To the end he was loyal to what he called Socialist ideals and the leaders who gave them shape, and seemed untroubled by the hardships endured by his family during the early years of Soviet rule. His family’s land and home had been seized during collectivization, and when he was a child the family was deported into the Siberian wilderness. His father died during their first Siberian winter, and one of his brothers labored for seven years as a prisoner digging the White Sea canal.

Still, General Kalashnikov spoke of his great respect for Lenin and Stalin alike. “I never knew him personally,” he said of Stalin, “and I regret this.”


Mesa woman accused of leaving boy, 2, on balcony at night

Don't these pigs have any real criminals to arrest???

On the other hand maybe it's a jobs program to create new cases for CPS!!!!!

Source

By Kirsten Kraklio The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Mon Dec 23, 2013 9:03 PM

A Mesa mother was arrested Friday night after her 2-year-old child was found alone outside in 40-degree weather, according to authorities.

Jessica Allyson Martinez, 21, continued to be held Monday afternoon in a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of child abuse. Her bond was set at $1,500.

Police were dispatched to Martinez’s apartment, near Mesa Drive and the Tempe Canal, to perform a welfare check Friday night after receiving calls that a child was outside on a balcony wearing only a diaper, according to documents filed in North Mesa Justice of the Peace Court.

The arriving officer said they found the 2-year-old climbing on the wall of the balcony. The boy then opened the front door of the apartment and officers entered to check for his parents.

According court documents, the boy was wearing only a soiled diaper and appeared dirty and unbathed.

The officer located the mother’s information and determined that she was at a Walmart four miles away from the apartment.

Martinez admitted to police she left the boy alone at their apartment shortly before 11 p.m. to drop off money and her car to her boyfriend, who is employed at the Walmart near Dobson and Lehi roads, according to the court records.

Authorities left the child in the care of his grandmother and a Child Protective Services referral was made.


Utah's gay marriage ban back in court, weddings could be stopped

Source

By Brady McCombs and Paul Foy, Associated Press

Posted: 12/23/2013 05:38:59 AM PST

A federal judge on Monday is set to consider a request from the state of Utah to block gay weddings that have been taking place since Friday, when the state's same-sex marriage ban was overturned.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled on Friday that Utah's ban violated gay and lesbian couples' rights under the 14th Amendment.

Lawyers for the state want the ruling put on hold as they appeal the decision that has put Utah in the national spotlight because of its long-standing opposition to gay marriage. Shelby will hold a hearing Monday morning on the request.

On Sunday, a federal appeals court rejected the state's emergency request stay the ruling, saying it couldn't rule on a stay since Shelby hasn't acted on the motion before him.

Following Shelby's surprising ruling Friday afternoon, gay and lesbian couples rushed to a county clerk's office in Salt Lake City to get marriage licenses. More than 100 couples wed as others cheered them on in what became an impromptu celebration an office building about three miles from the headquarters of the Mormon church.

Hundreds of couples are expected to arrive at county clerks offices early Monday morning in hopes of getting marriage licenses before a possible halt if Shelby grants the stay its request. Legal experts say that even if a stay is granted, the licenses that have already been issued will likely still be valid.

For now, a state considered as one of the most conservative in the nation has joined the likes of California and New York to become the 18th state where same-sex couples can legally wed.

Utah is home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was one of the leading forces behind California's short-lived ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, which voters approved in 2008. The church said Friday that it stands by its support for “traditional marriage” and that it hopes a higher court validates its belief that marriage is between a man and woman.

In Shelby's 53-page ruling, he said the constitutional amendment Utah voters approved in 2004 violates gay and lesbian couples' rights to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment. Shelby said the state failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way.

The decision drew a swift and angry reaction Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, who said he was disappointed in an “activist federal judge attempting to override the will of the people of Utah.” The state quickly took steps to appeal the ruling and halt the process, setting up Monday's hearing before Shelby.

The ruling has thrust Shelby into the national spotlight. He has been on the bench for less than two years, appointed by President Barack Obama after GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch recommended him in November 2011.

Shelby served in the Utah Army National Guard from 1988 to 1996 and was a combat engineer in Operation Desert Storm. He graduated from the University of Virginia law school in 1998 and clerked for the U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene in Utah, then spent about 12 years in private practice before he became a judge.


A solution to the wage debate

How do you spell oxymoron???? While John Cassidy's seems to say he is against taxes, he sounds like a big time supporter of a socialist government system where the government knows how to spend your money better then you do!!!!

Source

A solution to the wage debate

Sun Dec 22, 2013 9:21 PM

I have a solution to the minimum wage vs. living wage debate that will satisfy both the bleeding-heart liberals who want equal economic results for all and the hard-line conservatives who believe in self-reliance and a free-market system of wage and price controls:

1. Keep the minimum-wage rate where it is for teenagers entering the workforce for the first time. They do not have the knowledge, skill or need to justify a higher wage.

2. Have private businesses that hire low-skilled, undereducated workers partner with government (preferably state or local) to provide a “living wage” for those trying to support a family. The employer pays $7.50 per hour; the government pays $7.50 per hour, which will result in a living wage. No other government subsidies will be provided, except for single parents with children. Their child-care costs will be subsidized by the government while in the program.

3. Provide each person in the program a voucher to attend a community college, public university or authorized trade school. They have five years to graduate, at which point all government assistance will end. Those who truly want a better life for themselves and their children will endure the hardships of working and going to school at the same time. If, after five years, they have not improved their skills or education to qualify for a job that offers a living wage, then they will have to look to private charities to assist them further. No more generational welfare.

I am all for helping those who are truly in need of assistance. However, I resent having my hard-earned tax dollars channeled to those who refuse to take responsibility for their well-being.

— John Cassidy Jr., Scottsdale


Chandler council approves mayor, member pay raises

They love to tell us they are "public servants". But when is the last time one of your servants told you that he was going to force you to give him a 37 percent raise!!!!!

Let's face it they are not "public servants". They are "royal rulers".

Source

Chandler council approves mayor, member pay raises

Posted: Saturday, December 21, 2013 1:00 pm

By Chris Gabel, Tribune

With little public discussion at its Dec. 12 meeting, the Chandler City Council nearly unanimously gave itself a sizable pay raise.

By measure of a 6-1 vote, council members will be paid $29,000 annually beginning in 2015 and the mayor’s salary will increase to $49,500. The bumps represent a 37 percent raise for the council and 30 percent for the mayor.

Councilman Kevin Hartke was the lone dissenting vote. This week, he cited the “awkwardness for us to be the ones to give us a salary raise” for his vote.

That reason also was brought up by Chandler resident Victor Peterson.

“Shouldn’t the voters of the city vote on your pay raise?” Peterson asked the council before the vote. “I never worked anywhere where I could go to the boss and say, ‘I’m getting a 37 percent raise, because I want it.’”

Including comments by Peterson and Angela Creedon, who represented the Chandler Chamber of Commerce Public Policy Committee and spoke in favor of the raise, the issue took up slightly more than six minutes during the council meeting.

The city’s counsel took up part of that time explaining council members were not giving themselves a raise but rather increasing the pay of future councils since the increases won’t go into effect until members elected in November 2014 take office.

Council members Jack Sanders, Nora Ellen and Rick Heumann will hold their office in 2015, and Hartke could as well is he wins re-election. Mayor Jay Tibshraeny also will run for re-election next year.

Councilwoman Trinity Donovan, who will no longer be part of the council when the bump takes effect, proposed the raise.

“I want to do all I can to ensure that there will be quality candidates who will choose to run for local elected office,” Donovan wrote in a council memo. “It takes a significant time commitment in order to represent the citizens of Chandler well and it is critical that the members of the council be fairly compensated for their time, efforts and the work they do on behalf of the residents of this community.”

The increase gives the elected officials in Chandler — the state’s fourth-largest city — the fourth-highest pay in Arizona after taking into account the raises Mesa officials will receive in 2015.

“This puts us in line with our peer cities,” Creedon said.

The Chandler City Council last voted to increase its pay in 2007, which was a bump of 48 percent for the council and 38 percent for the mayor.

• Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or cgabel@evtrib.com.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or cgabel@evtrib.com.


Communist Party feeling uneasy about Mao ahead of his birthday celebrations

Sadly our government masters routinely re-write history to make it favor their version of reality.

If your an American your probably incorrectly thinking that only applies to evil commie countries and third world dictatorships. And of course that proves my point, you have been brainwashed to a great degree by the American government and routinely believe the lies does out by our government masters without giving them much thought.

Source

Communist Party feeling uneasy about Mao ahead of his birthday celebrations

By William Wan, Updated: Wednesday, December 25, 5:00 AM E-mail the writer

BEIJING — A curious thing happened two weeks ago as China was preparing celebrations for the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth. One of the main events — a symphony of favorite Communist songs at the Great Hall of the People — got an abrupt name change.

No longer would it be called “The Sun is Reddest, Chairman Mao is Dearest.” Instead, all traces of China’s founding father were quietly scrubbed from posters, ticketing Web sites and programs, and the show repackaged as a more generic New Year’s gala called “Singing the Motherland’s Praises.”

The sudden alteration — ordered from on high — is just one of many signs these days of the Communist Party’s uneasy feelings about the late Chairman Mao ahead of his birthday, on Thursday.

Even decades after his death, there is uncertainty about how to tackle the legacy of the man who cemented the party’s grip on power but was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, disastrous policies and brutal purges.

At the heart of that ambivalence is a debate over China’s future. Die-hard leftists are pushing for the country’s new leaders to revive Mao’s teachings as a path to stronger nationalism, economic equality and party legitimacy. Meanwhile, liberals say the time has come not only for economic reforms and other new paths forward, but also for an honest assessment of China’s troubled past.

“Mao has never left China’s political stage,” said Guo Songmin, a well-known leftist commentator. “Now all sides want to use him to influence China’s political direction.”

Admirers, detractors

Mao is everywhere, even after death.

In addition to that unavoidable portrait overlooking Tiananmen Square, he appears on most of China’s bank notes, is invoked countless times a day in party speeches and remains a staple of state-sponsored TV dramas and movies. This month, however, the Mao industry shifted into overdrive, with restaurants flogging his favorite dishes, cities plastering his sayings on walls and a plethora of statues making their debut — the most notable (ahem, gaudy) of which has been a $16.5 million gold version inlaid with gems.

Beyond the flash, however, many still hold dear his ideals.

For Cao Zhaojin, Mao represents a simpler time before China became so money-obsessed. The 59-year-old retired Beijing factory worker keeps large poster boards of the Great Helmsman at home, which is lined with Mao’s selected works and calendars with classic quotes.

“Chairman Mao represents a belief in communism, in putting the collective good ahead of yourself, in selfless contribution and values,” he said. “Look at our society today. . . . Nobody believes in anything anymore but money and personal gain.”

Representing the opposition, Bao Tong — a former aide to party leader Zhao Ziyang, who was purged during the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown — penned a scathing editorial Monday decrying the creation of a false “myth of Mao” that “still haunts China today.”

In his essay, Bao described Mao as a megalomaniac who sold Chinese workers on a pipe dream of equality, sacrificed millions in pursuit of vanity and ruthlessly killed all rivals.

In a phone interview from his home, where he is under house arrest, Bao said he had his essay smuggled out to Radio Free Asia because he believes that how China thinks of Mao has a huge effect on its present and future. “China cannot turn a blind eye to these facts,” he said.

Evolving official views

Such outspoken criticism of Mao remains rare in the party. But official assessments have slowly evolved over time.

An editorial this week in the Global Times, a nationalistic state-controlled newspaper, dismissed recent repudiations of Mao as “a childish fantasy.” But even it acknowledged that assessing his legacy these days “is not easy because we are still living in the ‘era of Mao.’ ”

As a result, many officials this year are carefully taking their cues from China’s new top leader, President Xi Jinping.

Xi’s term began last year with Maoists secretly hopeful that he shared their views. But Xi has since proven more complex and pragmatic than leftists or liberals would prefer. His actions have appeared driven not by ideology but by consolidation of power above all else, analysts and party officials say.

Last month, on a visit to Mao’s home province of Hunan, Xi warned officials to tone down the Mao worship this year, calling for events that are “grand” but “simple and pragmatic.”

While Xi’s message may have encouraged some to scale back their plans, local jurisdictions with historical ties to Mao have largely ignored it.

Mao’s home town of Shaoshan has spent $320 million in preparation — renovating historical sites and museums, organizing galas, and building new roads and other infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to pass through. Many hotels have been fully booked for days leading up to the anniversary. Merchants in town say they have stocked up on Mao tchotchkes of every kind — busts and statues, key rings, commemorative liquor, little red books of his sayings and photos from every phase of his life.

Whatever else Mao may mean politically or ideologically these days, at least for a week, those in the industry hope that interest in the founder of China’s socialist state will translate into little mountains of cash.

Liu Liu and Chen Guo contributed to this report.


Colorado resorts brace for marijuana tourism

Source

Colorado resorts brace for marijuana tourism

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY 9:53 a.m. EST December 23, 2013

Colorado's ski resorts and mountain towns are bracing for an influx of tourists seeking a now-legal Rocky Mountain high.

Last year, the state legalized the possession and use of small amounts of recreational marijuana, and on Jan. 1 special stores will be allowed to sell pot to anyone 21 and over. Voters had previously approved a medical marijuana system, but last fall's vote threw the doors wide open by requiring state officials to regulate pot like alcohol.

With several companies offering marijuana tours — sightseeing tours of the state's high country, with marijuana supplied — police and ski area operators worry that tourists who don't understand the rules will be sparking up on the slopes.

"We're delving into truly uncharted territory here," said Summit County Sheriff John Minor, whose jurisdiction covers the Arapahoe Basin, Keystone and Breckenridge ski areas. "We do have this misperception in Summit County where people have smoked in public, been charged, and were under the perception that it's a free-for-all."

Under the law, marijuana may be smoked by adults but only in private. But exactly what "private" means is still the subject of debate. Minor says a private vehicle on a public road, for example, is considered "in public."

Marijuana tour operator Timothy Vee of Colorado High Life Tours says to get around those rules, his drivers sometimes pull into a parking lot, allowing tour guests to partake of the pot he offers. Under current law, it's legal to give another adult marijuana as long as there's no direct payment for it. Vee and other operators charge people to rent the limo and driver and say the pot, snacks and soda are free.

For $1,200 a day, tourists can rent a chauffeured minibus from Vee to pick them up at their hotel and drive them to the slopes while they use marijuana during the ride. Vee said concerns about impaired skiers and riders are overblown. After all, he says, every ski area has a bar at the bottom of the slope. And for decades, skiers and snowboarders in Colorado have been ducking into the trees for a mid-run toke. Many ski areas are home to illicitly built "smoke shacks" tucked between the slopes, and locals often refer to gondola ski lifts as "ganja-las."

"What I'm getting are a lot of old stoners, and a lot of wealthy people who want to come do it safely with a concierge," Vee said. "Now the kids are gone, they're 60 years old and they want to get high."

Ski resorts worry their slopes' family-friendly image will take a hit if out-of-state tourists start thinking their kids will be exposed to marijuana smoke in lift lines and gondolas. At Arapahoe Basin in October, mountain manager Al Henceroth confiscated passes from several skiers he caught publicly sharing a joint.

In a series of blog posts that drew sometimes-vitriolic responses, Henceroth made a key point: Because most ski areas are on leased federal lands, marijuana use remains illegal.

"We will not hesitate to call the cops on this issue," wrote Henceroth, who declined to be interviewed.

Jenn Rudolph, a spokeswoman for the industry group Colorado Ski Country USA, said people who smoke in lift lines and on the slopes will be prosecuted, either by federal forest rangers or local law enforcement working with the resorts. Getting caught smoking pot by a ranger brings a minimum $250 citation, Forest Service officials said. Last year, rangers wrote 112 tickets for marijuana use at Colorado ski areas. This year, they had already written 93 through this September.

"Colorado is a family-friendly ski destination, and the law is clear that you can't smoke marijuana in public," Rudolph said. "Resorts are going to do what they need to do to enforce that."

Hughes also reports for the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

Source

Colorado’s ‘High Country’ Takes on New Meaning

By Brad Tuttle @bradrtuttleDec. 24, 20131

Some are saying that marijuana tourism could rival the state’s multi-billion dollar ski and snowboard industry.

Voters in Colorado and Washington passed ballot initiatives in 2012 legalizing recreational usage of marijuana, and starting on January 1, 2014, specialty pot shops are expected to open in Colorado. Marijuana tour operators started popping up in Colorado last spring, when the Denver Post and others noted the launch of My 420 Tours, “America’s First Legal Marijuana Tourism Company,” named to commemorate April 20 (4/20), which has come to be known as “weed day” among pot smokers.

USA Today recently highlighted several other in-state marijuana tour companies, which often plan on combining pot-themed trips with visits to Colorado’s famed ski resorts. The price of a tour typically includes a limo and driver, and snacks, soda, and marijuana are given away free because the company is not a legal pot dispensary. “What I’m getting are a lot of old stoners, and a lot of wealthy people who want to come do it safely with a concierge,” said Timothy Vee, owner of Colorado High Life Tours. “Now the kids are gone, they’re 60 years old and they want to get high.”

Another pot-themed tour operation, Colorado Green Tours, began suggesting customized “Cannabis Apres-Ski” tour packages at the start of the ski season.

How big could marijuana tourism become in the Colorado Rockies? “We think it could rival skiing,” Chris Walsh, editor of Marijuana Business Daily, told the Vail Daily. “Not next year or the year after, but down the road.”

While many considering Colorado to offer the best skiing in the world at resorts such as Vail, the unprecedented combination of legal marijuana and top-notch powder gives extra reason for tourists to pick Colorado over other ski destinations. “The Colorado skiing industry is competing with resorts from all over the country and world,” said Walsh. “This could set Colorado’s skiing industry apart from its competitors in places like Utah and California.”

For the time being, however, it looks like sales of recreational marijuana in Colorado will be hampered because there’s just not enough pot to meet the expected demand come the start of 2014. More than 100 stores have applied to become legal marijuana dispensaries, but it’s been estimate that come January 1, only about a dozen will be operational in Denver, the state’s largest city.

Marijuana Business Daily has reported that state laws have made it difficult, if not impossible, for pot growers to ramp up production until January. It could take several months for supplies to catch up with demand, and during the interim the marketplace may be chaotic:

“While demand is expected to soar, supply will be roughly the same over the next few months. That imbalance could create a host of problems, from operational issues to empty shelves. Retail stores might have to actually turn away customers or temporary close to rebuild inventory. And prices could fluctuate significantly.”

Meanwhile, some ski towns worry that the influx of marijuana tourism could hurt, rather than help, local businesses and the family-friendly atmosphere. In an NPR segment, one waiter at a popular restaurant in Vail, which has thus far banned sales of recreational and medicinal marijuana, said he thought the rise of pot tourism could be a turn-off for many visitors. “This town is driven on a high-class clientele that come out here with their families, for a family vacation and the family experience.”

Colorado Ski Country USA, the industry’s trade association in the state, is also downplaying, if not discouraging, the concept of ski-pot tourism. “We’re getting the word out that we have a lot of things to offer guests, but smoking marijuana is not one of them,” Colorado Ski Country USA’s Jennifer Rudolph told the Associated Press. “We have so much to offer our guests that outweigh the legality of possession of marijuana.”

As early as last January, the Vail Daily was reporting that there was a buzz on the streets of Vail, with tourists regularly inquiring about the possibility of smoking marijuana legally. But there are plenty of misconceptions about the marijuana business in Colorado. The biggest one is probably that towns will suddenly be overrun with people smoking weed; in fact, it’s only legal to smoke in private places, and only for adults ages 21 and up. “The bottom line is guests should not expect to smoke marijuana in public at a ski resort,” said Colorado Ski Country’s Rudolph.


Source

Smokin' on the slopes? Colorado ski resorts issue weed warning as legalization nears

Published December 03, 2013

FoxNews.com

A skier enjoys opening day at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area in Colorado. Colorado Ski Country USA, a trade association that represents 21 resorts, is informing visitors through social media about the new pot laws, which were passed last year and legalize marijuana possession in small amounts for adults over 21, including out-of-state visitors.

As the state prepares to legalize recreational marijuana on Jan. 1, Rocky Mountain resorts are preparing for a rush of pot smokers looking to light up on the slopes. One might think that skiing and pot-smoking would be an unwise combination -- and that's probably correct. But a handful of marijuana-themed ski trips already are being marketed, and the state's ski industry is trying to get in front of what could be a dangerous fad.

Mountain managers are concerned not only about safety but their tourism image. The fear is that some of the more conservative, family-run resorts will see a backlash from people who don’t want to be in a cannabis cloud.

Jennifer Rudolph of Colorado Ski Country USA, a trade association that represents 21 resorts in the state, says the ski industry generates about $3 billion in tourism revenue annually and Colorado had more than 11 million skier visits last year, outpacing every other state in the nation.

It’s those kinds of numbers that tourism operators hope to cash in on.

Colorado Highlife Tours is offering a party package starting at $75 per person which includes “affordable Marijuana friendly ski buses” for groups to Breckenridge, Winter Park, Eldora, Loveland, Echo Mountain, Keystone, Copper Mountain Resort and Vail.

The tour operators will pick up passengers, drive customers to ski resorts/towns and provide refreshments on the bus.

“We can stop off at one of the many retail marijuana stores for you to buy some of Colorado’s finest marijuana products and smoking accessories,” the site boasts. “We then will take you to your hotel for front door drop off & for you to have a fabulous time on the slopes. Some of the local resort towns have marijuana to buy also!”

According to the site, there’s also a concert featuring Redman and Method Man, although FoxNews.com has not been able to independently verify the claim.

Not to be outdone, my420tours.com is offering their guests a trippy time with cannabis sampling, a daily 4:20 happy hour party and well as a marijuana cooking and recipe class.

Rudolph says her group is pushing back on the promises of pot fun on the slopes.

“We are being proactive in educating the public in what to expect when they come to Colorado to ski,” Rudolph told The Associated Press.

She added: “We’re getting the word out that we have a lot of things to offer guests, but smoking marijuana is not one of them. ... We have so much to offer our guests that outweigh the legality of possession of marijuana.”

Rudolph says her organization is informing visitors through social media and its blog about the new pot laws, which were passed last year and legalize marijuana possession in small amounts for adults over 21, including out-of-state visitors. Some resorts also are addressing the issue with their respective towns and chambers of commerce.

Aspen’s home county approved the measure by margin of more than 3 to 1, and more than two-thirds of voters also approved marijuana in the home county of Colorado’s largest ski resort, Vail. A whopping eight in 10 voters in the home county of Telluride ski resort favored marijuana legalization.

It’s also relatively easy to smoke marijuana at resorts without getting caught. Wooded areas off some of Colorado’s slopes already are dotted with “smoke shacks,” old mining cabins that have been illicitly repurposed as places to use the drug out of the cold and wind.

Still, industry officials hope visitors will respect that it is still illegal to smoke marijuana in public and on federal land, where 90 percent of the state’s ski resorts are located. Anyone who is caught risks having their pass taken away.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Atheists, work with us for peace, Pope says on Christmas

Like atheists are war mongers or something???

At the first anti-war meetings of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars the only people I knew there were my atheist friends.

If you ask me some of the biggest supporters of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been the so called peace loving Christian nut jobs!!!

Source

Atheists, work with us for peace, Pope says on Christmas

Philip Pullella Reuters

6:47 a.m. CST, December 25, 2013

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, celebrating his first Christmas as Roman Catholic leader, on Wednesday called on atheists to unite with believers of all religions and work for "a homemade peace" that can spread across the world.

Speaking to about 70,000 people from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the same spot where he emerged to the world as pope when he was elected on March 13, Francis also made another appeal for the environment to be saved from "human greed and rapacity".

The leader of the 1.2 billion-member Church wove his first "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and world) message around the theme of peace.

"Peace is a daily commitment. It is a homemade peace," he said.

He said that people of other religions were also praying for peace, and - departing from his prepared text - he urged atheists to join forces with believers.

"I invite even non-believers to desire peace. (Join us) with your desire, a desire that widens the heart. Let us all unite, either with prayer or with desire, but everyone, for peace," he said, drawing sustained applause from the crowd.

Francis's reaching out to atheists and people of other religions is a marked contrast to the attitude of former Pope Benedict, who sometimes left non-Catholics feeling that he saw them as second-class believers.

He called for "social harmony in South Sudan, where current tensions have already caused numerous victims and are threatening peaceful coexistence in that young state".

Thousands are believed to have died in violence divided along ethnic lines between the Nuer and Dinka tribes in the country, which seceded from Sudan in 2011 after decades of war.

The pontiff also called for dialogue to end the conflicts in Syria, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq, and prayed for a "favorable outcome" to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

"Wars shatter and hurt so many lives!" he said, saying their most vulnerable victims were children, elderly, battered women and the sick.

PERSONAL PEACEMAKERS

The thread running through the message was that individuals had a role in promoting peace, either with their neighbor or between nations.

The message of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem was directed at "every man or woman who keeps watch through the night, who hopes for a better world, who cares for others while humbly seeking to do his or her duty," he said.

"God is peace: let us ask him to help us to be peacemakers each day, in our life, in our families, in our cities and nations, in the whole world," he said.

Pilgrims came from all over the world for Christmas at the Vatican and some said it was because they felt Francis had brought a breath of fresh air to the Church.

"(He) is bringing a new era into the Church, a Church that is focusing much more on the poor and that is more austere, more lively," said Dolores Di Benedetto, who came from the pope's homeland, Argentina, to attend Christmas Eve Mass.

Giacchino Sabello, an Italian, said he wanted to get a first-hand look at the new pope: "I thought it would be very nice to hear the words of this pope close up and to see how the people are overwhelmed by him."

In his speech, Francis asked God to "look upon the many children who are kidnapped, wounded and killed in armed conflicts, and all those who are robbed of their childhood and forced to become soldiers".

He also called for a "dignified life" for migrants, praying tragedies such as one in which hundreds died in a shipwreck off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa are never repeated, and made a particular appeal against human trafficking, which he called a "crime against humanity".

(Editing by Pravin Char)


Will the NSA have to curtail some intelligence tools?

What part of the Bill of Rights don't these tyrants at NSA understand??? Particularly the 4th Amendment????

Of course the real problem is in Congress where our royal rulers have passed the Patriot Act, which essentially has flushed the Bill of Rights down the toilet.

Source

Will the NSA have to curtail some intelligence tools?

By Walter Pincus, Published: December 23 E-mail the writer

As the drip, drip, drip of stories generated by documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden continues, the intelligence community and particularly the NSA may be forced to modify some tools that officials claim have proved effective, not just in fighting terrorism but in gathering all sorts of intelligence.

That the NSA is losing what’s become a public relations battle was illustrated last week in the combination of U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon deciding that NSA’s domestic collection of telephone toll records is likely unconstitutional, and the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies recommending changes that could directly impact NSA programs.

Twelve years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the public’s fear of terrorists striking the U.S. homeland has almost vanished. With a handful of attempts thwarted and the Snowden documents generating criticism of a wide range of NSA collection programs, intelligence officials are among the few who remember complaints in the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks that they hadn’t “connected the dots.”

The April 15 Boston Marathon bombing brought back memories of that criticism when the FBI was questioned in Congress for not thoroughly pursuing Russian warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the alleged perpetrators.

The NSA’s domestic collection of telephone toll records, a program created in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, has come under particular scrutiny. Its defenders say it can provide “dots” of information that could lead to unraveling a plot.

Today, however, this metadata program is being characterized as a bigger potential danger to the public’s privacy than as a potential asset in preventing another terrorist plot.

I write “potential danger” because despite Snowden’s apparent downloading of an estimated 1.5 million documents, stories so far generated by his actions have not disclosed any illegal or improper use of information in the so-called 215 metadata program, under which the NSA collects and stores all U.S. telephone toll records for five years.

There has been some actual misuse of intercepts, but they took place overseas, under a different NSA program. In a dozen instances, discovered in the past by the NSA’s own oversight program and recently disclosed in September by the agency itself, agency personnel or contractors used access to intercepts to check up on wives or girl friends.

There is no evidence offered that the 215 metadata program has been misused.

Former National Intelligence director Dennis Blair, appearing Sunday on CNN, asked rhetorically “whether actual harm was done to an innocent American . . . by the program. Has anybody lost a job, been harassed by the FBI, been barred from doing something as a result of the program, any innocent American? And the answer is no, none of those have come to light.”

The presidential review panel reported it “found no evidence of illegality or other abuse of authority for the purpose of targeting domestic political activity. This is of central importance, because one of the greatest dangers of government surveillance is the potential to use what is learned to undermine democratic governance.”

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a leading critic of the program, said Sunday on ABC, “There has been no abuse,” but also added, “the potential for abuse is always there, and Americans have always erred on the side of protecting our privacy.”

So the question is how to protect that privacy while also providing the security the public also demands.

Last June, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller said if NSA’s 215 metadata had been available before Sept. 11, the bureau might have been able to connect an al-Qaeda-linked Yemen number to hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was in the United States. In October, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander gave similar testimony to Congress.

Critics now focus on two statements from last week that question the usefulness of the 215 program. Leon said in his opinion, “The government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.” He points out in a footnote, however, that “the government could have presented classified evidence in camera but it chose not to do so.”

The president’s review board said its study “suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony metadata was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, one of five members of the review board, sought to clarify what those words meant. He said the group saw value in keeping the program going, noting it is important that “out of the couple hundred times a year that NSA queries this database . . . there are a dozen, 15 times a year where they have tipped information to the FBI.”

The president’s panel recommended two changes in how the program operates. The first was to keep the massive phone toll records with the telecommunication companies or some nongovernmental body rather than the NSA.

The second change was in how NSA queries the phone metadata. Today, NSA gets blanket authority to pursue foreign calls to U.S. phones if it relates to one of a specific list of foreign terrorist organizations pre-approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Thereafter, it is up to a small group of NSA officials to determine when any single foreign number qualifies.

The review board said under its proposal, “NSA should have to get a court order for every individual time they want to query this data [based on a foreign phone call to the U.S.], not operate under a blanket court order,” Morell said. It could lead to four days of delay to the process, he suggested. Leon also focused on NSA “querying and analyzing it [the telephone metadata] without prior judicial approval.”

With that kind of backing, this may be one recommendation that can gain votes in Congress not just from critics of the program, but also from some of its supporters.

For previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


This FBI agent had a boneheaded plan to copyright a secret interrogation manual

Source

This FBI agent had a boneheaded plan to copyright a secret interrogation manual

By Andrea Peterson

December 20 at 11:51 am

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones has a pretty incredible story up right now -- as in you will be incredulous that an FBI agent actually thought this was a good idea. The author of a sensitive FBI interrogation manual submitted the document for copyright protection -- in the process, making it available to anyone with a card for the Library of Congress to read.

This is bizarre on a number of levels, but two aspects of the story are particularly mind-boggling. First is that the American Civil Liberties Union fought a legal battle with the FBI over access to documents just like this. In fact, the FBI relented and provided a version of this same manual to the ACLU last year. But the copy they released to the ACLU was heavily redacted -- unlike the 70-plus page version of the manual Baumann reviewed at the Library of Congress.

And second, the manual almost certainly shouldn't even qualify for a copyright because it is a government work. Anything "prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties" is not subject to copyright in the United States. And yet, according to Baumann, the author of the manual deposited a version of the interrogation manual dated 2008 with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2010.

A comparison between that version catalogued by the Library of Congress and the redacted one the ACLU obtained reveals a few interesting details. For instance, the full version includes a sentence that says the manual is intended for the FBI's "clean" teams -- the investigators charged with collecting information for use in federal prosecutions. "That raises the question of whether teams collecting information that's not for use in federal courts would have to follow the manual's (already permissive) guidelines at all," says Baumann.


Phoenix unveiled a $15,000 sculptural portable seating piece.

Your tax dollars being p*ssed away????

Source

Phoenix unveiled a $15,000 sculptural portable seating piece.

The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:19 PM

Phoenix unveiled a $15,000 sculptural seating piece at the Phoenix Festival of the Arts this month.

The Arizona artist team of Aranda/Lasch designed the seating, which stacks in a variety of geometric shapes like Legos. The sculpture will provide portable seating for gatherings at the Phoenix Center for the Arts and Hance Park, according to the city.

The aluminum seating, which can fit between 10 to 15 people, has a coating that allows for indoor and outdoor use. It could be configured to serve as a stage set for one or several performers, according to Ed Lebow, director of the public-art program.

The Phoenix Center for the Arts will house the piece when it’s not in use.

The Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture Public Art Program commissioned the art. It’s part of Cultural Connections, a series of temporary public artworks commissioned by the city, Arizona State University Art Museum and Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation.

“The series was developed to create events and artworks that activate underutilized yet highly visible and accessible public sites along the light-rail corridor near Hance Park and Roosevelt Row,” according to a news release.

The city used a National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant and Phoenix percent-for-art funds to pay for the artwork.


Marijuana smuggling in peak season, Pinal officials say

Source

By Brittany Elena Morris The Arizona Republic 12 News-Breaking News Team Tue Dec 24, 2013 6:33 PM

A flurry of recent drug-smuggling activity in the desert south of the Valley serves as a reminder that Arizona is in the midst of the peak marijuana-smuggling season, according to local and federal authorities.

Pinal County sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Border Patrol agents combined to seize more than 2,000 pounds of marijuana in a 24-hour period last week, and federal officials anticipate more seizures before the end of the year.

On Dec. 18, three traffic violations became high-speed chases when drivers fled into the desert of the Vekol Valley area, according to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office.

The vehicles left behind yielded bundles of marijuana weighing hundreds of pounds, said Tim Gaffney, a sheriff’s spokesman. The Vekol Valley is a known drug-smuggling corridor running through the desert south of Interstate 8 generally between Gila Bend and Casa Grande.

In one of the chases, a Chevy Tahoe failed to stop at a traffic light and led a sheriff’s deputy into the desert. Gaffney said 10 to 15 men fled from the Tahoe and could not be found.

Within the following two days, officials arrested 13 men and one woman for possession of marijuana, Gaffney said. The group of 14 suspects included some who were accused of carrying more than 1,363 pounds of marijuana in their backpacks from Mexico, Gaffney said.

The seizure of large amounts of marijuana is not a surprise, said Andy Adame, Arizona sector Special Operations Supervisor with U.S. Border Patrol. Adame said December is the middle of marijuana season, when an average of 4,000 pounds of marijuana is seized daily in Arizona.

In October and November 2013, 246,160 pounds were seized, a 25 percent spike from the same time last year. Adame expects the 2013 total will exceed last year’s 1,040,000 pounds of marijuana.


On-duty police deaths may hit 70-year low in 2013

Being a cop is a dangerous job. But what the cops don't tell you is that ANY job that requires driving is dangerous.

Of course when it comes to the most dangerous jobs, being a cop isn't a dangerous job at all. The job of being a police officer rarely gets into the top 10 most dangerous jobs.

Year in and year out the most dangerous jobs are fishermen, loggers and construction workers. They routinely swap places as the top 3 most dangerous jobs according to US Labor Department statistics.

And when it comes to being murdered at work it rarely happens to cops. Most people murdered at work are convenience store workers, liquor store workers and hotel clerks. Most robbers are smart enough not to try robbing cops who are always armed in the USA.

Source

On-duty police deaths may hit 70-year low in 2013

Dan Freedman

Updated 6:30 am, Sunday, December 22, 2013

In the 1968 movie "Bullitt," actor Steve McQueen plays a police detective who floors his Mustang GT in a tire-screeching car chase up, down and over San Francisco's hills.

Fast-forward to the 21st century: Traffic accidents have exceeded gunfire as the leading cause of police on-duty deaths for 14 of the past 15 years.

A 2011 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study of 733 fatal police crashes found half involved only the officer-driven vehicle. Forty-two percent of the officers who died didn't have their seat belts on.

"It's ironic that police officers present the greatest dangers to themselves as they try to help the public," said Pat Tobin, a retired San Francisco police motorcycle supervisor who lectures on officer safety. "But honestly, that is the case."

The good news is years of trainers' attempts to break through the pedal-to-metal, no-seat-belt police culture appear to be paying off. There's a chance that nationwide on-duty deaths for 2013 will total fewer than 100 for the first time since World War II.

'Historic moment'

Among the primary reasons for the drop is safer driving. Vehicular-related deaths have accounted for 43 of 99 on-duty deaths so far this year, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, an online site that tracks officer deaths. That's five fewer traffic deaths than in 2012 and a drop of 19 since 2011.

"This is a historic moment for law enforcement," said Dale Stockton, a retired Carlsbad (San Diego County) police captain who heads Below 100, which offers safety training to police departments nationwide. "Barring a catastrophe, we'll come in at a level as low as anyone has seen since 1944, when most every crime-demographic male was out of the country. No one wearing a badge today has ever experienced a year with a loss level this low."

With guns proliferating nationwide, gunfire remains a major concern and is the No. 2 cause of officer deaths, with 29 recorded so far in 2013. But that's an improvement over 2012, when 47 died from shootings, and a big reduction from the 67 officers shot and killed in 2011.

California deaths

In California, nine officers have died so far in 2013, four from vehicular accidents and five from gunfire.

Among those felled by bullets: An officer in Galt, south of Sacramento, killed by a burglary suspect, and two Santa Cruz police officers killed when a subject of a sexual assault investigation answered their door-knock with gunfire.

The 2,197-officer San Francisco Police Department has not had an on-duty death since 2006 when it lost two officers, one to gunfire and one to an auto accident.

Below 100 training stresses simple things officers can do to improve their odds on the streets and highways: Wear seat belts and body armor, reduce speed and avoid complacency.

For decades, officers have resisted seat belts and body armor as restricting their ability to exit vehicles quickly and maneuver. Police drive fast to actual emergencies but sometimes officers speed "because they can," Stockton said.

Officers who wear seat belts or don't speed in nonemergency situations often feel they have to explain themselves to eye-rolling colleagues. Technology is helping

But police training increasingly emphasizes anticipating danger in seemingly routine situations such as serving warrants and making car stops. Technology is helping police departments monitor police-cruiser speed remotely, and research is under way into disabling getaway cars without police chasing them.

The San Francisco Police Department now requires officers to wear seat belts and follow strict rules about high-speed chases, confining them to pursuits of drunken drivers or suspects in felony or domestic violence cases.

Of "Bullitt" and its depiction of heavy-metal cars cresting hills airborne, Officer Albie Esparza, an SFPD spokesman, said: "Those days are over."

"It's not that we don't ever chase, because we do," Esparza said. "But it has to be a violent felony. It's all for public safety as well as officer safety."

Dan Freedman is a reporter in the Hearst Newspapers Washington bureau.


Who says government work doesn't pay well????

Who says government work doesn't pay well???? Well maybe I should have said, who says government parasites are not paid very well!!!!

When I first started to work, government workers like to say that even thought they had low paying jobs compared to the private sector they had good job security.

Sadly that has changed over the years and now government workers are frequently paid much better the workers in the private sector. And that is in addition to government workers have job with great job security in which they are almost impossible to be fired.

Source

S.F. Fire Dept. dominates list of highest-paid city workers

Updated 10:27 pm, Saturday, December 21, 2013

It's good to be the mayor, but it pays to be a firefighter.

A fire official again topped the list of San Francisco's highest paid city employees last year, and the department had six of the city's top 10 spots for total pay, according to figures for fiscal 2012-13 from the city's Department of Human Resources.

Mayor Ed Lee may get the august, wood-paneled office in City Hall's Room 200 and a Chevy Volt chauffeured by a security detail, but 48 city employees took home more pay than Lee's $270,910 in fiscal 2012-13, the figures show.

Some of those are well-salaried department heads who don't make overtime and have some relatively modest additional pay packages, like Police Chief Greg Suhr, who totaled $324,749, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White at $320,816 and San Francisco International Airport Director John Martin with $301,499.

Most of the top earners last year, though, got there through overtime or massive payouts of accrued time off upon retirement, with much of that going to fire and police brass, the figures show.

When they were facing large deficits a few years ago during the recession, city officials pushed to reduce overtime, including OT for police officers, Muni workers and sheriff's deputies. There have been reductions, but not across the board, Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda said.

"The overtime has come down from the peak, which was five years ago," Zmuda said. A lot of progress was made at the Police Department, but not as much in other areas, she said.

31 of the top 50 earners

One area where overtime has surged - by design - is the Fire Department, with top brass and front-line firefighters making up 31 of the top 50 city earners in the last fiscal year, figures show.

At the top of the list was Battalion Chief James Vannucchi, who retired during the fiscal year, which ended June 30, and took home a whopping $393,430.

Vannucchi more than doubled his base salary of about $158,000 by pulling in almost $52,000 in overtime and more than $183,000 in other compensation, including payouts for accrued vacation, unused sick time and other earned time off, the figures show.

Many of the top earners, including at least four of the top 10, found themselves in that spot thanks to generous payouts upon retirement.

"It's a double-edged sword when you pay people for their unused sick days," said Tom O'Connor, president of Firefighters Union Local 798. "Think of how much money Jim saved them over the course of 30 years by not calling in sick. ... It's a smart fiscal policy, but it looks bad when they pay out at the end of the year." Vannucchi took an average of 2.2 sick days per year in his final 76 months on the job, according to Fire Department figures.

That will likely change soon. The union is negotiating its next contract, and the firefighters are seeking a raise in exchange for dropping compensation for unpaid sick time, O'Connor said.

"This practice of getting paid for unused sick days will end in the near future," he said.

The other driving factor is overtime, particularly within the Fire Department, which mandates a certain number of firefighters work overtime to fill shifts.

Relying on overtime, rather than filling vacant positions, is more cost effective because it eliminates the additional cost of providing health care, retirement and other benefits to new firefighters, who in the first year work extensive paid training days, Zmuda said.

A toll on the force

But it takes a toll on the existing force.

"Operationally, we've suffered a bit," Hayes-White said. The city is now aggressively trying to ramp up firefighter hiring, including a new recruit class of 43 sworn in last week. Another class is set for January, with three more over the next three years.

Five of the top six earners in city government in terms of overtime last year were in the Fire Department, figures show.

Fire Lt. Gary Altenberg of Station 39 on Portola Avenue had the most overtime of any city employee, pulling in $191,172 in overtime, well above his salary of $131,101. With other pay perks, his total compensation was $343,730. Not far behind was firefighter and paramedic Frederick Binkley, who racked up $179,235 in overtime on top of a base pay of $129,141, the figures show. Binkley's total pay last year was $326,140.

Massive overtime isn't confined to the Fire Department.

Sheriff's Deputy Whitney Yee was the fourth highest overtime earner last year, raking in $156,843 in extra-hours pay. That amount was almost double his base salary of $90,545.

Topped sheriff's salary

Yee earned a total of $264,163 last year and made more in overtime than his boss' salary.

Elected Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi had a salary of $138,668. He also got another almost $128,000, which was primarily back pay after Lee suspended him for almost seven months in an unsuccessful effort to remove the sheriff over a domestic dispute with his wife.

The top earner in other compensation besides salary or overtime was John Goldberg, a captain who retired from the police force in June 2012 and later was hired by the Department of Public Works as a manager on police facility construction projects.

Goldberg secured almost $240,000 in payouts from 1,040 hours of unused sick time, 1,300 hours of comp time and 400 hours of unused vacation time, according to city figures.

He earned $34,583 in base pay during fiscal 2012-13.

As for the $100,000 club, well, let's just say it ain't what it used to be.

No less than 10,281 of the city's roughly 28,000 employees earned at least $100,000 in total compensation in the last fiscal year. Eighty-four pulled in at least $250,000 each in total compensation, the figures show.

Money list: See S.F. city government's top earners at www.sfgate.com/news/databases

John Coté is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jcote@sfchronicle.com


Campaign 'slush funds' tapped for luxuries

Who says they are not royal rulers that live like kings????

And remember the correct word is not "bribes", they are "campaign contributions", although most of us know there isn't a dimes difference between a "bribe" and a "campaign contribution".

Source

Campaign 'slush funds' tapped for luxuries

December 22, 2013

Ignore the cynical line that members of Congress don't do much. They're awfully busy raising and spending money.

The Tribune's review of five years of campaign spending by Illinois' congressional delegation revealed Thursday how frequently its members essentially use campaign cash as slush funds: When they're not in session, they're hosting fundraisers, jet-setting and stuffing their bellies at private luncheons — all in the name of campaign activity, of course.

Examples: Illinois' 18 House members (19 prior to 2010) and two senators spent about $500,000 from their campaign funds on meals alone during the last five years, the Tribune review found. Rep. Luis Gutierrez spent more than $130,000 on hotels and travel expenses to such destinations as Las Vegas, New York, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Rep. Aaron Schock spent more than $19,000 on hotel rooms and parties in Vail, Colo. He bought $1,500 in concert tickets and spent another $139,000 from a second campaign fund on hotels, meals and airfare.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger spent $2,125 at a coin shop. Sen. Mark Kirk's campaign spent $1,133 on museum souvenirs. Rep. John Shimkus, who has a role with the National Republican Congressional Committee, spent about $130,000 on meals and entertaining. Rep. Bobby Rush bought $652 worth of luggage.

There's also a family betterment plan:

Three members — Gutierrez, Rush and Rep. Mike Quigley — pay their spouses out of their campaign funds. Rush's wife, Carolyn, has collected more than $300,000 during the last five years. Gutierrez paid his wife, Soraida, more than $176,000 and even gave her a monthly raise. Quigley's wife, Barbara, collected more than $73,000 under the name of her tourism company.

Even members of Congress who have no serious opponents and no need to pay campaign workers, rent office space or buy yard signs still devote an inordinate amount of time to raising and spending money in ways that don't pass the smell test. Shimkus hasn't had a close race in 10 years. But he still managed to spend some $130,000 on campaign-related meals during the last five. Rush and Gutierrez rarely face serious opposition. Neither does Schock, a fundraising phenom, who toyed with the idea of running for governor.

Thursday's article reported that the expenditures, disclosed in campaign finance filings to the Federal Election Commission, are legal as long as they served a political or campaign purpose. But critics say they are examples of how campaign funds can boost lawmakers' lifestyles and how the line between personal and campaign spending can be blurred. Congressional watchdog groups point to lax oversight by the FEC as problematic: The commission collects all the campaign information but has little authority and not enough resources to be an effective agent of enforcement.

But the government shouldn't have to babysit campaign forms. Members of Congress should know better than to spend so much on ... themselves. When asked about some of Schock's campaign expenses, his political director told the Tribune: "Until a time exists when donations are no longer a part of our democratic process, Rep. Schock will continue to have a top-tier fundraising operation which follows all the rules and discloses all the information as required by the FEC."

In other words, buzz off. Schock will continue to claim as campaign expenses such expenditures as concert tickets and — get this — a $390 charge to a seaplane company based in the British Virgin Islands.

Lest anyone forget: Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is serving time in federal prison for misusing $750,000 in campaign funds. Prosecutors said he broke the law by filing false reports with the FEC. But the only reason he got caught was because the FBI started looking at his paperwork.

You would think even the mere appearance of Jackson's egregious use of campaign dollars — the Bruce Lee memorabilia, the stuffed elk heads — might caution his former colleagues against lavish expenditures that smack of self-interest.

You would think they might use a little more discretion in defining "campaign expenses."

You would think members of the Illinois delegation, especially those without opposition, might instead focus all their attention on this state's high unemployment or on the needs of their districts and the nation — improving economic development, attracting new businesses, working on housing issues, pushing to reduce federal deficits and debt through entitlement reform and spending cuts.

But by the looks of their campaign filings, they're much, much too busy for any of that.


Higher Chicago taxes, fines and fees for 2014

Higher Chicago taxes, fines and fees for 2014

Did you expect anything else from the government crooks????

Even you pot smokers will be effected. They royal government rulers of Chicago think the deserve a 7 percent cut of all the medical marijuana you buy! - "businesses that ... grow medical marijuana or run dispensaries will be charged a 7 percent "privilege tax." Patients will be charged a 1 percent tax for buying pot"

Source

Higher Chicago taxes, fines and fees for 2014

But parking meter rates won't go up

By Hal Dardick, Chicago Tribune reporter

11:55 p.m. CST, December 20, 2013

A slew of tax and fee increases are set to hit Chicagoans in 2014 on everything from water, cigarettes and cable TV to property taxes and parking violations.

There's a small measure of good news, however: For the first time since 2009, parking meter rates won't go up. The last of the five big increases from former Mayor Richard M. Daley's much-criticized meter lease took effect early this year, and Chicago Parking Meters LLC won't get a rate increase until next year, city officials said.

The requests for more money are the result of decisions made this year by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City Council and Chicago Public Schools, which the mayor controls.

The widest-felt effects will stem from the property tax increase enacted in August by the Chicago Board of Education and higher water and sewer fees set in motion during Emanuel's first year in office as a way to pay for the replacement of aging mains.

The owner of a home valued at $213,000 can expect to pay about $51 more in school property taxes next year. It's the third year in a row that Chicago property owners will get hit with higher school taxes.

City property owners and suburban governments that buy city water face a 15 percent increase in water rates. In some cases, suburban utilities will pass the increases on to people who buy their water. Sewer charges, added to city property owners' bimonthly bills, will be 96 percent of their water tab, an increase of 4 percentage points.

Here's a look at some of the other Chicago tax and fee hikes:

•The city cigarette tax will increase by 50 cents per pack Jan. 10. With federal, state and county taxes added in, the taxes alone on each pack sold in Chicago will hit $7.17, the highest level in the nation. New York City will be second, with a $6.86-per-pack tax.

•Amusement taxes on cable TV will increase 50 percent — to 6 percent from 4 percent. Because of vagaries in federal law, satellite TV subscribers don't pay those fees.

•Drivers who speed near 50 schools and parks where automated speed cameras are going up could be hit with fines of $100 for driving 11 mph and more over the limit and $35 for driving 10 mph over the limit. The city's first speed cameras started generating fines late this year, but more cameras are going online.

•People whose vehicles are impounded for various city offenses — from playing music too loudly to illegally toting a gun — will see their daily storage fees double to $20 for the first five days.

•Three parking violation fines also will increase by $50 — to $250 for parking in a disabled spot, to $150 for parking too close to a fire hydrant and to $75 for parking a truck, recreational vehicle, bus or taxi on a residential street.

•Fines for parking during rush hour where it's banned will increase to $100 from $60. Parking on a street when it's scheduled to be cleaned will cost $60 instead of the current $50.

•Developers of large construction projects will be hit with higher zoning permit filing fees and big surcharges for filing in person instead of electronically.

All of the new city fines and fees are expected to pump about $32.4 million into city coffers next year. City officials say the speed cameras, which started going up around the city in recent months, could bring in an additional $70 million. CPS is counting on the property tax increase to raise $93 million in 2014.

On the state side, it will be several months before new laws allow citizens to carry guns in public and the chronically ill to use marijuana for medical purposes, but both initiatives come with fees and taxes to pay for starting and regulating those programs.

A concealed carry permit will cost $150 for Illinois residents and double for out-of-staters. The licenses are good for five years. That's on top of a $10 application fee to obtain a firearm owner's identification card, which is required to qualify for a concealed carry permit.

Meanwhile, businesses that win approval to grow medical marijuana or run dispensaries will be charged a 7 percent "privilege tax." Patients will be charged a 1 percent tax for buying pot, the same rate that applies to pharmaceuticals.

Tribune reporter Monique Garcia contributed.

hdardick@tribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal


Air Force general dismissed for drunken antics in Moscow

The good thing about marijuana is it doesn't turn people into *ssholes like booze does. On the other hand this military *sshole probably would have behaved the same even if he was stoned.

Source

Air Force general dismissed for drunken antics in Moscow

By Tony Perry

December 21, 2013, 8:35 a.m.

Another high-ranking U.S. military officer has been dismissed after getting drunk during a goodwill mission to Russia, officials said.

Last year, the captain of the San Diego-based frigate Vandegrift was relieved of command for getting drunk during a visit to the port of Vladivostock to review the Russians' Pacific fleet. Three other officers were also punished for "inappropriate behavior" involving alcohol.

This week it was revealed that Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Carey was dismissed for getting drunk and insulting his hosts during an official visit to Moscow in July.

Carey was removed as head of the 20th Air Force, which handles 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

According to the Associated Press, Carey got drunk and was stumbling through Red Square and had made a scene at a banquet.

His behavior was "unbecoming an officer and gentleman," according to an Air Force investigation.

Much the same language was used last year when Cmdr. Joseph Darlak was relieved as commanding officer of the Vandegrift. "Inappropriate behavior and judgment in positions of authority are unacceptable," a Navy spokeswoman said at the time.


After 11 years in prison for murder he didn't commit, L.A. man is free

Hey, he is Black and must have done something wrong to deserve his 11 years in prison. Well that's probably what the cops who framed him are saying. The rest of us know the truth.

Sadly this isn't an isolated incident and happens all the time. Phoenix's own Ray Krone was the framed for murder and spent 10 years on death row before DNA testing proved he was framed by the police. Ray Krone is now famous because he was the 100th freed from death row because of DNA testing. Other then that he is just one of the 100's if not 1,000's of people framed by the police and sent to prison for crimes they didn't do.

Source

After 11 years in prison for murder he didn't commit, L.A. man is free

By Ruben Vives and Marisa Gerber, Los Angeles Times

December 21, 2013, 9:56 p.m.

DeAndre Howard spent more than a decade in prison for a murder he knew he didn't commit. After years of fighting for his innocence from behind bars, a federal judge had finally granted him an appeal. Prosecutors, he said, gave him a choice.

He could plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and get out in time for a Thanksgiving dinner with his family. Or he could go back to trial and risk spending the rest of his life in prison.

He chose trial. That felt final. It felt right.

"There was no need to compromise your integrity just so you can go free," he said. "I felt that's something you have to hold firm to even if your life is on the line."

On Friday, after 11 years behind bars, Howard, 31, walked out of a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles a free man after a jury acquitted him of murder and attempted murder.

Dressed in a black jumpsuit from county jail, he had trouble finding a pay phone. Someone let him borrow a cellphone. He made several calls to relatives who weren't expecting his release until several days later. A cousin picked him up at a bus stop near the courthouse.

"I was looking at all the buildings and breathing the nice cold air," he said. "This was freedom."

The wrongful arrest in 2002, he says, came just as troubles in his life were compounding.

Growing up in South L.A., his grandmother was the force of stability. But after she was killed in a shooting in the late 1980s, he said, his life began to unravel. He spent his time scrimping together change to buy hot dogs and diapers for his siblings. Eventually, they landed in the foster care system. At 18, he set a goal for himself: If he didn't sign up for school or get a job in a year, he'd join the Army or the Navy.

But that never happened. In 1999 he was arrested for selling crack. The next year he did prison time on a forgery charge. He was released in February 2002, five months before the summer evening that changed his life.

On July 8, an employee at a liquor store at 42nd and Hoover streets had just started his break when he heard what he thought were firecrackers. He turned and saw a man firing a gun at two others, later identified as Mark Freeman, who was killed, and Arthur Ragland. The shooter got back into a white vehicle and drove off, court documents say.

The crux of the case was whether Howard was that shooter.

Although the liquor store employee and Freeman's former girlfriend, who had seen the shooting from down the street, initially picked Howard's face out of a photo lineup, court documents say the woman later testified that she had seen the shooter's profile and couldn't tell who it was.

Howard maintained his innocence and, according to court documents, urged his attorney to contact Ragland, the surviving victim. That never happened, according to the records.

At trial, the jury initially deadlocked. The judge asked jurors to continue deliberating, and they eventually found Howard guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder. He was sentenced to 75 years to life, plus a consecutive life term.

From behind bars, Howard fought for his innocence. He began filing a flurry of appeals, which hinged on his belief that his trial lawyer hadn't properly defended him. His main point of concern was that his lawyer had never interviewed Ragland. He said his position was bolstered in 2004 when Ragland sent a letter to Howard's appellate attorney saying that Howard wasn't the gunman.

"The truth remains DeAndre Howard never attempted to murder me," Ragland stated in a declaration. "Neither did he murder victim Mark Anthony Freeman."

A U.S. magistrate judge, nonetheless, denied Howard's request to overturn the conviction in 2007. Howard appealed again. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled that the fact that Howard's attorney hadn't interviewed Ragland was significant.

"One would normally expect the surviving victim to be a star witness for the prosecution," the court wrote. "A reasonable attorney would therefore have attempted to interview Ragland to prepare for trial."

The 2010 appeals court decision remanded it back to the lower court to test the merits of Howard's allegations.

After the appeal, the case went back to district court and spent the next year or so making its way through the system. A judge eventually overturned the conviction, but Howard wasn't freed because prosecutors sought to retry him. The case concluded last week with the jury's verdict.

At his most recent trial, Howard said he spent the day when jurors were deliberating reading his Bible and praying.

"I just kept saying not guilty, not guilty," he said.

As the judge got the jury's verdict, Howard noticed a smile. He wasn't sure what it meant. Then he knew: Not guilty. It was the vindication he'd waited for — the assurance that he had been right not to take the plea deal.

Jennifer Turner, a lawyer with the federal public defender's office who defended Howard during his habeas proceedings, said she was overjoyed at Howard's release.

"He was finally represented by an attorney who investigated the case … and actually advocated for Mr. Howard," she said. "The difference between the two trials was the quality of representation that Mr. Howard had."

Still , she says, it's an imperfect result.

"There's nothing that an attorney or any of us can do to get back the 11 years of his life that were lost to this case," she said. "But aside from that, this was the most justice we could hope for."

As Howard reflected Saturday on his long legal battle, he admits that going back to trial was a big risk, but one that he reasoned he had to take.

"It was my way of fighting back — take it to trial," he said.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

Times staff writer Victoria Kim contributed to this report. Writer Victoria Kim contributed to this report.


A spy world reshaped by Edward Snowden

After reading this article I suspect our government rulers might think that it would be OK for them to rob Circle Ks, well as long as they don't get caught!!

"Well, sir, there are many things we do in intelligence that, if revealed, would have the potential for all kinds of blowback ... The conduct of intelligence is premised on the notion that we can do it secretly, and we don't count on it being revealed in the newspaper."

Source

A spy world reshaped by Edward Snowden

By Ken Dilanian

December 22, 2013, 6:00 a.m.

WASHINGTON — After news reports that the National Security Agency had secretly monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone calls, America's top intelligence official was asked why congressional oversight committees were kept in the dark.

Shouldn't Congress have been briefed, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) asked James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, about a spying operation that would embarrass the U.S. government if exposed?

"Well, sir, there are many things we do in intelligence that, if revealed, would have the potential for all kinds of blowback," Clapper replied at a House Intelligence Committee hearing in October. "The conduct of intelligence is premised on the notion that we can do it secretly, and we don't count on it being revealed in the newspaper."

Not these days.

Clapper and his colleagues now operate in a spy world reshaped by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who claims responsibility for what officials deem the largest and most damaging compromise of classified information in U.S. history. Among the casualties is the assumption that some of the nation's most carefully guarded secrets will stay secret.

NSA officials say Snowden downloaded and removed about 1.7 million documents from computer networks at an NSA listening post in Hawaii where he worked until June. The haul included about 2,000 specific requests for NSA surveillance that officials say make up a digital road map of spying successes and gaps in such high-profile targets as Iran, Russia, North Korea and China.

The requests have not been made public. But other leaks from Snowden's cache have been so illuminating that experts say the disclosures will mark a turning point in U.S. spying, much as revelations of CIA assassinations and NSA domestic spying led to creation of the congressional oversight committees and new laws in the 1970s.

At least some change appears inevitable. In just the last week, events produced "a seismic shift in the movement for real surveillance reform," said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a critic of NSA programs.

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon issued a sharp rebuke to the NSA on Monday when he ruled that a major program that Snowden exposed — the secret logging of virtually every American's telephone calls — was "almost Orwellian" in scope and probably violated the Constitution.

Leon stayed his ruling pending an expected government appeal. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and has been a staunch Capitol Hill ally for the embattled agency, announced that she would welcome a Supreme Court review to determine whether the bulk collection is legal.

The next day, the leaders of the nation's largest technology companies sat down with President Obama and complained that the NSA was damaging their reputations and undermining Silicon Valley's ability to sell computer hardware and cloud services, hurting the U.S. economy. (Privacy advocates have noted that they have been calling on leading technology companies to offer safeguards of their own against the use of personal information they gather.)

Several executives said some foreign customers had begun to reject American-made technology because Snowden's leaks showed that the NSA had enlisted tech firms and secretly tapped their data-transfer hubs. Some companies are facing lawsuits from shareholders demanding disclosure of any cooperation with NSA data-mining programs.

And on Wednesday, a presidential task force called for sweeping changes in NSA operations at home and abroad, including an end to the NSA's vast collection of U.S. telephone records. It said telephone companies or other groups, instead of the government, should keep the logs and allow the NSA access only if it obtains a court order.

Some critics say that's not enough. Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who has called for new curbs on NSA operations, said the panel's proposals would leave intact what he called "the surveillance state in America." Storing telephone data on the servers of a nongovernmental entity, he said, "would simply represent an outsourcing of bulk collection, not an end to it."

The crosscurrents added pressure on Obama to act more forcefully. On Friday, he said at a news conference that he would make "a pretty definitive statement" in January to outline surveillance reforms, including support for at least some of the task force's 46 recommendations.

"People are concerned about the prospect, the possibility of abuse," he said. But he said he was confident that the NSA was "not engaging in domestic surveillance or snooping around" on Americans.

Intelligence officials say some of America's adversaries, including members of Al Qaeda, have changed how they communicate to avoid the surveillance that Snowden disclosed.

Other costs are also now clear.

In nearly every meeting with foreign leaders or other officials, White House officials face angry complaints about the spying that was revealed in Snowden's leaks and questions about what might come next, officials said. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue involves classified material, said senior White House aides spend far more time grappling with the issue than is publicly understood.

But the administration official said an NSA-led intelligence task force that is investigating the leaks may never determine precisely what information Snowden stole or whether it's been copied, making it difficult to warn other governments or preempt his disclosures to mitigate the repercussions.

In Brazil, where Snowden leaks revealed that the NSA had monitored phones used by President Dilma Rousseff and her senior advisors, the government has responded by proposing to build fiber-optic lines to Europe so Brazil's Internet traffic can bypass U.S. data hubs that the NSA was monitoring.

In Europe, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other major technology and telecommunications companies have been tarnished by their apparent cooperation with the NSA, said Jay Cline, president of Minnesota Privacy Consultants, which advises corporations about privacy issues.

"The Europeans consider privacy as a human right," he said. "The details of what is being surveilled has raised questions among Europeans whether any of their data can be trusted in the U.S."

Snowden, who has been charged with espionage and is living in Russia, was hardly the first — and may not be the last — American with a high-level security clearance to leak a huge cache of U.S. secrets.

He has said he was inspired by Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison in August after being convicted of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic records, cables and videos to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks in 2010.

Michael Hayden, who headed both the NSA and CIA, said the chance of exposure of an NSA surveillance program "is like zero" under normal circumstances. But the risk calculus changes dramatically when a trusted insider is involved, he said.

"What the Snowden thing has done," he said, "is show that sometimes the greatest risk to discovery is the self-anointed leaker inside your organization."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com


The Federal Reserve was created 100 years ago. This is how it happened.

A great book on this subject is "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin. I have read it and think it is a great book. Technically the full name of the book is "The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve".

The Federal Reserve allows the Feds to print money that isn't backed by gold, silver, or anything of value other then the paper the money is printed on.

I am have not read the book talked about in this article which is “The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire,” by Neil Irwin.

Source

The Federal Reserve was created 100 years ago. This is how it happened.

Posted by Neil Irwin on December 21, 2013 at 12:37 pm

A century ago this week, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, creating a central bank for a nation that was only beginning its economic ascendance. This is the story of how it came to be, from a nearly catastrophic financial panic to secret meetings of plutocrats on the Georgia coast to the pitched battle in the halls of Congress, excerpted from The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire.

The mustachioed man in the silk top hat strode to his private railcar parked at a New Jersey train station, a mahogany-paneled affair with velvet drapes and well-polished brass accents. Five more men — and a legion of porters and servants — soon joined him. They referred to one another by their first names only, an uncommon informality in 1910, intended to give the staff no hints as to who the men actually were, lest rumors make their way to the newspapers and then to the trading floors of New York and London. One of the men, a German immigrant named Paul Warburg, carried a borrowed shotgun in order to look like a duck hunter, despite having never drawn a bead on a waterfowl in his life.

Two days later, the car deposited the men at the small Georgia port town of Brunswick, where they boarded a boat for the final leg of their journey. Jekyll Island, their destination, was a private resort owned by the powerful banker J.P. Morgan and some friends, a refuge on the Atlantic where they could get away from the cold New York winter. Their host — the man in the silk top hat — was Nelson Aldrich, one of the most powerful senators of the day, a lawmaker who lorded over the nation’s financial matters.

For nine days, working all day and into the night, the six men debated how to reform the U.S. banking and monetary systems, trying to find a way to make this nation just finding its footing on the global stage less subject to the kinds of financial collapses that had seemingly been conquered in Western Europe. Secrecy was paramount. “Discovery,” wrote one attendee later, “simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would have been wasted. If it were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress.”

For decades afterward, the most powerful men in American finance referred to one another as part of the “First Name Club.” Paul, Harry, Frank and the others were part of a small group that, in those nine days, invented the Federal Reserve System. Their task was more than administrative. Because the men at Jekyll Island weren’t just trying to solve an economic problem — they were trying to solve a political problem as old as their republic.

Banking's rough beginning

The U.S. financial system needed remaking. The United States had a long but less than illustrious history with central banking. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary, believed a national bank would stabilize the new government’s shaky credit and support a stronger economy — and was an absolute necessity to exercise the new republic’s constitutional powers.

But Hamilton’s proposal faced opposition, particularly in the agricultural South, where lawmakers believed a central bank would primarily benefit the mercantile North, with its large commercial centers of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. “What was it drove our forefathers to this country?” said James “Left Eye” Jackson, a fiery little congressman from Georgia. “Was it not the ecclesiastical corporations and perpetual monopolies of England and Scotland? Shall we suffer the same evils to exist in this country?” Some founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, believed that the bank was unconstitutional.

By 1811, Madison was in the White House. The Bank of the United States closed down. Until, at least, Madison realized how hard it was to fight the War of 1812 without a national bank to fund the government. The Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816. It lasted a little longer — until it crashed against the same distrust of centralized financial authority that undermined the first. The populist Andrew Jackson managed its demise in 1836.

Running an economy without a central bank empowered to issue paper money caused more than a few problems in late 19th-century America. For example, the supply of dollars was tied to private banks’ holdings of government bonds. That would have been fine if the need for dollars was fixed over time. But one overarching lesson of financial history is that that’s not the case. In times of financial panic, for example, everybody wants cash at the same time (that’s what happened in fall 2008).

Without a central, government-backed bank able to create money on demand, the American banking system wasn’t able to provide it. The system wasn’t elastic, meaning there was no way for its supply of money to adjust with demand. People would try to withdraw more money from one bank than it had available, the bank would fail, and then people from other banks would withdraw their funds, creating a vicious cycle that would lead to widespread bank failures and the contraction of lending across the economy. The result was economic depression. It happened every few years. One particularly severe panic in 1873 was so bad that until the 1930s, the 1870s were the decade known as the “Great Depression.” There were lesser panics in 1884, 1890 and 1893

Then came the Panic of 1907, the one that finally persuaded American lawmakers to deal with their country’s backward financial system. What made the Panic of 1907 so severe? A bunch of things that happened to converge at once.

It started with a devastating earthquake in San Francisco in 1906. Suddenly, insurers the world over needed access to dollars at the same time. In what was then still an agricultural economy, it was also a bumper year for crops, and an economic boom was under way — so companies nationwide wanted more cash than usual to invest in new ventures. In San Francisco, deposits were unavailable for weeks after the quake: Cash was locked in vaults so hot from fires caused by broken gas lines that it would have burst into flames had they been opened.

All of that meant the demand for dollars was uncommonly high — at a time when the supply of dollars couldn’t increase much. This manifested itself in the form of rising interest rates and withdrawals. Withdrawals begat more withdrawals, and before long, banks around the country were on the brink of failure.

Then in October 1907, the copper miner turned banker F. Augustus Heinze and his stockbroker brother Otto tried to take over the market of his own United Copper company by buying up its shares. When he failed, the price of United Copper stock tumbled. Investors rushed to pull their deposits out of any bank even remotely related to the disgraced F. Augustus Heinze.

First, a Heinze-owned bank in Butte, Mont., failed. Next came the huge Knickerbocker Trust Co. in New York, whose president was a Heinze business associate. Depositors lined up by the hundreds in its ornate Fifth Avenue headquarters, holding satchels in which to stuff their cash. Bank officials standing in the middle of the room and yelling about the bank’s alleged solvency did nothing to dissuade them. The failure of the trust led every bank in the country to hoard its cash, unwilling to lend it even to other banks for fear that the borrower could be the next Knickerbocker.

The power of J.P. Morgan

It is true that the United States, in that fearful fall of 1907, didn’t have a central bank. That doesn’t mean it didn’t have a central banker. John Pierpont Morgan was, at the time, the unquestioned king of Wall Street, the man the other bankers turned to to decide what ought to be done when trouble arose. He was not the wealthiest of the turn-of-the-century business titans, but the bank that bore his name was among the nation’s largest and most important, and his power extended farther than the (vast) number of dollars under his command. His imprint on the financial system has long survived him. Two of the most important financial firms in America today, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, trace their lineage to John Pierpont Morgan.

When the 1907 crisis rolled around, Morgan held court at his bank’s offices at 23 Wall St. while a series of bankers came to make their requests for help.

Morgan asked the Treasury secretary to come to New York — note who summoned whom — and ordered a capable young banker named Benjamin Strong to analyze the books of the next big financial institution under attack, the Trust Company of America, to determine whether it was truly broke or merely had a short-term problem of cash flow — the old question of insolvent versus illiquid. Merely illiquid was Morgan’s conclusion. The bankers bailed it out.

It wouldn’t last — with depositors unsure which banks, trusts and brokerages were truly solvent, withdrawals continued apace all over New York and around the country. At 9 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2, 1907, Morgan gathered 40 or 50 bankers in his library.

The bankers awaited, as Thomas W. Lamont, a Morgan associate, put it, “the momentous decisions of the modern Medici.” In the end, Morgan engineered an arrangement in which the trusts would guarantee the deposits of their weaker members — something they finally agreed to at 4:45 a.m. Medici comparisons aside, it is remarkable how similar Morgan’s role was to that of Timothy Geithner, the New York Fed president, a century later during the 2008 crisis. Both knocked heads to encourage the stronger banks and brokerages to buy up the weaker ones, bailing out some and allowing others to fail, working through the night so action could be taken before financial markets opened.

With a big difference, of course: Geithner was working for an institution that was created by Congress and acted on the authority of the government. His major decisions were approved by the Fed’s board of governors, its members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. His capacity to address the 2007–08 crisis was backed by an ability to create dollars from thin air.

Morgan, by contrast, was simply a powerful man with a reasonably public-spirited approach and an impressive ability to persuade other bankers to do as he wished. The economic future of one of the world’s emerging powers was determined simply by his wealth and temperament.

Time for a change

Enough was enough. The Panic of 1907 sparked one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, as well as similar crises across much of the world. Members of Congress finally saw that having a central bank wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “It is evident,” said Sen. Aldrich, he of the silk top hat and the trip to Jekyll Island, “that while our country has natural advantages greater than those of any other, its normal growth and development have been greatly retarded by this periodical destruction of credit and confidence.”

Legislation Congress enacted immediately after the panic, the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, dealt with some of the financial system’s most pressing needs, but it put off the day of reckoning with the bigger question of what sort of central bank might make sense in a country with a long history of rejecting central banks. It instead created the National Monetary Commission, a group of members of Congress who traveled to the great capitals of Europe to see how their banking systems worked. But the commission was tied in knots.

Agricultural interests were fearful that any new central bank would simply be a tool of Wall Street. They insisted that something be done to make agricultural credit available more consistently, without seasonal swings. The big banks, meanwhile, wanted a lender of last resort to stop crises — but they wanted to be in charge of it themselves, rather than allow politicians to be in charge.

The task for the First Name Club gathered in Jekyll Island in that fall of 1910 was to come up with some sort of approach to balance these concerns while still importing the best features of the European central banks. Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich, one of the most important shapers of economic policy in early 20th century America. Image by © CORBIS

Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich, one of the most important shapers of economic policy in early 20th century America. Image by © CORBIS

The solution they dreamed up was to create, instead of a single central bank, a network of them around the country. Those multiple central banks would accept any “real bills” — essentially promises businesses had received from their customers for payment — as collateral in exchange for cash. A bank facing a shortage of dollars during harvest season could go to its regional central bank and offer a loan to a farmer as collateral in exchange for cash. A national board of directors would set the interest rate on those loans, thus exercising some control over how loose or tight credit would be in the nation as a whole.

The men at Jekyll drafted legislation to create this National Reserve Association, which Aldrich, the most influential senator of his day on financial matters, introduced in Congress three months later.

A rocky reception

It landed with a thud. Even though the First Name Club managed to keep its involvement secret for years to come, the idea of a set of powerful new institutions controlled by the banks was a non-starter in this nation with a long distrust of centralized financial authority.

Aldrich’s initial proposal failed, but he had set the terms of the debate. There would be some form of centralized power, but also branches around the country. And what soon became clear was that the basic plan he’d laid out — power simultaneously centralized and distributed across the land and shared among bankers, elected officials, and business and agricultural interests — was the only viable political solution.

Carter Glass, a Virginia newspaper publisher and future Treasury secretary, took the lead on crafting a bill in the House, one that emphasized the power and primacy of the branches away from Washington and New York. He wanted up to 20 reserve banks around the country, each making decisions autonomously, with no centralized board. The country was just too big, with too many diverse economic conditions, to warrant putting a group of appointees in Washington in charge of the whole thing, Glass argued.

President Woodrow Wilson, by contrast, wanted clearer political control and more centralization — he figured the institution would have democratic legitimacy only if political appointees in Washington were put in charge. The Senate, meanwhile, dabbled with approaches that would put the Federal Reserve even more directly under the thumb of political authorities, with the regional banks run by political appointees as well.

But for all the apparent disagreement in 1913, there were some basic things that most lawmakers seemed to agree on: There needed to be a central bank to backstop the banking system. It would consist of decentralized regional banks. And its governance would be shared — among politicians, bankers, and agricultural and commercial interests. The task was to hammer out the details.

Who would govern the reserve banks? A board of directors comprising local bankers, businesspeople chosen by those bankers, and a third group chosen to represent the public. The Board of Governors in Washington would include both the Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve governors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

How many reserve banks would there be, and where? Eight to 12, the compromise legislation said, not the 20 that Glass had envisioned. An elaborate committee process was designed to determine where those should be located. Some sites were obvious — New York, Chicago. But in the end, many of the decisions came down to politics. Glass was from Virginia, and not so mysteriously, its capital of Richmond — neither one of the country’s largest cities nor one of its biggest banking centers — was chosen.

The vote over the Federal Reserve Act in a Senate committee came down to a single tie-breaking vote, that of James A. Reed, a senator from Missouri. Also not so mysteriously, Missouri became the only state with two Federal Reserve banks, in St. Louis and Kansas City. The locations of Federal Reserve districts have been frozen in place ever since, rather than evolving with the U.S. population — by 2000, the San Francisco district contained 20 percent of the U.S. population, compared with 3 percent for the Minneapolis district.

And in a concession to those leery of creating a central bank, the Federal Reserve System, like the First and Second Banks of the United States, was set to dissolve at a fixed date in the future: 1928. One can easily imagine what might have happened had its charter come up for renewal just a couple of years later, after the Depression had set in.

Creation of a central bank

The debate over the Federal Reserve Act was ugly. In September 1913, Rep. George Ross Smith of Minnesota carried onto the floor of the House a 7-by-4-foot wooden tombstone — a prop meant to “mourn” the deaths of industry, labor, agriculture and commerce that would result from having political appointees in charge of the new national bank.

“The great political power which President Jackson saw in the First and Second National banks of his day was the power of mere pygmies when compared to the gigantic power imposed upon [this] Federal Reserve board and which by the proposed bill is made the prize of each national election,” he argued.

It wasn’t just the fiery populists who opposed the bank. Aldrich, the favored senator of the Wall Street elite, complained that the Wilson administration’s insistence on political control of the institution made the bill “radical and revolutionary and at variance with all the accepted canons of economic law.” He wanted the banks to have more control, not a bunch of politicians.

For all the noise, the juggling of interests was effective enough — and the memory of 1907 powerful enough — for Congress to pass the bill in December 1913. Wilson signed it two days before Christmas, giving the United States, at long last, its central bank. “If, as most experts agree, the new measure will prevent future ‘money panics’ in this country, the new law will prove to be the best Christmas gift in a century,” wrote the Baltimore Sun.

The government, of course, hadn’t solved the problem of panics. It had just gained a better tool with which to deal with them.

And opposition to a central bank, rooted as deeply as it was in the American psyche, didn’t go away. Instead, it evolved. Whenever the economic tide turned — during the Great Depression, during the deep recession of the early 1980s, during the downturn that followed the Panic of 2008 — the frustration of the people was channeled toward the institution they’d granted an uncomfortable degree of power to try to prevent such things.

But after more than a century of trying, the United States had its central bank. Before long, New York would supplant London as the center of the global financial system, and the dollar would replace the pound as the leading currency in the world. And as the years passed, the series of compromises that the First Name Club dreamed up a century earlier, and the unwieldy and complex organization it created, would turn out to have some surprising advantages — even in a country that had previously been better at creating central banks than keeping them.

Adapted from "The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire," published in 2013 by The Penguin Press.


Covert action in Colombia

The insane and unconstitutional "war on drugs" certainly seems to be a part of the "military industrial complex".

The "war on drugs" always seems like a good excuse for our government masters to invade, murder and kill people in 3rd world countries as we see in this article.

Source

Covert action in Colombia

U.S. intelligence, GPS bomb kits help Latin American nation cripple rebel forces

By Dana Priest

Published on December 21, 2013

The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.

The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000.

The previously undisclosed CIA program was authorized by President George W. Bush in the early 2000s and has continued under President Obama, according to U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic officials. Most of those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program is classified and ongoing.

The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them.

That weapon is a $30,000 GPS guidance kit that transforms a less-than-accurate 500-pound gravity bomb into a highly accurate smart bomb. Smart bombs, also called precision-guided munitions or PGMs, are capable of killing an individual in triple-canopy jungle if his exact location can be determined and geo-coordinates are programmed into the bomb’s small computer brain.

In March 2008, according to nine U.S. and Colombian officials, the Colombian Air Force, with tacit U.S. approval, launched U.S.-made smart bombs across the border into Ecuador to kill a senior FARC leader, Raul Reyes. The indirect U.S. role in that attack has not been previously disclosed.

The covert action program in Colombia is one of a handful of enhanced intelligence initiatives that has escaped public notice since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most of these other programs, small but growing, are located in countries where violent drug cartels have caused instability.

Sources: U.S. State Department, Pais Libre, Colombian Defense Ministry and the Air Force. Research and data compiled by Elyssa Pachico. Graphic by Cristina Rivero. Map by Gene Thorp.

The roster is headed by Mexico, where U.S. intelligence assistance is larger than anywhere outside Afghanistan, as The Washington Post reported in April. It also includes Central America and West Africa, where trafficking routes have moved in response to U.S. pressure against cartels elsewhere.

Asked to comment on U.S. intelligence assistance, President Juan Manuel Santos told The Post during a recent trip to Washington that he did not wish to speak about it in detail, given the sensitivities involved. “It’s been of help,” he said. “Part of the expertise and the efficiency of our operations and our special operations have been the product of better training and knowledge we have acquired from many countries, among them the United States.”

A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment.

Colombia and the FARC have been in peace negotiations in Havana for a year. They have agreed so far on frameworks for land reform, rural development and for allowing insurgents to participate in the political process once the war ends. The two sides are currently discussing a new approach to fighting drug trafficking.

Today, a comparison between Colombia, with its vibrant economy and swanky Bogota social scene, and Afghanistan might seem absurd. But a little more than a decade ago, Colombia had the highest murder rate in the world. Random bombings and strong-arm military tactics pervaded daily life. Some 3,000 people were kidnapped in one year. Professors, human rights activists and journalists suspected of being FARC sympathizers routinely turned up dead.

The combustible mix of the FARC, cartels, paramilitaries and corrupt security forces created a cauldron of violence unprecedented in modern-day Latin America. Nearly a quarter-million people have died during the long war, and many thousands have disappeared.

The FARC was founded in 1964 as a Marxist peasant movement seeking land and justice for the poor. By 1998, Colombia’s president at the time, Andres Pastrana, gave the FARC a Switzerland-sized demilitarized zone to encourage peace negotiations, but its violent attacks only grew, as did its links with the narcotics trade.

By 2000, the emboldened insurgency of 18,000 took aim at Colombia’s political leaders. It assassinated local elected officials. It kidnapped a presidential candidate and attempted to kill a presidential front-runner, hard-liner Alvaro Uribe, whose father the FARC had killed in 1983.

Fearing Colombia would become a failed state with an even greater role in drug trafficking into the United States, the Bush administration and Congress ramped up assistance to the Colombian military through Plan Colombia.

By 2003, U.S. involvement in Colombia encompassed 40 U.S. agencies and 4,500 people, including contractors, all working out of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, then the largest U.S. embassy in the world. It stayed that way until mid-2004, when it was surpassed by Afghanistan.

“There is no country, including Afghanistan, where we had more going on,” said William Wood, who was U.S. ambassador to Colombia from 2003 to 2007 before holding the same post in war-torn Afghanistan for two years after that.

When Bush became president, two presidential findings were already on the books authorizing covert action worldwide. One allowed CIA operations against international terrorist organizations. The other, signed in the mid-1980s by President Ronald Reagan, authorized action against international narcotics traffickers.

A presidential finding is required for the CIA to do things other than collect and analyze overseas intelligence. Giving spy equipment to a partner, supporting foreign political parties, planting propaganda, and participating in lethal training or operations all require a finding and a notification to congressional intelligence committees.

The counternarcotics finding had permitted the CIA and a technical unit of the clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to provide support to the years-long hunt for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, killed by Colombian forces 20 years ago this month. It also made possible CIA-supported operations against traffickers and terrorists in Bolivia and Peru years ago.

Under the Colombian program, the CIA is not allowed to participate directly in operations. The same restrictions apply to military involvement in Plan Colombia. Such activity has been constrained by members of Congress who had lived through the scandal of America’s secret role in Central America’s wars in the 1980s. Congress refused to allow U.S. military involvement in Colombia to escalate as it had in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama.

In February 2003, the FARC took three U.S. contractors hostage after their single-engine Cessna, above, crashed in the jungle near La Esperanza. A covert CIA program was launched to find them. (El Tiempo via AP)

The FARC miscalculates

The new covert push against the FARC unofficially began on Feb. 13, 2003. That day a single-engine Cessna 208 crashed in rebel-held jungle. Nearby guerrillas executed the Colombian officer on board and one of four American contractors who were working on coca eradication. The three others were taken hostage.

The United States had already declared the FARC a terrorist organization for its indiscriminate killings and drug trafficking. Although the CIA had its hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush “leaned on [CIA director George] Tenet” to help find the three hostages, according to one former senior intelligence official involved in the discussions.

The FARC’s terrorist designation made it easier to fund a black budget. “We got money from a lot of different pots,” said one senior diplomat.

One of the CIA officers Tenet dispatched to Bogota was an operator in his forties whose name The Washington Post is withholding because he remains undercover. He created the U.S. Embassy Intelligence Fusion Cell, dubbed “the Bunker.”

It was a cramped, 30-by-30-foot room with a low ceiling and three rows of computers. Eight people sat at each row of consoles. Some scoured satellite maps of the jungle; others searched for underground FARC hiding places. Some monitored imagery or the movement of vehicles tagged with tracking devices. Voice intercepts from radio and cellphone communications were decrypted and translated by the National Security Agency.

Bunker analysts fused tips from informants and technically obtained information. Analysts sought to link individuals to the insurgency’s flow of drugs, weapons and money. For the most part, they left the violent paramilitary groups alone.

The Bunker’s technical experts and contractors built the Colombians their own nationwide intelligence computer system. They also later helped create regional fusion centers to push tactical intelligence to local commanders. The agency also paid for encrypted communications gear.

“We were very interested in getting the FARC, and it wasn’t so much a question of capability, as it was intelligence,” said Wood, “specifically the ability to locate them in the time frame of an operation.”

Outside the Bunker, CIA case officers and contractors taught the art of recruiting informants to Colombian units that had been vetted and polygraphed. They gave money to people with information about the hostages.

Meanwhile, the other secret U.S. agency that had been at the forefront of locating and killing al-Qaeda arrived on the scene. Elite commandos from JSOC began periodic annual training sessions and small-unit reconnaissance missions to try to find the hostages.

Despite all the effort, the hostages’ location proved elusive. Looking for something else to do with the new intelligence equipment and personnel, the Bunker manager and his military deputy from the U.S. Special Operations Command gave their people a second mission: Target the FARC leadership. This was exactly what the CIA and JSOC had been doing against al-Qaeda on the other side of the world. The methodology was familiar.

“There was cross-pollination both ways,” said one senior official with access to the Bunker at the time. “We didn’t need to invent a new wheel.”

At the urging of President George W. Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, left, the CIA program to find the U.S. hostages began targeting FARC leaders with U.S.-provided intelligence and smart bombs. (Charles Dharapak/AP) A request from Colombia’s president

Locating FARC leaders proved easier than capturing or killing them. Some 60 times, Colombian forces had obtained or been given reliable information but failed to capture or kill anyone senior, according to two U.S. officials and a retired Colombian senior officer. The story was always the same. U.S.-provided Black Hawk helicopters would ferry Colombian troops into the jungle about six kilometers away from a camp. The men would creep through the dense foliage, but the camps were always empty by the time they arrived. Later they learned that the FARC had an early-warning system: rings of security miles from the camps.

By 2006, the dismal record attracted the attention of the U.S. Air Force’s newly arrived mission chief. The colonel was perplexed. Why had the third-largest recipient of U.S. military assistance [behind Egypt and Israel] made so little progress?

“I’m thinking, ‘What are we killing the FARC with?’ ” the colonel, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview.

The colonel, a cargo plane expert, said he “started Googling bombs and fighters” looking for ideas. Eventually he landed on the Enhanced Paveway II, a relatively inexpensive guidance kit that could be strapped on a 500-pound, Mark-82 gravity bomb.

The colonel said he told then-defense minister Santos about his idea and wrote a one-page paper on it for him to deliver to Uribe. Santos took the idea to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In June 2006, Uribe visited Bush at the White House. He mentioned the recent killing of al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. An F-16 had sent two 500-pound smart bombs into his hideout and killed him. He pressed for the same capability.

“Clearly this was very important” to Uribe, said retired Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who had taken over as CIA director just months earlier.

First, there was the matter of fitting the smart bombs onto a Colombian aircraft. Colombia did not have F-16s. Raytheon, the kit manufacturer, sent engineers to figure out how to mount the equipment on a plane. First they tried mounting it on a Brazilian-made Embraer A-29 Super Tucano, a turboprop aircraft designed for low-flying counterinsurgency missions. But affixing the cable that ran from the bomb’s computer brain to the cockpit meant drilling too close to the fuel cell. Instead, they jerry-rigged it to an older Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, a light attack aircraft first developed by the U.S. Special Operations air force for Vietnam and later used in the Salvadoran civil war.

Then the engineers and Colombian pilots tested the first of three PGMs in a remote airfield near the Venezuelan border. The target was a 2-by-4 stuck in the ground. The plane launched the bomb from 20,000 feet. “It landed about a foot from it,” the colonel said. The results were so good, he thought, “why waste two more kits?” The smart bombs were ready for use.

But White House lawyers, along with their colleagues from the CIA and the departments of Justice, Defense and State, had their own questions to work through. It was one thing to use a PGM to defeat an enemy on the battlefield — the U.S. Air Force had been doing that for years. It was another to use it to target an individual FARC leader. Would that constitute an assassination, which is prohibited by U.S. law? And, “could we be accused of engaging in an assassination, even if it is not ourselves doing it?” said one lawyer involved.

The White House’s Office of Legal Counsel and others finally decided that the same legal analysis they had applied to al-Qaeda could be applied to the FARC. Killing a FARC leader would not be an assassination because the organization posed an ongoing threat to Colombia. Also, none of the FARC commanders could be expected to surrender.

And, as a drug-trafficking organization, the FARC’s status as a threat to U.S. national security had been settled years earlier with Reagan’s counternarcotics finding. At the time, the crack cocaine epidemic was at its height, and the government decided that organizations that brought drugs to America’s streets were a threat to national security.

There was another concern. Some senior officials worried that Colombian forces might use the PGMs to kill their perceived political enemies. “The concerns were huge given their human rights problems,” said a former senior military officer.

To assure themselves that the Colombians would not misuse the bombs, U.S. officials came up with a novel solution. The CIA would maintain control over the encryption key inserted into the bomb, which unscrambled communications with GPS satellites so they can be read by the bomb’s computers. The bomb could not hit its target without the key. The Colombians would have to ask for approval for some targets, and if they misused the bombs, the CIA could deny GPS reception for future use.

“We wanted a sign-off,” said one senior official involved in the deliberations.

To cut through the initial red tape, the first 20 smart bomb kits — without the encryption keys — came through the CIA. The bill was less than $1 million. After that, Colombia was allowed to purchase them through the Foreign Military Sales program. Secretly assisting Colombia against rebels

Raytheon’s Enhanced Paveway II is a laser-guided bomb upgraded with a GPS-guided capability, which works better against targets in the thick jungle. An encryption key inserted into the guidance system allows the bomb’s computer to receive military-grade GPS data used to guide a bomb to its target. Anatomy of Lethal Air Operations in Colombia

First strike: In a typical mission, several Cessna A-37 Dragonflys, a light attack aircraft first developed by the U.S. Special Operations for Vietnam, fly at 20,000 feet carrying smart bombs. They can be launched once the planes get within three miles of the target. The bombs communicate with GPS satellites to know where they are at all times and to hit the target.

Bombardment: Several Brazilian-made Embraer A-29 Super Tucanos, a turboprop aircraft flown at a much lower altitude, follow the A-37s. They drop conventional gravity bombs in a pattern near the smart bombs to flatten the jungle and kill other insurgents in the FARC camp.

Gunship strike: Low-flying Vietnam era AC-47 gunships, nicknamed Puff the Magic Dragon, strafe the area with machine guns, shooting the survivors, according to one of several officials who described the scenario.

Ground units Finally, if the camp is far into the jungle, Colombian army troops are usually ferried in by U.S.-provided Black Hawk troop-carrying helicopters. Troops would collect the remains of the killed FARC leader if possible, round up survivors and gather electronic equipment like cellphones and computers that could yield valuable information about FARC operations.

A first strike

Tomas Medina Caracas, also known as Negro Acacio, the FARC’s chief drug trafficker and commander of its 16th Front, was the first man the U.S. Embassy Intelligence Fusion Cell queued up for a PGM strike.

At about 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2007, pilots wearing night vision goggles unleashed several Enhanced Paveway II smart bombs into his camp in eastern Colombia as officials in both capitals waited. Troops recovered only a leg. It appeared by its dark complexion to belong to Acacio, one of the few black FARC leaders. DNA tests confirmed his death.

“There was a great deal of excitement,” recalled William Scoggins, counternarcotics program manager at the U.S. military’s Southern Command. “We didn’t know the impact it would have, but we thought this was a game changer.”

Six weeks later, smart bombs killed Gustavo Rueda Díaz, alias Martin Caballero, leader of the 37th Front, while he was talking on his cellphone. Acacio’s and Caballero’s deaths caused the 16th and 37th fronts to collapse. They also triggered mass desertions, according to a secret State Department cable dated March 6, 2008, and released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in 2010. This was just the beginning of the FARC’s disintegration.

To hide the use of the PGMs from public discovery, and to ensure maximum damage to a FARC’s leaders’ camp, the air force and U.S. advisers developed new strike tactics. In a typical mission, several A-37 Dragonflys flying at 20,000 feet carried smart bombs. As soon as the planes came within a three-mile “basket” of the target, a bomb’s GPS software would automatically turn on.

The Dragonflys were followed by several A-29 Super Tucanos, flying at a much lower altitude. They would drop a series of dumb bombs in a pattern nearby. Their blast pressure would kill anyone close in and also flatten the dense jungle and obscure the use of the smart bombs.

Then, low-flying, Vietnam-era AC-47 gunships, nicknamed Puff the Magic Dragon, would strafe the area with mounted machine guns, “shooting the wounded trying to go for cover,” according to one of several military officials who described the same scenario.

Only then would Colombian ground forces arrive to round up prisoners, collecting the dead, as well as cellphones, computers and hard drives. The CIA also spent three years training Colombian close air support teams on using lasers to clandestinely guide pilots and laser-guided smart bombs to their targets.

Most every operation relied heavily on NSA signal intercepts, which fed intelligence to troops on the ground or pilots before and during an operation. “Intercepts . . . were a game changer,” said Scoggins, of U.S. Southern Command.

The round-the-clock nature of the NSA’s work was captured in a secret State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. In the spring of 2009, the target was drug trafficker Daniel Rendon Herrera, known as Don Mario, then Colombia’s most wanted man and responsible for 3,000 assassinations over an 18-month period.

“For seven days, using signal and human intelligence,” NSA assets “worked day and night” to reposition 250 U.S.-trained and equipped airborne commandos near Herrera as he tried to flee, according to an April 2009 cable and a senior government official who confirmed the NSA’s role in the mission.

The CIA also trained Colombian interrogators to more effectively question thousands of FARC deserters, without the use of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques approved for use on al-Qaeda and later repudiated by Congress as abusive. The agency also created databases to keep track of the debriefings so they could be searched and cross-referenced to build a more complete picture of the organization.

The Colombian government paid deserters and allowed them to reintegrate into civil society. Some, in turn, offered valuable information about the FARC’s chain of command, standard travel routes, camps, supply lines, drug and money sources. They helped make sense of the NSA’s voice intercepts, which often used code words. Deserters also sometimes were used to infiltrate FARC camps to plant listening devices or beacons that emitted a GPS coordinate for smart bombs.

“We learned from the CIA,” a top Colombian national security official said of the debriefing program. “Before, we didn’t pay much attention to details.”

FARC commander Raul Reyes in 2002 in Los Pozos, Colombia. In 2008, Colombia, with tacit U.S. approval, launched U.S.-made smart bombs into Ecuador, killing Reyes, considered to be the group's No. 2 leader. (Scott Dalton/AP) Ecuador and the not-forgotten hostages

In February 2008, the U.S.-Colombian team got its first sighting of the three U.S. hostages. Having waited five years, the reaction was swift at U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, which began sending JSOC commandos down, said a senior U.S. official who was in Colombia when they arrived.

The JSOC team was headed by a Navy SEAL Team Six commander. Small units set up three operational areas near the hostages and conducted long-range reconnaissance, the senior official said. The NSA increased its monitoring. All eyes were on the remote jungle location. But as initial preparations were underway, operations were heating up elsewhere.

Just across the Putumayo River, one mile inside Ecuador, U.S. intelligence and a Colombian informant confirmed the hideout of Luis Edgar Devia Silva, also known as Raul Reyes and considered to be the No. 2 in the seven-member FARC secretariat.

It was an awkward discovery for Colombia and the United States. To conduct an airstrike meant a Colombian pilot flying a Colombian plane would hit the camp using a U.S.-made bomb with a CIA-controlled brain.

The Air Force colonel had a succinct message for the Colombian air operations commander in charge of the mission. “I said, ‘Look man, we all know where this guy is. Just don’t f— it up.’ ”

U.S. national security lawyers viewed the operation as an act of self-defense. In the wake of 9/11, they had come up with a new interpretation of the permissible use of force against non-state actors like al-Qaeda and the FARC. It went like this: If a terrorist group operated from a country that was unable or unwilling to stop it, then the country under attack — in this case, Colombia — had the right to defend itself with force, even if that meant crossing into another sovereign country.

This was the legal justification for CIA drone strikes and other lethal operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and, much later, for the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

So minutes after midnight on March 1, three A-37 Dragonflys took off from Colombia, followed by five Super Tucanos. The smart bombs’ guidance system turned on once the planes reached within three miles of Reyes’s location.

As instructed, the Colombian pilots stayed in Colombian airspace. The bombs landed as programmed, obliterating the camp and killing Reyes, who, according to Colombian news reports, was asleep in pajamas.

Above: The 2008 bombing of Raul Reyes’s camp in Ecuador sparked a diplomatic dispute. Ecuador moved troops to border towns such as Puerto Nuevo. (Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images; Dolores Ochoa/AP)

Colombian forces rushed across the border into Ecuador to retrieve Reyes’s remains and also scooped up a large treasure trove of computer equipment that would turn out to be the most valuable FARC intelligence find ever.

The bombing set off a serious diplomatic crisis. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez called Colombia “a terrorist state” and moved troops to the border, as did Ecuador. Nicaragua broke off relations. Uribe, under pressure, apologized to Ecuador.

The apology, while soothing relationships in Latin America, angered the small circle of U.S. officials who knew the back story, one of them said. “I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe they’re saying this,’ ” he said. “For them to be giving up an important legal position was crazy.”

But the flap did not damage the deep ties between U.S. and Colombian forces or deter the mission to rescue the hostages. In fact, the number of JSOC troops continued to mount to more than 1,000, said the senior official then in Colombia. Officials thought for sure they would be spotted, but they never were. A U.S.-Colombian military exercise provided sufficient cover when the International Committee of the Red Cross showed up at isolated bases and stumbled upon some burly Americans, said two U.S. officials.

After six weeks of waiting to find the hostages, most of the JSOC troops left the country for pressing missions elsewhere. One unit remained. On July 2, 2008, it had the role of unused understudy in the dramatic and well-documented Operation Checkmate, in which Colombian forces pretending to be members of a humanitarian group tricked the FARC into handing over the three U.S. hostages and 12 others without a shot fired. The JSOC team, and a fleet of U.S. aircraft, was positioned as Plan B, in case the Colombian operation went awry.

A Colombian pilot boards a Super Tucano in Bogota in 2006. Recently, Colombia has fitted smart bombs onto some of its Super Tucanos, which have been largely used to drop dumb bombs during airstrikes. (Jose Miguel Gomez/Reuters) Santos continues the smart-bomb war

As a sign of trust, in early 2010 the U.S. government gave Colombia control over the GPS encryption key. There had been no reports of misuse, misfires or collateral damage from the smart bombs. The transfer was preceded by quick negotiations over the rules of engagement for smart-bomb use. Among the rules was that they would be launched only against isolated jungle camps.

President Santos, who was defense minister under Uribe, has greatly increased the pace of operations against the FARC. Almost three times as many FARC leaders — 47 vs. 16 — have been killed under Santos as under Uribe. Interviews and analysis of government Web sites and press reporting show that at least 23 of the attacks under Santos were air operations. Smart bombs were used only against the most important FARC leaders, Colombian officials said in response to questions. Gravity bombs were used in the other cases.

President Juan Manuel Santos, who was Colombia's defense minister when the CIA covert program ramped up, has increased efforts to weaken the FARC. (Jose Cendon/Bloomberg)

Colombia continues to upgrade its air capabilities. In 2013, the air force upgraded its fleet of Israeli-made Kfir fighter jets, fitting them with Israeli-made Griffin laser-guided bombs. It has also fitted smart bombs onto some of its Super Tucanos.

Having decimated the top FARC leadership and many of the front commanders, the military, with continued help from the CIA and other intelligence agencies, appears to be working its way through the mid-level ranks, including mobile company commanders, the most battle-hardened and experienced remaining cadre. One-third of them have been killed or captured, according to Colombian officials.

The Santos administration has also targeted the financial and weapons networks supporting the FARC. Some critics think the government has been too focused on killing leaders and not enough on using the army and police to occupy and control rebel territory.

Killing an individual has never been a measure of success in war, say counterinsurgency experts. It’s the chaos and dysfunction that killing the leadership causes to the organization that matters. The air operations against the FARC leadership “has turned the organization upside down,” said a senior Pentagon official who has studied the classified U.S. history of Colombia’s war.

Some have fled to Venezuela. One member of the secretariat hides out intermittently in Ecuador, according to senior Colombia officials, breaking the important psychological bond with ground troops and handicapping recruitment.

For fear of being located and targeted, units no longer sleep in the same place two days in a row, so camps must be sparser. “They know the government has so much information on them now, and real-time intelligence,” said German Espejo, security and defense counselor at the Colombian Embassy. Worried about spies in their midst, executions are common.

The FARC still mounts attacks — a car bombing of a rural police station Dec. 7 killed six police officers and two civilians — but it no longer travels in large groups, and it limits most units to less than 20. No longer able to mount large-scale assaults, the group has reverted to hit-and-run tactics using snipers and explosives.

The weariness of 50 years of transient jungle life has taken its toll on the FARC negotiating team, too. Those who have lived in exile seem more willing to continue the fight than those who have been doing the fighting, said Colombian officials. The negotiations, Santos said in the interview, are the result of the successful military campaign, “the cherry on the cake.”

On Dec. 15, the FARC said it would begin a 30-day unilateral cease-fire as a sign of good will during the holiday season. The Santos administration rebuffed the gesture and vowed to continue its military campaign. Later that day, security forces killed a FARC guerrilla implicated in a bomb attack on a former minister. Three days later, the army killed another five.

Elyssa Pachico and Julie Tate contributed to this report.


Game and Fish disputes claim of excessive travel costs

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Game and Fish disputes claim of excessive travel costs

Posted: Thursday, December 19, 2013 5:30 pm | Updated: 9:45 am, Fri Dec 20, 2013.

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

The state Game and Fish Department is spending about a million dollars a year in travel that may not be necessary or appropriate, state auditors reported Thursday.

In a report to the Legislature, Auditor General Debbie Davenport questioned whether the extent of travel, particularly to out-of-state destinations, is “clearly and adequately justified.” She particularly noted that agency Director Larry Voyles is traveling, at state expense, about one third of the year.

Those expenses totaled at least $67,000, and that's not counting another $21,800 which was paid for by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies because Voyles serves as chairman.

There also was $3,200 in conference and meeting registration fees for out-of-town events.

In a formal response, Voyles and John Harris, who chairs the Game and Fish Commission, defended the travel expenses as both reasonable and necessary.

They said the expenses total only about 1 percent of the agency's budget, and two thirds of that is for in-state travel. And they said the director, his staff and commissioners are required to travel “to all corners of Arizona to manage more than 800 species of wildlife, to provide for safe and compatible recreation, and to enforce the laws that govern wildlife, watercraft, and off-highway vehicles.”

Beyond that, they said the travel within Arizona “is critical to building relationships and promoting public engagement.”

As to that out-of-state travel, the pair defended the expenses saying there are regional and national policy forums, and they said the director is the agency's “most effective and appropriate representative,” especially when dealing with federal agencies.

Davenport, however, noted that state Game and Fish sends more representatives to conferences than other states. She said in the two most recent budget years, Arizona registered more than twice the number of representatives for three of the four conferences of a western area group, including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.

But Voyles and Harris, in their response, suggested there was as reason for this.

“There are few champions for the state conservation machine (the collective conservation system delivered by the 50 state fish and wildlife agencies) active at the nation's capital,” they wrote. “The state of Arizona is one of those champions.”

And they said states do and spend far more that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.

“In the face of federal encroachment on conservation of state resources, it has become abundantly clear that Arizona's leadership role is critical to the future of the state conservation machine,” they wrote.

Beyond that, they said the commission has determined that travel to conference is necessary “to assure Arizona subject matter expert engagement on policy issues at the regional, national and international levels.”

They also said that Arizona has played a key role in developing policies about reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf in the region.


Weak U.S. card security made Target a juicy target

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Weak U.S. card security made Target a juicy target

Associated Press Sun Dec 22, 2013 7:45 AM

NEW YORK — The U.S. is the juiciest target for hackers hunting credit card information. And experts say incidents like the recent data theft at Target’s stores will get worse before they get better.

That’s in part because U.S. credit and debit cards rely on an easy-to-copy magnetic strip on the back of the card, which stores account information using the same technology as cassette tapes.

“We are using 20th century cards against 21st century hackers,” says Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation. “The thieves have moved on but the cards have not.”

In most countries outside the U.S., people carry cards that use digital chips to hold account information. The chip generates a unique code every time it’s used. That makes the cards more difficult for criminals to replicate. So difficult that they generally don’t bother.

“The U.S. is the top victim location for card counterfeit attacks like this,” says Jason Oxman, chief executive of the Electronic Transactions Association.

The breach that exposed the credit card and debit card information of as many as 40 million Target customers who swiped their cards between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15 is still under investigation. It’s unclear how the breach occurred and what data, exactly, criminals have. Although security experts say no security system is fail-safe, there are several measures stores, banks and credit card companies can take to protect against these attacks.

Companies haven’t enhanced security so far because it can be expensive. And while global credit and debit card fraud hit a record $11.27 billion last year, those costs accounted for just 5.2 cents of every $100 in transactions, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks global payments.

Another problem: retailers, banks and credit card companies each want someone else to foot most of the bill. Card companies want stores to pay to better protect their internal systems. Stores want cards companies to issue more sophisticated cards. Banks want to preserve the profits they get from older processing systems.

Card payment systems work much the way they have for decades. The magnetic strip on the back of a credit or debit card contains the cardholder’s name, account number, the card’s expiration date and one of two security codes. When the card is swiped at a store, an electronic conversation is begun between two banks. The store’s bank, which pays the store right away for the item the customer bought, needs to make sure the customer’s bank approves the transaction and will pay the store’s bank. On average, the conversation takes 1.4 seconds.

During that time the customer’s information flows through the network and is recorded, sometimes only briefly, on computers within the system controlled by payment processing companies. Retailers can store card numbers and expiration dates, but they are prohibited from storing more sensitive data such as the security codes printed on the backs of cards or other personal identification numbers.

Hackers been known to snag account information as it passes through the network or pilfer it from databases where it’s stored. Target says there is no indication that the three or four-digit security codes on the back of customer credit cards were stolen. That would make it hard to use stolen account information to buy from most internet retail sites. But because the magnetic strips on cards in the U.S. are so easy to generate, thieves can simply reproduce them and issue fraudulent cards that look and feel like the real thing.

“That’s where the real value to the fraudsters is,” says Chris Bucolo, senior manager of security consulting at ControlScan, which helps merchants comply with card processing security standards.

Once thieves capture the card information, they check the type of account, balances and credit limits, and sell replicas on the Internet. A simple card with a low balance and limited customer information can go for $3. A no-limit “black” card with the security number printed on the back of the card can go for $1,000, according to Al Pascual, a senior analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research, a security risk and fraud consulting firm.

To be sure, thieves can nab and sell card data from networks processing cards with digital chips, too, but they wouldn’t be able to create fraudulent cards.

Credit card companies in the U.S. have a plan to replace magnetic strips with digital chips by the fall of 2015. But retailers worry the card companies won’t go far enough. They want cards to have a chip, but they also want each transaction to require a personal identification number, or PIN, instead of a signature.

“Everyone knows that the signature is a useless authentication device,” Duncan says.

Duncan, who represents retailers, says banks want to preserve the higher profits they can get when a signature is needed because there are fewer signature processing networks, and less price competition. The higher profits outweigh the cost of fraud, Duncan says.

“Compared to the tens of millions of transactions that are taking place every day, even the fraud that they have to pay for is small compared to the profit they are making from using less secure cards.”

Even so, there are a few things retailers can do, too, to better protect customer data. The most vulnerable point in the transaction network, security experts say, is usually the merchant.

“Financial institutions are more used to having high levels of protection,” says Pascual. “Retailers are still getting up to speed.”

The simple, square, card swiping machines that consumers are used to seeing at most checkout counters are hard to infiltrate because they are completely separate from the Internet. But as retailers switch to faster, Internet-based payment systems they may expose customer data to hackers.

Retailers need to build robust firewalls around those systems to guard against attack, security experts say. They could also take further steps to protect customer data by using encryption, technology which scrambles the data so it looks like gibberish to anyone who accesses it unlawfully. These technologies can be expensive to install and maintain, however.

Thankfully, individual customers are not on the hook for fraudulent charges that result from security breaches. But these kinds of attacks do raise costs —and, likely, fees for all customers.

“Part of the cost in the system is for fraud protection,” Oxman says. “It costs money, and someone’s going to pay for it eventually.”

Jonathan Fahey can be reached at http://twitter.com/JonathanFahey .


Arizonans' health subsidies take hit

In this article the Arizona Republic seems to think that politics is a game you win when your politicians steal more for you then you pay in taxes.

Of course using that logic the 50 percent of the taxpayers that pay the other people bills will always be be the losers.

And it also shoots down the idea that the government is some form of public servant that does things for us which we can't do on our own.

In reality the government is nothing more then an income redistribution machine where the special interest groups that own the elected officials get the elected officials to steal money from the taxpayers and give it to the special interest groups.

Source

Arizonans' health subsidies take hit

By Ken Alltucker The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Dec 21, 2013 10:13 PM

Residents of Pima, Maricopa and Pinal counties are poised to collect less in health-insurance subsidies than the vast majority of consumers in the 36 states that use the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace.

The subsidies are calculated based on a person’s income and a community’s lowest-cost health policies. In Arizona, those calculations are driven by a single insurer that charges much less than other companies, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.

The difference in the amount Arizonans will get compared with consumers in other states could be significant. A non-smoking, 27-year-old Tucson resident who earns $25,000 a year won’t get any subsidy. But a person of the same age and income in Cheyenne, Wyo., qualifies for $2,154 per year, according to Value Penguin, a consumer-information website.

Single young adults — the group health-reform advocates say is critical to the law’s success — will get the smallest subsidies because their insurance plans cost less on average.

Although Arizonans seemingly benefit from lower premiums, experts fear that the limited subsidies will steer them toward policies that limit coverage and choices.

The most someone can earn and still collect a subsidy is 400 percent of the federal poverty level — $45,960 for an individual or $94,200 for a family of four. But many Arizona consumers who earn less won’t qualify.

That’s because the subsidies vary from county to county and are calculated not just on income but also on the cost of a community’s “benchmark” health-insurance plan, which is the second-least expensive “silver” plan sold.

In Pima, Maricopa and Pinal counties, the benchmark plans are sold by Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Health Net and are among the cheapest across the federal marketplace. The nation’s least expensive overall is Pima County’s benchmark plan, which charges $138 per month for a 27-year-old non-smoker. That means Pima County residents will get the least generous subsidies among all communities on the federal marketplace.

In Maricopa and Pinal counties, the benchmark plans charge $161 and $162 per month respectively for the same-age non-smoker, ranking them No. 70 and 71 — No. 1 being the cheapest — among more than 2,500 counties in the federal marketplace. The analysis does not include plans in states that are operating their own marketplaces.

People in the vast majority of communities on the federal exchange will collect more lucrative subsidies than metro Phoenix residents. Even with lower subsidies, though, Arizona consumers may be eligible for other assistance. A person who earns less than $28,725, for example, will pay lower deductibles and less out of pocket under a provision that limits cost-sharing for those who earn less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level.

Health Net says it can offer so many lower-cost plans because it negotiated favorable rates with a narrow selection of providers to form its network. For example, its lowest-cost plans steer metro Phoenix consumers to two for-profit hospital chains, Abrazo Heath Care and Iasis Healthcare.

Still, Arizona residents said they anticipated either more lucrative subsidies, a broader selection of doctors and hospitals, or both.

Mesa resident Tina Coleman scrutinized both the prices and providers that were offered in the insurance plans sold over Healthcare.gov. Coleman, 44, said that making sure preferred doctors and hospitals were covered as “in-network” providers was particularly important. Her 11-year-old son has asthma and allergies.

But the cheapest HMO plans sold by Health Net didn’t include her neighborhood hospitals. So she chose a Health Net preferred-provider plan with a broader selection of doctors and hospitals.

The price disparity between Health Net and the other plans — combined with the seemingly low subsidy rates — made it seem that there was very little practical choice when selecting a health plan, she said.

“I was hoping I would have a few more options,” Coleman said. “It feels like I’m being kidnapped into Health Net because that is all I can afford.”

The law aims to attract a wide selection of health insurers under the belief that competition will offer consumers more choice and lower-priced plans. There is a broad selection in Maricopa County, with 40 silver plans that sell for an average premium of $226 per month for a 27-year-old non-smoker.

Health Net sells the six least-expensive silver plans in Maricopa County. The benchmark is Health Net’s Community Care HMO plan, which charges a 27-year-old non-smoker $65 less each month than Maricopa County’s average silver plan.

“This is what happens in a market that is based on price competition,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Insurance companies establish rates based on factors such as the relative health of a community, prices charged by hospitals and doctors, and how aggressive medical providers are with recommended tests, surgeries or procedures.

The Affordable Care Act also has strict rules that health insurers must meet. Insurers can no longer deny coverage to the sick and must limit deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs annually to $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family.

One way insurers like Health Net lower expenses is by limiting the network of doctors, hospitals or other providers customers can use. Other insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and Meritus offer limited networks, too.

Health Net representatives said the company can charge less for its marketplace plans because of shrewder negotiations with doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers.

“We went out and asked for discounts,” said Jacque Thames, Health Net’s provider network management director. “Physicians were more than willing to accommodate that to help Arizonans gain insurance.”

In Maricopa County, Health Net’s benchmark plan has a hospital network that includes nine of the county’s 60 acute-care and specialty hospitals. Those “in-network” hospitals are from Abrazo and Iasis, two for-profit chains. Abrazo includes Maryvale, Phoenix Baptist, Paradise Valley, Arrowhead and West Valley hospitals and a specialty hospital, Arizona Heart Hospital. Iasis has three area hospitals, Tempe St. Luke’s and St. Luke’s Medical Center in Phoenix, and the Mountain Vista Medical Center in Mesa.

The Health Net benchmark plan also has one Pinal County hospital, Casa Grande Regional Medical Center, and three Pima County hospitals, Northwest Medical Center, Oro Valley Hospital and Tucson Medical Center.

Other metro Phoenix hospital groups such as Banner Health, Dignity Health, John C. Lincoln, Mayo Clinic and Scottsdale Healthcare are not part of the plan’s network. So a Health Net consumer who bought a benchmark plan would need to pay for non-emergency services at those hospitals.

Health Net spokesman Brad Kieffer said that affordability and quality were key when the health insurer selected its network of hospitals and doctors.

“The affordability of Community Care is part of its popularity,” said Kieffer, who added that Health Net’s strategy was to competitively price silver and bronze plans to entice consumers. “We feel that is where most people will look for their coverage.”

Consumers don’t have to choose the benchmark Health Net plan. More than 100 health-insurance plans are sold in Arizona, covering 60 to 90 percent of expected medical costs, depending on the tier. A bronze plan covers 60 percent of costs; silver, 70 percent; gold, 80 percent; and platinum, 90 percent. “Catastrophic” plans will offer bare-bones coverage.

Because the lower-priced plans typically have a limited network of providers, consumer watchdogs encourage people to scrutinize networks to make sure the plans fit their needs.

Diane Brown, executive director of Arizona Public Interest Research Group, said people should evaluate more than just the monthly premium when selecting a plan.

“People need to look at who the doctors or providers are in a plan’s network,” Brown said. “They need to make a decision scrutinizing all these factors, not just based on their monthly cost.”

But some insurers expect cost-conscious insurance shoppers may gravitate toward lower-priced plans because they won’t enjoy the same level of subsidies that are available in other states.

Meritus, a non-profit health-insurance cooperative, expected its most affordable HMO plan would be the least expensive in the community. The plan charges $175 per month for a 27-year-old non-smoker in Maricopa County. But Health Net has six HMO plans that are less expensive.

Meritus CEO Kathleen Oestreich said the marketplaces were designed to give consumers a robust choice of similar-priced plans. But even with 40 plans available at the silver level, Oestreich expects many consumers will flock to the lower-priced plans.

The difference between the low- and higher-cost plans is so big that “in essence there is no choice at all,” Oestreich said. “This is a lower-income population. They are not going to be able to go with another plan.”

Even though Health Net has priced its plans below its competitors, that does not mean those prices will last beyond 2014.

Health-insurance companies can adjust their prices each year. If they are not collecting enough in premiums to pay for potential health claims, they can raise rates the following year.

Mesa broker Al Leafman questioned whether that is Health Net’s strategy.

“They are clearly much more competitive than just about everyone in the market,” said Leafman, president of Health Insurance Express. “It wouldn’t be the first time a carrier doing a market-share grab with the hopes of readjusting the rates upon renewal.”

Health Net also may have established its prices based on financial protections that are included in the law for health insurers.

Health Net CEO Jay M. Gellert, in a recent conference call with stock analysts discussing the company’s quarterly earnings, said the insurer was prepared to pay more for customers’ medical care than it collected in premiums for marketplace plans.

He said the company could “break even” if a key financial ratio showed that it paid more in medical costs than it collected in health-insurance premiums. He said that the “medical-loss ratio” could reach 120 percent — which is the equivalent of paying $1.20 in medical costs for every $1 collected in insurance premiums. Though Gellert added: “We expect we’ll do better.”

Health-insurance companies normally pay out 80 to 85 cents in medical costs for every $1 collected in premiums. Because the new marketplaces have financial unpredictability, the health-care law has three programs that protect insurers. Those reinsurance, risk-adjustment and risk-corridor programs limit potential losses. Gellert cited those programs during his conference call.

Still, insurers that price plans low may face financial risk if claims are higher than expected during the first year, even with the law’s financial protections, said Matt Eyles, executive vice president of Avalere Health.

“They are clearly being aggressive on pricing,” Eyles said. “That is definitely a risky strategy.”

What the subsidies might be

Estimated subsidy rates* for non-smoking adults, ages 27 and 50, in Maricopa and Pima counties.

Maricopa County

Income; percentage of federal poverty level; monthly subsidy for a 27-year-old; monthly subsidy for a 50-year-old:

$15,282; 133 percent; $123; $237.

$25,583; 225 percent; $10; $124.

$28,725; 250 percent; 0; $82.

$34,470; 300 percent; 0; 0.

Pima County

$15,282; 133 percent; $100; $197.

$25,583; 225 percent; 0; $84.

$28,725; 250 percent; 0; $43.

$34,470; 300 percent; 0; 0.

* Figures are rounded; subsidies are same for any plan purchased.

Source: Value Penguin

Reach the reporter at ken.alltucker@arizonarepublic.com.


City of Phoenix’s credit rating downgraded

Source

City of Phoenix’s credit rating downgraded

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Dec 21, 2013 9:08 AM

Phoenix’s perfect credit rating was downgraded Friday, a blow to city leaders who had pointed to the top rating as evidence of its sound fiscal management compared with other large U.S. cities.

Standard and Poor’s, one of the world’s largest credit-rating agencies, changed Phoenix’s general obligation bonds rating from AAA to AA+, citing concerns about the overall performance of the local economy and its level of debt and financial liabilities.

Similar to a person’s credit score, a city’s bond rating affects its ability to borrow money and the interest rate it pays. Phoenix’s lower rating could mean it will have to pay more in interest to issue bonds in the future.

Phoenix officials said the downgrade is largely the result of a change in S&P’s rating criteria this year, placing a higher emphasis on local economic conditions. In particular, Phoenix’s property values, which plummeted during the housing-market crash, depressed its rating, they said.

“A lot of what this is about is not within our control,” City Manager Ed Zuercher said. “What property values do, we don’t have direct control over that. But the things that we do have direct control over, we feel good about.”

Although S&P noted Phoenix has managed its budget “proactively” in recent years and has high levels of available cash, the agency said the city’s amount of debt and financial liabilities is weak.

Rating analysts compared its total outstanding general-obligation debt, which is usually paid from sales and property taxes, to its revenues over the course of the year, suggesting its debt ratio was unfavorable compared with other cities. According to the report, Phoenix’s payments on its debts made up nearly 10 percent of its total governmental expenses for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

S&P also called attention to the city’s pension liabilities. The city’s retirement system for general employees, the City of Phoenix Employes’ Retirement Plan, is 62.2 percent funded, with an unfunded accrued liability of $1.11 billion. A trust is considered fully funded if it has enough assets in hand to cover 100 percent of existing pension liabilities.

City executives said they learned of the potential downgrade Friday afternoon and attempted to convince S&P to hold off on its decision, citing improvements in the local economy and recent reforms to reduce pension liabilities. Those attempts were unsuccessful.

Phoenix’s bond rating was upgraded to AAA from AA+ in 2007, at the height of the real-estate boom. The city faced the threat of a downgrade during the recession, when it faced a record $277 million budget shortfall.

Former Chief Financial Officer Jeff DeWitt, who recently left Phoenix to take the same post in the city of Washington, D.C, had negotiated with the rating agency to avoid a downgrade several years ago.

Mayor Greg Stanton released a statement Friday, saying, “I’m disappointed the new S&P criteria have affected Phoenix, but we still have the second-highest bond rating in the nation and earned the highest marks for budget flexibility and fiscal management.”

But several City Council members said the downgrade was a wake-up call.

Councilman Sal DiCiccio suggested the downgrade shows Phoenix needs to get serious about pension reform and make changes beyond modest reforms enacted this year. He said the city must realize its growing budget impacts its ability to pay down long-term debt.

“Is the downgrade huge?” DiCiccio asked. “No, it’s not. But it’s a warning bell. You have to actually have a real plan in place that prevents Phoenix from being the next Detroit.”

Zuercher said the city’s pension debt was not a major factor in the downgrade, explaining that city officials expect pension reforms passed by voters and the City Council will save $830 million over the next 25 years. However, Zuercher said the city must continue to focus on efficiencies and live within its budget.

Ratings analysts from S&P could not be reached for comment after the report was released Friday evening. However, the city put out a news release quoting an agency analyst who said the rating “is directly attributable to S&P’s newly released, changed criteria.”

While the downgrade was a major disappointment to city leaders, they said it will not immediately affect its finances because the city has no plans to issue additional bonds. However, the city could end up paying up to a tenth of a percent more in interest on future debts or if it seeks to refinance bonds, officials said.

Vice Mayor Bill Gates said Phoenix might have maintained its AAA rating if S&P used its old methodology, noting that the new rating includes assessed property valuations from roughly two years ago. Gates said he’s concerned residents and outsiders will misinterpret the rating change.

But Gates said the biggest takeaway is that the council needs to do more to attract jobs and development, which will in turn increase property values and its economic outlook.

“Apple going to Mesa was a wake-up call. This now — today — was a wake-up call,” Gates said. “We’ve got to get focused.”


Govt drops objection to publishing secret opinion

Last time I checked, the Constitution was supposed to protect the people from abusive government tyrants.

The government seems to have it backwards and thinks that the Constitution is to protect government bureaucrats from the people!!!!

"The Justice Department [said] that the department won't object if the court decides to publish nonclassified portions of its opinion that don't harm an ongoing law enforcement investigation"

Source

Govt drops objection to publishing secret opinion

Associated Press

By FREDERIC J. FROMMER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has dropped its objection to the publication of a secret court opinion on the law that authorizes the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records.

The Justice Department told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in a filing Friday that the department won't object if the court decides to publish nonclassified portions of its opinion that don't harm an ongoing law enforcement investigation.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School had asked the court to release opinions on the meaning, scope and/or constitutionality of a legal provision under which the records are collected — Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.

The government located such an opinion, dated Feb. 19, and a judge on the FISA Court, F. Dennis Saylor, ordered the department to conduct a declassification review of it, with proposed redactions, to "inform the court's decision whether to publish it." Last month, the Justice Department told the court that the administration determined the opinion should be withheld in full and a public version cannot be provided, without providing any explanation.

In response, Saylor directed the government to provide a "detailed explanation" of that conclusion. The deadline for that government filing was Friday.

In its latest filing, the Justice Department explained the reason for its initial reluctance to have the opinion published: It relates to the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation. Some information in the opinion could tip off the subject or his associates, the Justice Department said.

"However, upon review and as a discretionary matter," the government said, it decided to drop its objection to the court publishing parts of the opinion, as long as they're not classified and don't jeopardize the investigation.

Alex Abdo, a staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project, said in an email: "We welcome the government's decision to agree to release portions of the court's opinion. But we are troubled that the government agreed to release this information only when required to justify itself to a court. At the very least, this demonstrates the importance of judicial scrutiny in the face of government claims of secrecy."

Friday's filing comes a few days after a federal judge ruled that the phone collection program is likely unconstitutional.

Also Friday, President Barack Obama suggested that he may be ready to make changes to the program to ease the public's concern about privacy.

"There are ways we can do it, potentially, that gives people greater assurance that there are checks and balances — that there's sufficient oversight and sufficient transparency," Obama said at a news conference. Programs like the bulk collection of phone records "could be redesigned in ways that give you the same information when you need it without creating these potentials for abuse."


Arizona Marijuana-Legalization Bill Will Be Proposed by House Democrat

Source

Arizona Marijuana-Legalization Bill Will Be Proposed by House Democrat

By Matthew Hendley Wed., Nov. 27 2013 at 12:00 PM

Assistant House Minority Leader Ruben Gallego, a Phoenix Democrat, announced plans to introduce a marijuana-legalization bill during the upcoming legislative session.

Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, said he's working on a bill "that would regulate and tax marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol."

(Before we get ahead of ourselves, yes, Republicans still have a healthy majority in both chambers of the Legislature, and several Republicans still try to fight the state's voter-approved medical marijuana program.)

What Gallego is proposing isn't anything radically different from laws in states like Colorado and Washington, which have legalized marijuana for personal use.

He says the bill will allow people 21 years old and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and no more than five plants.

The legislation also would set up a ban on smoking it in public and establish regulations for places that can sell marijuana. The bill also will include an excise tax on pot sales, which "distributes the tax proceeds to fund public education and treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse, with half of the money going to the state general fund."

Gallego released a statement saying:

"The issue of marijuana regulation is pragmatic. Regulating marijuana takes sales off the street and puts them in a controlled environment. Ultimately, this will help law enforcement, especially in times when resources are limited. About 750,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana-related offenses in 2012, and the majority of those arrests were simply for possession. Law enforcement officers' time and resources would be better spent addressing serious crimes, so that we are all safer. Additionally, we can use some of the money generated from the sales to pay for public education and treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse."

According to a poll on the issue, a majority (56 percent) of Arizonans said they support marijuana legalization.

In addition to Gallego's legislation, a group called Safer Arizona is trying to collect 259,213 signatures by July 2014 to get the issue on ballots for voting to decide. The odds aren't exactly on the pro-legalization side for the petition, either, since Safer Arizona doesn't have major financial backing, which is pretty much a necessity for anyone looking to gather more than a quarter-million valid signatures.


Arizona's Legal Dispensaries Sold More Than 2.5 Tons of Medical Marijuana in First Yea

Source

Arizona's Legal Dispensaries Sold More Than 2.5 Tons of Medical Marijuana in First Year

By Ray Stern Wed., Dec. 18 2013 at 1:11 PM

Arizona's medical-marijuana dispensaries sold more than 2.5 tons of marijuana in the past 12 months, officials say.

From December 6th, 2012 -- opening day for the state's first state-authorized dispensary, Arizona Organix -- to December 9th of this year, 5,279 pounds of marijuana were sold, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

The health department provided the numbers this morning following a New Times records request made last month.

Online records show 77 dispensaries are now open across Arizona, with a few more scheduled for openings in early 2014. Voters approved Arizona's medical-marijuana law, which authorizes the shops, in a 2010 ballot initiative.

A total of 376,231 transactions took place in the given time-frame, the DHS says, resulting in the sale of 84,456.08 ounces -- or about 5,279 pounds of marijuana. (A further breakdown of the weight into buds and other preparations of marijuana, such as the ingredients of medical-marijuana-infused food and drinks, wasn't available.) Considering that most of the 77 shops weren't open until the last few months, it's an impressive number.

The figure also seems to indicate that the state's 40,000-or-so medical-marijuana patients so far aren't buying anywhere their statutory limit of five ounces a month. If the patients were buying the max, (perhaps to sell it elsewhere), that would be 200,000 ounces sold a month. Of course, the program is still getting started -- the 2014 total will be more reflective of the fully built-out dispensary program. Plus, it's possible that elderly sick folks are not buying as much as the 18-30 crowd that make up 25 percent of the total patients.

Whatever the patients' reason for their purchase, the program is obviously taking at least a small bite out of crime.

That's 2.5 tons that wasn't smuggled over the international border or grown by black-market farmers. The tonnage and total transactions also represent crimes that didn't require expensive investigations, arrests, jailings and court dates, giving police, prosecutors and the courts more time to deal with real crime.

Legalizing marijuana outright in Arizona, as some would like to do, would have an even greater positive effect on the criminal justice system.


Marijuana Policy Project Plans Arizona Legalization Measure for 2016

Source

Marijuana Policy Project Plans Arizona Legalization Measure for 2016

By Ray Stern Thu., Sep. 12 2013 at 1:30 PM

The national Marijuana Policy Project, bolstered by federal approval of state pot-freedom laws, plans to put a Colorado-style legalization initiative on Arizona's ballot for 2016. It's part of a master plan to pass similar legalization laws in 10 states by 2017.

"We're feeling very good about what we can accomplish," says the MPP's spokesman, former Scottsdalite Mason Tvert.

The group was behind Arizona's historic medical-marijuana law, which voters passed by a narrow margin in 2010 and now support in even greater numbers, surveys claim.

A poll in May also revealed that most Arizonans support legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, though it's unclear how voters would react to the MPP's latest proposal.

Marjiuana advocates have momentum on their side that doesn't appear likely to fade, at least while Obama's still in office. Last month, the U.S. Justice Department gave its blessing -- with some caveats -- to medical pot laws in Arizona and other states, as wel as voter-approved laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize pot for all adults 21 and older. Colorado's cannabis stores are set to open on January 1st.

This week, a rare hearing about marijuana legalization took place in Congress. Even Republican Senator John McCain has expressed support for the pro-pot movement. In a statement on Friday, McCain basically threw Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and state Attorney General Tom Horne under the psychedelic bus by affirming that "I respect the will of the people."

Horne and Montgomery have been working hard to undermine the voter-sanctioned Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. Montgomery told a reporter this week he'd try to derail the MPP's fresh push for legalization.

"We will not get caught flat-footed and late to the issue again," he said, implying he believes that Arizona's medical-pot law passed only because he and other prohibitionists were caught flat-footed and late to the issue.

Tvert, who lives in Colorado, says he doesn't expect a ton of opposition for the planned 2016 ballot initiative.

"Most people don't think adults should be punished simply for using (marijuana)," Tvert says, calling such opinions by prohibitionists "very antiquated" and driven by "weak arguments."

An example of one of those weak arguments can be seen in an opinion piece by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk published this week in a central Arizona newspaper. Polk ticks off a number of reasons why people shouldn't use marijuana, such as the idea that weed "starts the user on a downward life trajectory..." But she spends no time arguing why pot users should be arrested and jailed, as they are now, or why possession of one seed in Arizona should continue to be a felony.

By the way, Arizonans who don't want to wait until 2016 can still sign a petition going around that would put the legalization question on the ballot for next year. If that's successful, the Marijuana Policy Project could save money for campaigns in less pot-friendly states.


Marijuana Legalization in Arizona: Polls Come Up With Wildly Different Levels of Support

Source

Marijuana Legalization in Arizona: Polls Come Up With Wildly Different Levels of Support

By Matthew Hendley Wed., Dec. 18 2013 at 12:23 PM

Marijuana legalization in Arizona is either clearly supported by most people, or clearly not supported by most people, depending on which poll results you look at.

Although two polls released earlier this year seemed to show most people were on-board with legalization, a poll released today says the opposite.

Susquehanna Polling and Research's poll today says 60 percent of the voters it surveyed oppose legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Just 36 percent support it, the poll says.

The survey results say:

A 60-36 margin against legalization of marijuana shows fairly broad based opposition to the idea including opposition by a majority of Republicans (75%) and Democrats (51%) while Independents split equally 47-47. Senior citizens oppose legalization 71-28, which is a critical constituency all politicians will not want to alienate. Clearly, the legalization of marijuana is opposed by almost all demographic groups and even slightly opposed among Democrats in the state. Only independent voters particularly in the Pima [County] area . . . might be open to the issue but even among them the issue is basically tied.

A couple of notes: Susquehanna readily admits on its website that it only does polls for political candidates who are Republicans. In Pennsylvania, where the company is based, it found President Obama and Mitt Romney tied in the state, three days before Election Day. Obama won by more than 5 percentage points, and every other poll in the state conducted within two weeks of the election found Obama leading by between 3 and 6 percentage points.

With all of that said, back in May, a Behavior Research Center poll found that 56 percent of the people it surveyed were in favor of legalizing marijuana in Arizona.

(A note on that: Although polling guru Nate Silver has said that the Behavior Research Center "has had good results in the past," it was the only polling firm to find Obama leading Romney at any point in Arizona in 2012, including a month before the election. Romney won the state very easily, by more than 9 percentage points.)

Then there's the third poll, from Public Policy Polling, which found at the beginning of the year that nearly 60 percent of the Arizonans it surveyed supported marijuana legalization.

Keeping with our accuracy comparisons with 2012 presidential election results, Public Policy Polling, although it does polling for Democrats, was hailed for its accuracy during that election.

Although there's an effort to gather the signatures to put marijuana legalization on the Arizona ballot next year, the effort lacks a major funding source, so it's unlikely that there actually will be a vote on the issue in the near future.

However, the national group that backed Arizona's medical-marijuana law plans to support a legalization effort here in 2016.


Marijuana Legalization Supported by More Than Half of Arizonans

Source

Marijuana Legalization Supported by More Than Half of Arizonans, Poll Says

By Matthew Hendley Tue., May 14 2013 at 12:03 PM

It shouldn't be illegal to possess a little marijuana, according to more than half of Arizona's residents.

This Behavior Research Center poll, released today, shows that 56 percent of the Arizonans surveyed are in favor of "legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use," with majority support from both genders and all age groups.

See also: -Poll: Most Arizona Voters Support Medical Marijuana

The only lack of support for marijuana legalization -- aside from people grouped into the "other" races category -- comes from self-proclaimed Republicans and conservatives.

People saying they were Republican said no to legalization by a 41-56 margin, and people saying they were conservative said no by a 35-58 margin.

Just about everyone else supports legalization, according to the poll, including men (62 percent), women (50 percent), people under 35 (58 percent), between 35 and 53 (59 percent), 54 or older (51 percent), Democrats (61 percent), Independents (72 percent), Maricopa County (54 percent), Pima County (60 percent), rural counties (58 percent), liberals (75 percent), and moderates (67 percent).

The same poll also found some pretty positive feedback for same-sex marriage -- 55 percent are in favor, and 35 percent oppose it.

"It is perhaps ironic that as support for same-sex marriage and defelonization of marijuana have long been albatrosses which conservative candidates could hang around the necks of some of their moderate or liberal challengers," the pollsters say in the release. "[I]t now appears that hard opposition to gay marriage and perhaps even to marijuana liberalization could become issues moderates and liberals can use against their conservative opponents."

See the poll results here.


Why It's Crazy To Try To Set DUI Limits For Marijuana

Let's face it DUI laws have evolved to where they are mostly about raising revenue for our government masters and have next to nothing to do with safety.

When DUI was first invented the legal limit was .15 and at that level most people are smashed!!! For me I have to drink about about a 6 pack of beer to hit the .15 level and I am certainly smashed after 6 beers.

Over years the Federal government passed laws bribing the state government to pass laws lowering the legal limit to .10 and .08 where it is now. And is thinking about giving the state governments more bribes to lower the legal limit to .05.

Basically that involves giving the state government that pass these draconian DUI laws Federal government highway money.

At .08 a petite 100 pound woman is legally drunk after having 1 beer or drink. I seriously doubt that 1 beer or drink will impair a small person's ability to drive safely.

At .08 I am legally drunk after 2 beers. And again I seriously doubt that 2 beers will impair my ability to drive safety.

Source

Why It's Crazy To Try To Set DUI Limits For Marijuana

Business Insider

By Erin Fuchs December 19, 2013 1:45 PM

A woman smokes a blunt at the 4/20 marijuana holiday in Civic Center Park in downtown Denver April 20, 2013.

Come New Year's Day, Colorado's pot shops will start selling legal, recreational weed, but there's still a marijuana law that's bugging pot advocates — the state's new marijuana DUI law.

Colorado passed a law last spring that presumes you're too high to drive if you have 5 nanograms or more of THC per milliliter of blood, even though many experts say there is insufficient evidence to tie that level of THC to impaired driving.

"We don't have a consensus as to what levels of THC are consistently correlated with behavioral impairment," Paul Armentano, deputy director for the pot advocacy group NORML, told me. But, he added, "Marijuana policy has never been driven by science in this country."

It's never been legal to drive while you're impaired by any drug in Colorado, but this is the first time there's a presumption that a certain level of THC in your blood means you're high. Since the controversial new limits passed, Denver criminal defense attorney Sean McAllister told me he's seen an uptick in marijuana-related driving arrests.

Medical pot users also fear getting stopped now since they may have THC levels above the legal limit but don't feel too high to drive. Teri Robnett — a patient advocate who also has a pot prescription for her Fibromyalgia — told me she's often over the THC limit because the medical marijuana she takes metabolizes slowly.

"I can pretty much assume that I will always be above five nanograms in my blood," she said, "but I have no impairment."

The Rise Of Drug-Impaired Driving Laws

Every state in America has a legal driving limit for blood alcohol levels, as well as some kind of law regulating drug use and driving. These laws are known as DUID laws, which stands for driving under the influence of drugs. The idea behind these laws is that being high on the road may be dangerous.

"Smoking marijuana has a very negative effect on your ability to operate a motor vehicle," Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told SF Gate. "It's quite dangerous to you, your passengers and others on the road."

Some states like New York have effect-based DUID laws, meaning that you can get in trouble if you're visibly impaired while driving and provably high on drugs that made you impaired.

Other states have per se drugged driving laws, meaning you can get a DUID if you have a certain level of drugs in your system. Several states have enacted per se laws in recent months, including Washington state and Colorado. Still other states like Arizona and, more recently Oklahoma, have "zero tolerance" per se laws. That means you're toast if you're caught driving with any amount of illegal drugs in your system.

While Colorado just legalized recreational pot in Nov. 2012, medical marijuana there has been legal there since 2000, and medical-marijuana activists balked at a driving limit for pot in the state when the measure was previously defeated.

Before the Colorado DUID bill failed in May 2012, medical marijuana activists argued that 5 nanograms was too low and that effectively sober people would end up getting arrested, the Denver Post reported.

"There needs to be a way to know whether a medical patient has the 5 nanograms in their system so they can know whether they can get behind the wheel," Debbie Olander, a union spokesperson, told the Denver Post. "With alcohol you can."

THC limits in Colorado eventually passed after the state legalized recreational pot.

Unlike in Washington, though, Colorado's new law lets drivers try to submit evidence in court showing they weren't impaired even though their THC blood levels were above the legal limit. That standard is known as "permissive inference." But you'd have to have a good lawyer to get out of a DUID with 5 nanograms in your blood, even if you were cool to drive.

"It's the defense attorney's job to educate the jury, trying to get them to look at impairment and not the number [THC level]," Colorado defense attorney Leonard Frieling told me.

Why That THC Number Doesn't Mean You're Too High To Drive

Marijuana advocates say there simply isn't enough evidence to link certain THC levels to impaired driving, even though many states have tied a specific number to impairment.

To be sure, there is some evidence that it's not a great idea to drive when you're high.

"We know that when people smoke marijuana they lose some of their peripheral vision," Dr. Marilyn Huestis, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Intramural Research Program, told Popular Science Magazine. "We know it affects the passage of time, or the idea of how rapidly time is passing. It affects balance. And one of the most interesting areas it affects is the prefrontal cortex."

That, in turn, can affect our ability to make decisions, Huestis told Popular Science's Clay Dillow. Marijuana can also make it hard to multitask. In several studies, marijuana has also interfered with drivers' ability to hold the vehicle in the middle of the traffic lane, Dillow reported.

One widely cited experiment by a Washington TV station asked volunteers to get high on pot and then try driving on a course with a safety instructor. One drove too slowly, while another almost hit the station's photographer.

Despite these signs that driving high might be bad, even the federal government says there's a lack of evidence that ties a certain level of THC with a certain degree of impairment. In other words, some people may be able to drive perfectly well at a certain level of THC intoxication, while others may be impaired. Here's what the National Highway Traffic Administration says on its website:

It is difficult to establish a relationship between a person's THC blood or plasma concentration and performance impairing effects ... It is inadvisable to try and predict effects based on blood THC concentrations alone.

Apparently, Colorado's lawmakers didn't this advice, even though there's also no evidence that "per se" pot laws lower traffic fatalities, according to NORML's Paul Armentano.

For now, medical users who might have too much THC in their blood should probably try to be inconspicuous on the road.

"They drive under tremendous risk," Colorado lawyer Rachel Gillette told me. "I always say make sure your taillights are good. Don’t swerve or go out of the lines. Make sure they don’t have any reason to pull you over in the first place."


Horne's position on prayer at government meetings

When you have an election like this, it's kind of like having to decide to vote for Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Bush or Obama.

Anybody you vote for is going to screw you!!!!!

Source

The issue: Horne's position on prayer at government meetings

Who said it: Mark Brnovich, candidate for Arizona attorney general

by Lorraine Longhi - December 19, 2013, 10:13 pm

What we're looking at

Arizona attorney general candidate Mark Brnovich made a comment in a news release accusing current Arizona Attorney General, and fellow Republican, Tom Horne of not supporting prayer at the beginning of meetings of deliberative bodies.

The comment

"Other state attorneys general filed a brief in support of legislative prayer. Tom Horne was not among them."

The forum

A news release issued last month by Brnovich's campaign.

Analysis

Brnovich stated that Horne did not support Greece, N.Y.'s defense of prayer in public meetings, which is being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Town of Greece vs. Galloway.

In the case, a lower court ruled that opening a town council meeting with a prayer violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause because the content of the prayers gives the impression that the government endorses Christianity. Supporters of the practice argue that rules governing the separation of church and state have become too strict and prayer should be allowed as long as it doesn't coerce someone to follow a certain religion.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in November.

"The Town of Greece case is a wonderful opportunity for the Court to clarify that legislative prayer is both consistent with and protected by the First Amendment," said Brnovich in the news release. "At the same time, it is a missed opportunity for Tom Horne."

The brief that Brnovich is referring to was filed Aug. 2 and co-authored by the states of Indiana and Texas.

Horne, however, has weighed in on the case: He signed onto the initial amicus brief authored by Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller, which was filed on Jan. 7. Horne was among 17 attorneys general to sign onto Zoeller's brief. The Supreme Court later decided to hear the case.

According to a spokesman for the Indiana Attorney General's Office, Bryan Corbin, Indiana and Texas jointly co-authored the second amicus brief on the merits of the case. They were joined by 21 other states, but Arizona was not among them.

"The fact that Arizona or any other state is not listed should not be read as a specific decision by an attorney general that they do not support the brief," Corbin said. "There are many reasons why a state may not be listed, including inadvertent omissions."

Horne's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said the fact that Horne's name does not appear on the second brief does not indicate a lack of support for the merits of the case.

Bottom Line: While Horne's name does not appear on the Aug. 2 brief, it is not indicative of his lack of support for the case. Horne's signing onto the first brief established his support for arguments in favor of prayer during legislative meetings. It's unclear why Horne wasn't included on the second brief and it could have been an inadvertent omission.


Feds kill 26 barred owls to help spotted owl

Feds kill 26 barred owls to help spotted owl

Your tax dollars at work!!! Doing what I don't know. Well other then wasting your tax dollars I don't know what the purpose of this is!!!

Source

Feds kill 26 barred owls to help spotted owl

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 3:28 PM

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — An experiment to see if killing invasive barred owls will help the threatened northern spotted owl reverse its decline toward extinction is under way in the forests of Northern California.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that specially trained biologists have shot 26 barred owls in a study area on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation northeast of Arcata, Calif.

They plan to remove as many as 118 barred owls from the area, keeping the 55 known barred owl nesting sites open over the next five years to see if spotted owls increase, said Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Robin Bown. Contractors go to an area that barred owls are known to be in, play a digital caller to attract them, and shoot the birds with a shotgun.

The service is spending $3.5 million over six years to remove 3,600 barred owls from sites in Oregon, Washington and California.

Barred owls migrated from the East in the 1950s and have become the single biggest threat to spotted owl survival.

Major cutbacks in logging in old growth forest that spotted owls prefer as habitat have not turned around their population decline, and scientists want to see if removing competition from the more aggressive barred owl will make a difference.

Barred owl removal at research sites in Oregon and Washington state is set to begin next fall.

By then, the group Friends of Animals hopes to persuade a federal judge to issue a court order stopping the experiment. A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Calif., argues the permits for killing barred owls issued under the Migratory Bird Act are invalid. The research does not benefit the barred owl, said Friends of Animals attorney Michael Harris.

It is not unusual to kill one species to help a threatened or endangered one. Cormorants and sea lions are regularly killed to help salmon.

Bown said blood and genetic samples are taken from each barred owl that is killed, and the frozen carcasses are sent to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where they are available for further research.

Among other things, scientists are checking the barred owls for toxins from prey contaminated with rat poison put out by illegal marijuana growers to protect their crops. Scientists hope to get a better picture of whether the rat poison is killing spotted owls, which eat similar prey. Scientists rarely get a dead spotted owl they can test for toxins.


L.A. Councilman Huizar accused of groping woman in 2005

Maybe he should get a job as a cop part time. After all as any cop will tell you, it ain't rape if you got a gun and a badge. Of course that just what the cops think. Normal people still call it rape!

Source

L.A. Councilman Huizar accused of groping woman in 2005

By James Rainey

December 20, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar, recently accused by a former top aide of pressuring her for sex and retaliating when she rebuffed him, was the subject of a 2005 criminal investigation in which a Pasadena massage therapist said Huizar groped her, according to records and interviews.

At the time of the complaint, Huizar was president of the Los Angeles school board and was running for City Council.

The Pasadena Police Department recently released a summary of its investigation in response to a state Public Records Act request by The Times.

According to the summary, an employee of the Burke Williams spa in Old Town Pasadena said that on the evening of April 9, 2005, "the suspect grabbed [her] legs during the massage and attempted to pull her toward the massage table. Additionally, at the conclusion of the massage, the suspect grabbed the victim's leg, arm and breast."

The complainant, who was not identified, gave the name of her alleged assailant as Jose Huizar, according to the summary. Police investigated the incident as a possible misdemeanor sexual battery, said Lt. Tracey Ibarra, a Police Department spokeswoman.

The woman did not definitively identify Huizar, or eliminate him as a suspect, when police showed her an array of photos that included one of him, Ibarra said. But by the time the matter reached the Pasadena city prosecutors' office, she made it clear her attacker was Huizar, said Connie Orozco, who then supervised the office.

The woman later decided she did not want to proceed with the complaint, and the prosecutor's office did not file charges.

Huizar referred questions about the matter to his press secretary, Rick Coca, who issued a brief statement: "The council member recalls being contacted about an investigation more than eight years ago. There was no follow-up with him."

In October of this year, Huizar's former deputy chief of staff at City Hall, Francine Godoy, sued him, alleging workplace discrimination and sexual harassment. Godoy contends in the suit that Huizar "explicitly conditioned" her employment benefits on sexual favors and punished her when she spurned his advances.

Huizar has acknowledged a "consensual relationship" with Godoy but has dismissed her harassment allegations as "false and malicious."

At the time of the 2005 investigation, Huizar was in his second term on the school board and was campaigning for the council seat vacated by the new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. Huizar won the seat, and was twice reelected.

The criminal investigation was forwarded by police to the prosecutor's office and eventually reviewed by Orozco, who was then Pasadena's chief city prosecutor.

The prosecutor said she was contacted at the time by Steve Escovar, an attorney she knew who was representing Huizar. She said Escovar told her that Huizar was a good man and that the attorney believed the complainant did not want to proceed with a prosecution.

Escovar did not respond to requests for comment.

Orozco said the massage therapist worried that she would suffer consequences at work and might lose her job at Burke Williams if she pursued her complaint.

"It rings in my mind that she said they were not supportive in the least and they were encouraging her not to report this," Orozco said. "I told her this was not a reason to not go forward … when she was victimized."

A Burke Williams spokeswoman said the company has "a strict policy against all forms of harassment and encourages employees to report claims without fear of retaliation of any kind."

About a year after the alleged incident, the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing received a complaint against Burke Williams and four of its employees, a spokeswoman for the agency said.

According to a heavily redacted copy of the complaint, it accused Burke Williams and the employees of harassment, retaliation and other violations of state law. The complaint cited an incident on April 9, 2005 — the date of the alleged sexual battery.

The agency issued a routine "right to sue" letter, which doesn't judge a case's merits but is required for plaintiffs who want to file a civil suit alleging employment discrimination. The Times could find no record of a related lawsuit.

Orozco said that some time after an initial conversation about the criminal complaint, the massage therapist told her she did not want to proceed. She said that concern about job security was not her reasons for dropping the matter, Orozco recalled.

In most such cases, "if you say you don't want to prosecute it, as the complaining witness, you sort of have that power," Orozco said. "The victim in this case preferred it not go forward, and it did not."

james.rainey@latimes.com


Obamacare - ACA - Dead on arrival!!!!! DOA

 
Obamacare - ACA - Dead on arrival!!!!! DOA
 


Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws

Source

Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:10 PM

TORONTO — Canada’s highest court struck down the country’s anti-prostitution laws in their entirety Friday, including against keeping a brothel.

The 9-0 Supreme Court ruling is a victory for sex workers seeking safer working conditions because it found that the laws violated the guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person. But the ruling won’t take effect immediately because it gave Parliament a one-year reprieve to respond with new legislation.

Prostitution isn’t illegal in Canada, but many of the activities associated with prostitution are classified as criminal offences.

The high court struck down all three prostitution-related laws: against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution, and street soliciting. The landmark ruling comes more than two decades after the Supreme Court last upheld the country’s anti-prostitution laws.

The decision upheld an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling last year that struck down the ban on brothels on the grounds that it endangered sex workers by forcing them onto the streets.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing on behalf of the court, said Canada’s social landscape has changed since 1990, when the Supreme Court upheld a ban on street solicitation.

“These appeals and the cross-appeal are not about whether prostitution should be legal or not,” she wrote. “They are about whether the laws Parliament has enacted on how prostitution may be carried out pass constitutional muster. I conclude that they do not.”

A Vancouver sex worker who was part of a group that brought the case applauded the court’s decision.

“I’m shocked and pleased that our sex laws will not cause us harm in a year,” Amy Lebovitch said in a news conference.

Katrina Pacey, a lawyer for the group of downtown Vancouver prostitutes, called it “an unbelievably important day for the sex workers but also for human rights.”

“The court recognized that sex workers have the right to protect themselves and their safety,” she said.

In 1990, the two women on Canada’s Supreme Court dissented on the ruling upholding the ban on street solicitation. This time, all six men on the court justices sided with their three female colleagues.

“The harms identified by the courts below are grossly disproportionate to the deterrence of community disruption that is the object of the law,” McLachlin wrote. “Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes.”

Sex-trade workers argued that much has changed since the high court last considered prostitution, including the horrific serial killings of prostitutes by Robert Pickton in British Columbia.


Woman billed $5K after cavity search for drugs

Source

Woman billed $5K after cavity search for drugs

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 12:19 PM

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Federal agents wrongfully strip-searched a New Mexico woman at the El Paso border crossing, then took her to a hospital where she was forced to undergo illegal body cavity probes in an attempt to find drugs, according to a federal lawsuit filed.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso said the unnamed 54-year-old U.S. citizen was "brutally" searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in December 2012 after being selected for additional random screening at the Cordova Bridge in El Paso when a drug sniffing dog jumped on her. The woman was returning from a visit to a recently deported family friend in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, the lawsuit said.

Agents quickly stripped searched her and did cavity searches but found no evidence of drugs, court documents said. But the woman was transported in handcuffs to the University Medical Center of El Paso, the lawsuit said, where doctors subjected her to an observed bowel movement, a CT scan and other exams without a warrant.

Roger Maier, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation. "We do not tolerate corruption or abuse within our ranks, and we fully cooperate with any criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel, on or off-duty," Maier said.

According to the agency's website, CBP officers are expected to "conduct their duties in a professional manner and to treat each traveler with dignity and respect." The website says agents "use diverse factors to refer individuals for targeted examinations."

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and Texas said no drugs were found on the woman despite the intrusive searches.

"After enduring approximately six hours of demeaning and highly invasive searches, (the woman) was released without any charge," the lawsuit said.

However, her attorney said she was charged $5,000 by the hospital.

"What is truly frightening about this incident is that it could have happened to anyone," said ACLU-NM Legal Director Laura Schauer Ives. "The failed drug war and militarized border region have created an environment in which law enforcement officials increasingly inflict extreme and illegal searches on innocent Americans."

Named in the lawsuit were the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the University Medical Center of El Paso, and various agents allegedly involved in the searches.

"Hospital policy is to obtain consent from all patients who receive medical services at UMC," Margaret Althoff-Olivas, a spokeswoman for University Medical Center of El Paso told the AP in a statement. "Because this case involves litigation, UMC will not be commenting further."

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in compensatory and punitive damages.


Uganda lawmakers approve life sentence for gays

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Uganda lawmakers approve life sentence for gays

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 10:34 AM

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ugandan lawmakers on Friday passed an anti-gay bill that calls for life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts, drawing criticism from rights campaigners who called it “the worst in the world.”

When the bill was first introduced in 2009, it was widely condemned for including the death penalty, but that was removed from the revised version passed by parliament.

Instead it sets life imprisonment as the penalty for a homosexual act where one of the partners is infected with HIV, sex with minors and the disabled, as well as repeated sexual offenses among consenting adults, according to the office of a spokeswoman for Uganda’s parliament.

The bill also prescribes a seven-year jail term for a person who “conducts a marriage ceremony” for same-sex couples.

The bill was passed unanimously by the parliament, with no one voicing an objection.

President Yoweri Museveni must sign the bill within 30 days for it to become law. Although in the past he spoke disparagingly of gays, in recent times Museveni has softened his position on the matter, saying he is only opposed to gays who appear to “promote” themselves.

“In our society there were a few homosexuals,” Museveni said in March. “There was no persecution, no killings and no marginalization of these people but they were regarded as deviants. Sex among Africans including heterosexuals is confidential. If I am to kiss my wife in public, I would lose an election in Uganda.”

The passage of the bill makes it “a truly terrifying day for human rights in Uganda,” said Frank Mugisha, a prominent Ugandan gay activist, who called the legislation “the worst anti-gay law in the world.” He urged the country’s president not to sign the legislation into law.

“It will open a new era of fear and persecution,” he said. “If this law is signed by President Museveni, I’d be thrown in jail for life and in all likelihood killed.”

Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law that criminalized sexual acts “against the order of nature,” but the Ugandan lawmaker who wrote the new legislation argued that tougher legislation was needed because homosexuals from the West threatened to destroy Ugandan families and were allegedly “recruiting” Ugandan children into gay lifestyles.

Ugandan gays disputed this account, saying that Ugandan political and religious leaders had come under the influence of American evangelicals who wanted to spread their anti-gay campaign in Africa. Ugandan gays singled out Scott Lively, a Massachusetts evangelical, and sued him in March 2012 under the Alien Tort Statute that allows non-citizens to file suit in the United States if there is an alleged violation of international law.

Lively denied he wanted severe punishment for gays, and has previously told The Associated Press he never advocated violence against gays but advised therapy for them.

Ugandan gays had believed progress was being made to strengthen their rights in a country where prejudice against homosexuals is rampant. In 2012 they held their first gay pride parade and have sometimes joined street marches in support of all human rights.

Despite criticism of the anti-gay legislation abroad, it is highly popular among Ugandans who say the country has the right to pass laws that protect its children.

Amid international criticism, the bill was repeatedly shelved despite the protests of Ugandan lawmakers. Days before Christmas last year, the speaker of Uganda’s parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, said the anti-gay legislation would be passed as a “Christmas gift” to all Ugandans. She presided over the session Friday that passed the bill despite opposition from Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, who wanted the vote delayed.

David Bahati, the lawmaker who wrote the bill, said in a Facebook update Friday that the legislation was necessary “to defend our culture and to defend the future of our children.”

When the bill was first proposed, United States President Barack Obama called it “odious.”

Maria Burnett, a senior Africa researcher with Human Rights Watch, said the bill passed Friday is “still appalling” despite some amendments.

Homosexuality remains a taboo subject across many parts of Africa. Some 38 African countries — about 70 percent of the continent — criminalize homosexual activity, Amnesty International said in a report released earlier this year.

The rights group said of the new Ugandan law that it “would significantly hamper the work of human rights defenders and others who find themselves in conflict with the law merely by carrying out their legitimate activities.”


Leaders let us down all the time

Hey, I disagree with this 100 percent. If you are willing to bribe your elected officials, oops, I mean give them lots of campaign contributions they will pretty much do anything you ask them to do.

Our elected officials value money and value the special interest groups that give it to them.

Source

Leaders let us down all the time

Wed Dec 11, 2013 7:01 PM

I can’t help but be amused by Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell’s comments that Department of Economic Security Director Clarence Carter, who oversees Child Protective Services, should be removed because he let down the people of Arizona.

If letting down the people of Arizona is a basis for being removed from one’s position, I’m pretty sure the offices under our copper dome would forever remain vacant.

— Michael Tierney, Glendale


Highland Park assault weapons suit in federal court

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Highland Park assault weapons suit in federal court

By Gregory Trotter, Chicago Tribune reporter

December 20, 2013

A Highland Park man's recent lawsuit against his town, challenging the constitutionality of its ban on assault weapons, has landed in federal court, according to court documents.

Arie Friedman, a Highland Park pediatrician, along with the Illinois State Rifle Association, filed suit against Highland Park on Dec. 12 in response to the city's new ban on assault weapons. Last summer, Highland Park was one of several Chicago suburbs that raced to enact municipal ordinances regulating or banning the use of assault weapons before the state's concealed carry law pre-empted home-rule authority.

Friedman, a Republican who lost a race for state Senate in November 2012, has requested an injunction against the ban, claiming the ordinance infringes upon his Second Amendment rights, according to the complaint.

On Thursday, Steven Elrod, Highland Park's attorney, requested that the case be removed from Lake County Circuit Court and taken before a federal judge.

"The City Council believes the ban is constitutional and wanted to provide maximum protection to its residents, visitors and property owners," Elrod said.

Friedman, who could not be reached, owns semi-automatic rifles prohibited by the ban, with magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which also are banned, according to the complaint.

"Dr. Friedman keeps and maintains the firearms and ammunition magazines described above for lawful purposes, including recreational target shooting and defense of his home and family," the complaint states.

Semi-automatic rifles and shotguns should not be defined as assault weapons, said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, co-plaintiff in the suit.

"They're taking a common firearm and trying to ban it," Pearson said. "We oppose that."

After state legislators approved the concealed carry law last summer, communities with home rule authority had only a small window of time to define and regulate assault weapons. Once that window closed July 19, the state law pre-empted home rule.

At least 16 local governments, including Cook County, approved new restrictions. Some communities, including Deerfield and Winnetka, approved ordinances regulating transportation and storage.

Highland Park approved an outright ban June 24. Later in the fall, the Highland Park City Council added exemptions to the ban for licensed citizens with guns considered to be "curios," or antiques, as per the ordinance, Elrod said.

Highland Park residents had until Dec. 14 to remove assault weapons from city limits, permanently modify them so they do not fall under the law's definition or surrender them to police for disposal. Violations are considered a misdemeanor, with penalties that could include up to six months in jail or a fine of $500 to $1,000.

Highland Park's definition of assault weapons closely mirrors that of Cook County's regulations, Elrod said. The Cook County ban is also being challenged in pending litigation in federal court, he said.

In adopting the ban, the City Council intends to prevent violence, he said.

"Recent tragedies in the U.S. made it clear to the council that gun violence is not limited to urban settings," Elrod said, "but can also happen in smaller towns and suburban settings as well."

gtrotter@tribune.com


Helicopter gunships used in Mexico resort battle

More on the Mexican government's using Blackhawk helicopter gunships to murder of 5 suspected drug lords in Rocky Point as it's called by us gringos or Puerto Peñasco, Sonora which is the correct name.

This ain't in the deep interior of Mexico, Rocky Point is only about 200+ miles from Phoenix, Arizona and it's probably the second most common beach resort visited by tourists from Phoenix and Tucson after San Diego.

Source

Helicopter gunships used in Mexico resort battle

Originally published: Dec 20, 2013 - 2:31 pm

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Two government helicopter gunships opened fire on 10 vehicles fleeing a luxury beach condo complex during this week's gun battle at the Gulf of California resort of Puerto Penasco, Mexican authorities said.

New details emerged about the raging gun battle that ensued after federal forces tried to capture a reputed top lieutenant of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was staying at a beachfront villa.

Mexico's federal police said late Thursday that two government Blackhawk helicopters fired on at least 10 vehicles as they tried to flee the complex with drug cartel operator Gonzalo Inzunza. The vehicles were hit by gunfire in the Wednesday battle and were "left useless, causing the assailants to disperse." Five presumed cartel gunmen were killed in the battle.

Police found 14 sniper or assault rifles at the scene, which one federal official confirmed were of heavy caliber. Two federal officers were wounded in the gunfight.

The bullet-ridden, burned-out vehicles were left just outside the complex, which federal police did not identify. But Puerto Penasco city spokesman Cristobal Garcia confirmed Friday that the shootout actually began inside the Bella Sirena complex, where Inzunza was staying at a beachfront villa. The resort has units for both sale and rent, but it was unclear if the reputed capo owned or was renting the unit in which he was staying.

Garcia insisted that "these are not people who live in Puerto Penasco ... perhaps they were here on a holiday."

But federal police said Inzunza, 42, "has set up his center of operations in Puerto Penasco," to run drug-trafficking networks that stretched through at least seven other states, from the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo in Mexico's southeast to Baja California in the country's northwest.

They said Inzunza "had a personal relationship with Ismael ("El Mayo") Zambada," long viewed as the No. 2 leader of the Sinaloa cartel, after Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Inzunza's body was not found at the scene, and federal officials said they believed the fleeing gunmen took his dead or wounded body with them, as cartel gunmen sometimes do with fallen gang members or leaders.

Federal police said late Thursday that an analysis of blood stains found in the vehicles show that Inzunza was among those killed or wounded.

Drug cartel shootouts at Mexico's beach resorts generally have been rare, though some have been reported in the past in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. Prosecutors in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz said Friday they had found seven bodies dumped on a beach just south of the seaside city of Veracruz. They did not provide identities or a cause of death.

In the past, top drug traffickers have sometimes been caught, killed or almost caught at beach resorts, but they appear to have largely left resorts and their tourists alone. No foreigners, visitors or residents were harmed in the Puerto Penasco raid.

Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University, said Inzunza, who had a 3-million-peso ($230,000 reward) on his head, may have chosen Puerto Penasco not for the sun and sand but because it is located about an hour from the U.S. border.

The resort is located in Sonora state, which has been relatively free of the drug violence that has plagued other northern border states. The Sinaloa cartel may have chosen the Sonora-Arizona area as a base because other border areas are under the control of rival cartels or feeling the effects of government crackdowns, authorities said.

"It appears that this guy (Inzunza) was opening a very important border (trafficking) corridor," said Benitez. "Puerto Penasco is an area with a lot of movement, a lot of traffic, and it's perfect for setting up a corridor to sell cocaine, heroin or marijuana and ship it into the United States," Benitez said, noting the government "is shutting off the other big corridors in Texas and California."

"The Sonora corridor was the one left for the Sinaloa cartel, and the federal government is trying to prevent Sinaloa from setting down roots there," Benitez said.

Source

At least 5 killed in gunfight in Rocky Point's resort area

At least five people were killed in a shootout involving federal police and military officials this morning near Rocky Point's Sandy Beach area, the Sonora state attorney general confirmed.

The shootout was part of a federal police operation, but couldn't say whom it involved, Carlos Alberto Navarro Sugich, the state attorney general, told reporters.

Two people died when the vehicle they were driving crashed into a pole and burst into flames, Navarro Sugich said. The other two were killed during the operation outside a hotel in the tourist area of the city. The State police has not released their names or details on how the fifth person died.

He couldn’t say how many law enforcement officers, including the Navy, participated in the operation, but an American resident who moved into the Bella Sirena complex six months ago said at one point there were between 100 and 200 officers in the area, not including those shooting from the two helicopters.

An American man who lives in the Esmeralda Resort complex on Sandy Beach told the Star today that he awoke to the sound of gunfire about 4:30 or 5 a.m.

"An absolutely unreal experience,” said Stephen Heisler. "Whoever they were going after must have had a tremendous amount of power . . . To actually see a helicopter gunship firing into a dense residential area will haunt many for a very long time."

Source

Steller: In Rocky Point, not enough whitewash for a helicopter gunship

December 22, 2013 12:00 am • By Tim Steller 51

When Mexico’s drug-war violence surged in the middle of the last decade, Rocky Point was in a building boom, and the tourist industry assured us the beach town remained tranquilo.

It was — for a while.

Then, around 2007, the narcos made Rocky Point a home base, but still the local promoters insisted things were OK, because the criminals and cops took care of any conflicts outside town.

After that, occasional gunfights and drug-war executions started cropping up in Puerto Peñasco, culminating in a running gun battle that killed six people in July last year. The hospitality interests assured us the trouble doesn’t target tourists or take place in tourist areas of town.

On Wednesday, Mexican military helicopter gunships fired into a resort, exchanging heavy-weapons fire with narcos who had retreated into a Sandy Beach condo complex where they were staying. What are the promoters going to say now, I asked myself Wednesday — “It’s OK because they’re not firing into the tourists’ rooms”?

I’m not one to freak out over violence in Mexico, and even now I would feel comfortable taking my kids to Rocky Point. In my view, the risk remains small, and the biggest danger has long been traffic accidents. But I don’t for a second blame my relatively brave wife, Patty — and thousands of Americans like her — for saying, “You’re not taking my children down there.”

You just can’t explain away helicopter gunships firing into a condo complex.

That doesn’t mean people, especially those trying to promote Puerto Peñasco’s overbuilt real-estate market, won’t try. Investors — OK, speculators — built a string of condo towers along the previously pristine Sandy Beach over the last 15 years, but some were never completed and some others were never filled thanks to the economic collapse and drug-war fears of potential buyers.

It was only this year that tourism returned to a relatively robust level. On Thursday, after the smoke from Wednesday’s hours-long gun battle had cleared, the city’s mayor, Gerardo Figueroa Zazueta, did his best to paint the incident in the best light possible.

“The residents of Puerto Peñasco can relax … as can tourists in the area where many condominiums are found. Security protocols were followed according to law enforcement regulations,” he said in a written statement.

“Tourists living in or visiting the area should feel safe and take comfort in the fact that three levels of law enforcement came together to smother criminal activity, leaving only five dead … all of them presumed delinquents (criminals) at this time.

“We understand the concern, but foreigners should know that this was a military operation specifically targeting those involved in organized crime who, unfortunately, resisted arrest.”

That’s not the worst whitewash I’ve ever heard, but c’mon — “Security protocols were followed”?! All the dead are “presumed” to be criminals?!

And perhaps the biggest howler: “Three levels of law enforcement came together to smother criminal activity” in what once sentence later he contradictorily described as “a military operation.”

As Patty said, when you consider traveling to Rocky Point, you now have to take into consideration that there’s a remote chance that, if you’re unlucky enough to stay near a narco’s condo, a helicopter gunship will be firing into the complex.

The Mexican government explained its firepower by saying the bodyguards of the kingpin they were after, Gonzalo Inzunza , were armed with .60-caliber rifles and shooting back.

Even Rocky Point’s residents and avid defenders are conceding this point and are unhappy with the heavy firepower employed among the undersold tourist towers.

Rick Ramirez, a Tucson hairstylist who used to sell real estate in Rocky Point and still owns a condo there, told me Thursday that he finds much of the U.S. news coverage of crime there “sensationalized,” but he understood this time is a bit different.

“My only concern about this whole thing is that you had a helicopter firing into a condo complex,” he said. “That’s a little bit over the top.”

Ramirez is confident though, that those tourists scared off by this incident will consider traveling to Rocky Point eventually if nothing else happens for some months or even years.

I also talked Thursday with a well-known Rocky Point realist — Rosie Glover, who not only sells insurance but also heads the local government’s visitor assistance bureau. Over the years, she has taken heat for being too pragmatic about the town’s problems, not whitewashing them.

She thinks Rocky Point’s tourist industry needs to focus on attracting people who aren’t easily scared by hearing of these incidents.

“I believe it’s not healthy for someone who doesn’t want to come here, to come here. It’s stressful, and that’s not good for anybody. Nor is it healthful for us to try to talk people into coming, and beg people to come,” she said.

But even Glover, who grew up in Pitiquito, Sonora, and is as bicultural as they come, couldn’t resist pointing out that the military operation was narrowly targeted:

“They didn’t shoot willy-nilly into the resort. They were shooting specifically into one villa.”

You can’t blame a segment of Arizona tourists if they don’t take comfort in that.

Source

Rocky Point Shootout Killed a Cartel Boss, Mexican Officials Say -- But His Body's Missing

By Ray Stern Fri., Dec. 20 2013 at 9:19 AM

Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza, a top lieutenant in the Sinaloa cartel, was among six people killed in an hours-long shootout on Sandy Beach in Rocky Point this week, Mexican officials say.

But Mexican authorities reportedly are confirming this based on samples of DNA from the bloody crime scene -- the body of "El Macho Prieto" apparently was spirited off by other gunmen and hasn't been found.

So much for the idea that the Mexican military had things under control down there.

The intense gunfight between the military and gunmen began well before dawn on Wednesday near one of the condo towers on Sandy Beach, a popular hangout for American tourists that's about 200 miles south of Phoenix.

Witnesses reported seeing a helicopter firing machine-gun rounds with tracers into a condo. An American tourist was carjacked in the chaos that reportedly left six dead.

An initial article about the shootout in yesterday's Arizona Republic quotes an American expatriate praising the operation:

"The military did their grandest work protecting us and keeping us safe," said Susie Flinn, a real estate agent and resident of nearby Cholla Bay.

If that was their grandest work, no wonder the cartels have such a grip on the country. After taking hours to bring down a few guys, the military reportedly let the body of El Macho Prieto slip through its fingers. The cartel boss has a long history, it seems, and had a $230,000 bounty on his head.

Having been to Rocky Point many times, we can't understand how any gunmen could escape -- there are only a couple of roads out of town. Rocky Point may be relatively close by, but it's a world apart in terms of how it deals with criminals. When the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were located by police in April, almost the entire Boston area went into lockdown mode, and police even conducted intrusive door-to-door searches.

State and local Mexican authorities supposedly didn't have a clue about the operation beforehand -- sounds like they weren't trusted by the military.

Just another day in Mexico, it seems. But the touristy location is giving Arizonans another reason to re-evaluate their travel plans. Still, as far as we can tell, the situation isn't that much different than when New Times published "Fear Is Killing Tourism in Rocky Point, Mexico, Though Tourists Are Relatively Safe There -- For Now," our March 10, 2011, cover story.

That is, odds are good that you can hit the beach and other attractions in Rocky Point, have a great time, and come back safe -- as long as you're not a Mexican associated with a cartel or anybody else who's in the way when things go bad. The latter problem pretty much is the case in Phoenix.

You might want to keep in mind the words of wisdom from a U.S. Consulate General bulletin issued on Wednesday:

"In the event of gunfire, take shelter immediately and stay clear of doors and windows. Additionally, you should review your personal security plans; remain aware of your surroundings, including local events; and monitor local news stations for updates. Maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security."

Source

Puerto Peñasco, el último lugar del “Macho Prieto”

Nacional Vie 20 diciembre 2013 18:58 AP

Autoridades mexicanas informaron que el enfrentamiento armado en el balneario turístico norteño de Puerto Peñasco, en el que murió un importante operador del Cartel de Sinaloa, comenzó dentro de un lujoso complejo de condominios y que dos helicópteros artillados tuvieron que abrir fuego durante la confrontación.

La Policía Federal informó que dos helicópteros Blackhawk dispararon contra al menos 10 vehículos para buscar dispersar a los sicarios que apoyaban a Gonzalo Inzunza, alias “Macho Prieto”, el operador del cartel de Sinaloa que murió el miércoles en el choque armado que duró varias horas y cuyo cuerpo fue tomado por sus cómplices.

Cinco cuerpos de presuntos sicarios fueron localizados en la zona del enfrentamiento, donde la policía también localizó 14 fusiles de asalto, cuatro armas cortas, cinco granadas y más de 2.000 cartuchos y se incautó de 16 vehículos.

Un funcionario federal, no autorizado a ser identificado por cuestiones de seguridad, dijo que dos policías resultaron lesionados en el choque armado.

Vehículos quemados y con marcas de los disparos de los helicópteros quedaron fuera del complejo de condominios, el cual no fue identificado.

Sin embargo, el portavoz del balneario de Puerto Peñasco, Cristóbal García, dijo el viernes que el tiroteo comenzó dentro del complejo Bella Sirena. Inzunza, de 42 años, se encontraba dentro de una villa que daba al mar.

El complejo tiene villas y condominios en venta o renta, pero no estaba aún claro si el operador del cartel de Sinaloa era dueño o sólo alquilaba el lugar.

Puerto Peñasco está localizado en el estado norteño de Sonora y es una zona popular entre turistas estadounidenses.

García aseguró que “no es gente que vive en Puerto Peñasco… estaban a lo mejor de descanso”.

La Policía Federal, sin embargo, señaló en un comunicado que Inzunza había establecido su centro de operaciones en Puerto Peñasco para manejar redes de tráfico de drogas que se extienden hacia al menos otros siete estados del país, desde el sur en la costa caribeña en Quintana Roo hasta el norte en Baja California.

La dependencia aseguró que Inzunza tenía una relación personal con Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, considerado el número dos del cartel de Sinaloa, sólo después del máximo líder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

La Policía Federal informó la noche del jueves que un análisis de manchas de sangre en los vehículos reveló que Inzunza estaba entre los muertos, aunque su cuerpo no se encontró.

México ofrecía una recompensa equivalente a unos 230.000 dólares por la captura de Inzunza.

Los tiroteos en balnearios o centros turísticos han sido raros, aunque se han registrado algunos en el pasado, como en el puerto de Acapulco.

También en el pasado, algunos capos del narcotráfico habían sido capturados, asesinados o casi atrapados en balnearios.

En el enfrentamiento de Puerto Peñasco ningún extranjero ni turista ni residente resultó lesionado.

Raúl Benítez, experto en seguridad de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, dijo que Inzunza quizá escogió Puerto peñasco no por el sol y la playa sino porque se localiza a sólo una hora de la frontera con Estados Unidos.

“Según parece este señor estaba abriendo un corredor fronterizo muy importante”, señaló.

Sonora es un estado que ha estado relativamente libre del alto nivel de violencia del narcotráfico que ha afectado a otros lugares de México.

“Puerto Peñasco y toda esa zona es de mucho movimiento, tránsito y es perfecto para abrir un corredor de venta de cocaína, marihuana y heroína para cruzarlo a Estados Unidos”, dijo Benítez, para quien el gobierno ha estado “cerrando” otros corredores importantes para el narcotráfico como Texas y California.

El experto estimó que con el golpe a Inzunza el gobierno parece intentar evitar que el cartel de Sinaloa se afiance en Sonora y establezca el corredor a través de Arizona

Source

Suman 5 muertos tras balacera en Puerto Peñasco

El Universal | 2013-12-18 | 13:15

Puerto Peñasco– La Procuraduría General de Justicia de Sonora confirmó que suman cinco decesos por un enfrentamiento registrado entre presuntos delincuentes y fuerzas federales en la zona hotelera del destino turístico de Puerto Peñasco.

A través de su cuenta de Twitter, el procurador estatal Carlos Navarro confirmó la cifra de muertos, aunque no especificó si hubo bajas por parte de las fuerzas federales.

El enfrentamiento se registró al ser detectado un grupo de sujetos, por lo que elementos de la Marina acudieron en apoyo de la Policía Federal.

Tras la balacera, autoridades estatales y federales reforzaron la seguridad en Puerto Peñasco y Protección Civil ordenó la suspensión de clases.

Por su parte, el Consulado de Estados Unidos emitió una alerta a sus ciudadanos para que se abstengan de viajar a esta zona, localizada a una hora de la frontera.

Desde la tarde del martes se registraron balaceras y persecuciones en Sonoyta, municipio vecino de este puerto, localizado a unos 80 kilómetros, y por donde cruzan droga e indocumentados rumbo a Estados Unidos.

Frente a la exclusiva zona hotelera quedó un auto tipo pick up de modelo reciente totalmente calcinado y con dos cadáveres alrededor.

El hecho aterrorizó a turistas y residentes locales, por lo que las calles y edificios fueron resguardados por el Ejército; los turistas hospedados en los hoteles de lujo permanecieron en sus habitaciones.

Dos aviones militares y dos helicópteros artillados sobrevolaron Puerto Peñasco, municipio que tiene uno de los últimos aeropuertos internacionales construido en los últimos años en México.

Este balneario es el principal punto turístico que existe en Sonora, donde llegan a pasar vacaciones personalidades de todo el mundo.


Helicopter gunships used in Mexico resort battle

Mexican Police use Helicopter gunships to murder suspected drug dealers

A number of times I have made snide comments about the American government using drone strikes to take out suspected drug dealers on American soil. Based on this helicopter gunship drug war battle in Mexico, I don't think my suspicions of the American Empire using drone strikes to take out suspected drug dealers is that crazy.

I suspect a lot of nut job cops would love to use the military to kill suspected drug dealers in the USA!!!

Source

Helicopter gunships used in Mexico resort battle

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:20 PM

MEXICO CITY — Two government helicopter gunships opened fire on 10 vehicles fleeing a luxury beach condo complex during this week’s gun battle at the Gulf of California resort of Puerto Penasco, Mexican authorities said.

New details emerged about the raging gun battle that ensued after federal forces tried to capture a reputed top lieutenant of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was staying at a beachfront villa.

Mexico’s federal police said late Thursday that two government Blackhawk helicopters fired on at least 10 vehicles as they tried to flee the complex with drug cartel operator Gonzalo Inzunza. The vehicles were hit by gunfire in the Wednesday battle and were “left useless, causing the assailants to disperse.” Five presumed cartel gunmen were killed in the battle.

Police found 14 sniper or assault rifles at the scene, which one federal official confirmed were of heavy caliber. Two federal officers were wounded in the gunfight.

The bullet-ridden, burned-out vehicles were left just outside the complex, which federal police did not identify. But Puerto Penasco city spokesman Cristobal Garcia confirmed Friday that the shootout actually began inside the Bella Sirena complex, where Inzunza was staying at a beachfront villa. The resort has units for both sale and rent, but it was unclear if the reputed capo owned or was renting the unit in which he was staying.

Garcia insisted that “these are not people who live in Puerto Penasco … perhaps they were here on a holiday.”

But federal police said Inzunza, 42, “has set up his center of operations in Puerto Penasco,” to run drug-trafficking networks that stretched through at least seven other states, from the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo in Mexico’s southeast to Baja California in the country’s northwest.

They said Inzunza “had a personal relationship with Ismael (”El Mayo”) Zambada,” long viewed as the No. 2 leader of the Sinaloa cartel, after Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Inzunza’s body was not found at the scene, and federal officials said they believed the fleeing gunmen took his dead or wounded body with them, as cartel gunmen sometimes do with fallen gang members or leaders.

Federal police said late Thursday that an analysis of blood stains found in the vehicles show that Inzunza was among those killed or wounded.

Drug cartel shootouts at Mexico’s beach resorts generally have been rare, though some have been reported in the past in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. Prosecutors in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz said Friday they had found seven bodies dumped on a beach just south of the seaside city of Veracruz. They did not provide identities or a cause of death.

In the past, top drug traffickers have sometimes been caught, killed or almost caught at beach resorts, but they appear to have largely left resorts and their tourists alone. No foreigners, visitors or residents were harmed in the Puerto Penasco raid.

Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, said Inzunza, who had a 3-million-peso ($230,000 reward) on his head, may have chosen Puerto Penasco not for the sun and sand but because it is located about an hour from the U.S. border.

The resort is located in Sonora state, which has been relatively free of the drug violence that has plagued other northern border states. The Sinaloa cartel may have chosen the Sonora-Arizona area as a base because other border areas are under the control of rival cartels or feeling the effects of government crackdowns, authorities said.

“It appears that this guy (Inzunza) was opening a very important border (trafficking) corridor,” said Benitez. “Puerto Penasco is an area with a lot of movement, a lot of traffic, and it’s perfect for setting up a corridor to sell cocaine, heroin or marijuana and ship it into the United States,” Benitez said, noting the government “is shutting off the other big corridors in Texas and California.”

“The Sonora corridor was the one left for the Sinaloa cartel, and the federal government is trying to prevent Sinaloa from setting down roots there,” Benitez said.


When Glendale was boring and solvent

I always thought the purpose of city governments was to do boring things like pick up the garbage and provide sewer and water service!!!!!

Sadly many elected officials think the purpose of government is to allow them to use our money to hob nob with rich and famous movie stars and professional athletics.

And hob nob is probably a bad word for it. What our elected officials usually do is give these folks millions of OUR tax dollars so the elected officials can play with them.

Of course as soon as the money runs out the movie stars and professional athletics stop hanging out with our elected officials leaving them high and dry.

Source

When Glendale was boring and solvent

The City of Glendale is caught in an excruciating budget squeeze, due principally to debt from two big signature projects – the hockey arena and a spring training facility – that were supposed to pay for themselves but didn’t.

As a result, the city faces a deficit of as much as a fifth of everything else in its general fund budget.

Glendale used to be boring. It was a successful, but sleepy, upper-middle class bedroom community. And it had unexciting but competent governance.

That, however, wasn’t enough for city leaders. They wanted to become a city with cachet, the west side’s Scottsdale.

Glendale landed the Cardinals’ football stadium, but that was paid through countywide taxes. So, not much of a risk.

Then developer Steve Ellman started peddling the nonsense of a professional hockey arena that would pay for itself with ancillary retail development. He first pitched Scottsdale. Former Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross’ greatest service to her community was the skepticism with which she viewed the claims.

Glendale snatched it away, gloating at the time. Now, it’s an $8 million hole in the city’s budget.

Having ancillary retail pay for a sports facility sounded like such a good deal that the city assumed it would happen again with a spring training facility. That one is now a $17 million hole in the budget.

There’s a tendency now to regard Glendale officials as foolish or naïve. In reality, there’s quite a history of failed signature city projects in the Valley.

Tempe assumed development around Town Lake would at least pay for maintaining it. Hasn’t happened.

WestWorld was supposed to put Scottsdale on the international equestrian map and be self-supporting. Over two decades later, it still isn’t.

Scottsdale, in a brain-dead move that’s still unfathomable, actually rerouted its main arterial street for a high-concept retail development, the Galleria, that promptly failed after opening.

It’s actually better when these things fail before ever getting off the ground, and there have been several of those.

Phoenix cleared out a Latino neighborhood near Sky Harbor for an industrial park that housed mostly vacant land and weeds. It condemned several longtime downtown retailers to make room for a new retail development called Square One. It died in blueprint.

Mesa has been suckered twice by aquatic theme park developers, once clearing out a historic neighborhood to make room. Neither could get financing.

So, Glendale is hardly alone in falling for signature projects that never pan out. It took some greater financial risks. But it also got unlucky in coming up craps on the projects contemporaneous with a recession that hit government finances particularly hard.

There are two lessons here. First, never assume ancillary development is going to pay for the signature public amenity. The amenity is either worth the public funds being requested or it isn’t. Ancillary development, if it occurs, should be treated as a bonus, not as an essential element of the financing plan.

Second, boring can be OK. In city governance, it can be a high achievement.

Arguably, the most successful city in the Valley over last decade or so has been Chandler. Now, also arguably, Chandler had an advantage. Its successful but sleepy upper-middle class bedroom community has developed around a high-tech employment core that located there for different reasons.

Nevertheless, Chandler city government has steadily added plain-vanilla amenities – parks, an arts center – as it goes. So far, it hasn’t tried to make a name for itself with some pie-in-the-sky project.

That’s boring. But what would Glendale give to be boring again?

(column for 12.20.13)


Drive-thru windows allowed for Naperville pot clinics

Source

Drive-thru windows allowed for Naperville pot clinics

By Melissa Jenco, Chicago Tribune reporter

8:05 a.m. CST, December 20, 2013

Medical marijuana dispensaries looking to open in Naperville will be allowed to do so in some retail areas and can have drive-thru windows.

The Naperville City Council approved regulations for the dispensaries and cultivation centers before the drug officially becomes legal for medical purposes Jan. 1.

Cities are not allowed to prohibit such facilities entirely, but they can impose more stringent zoning regulations than the state, which has rules about their proximity to homes and schools.

Naperville council members agreed to limit cultivation facilities to industrial areas and require owners to go through a hearing process.

Dispensing facilities will be able to open in industrial areas without a hearing. They also will be allowed in some retail areas outside downtown, but a hearing will be needed. The city also has added a provision keeping such facilities at least 250 feet from residential areas.

The council debated whether to limit the amount of retail sales a dispensary could have.

"These facilities, what they sell other than medical marijuana oftentimes are health-related, natural, organic types of products … and I just don't know that … we want to be in the business of restricting it," Councilman Steve Chirico said.

Others said they feared drawing people who weren't using marijuana legally. However, after a city attorney said the state law only allows the marijuana and accessories for using it to be sold to qualifying patients and their caregivers, councilmen agreed to drop the retail sales restriction.

Some council members also previously expressed concerns about allowing drive-thru facilities at dispensaries, but ultimately they decided to allow them.

"There's people that will have certain issues that will make it difficult for them to get out and walk in," Councilman Paul Hinterlong said.

The City Council voted 8-0 on the new rules. Councilman Joe McElroy was absent.

Just how many medical marijuana facilities will attempt to open in Naperville remains to be seen. State law allows no more than 22 cultivation centers and 60 dispensing centers statewide.

mjenco@tribune.com

Twitter @melissajenco


Oak Forest deputy fire chief, wife accused of stealing $350K

Source

Oak Forest deputy fire chief, wife accused of stealing $350K

By Angie Leventis Lourgos Tribune reporter

12:47 p.m. CST, December 19, 2013

A former administrative assistant for the Palos Heights Fire Protection District and her husband – a deputy fire chief in Oak Forest - are accused of stealing more than $350,000 from her former employer, officials said.

Michelle Sopko, 45, and Charles Sopko, 47 of Oak Forest were arrested this morning and each charged with one count of theft of governmental property, a felony. They were scheduled to appear for a hearing at the Bridgeview Courthouse on Friday.

Earlier this year, a new Palos Heights Fire Protection District chief noticed discrepancies in the district’s financial records and asked Palos Heights police and the Cook County sheriff’s department to investigate, according to the sheriff’s office.

The agencies found that Michelle Sopko had diverted about $352,000 to a bank account she shared with her husband.

Michelle Sopko had worked for the Palos Heights fire district from October 2008 to December 2012, when she was fired for unrelated reasons, the office said.

Her job had included preparing and issuing payroll checks and paid district expenses.


Order to stop new ammunition record-keeping law in Sunnyvale denied

Source

Order to stop new ammunition record-keeping law in Sunnyvale denied

By Alia Wilson

awilson@community-newspapers.com

Posted: 12/19/2013 04:23:50 PM PST | Updated: about 16 hours ago

An emergency order to stop the new ammunition sales record-keeping law that went into effect Dec. 6 in Sunnyvale was denied this week, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The challengers to Sunnyvale's new gun regulations Measure C argued that this part of Sunnyvale's Measure C was inconsistent with state law and should be struck down; however the court disagreed and on Dec. 18 denied their request.

"This is a frivolous lawsuit and we're confident that it will continue to be rejected by the court," said the Law Center's Legal Director Juliet Leftwich in a statement. "California cities have broad authority to pass local ordinances to keep their communities safe from gun violence and the Sunnyvale ordinance is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, more than a dozen other cities and two counties have enacted similar laws requiring ammunition sellers to keep records of ammunition sales."

This portion of Sunnyvale's Measure C was actually based on the Law Center's model ammunition ordinance. When the city was sued, the center was able to secure the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP as pro bono counsel for Sunnyvale, the center reported.

"The gun lobby has a history of bullying cities to keep them from enacting new gun laws by threatening costly lawsuits," said Leftwich. "This time, the gun lobby failed to intimidate the people of Sunnyvale when they voted for Measure C, and now they are also failing in their attempt to overturn the will of the people in court."

NRA-backed plaintiffs also sued Sunnyvale on Dec. 16, in another lawsuit, claiming that another part of Measure C, which bans the possession of large capacity ammunition magazines, violates the Second Amendment.

Measure C was approved by 66 percent of Sunnyvale voters in November and requires gun owners to report a loss or theft of their weapon to police within 48 hours; to keep firearms locked up when not in the owner's direct possession; prohibits ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; and requires logging and tracking of ammunition sales within the city of Sunnyvale.


Man named Noel arrested for climbing public Christmas tree

Source

Man named Noel arrested for climbing public Christmas tree

By Rich Scinto, New Haven Register

Posted: 12/19/2013 08:57:35 AM PST | Updated: about 16 hours ago

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A man named Noel, who climbed the city's public Christmas tree Wednesday, was arrested after yelling incoherently and attempting to unfurl a banner.

Noel Delgado, 42, of New Haven, was charged with misdemeanor breach of peace after police talked him out of the tree.

Lt. Jeff Hoffman of the New Haven Police said Delgado was found climbing the tree shortly before noon ET.

“He was yelling kind of indecipherably about causes, but none of it really connected,” Hoffman said.

Delgado had two banners with him, but the words on them weren't visible because they had become tangled in the tree.

Police cut power to tree lights and kept people away as the incident played out. The tree, which sits near the center of the Green, had its nearly 30,000 LED lights lit on Dec. 5.

Delgado decided to make his way down the tree around 12:30 p.m., and police drove him from the snowy Green in a police cruiser. Delgado continued to yell as he was led away.

Delgado refused medical treatment, Hoffman said. According to court records, Delgado has a criminal history of minor arrests, and a felony charge of conspiracy to possess and sell drugs stemming from an April 2010 arrest.


Pastor gets 12 years for stealing $1.6M in loans, donations

Source

Pastor gets 12 years for stealing $1.6M in loans, donations

By Clifford Ward Special to the Tribune

6:16 p.m. CST, December 18, 2013

A pastor accused of using his minister’s garb as a thief dons a mask was sentenced today to 12 years in prison for stealing more than $1.6 million in loans and donations.

“Evidence shows the defendant put on the title and vestments of a pastor and went out into the community in the same way a robber puts on a ski mask and heads out into the night,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Shanti Kulkarni.

Howard Richmond, 53, of Naperville, told friends and followers they would be helping him build a mega church on Chicago’s west side. But he created fake financial documents to give his investors the impression that his church had millions of dollars in assets, authorities said.

Richmond, who ran a non-denominational Aurora storefront church called Life Reach Ministries, pleaded guilty in August to forgery and operating a continuing financial crime enterprise. He was also ordered to make $1.6 million in restitution, though authorities concede that his victims probably will not get their money back.

About two dozen people gave money to Richmond – one victim contributed $1 million – after hearing his church expansion plan. Many were promised huge returns on their money, which Richmond said would secure a multi-million dollar commitment from an Atlanta televangelist, Kulkarni said.

Richmond maintained that version when given the chance address the court with many of his victims watching. The Atlanta televangelist, he said, “snatched the carpet from underneath me” by withdrawing from the church expansion plan.

Judge Blanche Hill Fawell asked Richmond to explain examples of extravagances authorities detailed, such as a BMW car, a trip to Hawaii and thousands spent on clothes, jewelry and nights in a luxury hotel. Richmond offered vague explanations which prompted the judge to accuse him of talking in circles.

“You really haven’t answered my questions,” Fawell said.

“Can you ask me the questions again?” Richmond replied.

Among the witnesses was Rev. Neal Green, who ministers to a small west side Chicago congregation that meets in the basement of his house. Green said Richmond convinced him to sell real estate Green owned and then loan the proceeds to Richmond.

Green, 78, said he lost $1 million.

“I don’t see how a human being could do that to another human being,” Green said. “I’m living on welfare.”

triblocaltips@tribune.com Twitter: @TribLocal


60 kilos of marijuana busted inside a Mexican prison!!!

According to this article the cops busted 60 kilos of marijuana inside a Mexican prison!!! Yea, that's INSIDE a prison.

Let's face it the insane and unconstitutional American "war on drugs" has been a failure ever since it begin and will never be won.

And of course the Mexican War on drugs sadly is mostly paid and funded by the American government.

I tried to find an English version of the article, but couldn't!!! So following the Spanish article I included a Google translation of the article, which isn't perfect, but better then nothing.

Source

Source

Siembran marihuana en penal mexicano, suman 40 kilos decomisados

Ingresaron al penal un total de 60 kilos de mariguana, de los cuales 40 ya han sido asegurados.

Autoridades mexicanas hallaron 20 kilos de marihuana sembrados en el interior del Cereso de Chetumal tan sólo 15 días después de que se decomisara la misma cantidad en el mismo centro penitenciario.

En un comunicado, la dependencia informó que fue el propio titular de seguridad pública, el general retirado Carlos Bibiano Villa Castillo el que encabezó el operativo al interior del Centro de Reinserción Social (Cereso) de la capital del estado, refiere el diario mexicano El Universal.

A inicios de mes, la dependencia decomisó 20 kilos de marihuana, 48 relojes, bisutería, bebidas alcohólicas y dinero en efectivo a través de un operativo sorpresa realizado luego de recibir una llamada anónima.

Este domingo, la dependencia afirmó que "no se permitirá la corrupción al interior del Cereso, por lo que se realizan operativos de revisión y vigilancia de manera constante".

Según detalla el diario El Universal, en el operativo que realizaron a las 9:50 horas del domingo lograron asegurar dos paquetes sellados con cinta canela y papel aluminio, uno estaba enterrado cerca de la Iglesia que esta al interior del Cereso y el otro estaba escondido en un registro subterráneo.

De acuerdo con un reporte de la dependencia, ingresaron al penal un total de 60 kilos de mariguana, de los cuales 40 ya han sido asegurados y resta ubicar 20 kilos más.

La SSP reforzó la vigilancia al interior del Cereso para evitar cualquier intento de amotinamiento y anunció que seguirá realizando más operativos al interior de la penitenciaria donde permanecen detenidos unos mil 300 reos.

Translation provided by Google

Planted marijuana in Mexican criminal , totaling 40 kilos seized

They entered the prison a total of 60 kilos of marijuana, which 40 have already been secured.

Mexican authorities found 20 kilos of marijuana planted inside the Cereso Chetumal just 15 days after the same amount from seizing in the same prison.

In a statement, the agency reported that it was the holder of public safety, retired Gen. Carlos Bibiano Villa Castillo who headed the operation within the Centre for Social Reinsertion ( Cereso ) from the state capital, refers to the Mexican newspaper El Universal .

Earlier this month , the agency seized 20 kilos of marijuana, 48 watches , jewelery , liquor and cash through a surprise operation carried out after receiving an anonymous call.

This Sunday , the agency said that "corruption within the Cereso not be allowed , so operational review and monitoring are performed consistently ."

As detailed in the newspaper El Universal , who performed the operation at 9:50 am on Sunday managed to secure two packages sealed with masking tape and foil, one was buried near the church out into the Cereso and the other was hidden in an underground record.

According to a report by the agency, entered the prison a total of 60 kilos of marijuana, which 40 have already been secured and subtraction locate 20 kilos more .

The SSP reinforced surveillance inside the Cereso to prevent any attempt of mutiny and announced it will continue to make more operating inside the prison where about 300 thousand detained prisoners.


State had data on CPS crisis for years

You can't count on government to do the moral, right, ethical thing. Sadly government is mostly about money and power, not being a servant to the people our government masters pretend to serve.

Source

State had data on CPS crisis for years

By Mary Jo Pitzl The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 19, 2013 10:44 PM

The state’s child-welfare agency has for years issued reports showing that allegations of child abuse and neglect were not being investigated — suggesting that state officials who oversee CPS knew or should have known it was failing to adequately safeguard thousands of Arizona children.

The reports, issued every six months, raise the question of why only now has a furor erupted over CPS’ decision to set aside without further examination 6,554 cases dating to 2009.

Last month’s revelation of the uninvestigated cases has prompted three separate inquiries into what went wrong. It has also sidelined five higher-level CPS staffers through administrative leave and intensified scrutiny of an agency that all involved say is overburdened by a growing caseload.

The semiannual child-welfare reports — which are sent to the Governor’s Office, legislative leadership and key committee chairmen — are posted on a state website. They provide a count of cases that don’t receive a full, formal investigation. An Arizona Republic review of the reports from the fall of 2008 through March found that more than 4,457 cases were classified as not being investigated.

That figure doesn’t include what state officials say was a flood of more than 2,000 cases earlier this year that were marked “not investigated.”

Although Clarence Carter, head of CPS’ parent agency, initially expressed alarm that more than 6,500 reports of abuse and neglect to the state’s hotline had been marked “NI” for “not investigated,” he has more recently told reporters that the existence of the uninvestigated cases was apparent to anyone who read the agency’s semiannual reports.

On Wednesday, Andrew Wilder, Gov. Jan Brewer’s spokesman, disputed Carter’s suggestion that anyone who read the agency’s reports could see cases had gone without an investigation.

But by Thursday, the Governor’s Office and her appointee, Carter, were on the same page: Both Wilder and Carter blamed the terminology in the reports, saying it clouds what is happening with calls to the state’s child-abuse hotline.

In an interview Thursday, Carter, head of the state Department of Economic Security, said he should have made clear in his comments that only people with a grounding in child-welfare issues could have concluded from the reports that some cases had not been investigated. But, he added, even he couldn’t divine that from the reports.

“Yes, those things were in print, but they were in inconsistent and undefined terms,” he said. “No one outside of ‘CPS-land’ — even me — could understand that these things were not investigated.”

Carter said he was not contradicting his position from last month, when he expressed astonishment at the “NI” cases and called the apparently secret practice “highly, completely and totally unacceptable.”

He added that he is considering including a glossary with future reports so the meaning of terms is unambiguous.

Refering to the reports, Wilder said: “The numbers do appear to be there, but it’s how they’re reported. They’re lumped into categories with other reports, using confusing terminology.”

For example, the most recent report notes 1,603 cases got an “in-depth alternative assessment.” But a report for the six-month period ending March 2012 referenced 940 cases as “not assigned for investigation.”

“It’s not consistent language,” Wilder said. “That’s why it’s not reasonable to say people should have picked up on (the numbers and their meaning).”

Wilder said none of the activists who follow child-welfare issues raised questions about cases not being investigated.

But Dana Wolfe Naimark, president and CEO of the Children’s Action Alliance, said her group questioned the number of uninvestigated cases several times over the past year and a half and were assured by CPS staff that the children involved were safe because the agency was using an alternative process to check on them. That process relied on a close reading of a case file to determine if the child was in any danger.

Naimark said those assurances became “meaningless” last month, when Carter said he had no idea if the children mentioned in the “NI” reports were safe.

Likewise, The Republic had reported over the past 18 months that cases were going without an investigation.

In addition to the semiannual reports, monthly CPS reports that are circulated to a smaller audience of budget staffers for the Legislature and governor also document the gap between the number of reports the agency receives and the number it assigns for investigation. For example, a report for December 2011 shows 2,420 cases were assigned for investigation, but only 2,075 were responded to — leaving 345 unaccounted for. Those reports are not publicly available without a specific request.

Brewer has appointed an independent team to investigate the 6,554 cases and ensure child-welfare workers make personal contact with every child named in the reports. So far, the CARE team has seen 1,160 children. In only one case did a child have to be moved — in that instance, from the mother’s home to the father’s home.

State law requires all reports of child abuse and neglect to receive “a prompt and thorough investigation.” But CPS isn’t the only child-welfare office that’s not following the mandate to conduct an investigation. A new unit within the state DES, focused on potential criminal conduct in child-abuse and neglect cases, has by its own admission investigated only 19 percent of the cases brought to it.

The head of that unit, the Office of Child Welfare Investigations, blew the whistle on the 6,554 cases marked “not investigated” in a scathing memo last month to Brewer and Carter.

In his memo, Greg McKay noted that state law requires that all reports of child abuse and neglect that fall within CPS’ jurisdiction must be investigated.

Yet tight funding has limited his office’s ability to examine every case, McKay’s office states in reports to the Legislature and Brewer’s office.

Wilder acknowledged that McKay’s office investigates only a fraction of the potential criminal-conduct cases.

“They’re still ramping up,” Wilder said.

The Office of Child Welfare Investigations began conducting investigations in February, according to its reports, but its formal launch wasn’t until May. The office focuses exclusively on cases in Maricopa and Pima counties, the state’s most populous, and is initially investigating only cases that involve children age 5 or under, reports show.

The office is seeking $4.4 million from the Legislature next year to boost what McKay calls its “limited staffing.”

The office’s budget request includes a chart showing reports received and investigations completed in the office’s first two months of formal operations.

“It clearly shows additional staff is needed in order to investigate all cases of criminal conduct against Arizona’s most vulnerable population,” the request states.

As for state law that requires all cases to be investigated, Wilder said the 81 percent of cases the criminal-investigation office can’t get to is handled by regular CPS staffers. But it’s unclear how many of those complaints are being explored, given the thousands of cases CPS deliberately removed from the investigative process.


DHS removed more than 368,000 immigrants in 2013

Another Obama lie!!!! Obama promised not to send his DEA thugs after medical marijuana users in California. He did. Obama promised not to send ha users in Colorado and Washington where it is legal, but he currently is. And of course Obama promised not to deport law abiding Mexicans who wash our dishes, do our laundry and construction work, but as in this article Obama liked about that too!!!

Source

DHS removed more than 368,000 immigrants in 2013

Associated Press Thu Dec 19, 2013 3:53 PM

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration removed 368,644 immigrants from the country last year.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director John Sandweg says 235,093 of those immigrants were arrested at or near the U.S. border with Mexico.

This is the fewest number of immigrants deported by ICE since the end of President George W. Bush’s administration.

Last year ICE removed more than 409,000 immigrants.

Sandweg says significant increases in the numbers of Central Americans arrested along the Mexican border led to the drop in deportations this year. He said those case take more time.

The Border Patrol made more than 409,000 arrests at the border during the 2013 budget year that ended in September.

ICE has removed more than 1.9 million immigrants since 2009.


Topless hot-tub pic has mom in hot water

Don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down???? Well, besides harmless pot smokers and topless moms!!!

Source

Topless hot-tub pic has mom in hot water

KMOV Thu Dec 19, 2013 4:30 PM

A Missouri mother is in hot water after a photo showing her and her 14-year-old daughter topless in a hot tub was circulated around several high schools, according to video from KMOV.

The photo, which appeared on the social media app SnapChat, was taken by another daughter, according to the mother, whose identity wasn't revealed to protect her daughter.

"I was aware the photo was taken, and I told her at that second, please delete that photo,” said the mother, who was charged with misdemeanor child endangerment.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar tells KMOV that the photo "certainly had some sexual overtones” and that "she made a very poor choice."


Al Goldstein, pornography pioneer and Screw magazine publisher, dies at 77

While I am not a fan of talking dirty, I think all the folks that enjoy doing it have a God given First Amendment right to do it. And of course we can thank Al Goldstein for helping loosen some of the governments draconian and unconstitutional restrictions on free speech!!!!

Here in Arizona we still give life time prison sentences to people who look at dirty pictures. And of course in many parts of the world you can be still executed for saying something blasphemous about the official government religion.

Source

Al Goldstein, pornography pioneer and Screw magazine publisher, dies at 77

By Haimy Assefa and Ray Sanchez, CNN updated 4:37 PM EST, Thu December 19, 2013

(CNN) -- Al Goldstein, the foul-mouthed, cigar-chomping publisher of Screw magazine and pornography pioneer who helped move raunch into mainstream American life, died Thursday in New York. He was 77.

He is believed to have died of renal failure at a nursing home in Brooklyn, said his lawyer, Charles DeStefano.

Throughout his life, Goldstein fought to push the porn trade into mainstream acceptance by challenging the legal barriers against pornography under the First Amendment.

In 1968, he published Screw magazine, a smutty, offbeat publication full of political satire, DeStefano said.

The magazine caused an national uproar in 1973 when it printed nude photos of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The issue sold more than 500,000 copies.

Goldstein loathed authority and once published a doctored photo of a district attorney who was prosecuting a case against him along with the judge in the case. The pair was depicted in a sexually explicit manner even as the trial was ongoing, DeStefano said.

In 1984, Goldstein appeared before a congressional hearing on pornography.

The late Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) asked Goldstein whether it was the business of the state to stop pornographic pictures if those images caused the molestation of a child.

"I applaud your concern," Goldstein responded. "But 51,000 people died in car accidents last year. Alcohol contributed to that. Are you going stop the manufacture of automobiles or the cessation of the sale of liquor? What you're going to do is monitor [the sale] of liquor to minors. If somebody misuses something -- whether a knife or a car or pornography -- there are laws on the books to satisfy those concerns... But to deny those of us who handle it as an integrated part of our life is such a contradiction of the First Amendment and what we stand for that it's horrendous and repugnant to me."

For 30 years, Goldstein hosted his nude late-night talk show "Midnight Blue."

He had been described variously as arrogant, angry, gaudy and irreverent. He flipped the bird every chance he got. In fact, the back yard of his former Florida mansion was once adorned with an 11-foot statue of an extended middle finger.

The Brooklyn-born publisher lived life in extremes. He once enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, owned multiple properties and hobnobbed with celebrities, DeStefano said. In his later years, he lost practically everything and ended up homeless in New York.

Goldstein was sentenced to 60 days in jail in 2002 for threatening a former employee and leaving obscene messages on her answering machine.

In 2003, his business went bankrupt and he was later forced to sell an estate.

At one point, Goldstein was working at a greeter at a deli while sleeping in a backroom, said DeStefano, also a longtime friend.

The beginning of the end for Goldstein was a hip fracture two years ago, his lawyer said. He was obese and suffered from diabetes and mental health issues, according to DeStefano.

"He should be remembered as a man who had the guts to get in the face of his enemies," DeStefano said. "He was fearless."

People we've lost in 2013


Facebook pic of dangling dog leads to charges

Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down??? You know criminals that hurt people like robbers and rapists!!!

Source

Facebook pic of dangling dog leads to charges

Associated Press Thu Dec 19, 2013 8:21 AM

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A Greenville man has been charged with mistreating a dog after a photograph posted on Facebook showed the animal hanging over a balcony.

Police say 23-year-old Tyler Smith is charged with a violation of a city animal care ordinance. Smith faces up to $1,000 in fines and 30 days in jail if he is convicted of the misdemeanor.

It was not clear if Smith has an attorney.

The photo shows a tethered dog dangling off the balcony of a brick condo. A caption says the dog was lowered from the second-floor unit to let the dog use the bathroom.

Officer Johnathan Bragg said while it was raining last weekend the department got several messages stating that the dog was being let over the balcony with a leash.

"It was a harness around its body and around its neck," Bragg said.

The dog belongs to Smith's father, Bragg said.


Pastor defrocked after performing gay wedding

I guess if Jesus really existed he would be a homophobic jerk!!!!

Source

Pastor defrocked after performing gay wedding

Associated Press Thu Dec 19, 2013 10:13 AM

NORRISTOWN, Pa. — United Methodist church officials defrocked a pastor from central Pennsylvania on Thursday who violated religious doctrine by officiating his son’s gay wedding and then, after being suspended, defiantly refused to resign.

The Rev. Frank Schaefer met briefly with the Board of Ordained Ministry at church offices in suburban Philadelphia. Schaefer apparently made good on an earlier vow that he wouldn’t voluntarily surrender his credentials as ordered by a religious jury.

Officials had no choice but to terminate his ministerial office, church spokesman John Coleman said afterward.

“When asked to surrender his credentials as required by the verdict, he refused to do so,” Coleman said. “Therefore, because of his decision, the board was compelled by the jury’s decision to deem his credentials surrendered.”

Schaefer left the building without commenting. He planned to hold a news conference Thursday afternoon at a Methodist church in Philadelphia where an associate minister was defrocked in 2005 for being in a lesbian relationship.

Last month, a church jury suspended Schaefer for 30 days for performing the 2007 wedding of his gay son in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions are legal. Although the Methodist church accepts gay and lesbian members, it rejects the practice of homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching” and bars clergy from performing same-sex unions.

The issue has split the nation’s largest mainline Protestant denomination amid a rapid shift in public opinion. Same-sex marriage will soon be legal in 16 states, and opinion polls show that a majority of Americans now support it. Hundreds of Methodist ministers have publicly rejected church doctrine on homosexuality, and some of them face discipline for presiding over same-sex unions.

Critics say those pastors are sowing division within the church and ignoring the church’s democratic decision-making process. The denomination’s top legislative body, the 1,000-member General Conference, reaffirmed the church’s 40-year-old policy on gays at its last worldwide meeting in 2012.

Jurors who convicted Schaefer said he should use the suspension time to decide whether he could uphold the church’s Book of Discipline. If he decided he could not, he was told to give up his pulpit in Lebanon by Thursday.

Schaefer gave his answer publicly Monday during a news conference in Philadelphia, surrounded by dozens of sympathetic ministers and laity. Schaefer described the Book of Discipline as contradictory and biased against gay people, said he would not go quietly.

“I cannot voluntarily surrender my credentials because I am a voice now for many — for tens of thousands — of LGBT members in our church,” he said then.


Pastor gets 12 years for stealing $1.6M in loans, donations

Source

Pastor gets 12 years for stealing $1.6M in loans, donations

By Clifford Ward Special to the Tribune

6:16 p.m. CST, December 18, 2013

A pastor accused of using his minister’s garb as a thief dons a mask was sentenced today to 12 years in prison for stealing more than $1.6 million in loans and donations.

“Evidence shows the defendant put on the title and vestments of a pastor and went out into the community in the same way a robber puts on a ski mask and heads out into the night,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Shanti Kulkarni.

Howard Richmond, 53, of Naperville, told friends and followers they would be helping him build a mega church on Chicago’s west side. But he created fake financial documents to give his investors the impression that his church had millions of dollars in assets, authorities said.

Richmond, who ran a non-denominational Aurora storefront church called Life Reach Ministries, pleaded guilty in August to forgery and operating a continuing financial crime enterprise. He was also ordered to make $1.6 million in restitution, though authorities concede that his victims probably will not get their money back.

About two dozen people gave money to Richmond – one victim contributed $1 million – after hearing his church expansion plan. Many were promised huge returns on their money, which Richmond said would secure a multi-million dollar commitment from an Atlanta televangelist, Kulkarni said.

Richmond maintained that version when given the chance address the court with many of his victims watching. The Atlanta televangelist, he said, “snatched the carpet from underneath me” by withdrawing from the church expansion plan.

Judge Blanche Hill Fawell asked Richmond to explain examples of extravagances authorities detailed, such as a BMW car, a trip to Hawaii and thousands spent on clothes, jewelry and nights in a luxury hotel. Richmond offered vague explanations which prompted the judge to accuse him of talking in circles.

“You really haven’t answered my questions,” Fawell said.

“Can you ask me the questions again?” Richmond replied.

Among the witnesses was Rev. Neal Green, who ministers to a small west side Chicago congregation that meets in the basement of his house. Green said Richmond convinced him to sell real estate Green owned and then loan the proceeds to Richmond.

Green, 78, said he lost $1 million.

“I don’t see how a human being could do that to another human being,” Green said. “I’m living on welfare.”

triblocaltips@tribune.com Twitter: @TribLocal


FOS - Sheriff's special hiring program favored friends and relatives

Source

Honest they are not corrupt cops, they are "Friends of the Sheriff" or "FOS"!!!! I wonder if Sheriff Joe has a program like this!!!

Sheriff's special hiring program favored friends and relatives

By Robert Faturechi

December 18, 2013, 3:56 p.m.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca maintained a special hiring program that granted preferential treatment to the friends and relatives of department officials, including some candidates who were given jobs despite having troubled histories, according to interviews and internal employment records reviewed by The Times.

The program, known as "Friends of the Sheriff," has been in existence for at least eight years. Some high-ranking sheriff's officials injected themselves into the vetting process to lobby for favored job candidates, records show.

Among those hired was a man convicted of sexual battery, according to court records. His friend — and contact with the department — was Baca's driver. Another hired under the program was arrested last week on a federal weapons charge in connection with the FBI's corruption investigation in the sheriff's jails. His tie to the agency was his brother, a deputy.

Baca's nephew, Justin Bravo, became a deputy through the program in 2007, even after sheriff's investigators noted that he had allegedly been involved in theft and a fight with San Diego police and had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving and burglary, The Times reported this year.

Bravo, who did not respond to a request for comment, is now the subject of a criminal investigation into allegations that he abused an inmate.

Sheriff's officials have repeatedly denied that their friends, relatives and associates were shown favoritism in the hiring process. The department's watchdog, who examined the little-known hiring track in 2009, found no evidence that applicants "routinely received preferential treatment."

When presented with The Times' findings last week about the department's hiring of well-connected recruits, Baca's spokesman acknowledged that applicants were given advantages over others competing for jobs.

"They're moved to the front of the line," spokesman Steve Whitmore said. "They do get fast-tracked … because they've got a tradition and history with the department." Nonetheless, he insisted that the applicants were held to the same hiring standards as other recruits.

A day after Whitmore's comments, sheriff's officials told The Times the special hiring program was being eliminated and a policy was being drafted to prohibit top brass from lobbying lower-level background investigators on behalf of job applicants.

"The sheriff doesn't believe it's appropriate anymore. He's also worried about the message.... There's going to be allegations we give favoritism," said Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers, whose duties include overseeing personnel. "That argument could make some sense. I'll just leave it at that."

He said the department's own review found instances of well-connected applicants getting hired when they shouldn't have.

"I don't know if it was favoritism or incompetence or lack of due diligence," Rogers said.

The program marks the latest challenge for the nation's largest Sheriff's Department. Last week, 18 current and former deputies were charged by federal prosecutors in a jail abuse investigation. The Times reported this month that the department gave jobs to dozens of officers during a 2010 mass hiring even though sheriff's investigators found they had committed serious misconduct.

Baca, who is running for a fifth term, declined to be interviewed.

Whitmore said Baca knew vaguely about the separate hiring track but did not create it or operate it. Baca didn’t understand “all the ins and outs” of the program until the last few months, Whitmore added, and learned only this week that the program had been operating since 2005.

To handle all the applicants in the Friends of the Sheriff program, the department created a separate screening team and staffed it with veteran background investigators, officials said. The hope, they said, was that the experienced investigators would be able to resist any political pressure that department officials might try to exert on them.

Applicants were placed in the program after their department backer alerted the personnel division that one of their associates was applying. Candidates were put into the program after declaring they had a friend or relative in the department.

The records show that several candidates were listed as having Baca as their department connection.

Sheriff's officials said they did not know how many deputies had been given jobs through the Friends of the Sheriff program. The Times reviewed records showing that more than 270 applicants were screened through the program between 2005 and 2007.

The records listed the names of applicants and department officials they were connected with. . Some applicants were not hired despite their connections. The Times also had access to background investigations for some of the applicants.

Victoria Havassy, an outside psychologist who contracted with the county to help screen sheriff's job applicants, said she knew she was expected to treat an applicant differently when she saw a hiring file with a sticky note and the letters "FOS," for Friend of the Sheriff, written on it.

"We were supposed to consider that," she told The Times. "And I did."

Among other things, Havassy said she signed off on "Friend of the Sheriff" applicants with problematic work histories and behavior problems that would have gotten other job candidates rejected. Still, she said she refused to green-light applicants with more serious problems.

She said that soon after being told to lower her overall disqualification rate, which she did, she nonetheless was notified that the department would no longer be using her services. Havassy said she reached out to Baca for a meeting but received a phone call from his then-second-in-command, Larry Waldie, instead.

According to Havassy, Waldie told her: "Victoria, it's not always the numbers. It's who you disqualify."

The hiring records showed Undersheriff Waldie's involvement in the process. In one case, an applicant was noted as being disqualified over "falsification/illegal sex" issues. The man was "hired per U/S Waldie," the records state.

Waldie did not respond to a request for comment.

When 40-year-old David Chi applied for a job, his connection in the department was sheriff's Cmdr. Lynda Castro, internal records show. He was hired after failing to disclose being arrested years earlier by the Sheriff's Department on an outstanding warrant for suspicion of felony possession of a machine gun.

When confronted by a background investigator, Chi denied being arrested. "The applicant … informed me that it must be a mistake on the paperwork.... The applicant assured me that he had no recollection of ever being arrested on this warrant," the investigator noted in the hiring file.

After the background investigator located the arrest records, "the applicant admitted that indeed it was him and that he did not mention it during his background because he was embarrassed." Chi explained that he did community service after the arrest and got the case "dropped," so he felt he was not required to mention it, the records show. The Times found no records detailing the disposition of the case.

The department's hiring file shows that Castro personally met with a hiring lieutenant to advocate for Chi.

The commander "assured the Lieutenant that the applicant's failure to disclose his 1994 arrest was without malice and only due to the fact that he thought 'expunged' records were completely erased. She further stated that she has personal knowledge of the applicant's integrity and that he will be an asset to the Sheriff's Department," the records state.

Chi, who works as a deputy, did not return calls and an email seeking comment. Castro, who has since retired, could not be reached for comment.

Another applicant, Edward Gonsalves, got into the Friends of the Sheriff program through Eli Vera, a former sergeant who had the coveted assignment of being Baca's driver. Hiring records show that the Los Angeles Police Department rejected Gonsalves after investigators discovered he had been arrested in 1994 while he was a Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton.

Gonsalves was charged with felony rape of an unconscious person, court records show. He pleaded "no contest" to a lesser charge of misdemeanor sexual battery and was sentenced to a day in jail and three years' informal probation. In 1998, his request to have the case expunged was granted, the records show.

According to his account of the incident, which is documented in the hiring file, Gonsalves said he had met a woman at a party and the two ended up kissing and fondling one another. At some point, he said, he realized that she began to pass out because she had consumed too much alcohol. He said he had her friends take her home.

The next day, he said he called her friends to check on her, and they told him that she had gone to the hospital and that the police wanted to speak with him.

He told background investigators that he regretted not fighting the charge. He said his lawyer told him it would be expensive to go to trial.

Gonsalves was hired as a deputy. He could not be reached for comment.

Vera, now a station captain, would not comment on how he knew Gonsalves but described him as "an individual of pretty incredible character." Asked about the fact that the LAPD had rejected Gonsalves over the sexual battery incident, Vera said ,"That specific information I didn't know about."

"All I know about that young man," Vera said, "is he's the kind of person you want patrolling the streets."

Baca's spokesman had a different view on hiring an applicant with such a conviction on his record.

"It's obviously not right," Whitmore said. "It's obviously wrong."

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ben Poston contributed to this report.


Unions need to give the public a break

Source

Unions need to give the public a break

By George Skelton Capitol Journal

December 18, 2013, 5:34 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Even in deep blue California, where Democrats dominate, organized labor is losing public popularity.

That's a general statement, based on nonpartisan polling.

Specifically, public employee unions are tarnishing all labor, according to the pollster.

He pinpoints pension envy: public employees pulling down generous retirement benefits that private sector taxpayers began losing years ago. That's the long-term public gripe.

And recently in the traditional labor stronghold of the San Francisco Bay Area, voters have especially soured on unions because of two very annoying public transit strikes.

"When voters are thinking about labor, they're by and large thinking about public employees," says Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll. Government workers "have a certain amount of negative drag to them."

"Voters have been hearing about local government services being cut because of pension obligations, and that rubs them the wrong way."

That's compounded in the Bay Area — "ground zero for labor support," he says — by rail transit strikes.

A Field Poll released last week reported that voter views of labor unions statewide "have taken a decidedly negative turn over the past 21/2 years.... There has been a net 16-point swing in voter sentiment from the positive to negative side."

Voters were asked whether they thought labor unions do more harm than good, or vice versa. The response was negative: 45% more harm, 40% more good. But in March 2011, the outcome was the opposite: 46% good, 35% harm.

Queried about public employee unions specifically, 44% said they caused more harm, 39% more good. That's roughly the same finding as for all unions, and the pollster theorized voters were lumping public and private together.

Of California's nearly 2.7 million union members, 56% are public employees and 44% work in private enterprise.

In the Bay Area, voter attitudes about unions are still slightly positive: 45% to 41%. But in 2011 they were overwhelmingly upbeat: 50% to 30%.

There has been a striking deterioration in labor's popularity since Gov. Jerry Brown was governor the first time, back in the 1970s. Brown was the guy who empowered public employee unions by granting them collective bargaining rights.

In 1977, the Field Poll found that 51% of voters thought unions did more good than harm. Only 34% figured more harm.

My eyes really opened when I read what longtime labor supporter Willie Brown had to say in his weekly column Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Today's unions are not bucket lunchers," wrote the former state Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor, who now consults on how to influence politicians. "In fact, many of today's union members work for the government, which isn't the greatest place to engender goodwill with the public."

"Clearly," Brown continued, "public employee unions need to adjust their tactics. They can't pretend they're the 21st Century descendants of John L. Lewis, fighting to keep management from forcing them into indentured servitude....

"Public employees need to pull back from attacking management and start acting more like they work for the public."

But Brown predicted there's "not much chance" of transit workers being prohibited from striking — as state Senate Republican Leader Robert Huff of Diamond Bar advocates — because "public unions still have clout in Sacramento, thanks to their campaign contributions."

No question, labor is the most powerful interest in Sacramento. Little gets done over its objection, especially in an election year.

State and local public employee unions donated $2.7 million to legislative candidates during the 2012 elections, according to MapLight, a nonpartisan outfit that tracks political money. Police and fire unions also contributed about $2.7 million. Teachers unions kicked in $1.6 million. And the teachers pumped roughly $16 million into Brown's tax increase initiative.

Unions "continue to have this great power in getting their way," DiCamillo says. "They're still winning most of their battles, but in terms of the public, they may be losing the war."

Based on voter sentiment, 2014 might be a good time to place a public pension reform initiative on the ballot. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed is trying. He has drafted an initiative that would allow public agencies to negotiate reduced retirement benefits based on future work, but allow employees to keep the pensions already earned.

Last year, voters in San Jose and San Diego adopted pension reform plans by landslide margins.

"Cities all over the state are seeing services crowded out so they can pay for retirement costs," Reed told me. "Retirement costs have gone up and services have been squeezed. That's unsustainable."

Reed is waiting for the state attorney general to write an official title and summary for his proposal. Then he'll decide whether to circulate the measure for voter signatures to place it on the ballot.

Based on her past performance, Democratic Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris won't be doing Reed any favors in summarizing his measure for the public. Her wording may read like union propaganda.

Steve Smith, communications director for the California Labor Federation, says that public employees "are being scapegoated. There's no getting around the fact that many cities have mismanaged finances."

No question. And included in the mismanagement is promising employees retirements that the cities — and counties and special districts — can't afford.

When Californians turn against organized labor, that should be a clue for unions and their pet politicians to ease up on taxpayers and transit riders.

george.skelton@latimes.com


Woodstock residents rip inquiry of officer

Source

Woodstock residents rip inquiry of officer

By Dan Hinkel Tribune reporter

7:19 a.m. CST, December 18, 2013

A line of Woodstock residents came forward to blast city officials Tuesday night over the handling of a police officer who was the focus of a recent investigation into a text message sent to a 12-year-old girl.

City council members responded by saying they would continue to look into the city's approach to Sgt. Charles “Chip” Amati and any potential action they could still take.

The Tribune revealed Nov. 27 that Amati sent a text message this summer to his then-girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter reading, “Send me some sexy pictures!” according to a copy of the message.

Under questioning by Illinois State Police investigators, Amati, 48, also acknowledged that he had used a taxpayer-funded law enforcement database to research his girlfriend’s criminal record, a police report shows. Civil liberties advocates regard misuse of the database as an invasion of privacy and officers who use the system for personal reasons can be charged with official misconduct, a felony, state police said.

McHenry County prosecutors have not charged Amati with any crime. The Woodstock police and fire commission suspended him without pay for 30 days after considering a recommendation from Chief Robert Lowen. He can serve the suspension one day at a time, at the department's discretion, within a year, the chief said.

Several speakers at the Woodstock City Council meeting argued Amati's discipline was too light.

Tara Jenkins of Woodstock voiced displeasure that the city continues to pay Amati.

“He should be charged with a class three felony and he should not be on my community's police force,” she said.

A Woodstock blogger, Gus Philpott, said, “I really think it shouldn't take a public outcry for you all to stand up and do what's right.”

Responding to the speakers, Mayor Brian Sager gave a passionate condemnation of the officer's alleged behavior.

“You have a right to be disgusted, outraged and angry,” Sager said.

Other city council members said they were dissatisfied but noted the police and fire commission doled out the punishment. City Attorney Richard Flood said that the commission, not the city council, has legal authority to dole out serious officer discipline.

The issue caught fire on social media sites recently after a popular Twitter account labeled “Anonymous” — a name corresponding to that of a hacker collective known for taking up social causes — called for Amati’s firing. City officials were bombarded with phone calls and emails, and activists used Facebook to advertise protests Tuesday night in Woodstock.

A few people turned up at the meeting wearing the stylized Guy Fawkes masks associated with Anonymous.

The city has been issuing a response letter to those concerned about the situation, calling the text message “inexcusable, reprehensible and unacceptable” but saying the investigation showed the message represented an isolated incident. City officials pointed to Amati’s 24 years of service and previously spotless disciplinary record.

City officials also noted that prosecutors have not charged Amati, and authorities have not suggested the text message itself broke any law. McHenry County prosecutors have said the fact that the sergeant was likely to face workplace discipline factored into the decision not to charge him with any of the conduct the investigation revealed.

Last month, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Combs cited Amati’s work history and background, saying, “He'd been a police officer for a long time, and he made a mistake.” Amati had been responsible for coordinating the department’s use of the database the state police said he misused, though he has been relieved of that duty. Amati was also replaced as the agency’s spokesman.

Amati was not at Tuesday night’s meeting.

dhinkel@tribune.com


Mt. Soledad cross: Take it down

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Mt. Soledad cross: Take it down

By The Times editorial board

December 19, 2013

The Mt. Soledad cross has been handed yet another defeat in its long legal drama. A lower court ruled for the second time that the cross — a visually commanding religious symbol on government-owned land on a San Diego hilltop — violates constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state. Now the Supreme Court almost certainly will be asked to reconsider the issue. Though a previous opinion from the high court indicated a tolerance for such crosses, there is no getting around the fact that allowing such a clear symbol of Christianity to dominate a public landscape strongly implies a government preference for one religion over others. The cross should be taken down.

Attempts to remove the 59-year-old cross have been unfairly vilified as attempts to wipe all signs of religion from public spaces. Of course, crosses have a proper place on public land. One example is the large cross in a corner of Camp Pendleton that marks the site of the first baptism in California. In that case, history and religion are inextricably bound. The crosses that mark the graves of Christian war veterans are an appropriate way to honor both their service and their beliefs. But we doubt anyone would say that such a symbol belongs on the graves of Jewish or Muslim war dead. A cross is not a universal symbol for memorializing the dead. It is a Christian marker.

Yet in a 2010 case involving another cross on public land, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy oddly asserted in the majority opinion that the cross was not just a symbol of Christianity but a national emblem without particular religious meaning. "It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts … help secure an honored place in history for this nation and its people," Kennedy wrote. Often, yes, but that's because Christianity is the dominant religion in the U.S. and many veterans come from that religious background. It does not make the cross a universal or official symbol.

YEAR IN REVIEW: Highs, lows and an 'other' at the Supreme Court

A 2011 opinion on the Mt. Soledad cross by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenged Kennedy's line of thought. "Contrary to any popular notion, war memorials in the United States have not traditionally included or centered on the cross," wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown.

Last week's order by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns to remove the cross was stayed pending an appeal. But it clears the way for the case to go to the Supreme Court, where justices should rethink the disturbing suggestion that the symbol of one religion can now stand as the symbol of all Americans. If that's not governmental establishment of religion, what is?


Obama the oblivious

Hey, it' ain't about giving Americans low cost health insurance. Obamacare is a government welfare program for doctors and corporations in the medical industry, along with being a way for Democrats to trade votes for free medical care for poor people.

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Charles Krauthammer

Obama the oblivious

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: December 12

In explaining the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, President Obama told Chris Matthews he had discovered that “we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”

An interesting discovery to make after having consigned the vast universe of American medicine, one-sixth of the U.S. economy, to the tender mercies of the agency bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service.

Most people become aware of the hopeless inefficiency of sclerotic government by, oh, age 17 at the department of motor vehicles. Obama’s late discovery is especially remarkable considering that he built his entire political philosophy on the rock of Big Government, on the fervent belief in the state as the very engine of collective action and the ultimate source of national greatness. (Indeed, of individual success as well, as in “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”)

This blinding revelation of the ponderous incompetence of bureaucratic government came just a few weeks after Obama confessed that “what we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Another light bulb goes off, this one three years after passing a law designed to force millions of Americans to shop for new health plans via the maze of untried, untested, insecure, unreliable online “exchanges.”

This discovery joins a long list that includes Obama’s rueful admission that there really are no shovel-ready jobs. That one came after having passed his monstrous $830 billion stimulus on the argument that the weakened economy would be “jump-started” by a massive infusion of shovel-ready jobs. Now known to be fictional.

Barack Obama is not just late to discover the most elementary workings of government. With alarming regularity, he professes obliviousness to the workings of his own government. He claims, for example, to have known nothing about the IRS targeting scandal, the AP phone records scandal, the NSA tapping of Angela Merkel. And had not a clue that the centerpiece of his signature legislative achievement — the online Obamacare exchange, three years in the making — would fail catastrophically upon launch. Or that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose their private health plans.

Hence the odd spectacle of a president expressing surprise and disappointment in the federal government — as if he’s not the one running it. Hence the repeated no-one-is-more-upset-than-me posture upon deploring the nonfunctioning Web site, the IRS outrage, the AP intrusions and any number of scandals from which Obama tries to create safe distance by posing as an observer. He gives the impression of a man on a West Wing tour trying out the desk in the Oval Office, only to be told that he is president of the United States.

The paradox of this presidency is that this most passive bystander president is at the same time the most ideologically ambitious in decades. The sweep and scope of his health-care legislation alone are unprecedented. He’s spent billions of tax money attempting to create, by fiat and ex nihilo, a new green economy. His (failed) cap-and-trade bill would have given him regulatory control of the energy economy. He wants universal preschool and has just announced his unwavering commitment to slaying the dragon of economic inequality, which, like the poor, has always been with us.

Obama’s discovery that government bureaucracies don’t do things very well creates a breathtaking disconnect between his transformative ambitions and his detachment from the job itself. How does his Olympian vision coexist with the lassitude of his actual governance, a passivity that verges on absenteeism?

What bridges that gap is rhetoric. Barack Obama is a master rhetorician. It’s allowed him to move crowds, rise inexorably and twice win the most glittering prize of all. Rhetoric has changed his reality. For Obama, it can change the country’s. Hope and change, after all, is a rhetorical device. Of the kind Obama has always imagined can move mountains.

That’s why his reaction to the Obamacare Web site’s crash-on-takeoff is so telling. His remedy? A cross-country campaign-style speaking tour. As if rhetoric could repeal that reality.

Managing, governing, negotiating, cajoling, crafting legislation, forging compromise. For these — this stuff of governance — Obama has shown little aptitude and even less interest. Perhaps, as Valerie Jarrett has suggested, he is simply too easily bored to invest his greatness in such mundanity.

“I don’t write code,” said Obama in reaction to the Web site crash. Nor is he expected to. He is, however, expected to run an administration that can.

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.


Mansfield, Ohio, air base’s fate reflects a larger battle between active duty, Guard

Let's face it, government is almost always about cold hard cash!!!!

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Mansfield, Ohio, air base’s fate reflects a larger battle between active duty, Guard

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Published: December 16 E-mail the writer

MANSFIELD, Ohio — The four diminutive cargo planes parked on the National Guard air base in this Rust Belt town last year never would have been selected for a recruiting poster. Lacking the grace of a fighter or the girth of a freighter, the newly built twin-prop aircraft were the minivans of combat aviation — unsexy, utilitarian haulers of people and gear. But that didn’t matter to pilots and ground crews here. They loved the planes, as did troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not so the Air Force.

After spending almost $600 million to buy a tiny fleet of the planes over the past six years, stationing them in Mansfield and at two other National Guard bases, the Air Force flew all of them to a junkyard earlier this year. Five more planes, which the Pentagon already has paid for, will be mothballed as soon as they are built.

To Air Force leaders, it was all about economics. They deemed the small planes less efficient than larger, more commonly used transport aircraft.

To National Guard leaders in Ohio, how­ever, it was all about politics. The decision to get rid of perfectly good planes, they argue, was driven by a desire among active-duty Air Force leaders to shift the burden of budget cuts onto the National Guard.

With no planes at the Mansfield base, the Pentagon would no longer pay for it — or the jobs there. Local leaders howled, and the state’s congressional delegation confronted the Air Force. The ensuing battle, which escalated into an intense political dogfight in Washington, was an opening skirmish in what many federal and state officials predict will be the next big clash over defense spending.

As shrinking budgets force the military to thin its ranks, many active-duty leaders, seeking to protect their ilk, want the pain to fall disproportionately on National Guard and reserve forces. Guard and reserve leaders insist that their units should be spared — some even argue that they should be expanded — and that reductions should be concentrated on the active-duty contingent.

Although the dispute is rooted in money, it involves fundamental debates about states’ rights and the future of the modern military. In private conversations, officials on both sides cast the fight in existential, zero-sum terms. Active officers want to preserve today’s professional, volunteer force, built from the ashes of Vietnam, a force in which many officers and enlisted personnel spend two decades or more continuously in uniform, often acquiring specialized skills and deployment experience. National Guard officials want to protect the role of state-based militias, whose “citizen soldiers” provide a critical link to American society and act as a hedge against wars of choice.

“This debate is all about the question of what kind of military we Americans want,” said retired Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, a former chief of the National Guard Bureau. “Are they an expeditionary, foreign-legion force, or are they the defenders of our nation — the people we use to protect our nation’s vital interests?”

The path to an answer illustrates an essential challenge in cutting the nation’s defense budget. The Pentagon will have its say on how much could and should be trimmed, but others will as well. Local leaders, seeking to protect jobs, will weigh in, as will governors, who don’t want to lose their airplanes and helicopters. Members of Congress, who traditionally have sided with members of the Guard, will be the ultimate arbiters.

The battle is expected to intensify early next year. A congressional commission examining the role of Guard and reserve units in the Air Force is supposed to release its findings by February. The group’s chairman, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Dennis McCarthy, said in an interview that he thinks active forces need to shrink more than the Guard and reserves. Speaking in a personal capacity, he called Guard and reserve units the “most cost-efficient” part of the force, putting him at odds with some active-duty leaders.

An even more contentious fight is shaping up in the Army, which is facing pressure from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to make planned personnel cuts even deeper. Army leaders are likely to call for reductions in the Army National Guard, defense officials said, although they would not be as steep as those planned for the active force. Many state officials oppose the idea of any cuts to the Army Guard.

“There’s a lesson from Mansfield,” said a senior Pentagon official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity around the issue. “It’s not going to be easy — or pretty. In fact, it’s going to get ugly.”

‘The warning shot’

The Air Force first put Mansfield in its sights eight years ago.

Back then, Air Force leaders wanted to move a fleet of larger transport planes away from this base and shutter the National Guard unit here, the 179th Airlift Wing. When the plan was rejected by a national base-closure commission set up by Congress, the Air Force struck a compromise: It would remove the transport planes but find something else for the wing to do.

The replacement was a smaller plane that the Air Force never really wanted. The Army, looking for a faster and cheaper way than helicopters to move troops and supplies between big bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, had decided to buy a new plane called the C-27. Made in Italy, it looks like a smaller, two-propeller version of the C-130, the transport planes the Air Force had just transferred away from Mansfield.

Air Force strategists, however, didn’t see the service’s future as supporting troops fighting grueling counterinsurgency operations. They wanted to concentrate their resources on fielding sophisticated warplanes to address threats from China, North Korea and Iran.

The defense secretary at the time, Robert M. Gates, sought to broker a compromise by persuading the Air Force and the Army to jointly buy, train in and fly the plane. It appeared to be a model of cooperation — and detente. When it came time to find homes for the new C-27s, the Air Force put Mansfield atop the list.

After the planes arrived, the Air Force insisted on sole control of the fleet — and received it from Gates. The following year, the Air Force cut the number of C-27s it planned to buy from 78 to 38.

“That was the warning shot,” said Col. Gary McCue, the 179th’s commander. “They were coming after their own plane.”

A bald, broad-shouldered career aviator, McCue hoped the Air Force would change its mind after seeing the C-27 in action. A year later, in the fall of 2010, he deployed two of the planes in southern Afghanistan, working for an Army combat aviation brigade to ferry personnel and materiel. Although Army commanders gave the C-27 rave reviews, the Air Force was unmoved.

In January 2012, while some of the 179th’s pilots and planes were still in Afghanistan, the Air Force revealed its intention to send all the C-27s at Mansfield and two other Air National Guard bases to a sprawling desert parking lot for unneeded planes at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

Air Force leaders said the decision, which did not involve consultation with state Guard officials, was purely economic. Unlike the bigger C-130, the C-27 has a narrower range of uses. Those benefits, service officials said, did not justify the costs of maintaining the small fleet. Each plane in the force’s fleet adds to training and maintenance expenditures.

“It’s a less capable platform on the low end of the airlift spectrum,” said Michael Donley, the Air Force secretary at the time. “If we’re going to get smaller, we need to focus on multi-role aircraft, not niche aircraft.”

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff at the time, called it a “common-sense business decision.”

McCue and other officers in the Ohio Air National Guard maintain that the C-27 is far more efficient than the Air Force claims. But to him, the decision was never about money.

“It was parochial,” he said. “They didn’t want the Army to have them — and they didn’t want us to have them either.”

Air Force leaders, he thinks, “set us up to fail because they want to gut the Guard.”

‘Very, very lean’

To state leaders in Ohio, the 64-acre base on the western side of Mansfield’s municipal airport is an icon of efficient federal defense spending. Save for a tiny convenience store, there are none of the amenities found on full-scale Air Force installations — no bowling alley, movie theater or golf course. There are no enlisted barracks or stately homes for officers, just a dozen utilitarian buildings and a hulking hangar. Compared with active-duty bases, this compound is run by a skeleton crew: a core staff of 275 full-time airmen who live in nearby communities, augmented by 650 part-time Guardsmen who drill one weekend a month and two weeks a year.

“We’re the volunteer fire department of the Air Force,” McCue said. “We are very, very lean.”

Active officers acknowledge Mansfield’s frugality, but they note that the cost of operating scores of small Guard bases adds up. They contend that the Air Guard needs to consolidate in fewer, larger installations, where it would enjoy economies of scale. Ohio, for instance, has four air wings, each operating at different facilities.

That might make sense, Guard officials say, if today’s Guard were the Guard of the 1980s and ’90s: a bunch of weekend warriors who rarely deployed. In the post-9/11 years, however, the Guard has provided a substantial portion of the nation’s combat power in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 450,000 Americans serve in the Guard. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Guard members have been mobilized by the Army and the Air Force more than 750,000 times in support of overseas missions. For several months in 2005, more than half of all U.S. troops in Iraq were Guard members.

For units such as the 179th, their contributions to the Air Force extend beyond months-long deployments in war zones. Personnel from Mansfield routinely volunteer to fly whenever and wherever the Defense Department needs help hauling cargo. But unlike active members, Guard personnel receive their full wage — the same as an active member of equivalent rank — only when they are working or training. Their compensation shrinks when they take off their uniform.

Last year, the Air National Guard provided about a third of the Air Force’s overall combat and transport capacity — from flying patrols over the United States to conducting airstrikes in Afghanistan — for about 6 percent of the service’s overall budget. “That’s a great deal for America,” said retired Maj. Gen. Gus Hargett, president of the National Guard Association of the United States, an advocacy group that represents Guard members and state officials.

Because Guard members typically signed up to assist their states, and the nation, during emergencies — most have full-time jobs — the Defense Department has promised not to activate them more than once every five years. Active personnel, by contrast, can be deployed overseas once every three years or less.

That schedule provides another incentive for Air Force leaders to favor the active force. “It’s overly optimistic to think you can get the same availability with the reserves as you can with the active component,” said Schwartz, the former Air Force chief.

But Guard officials argue that they have been quick to help when asked. When the Air Force requested two Ohio Air National Guard KC-135 refueling tankers last year to support operations over Libya, the state made the planes — and the crews to fly them — available within 24 hours.

Guard members and reservists also bring unique professional knowledge to the fight. Some of the military’s most adept cyber-warriors are part-time soldiers who work for large technology firms, and many Air Guard pilots have been flying for decades as commercial aviators.

“They have life experiences that the average soldier or Marine hasn’t had yet,” said Blum, the former Guard bureau director.

Unlike active troops, who are clustered in and around a few dozen large military installations, Guard members are spread across the nation. Including them in military operations, he said, helps to build and sustain popular support.

Activating them is more difficult than issuing orders to active personnel — businesses and families get disrupted — but such a cost, Blum said, is a worthy check on those seeking to wage war. “It makes our political leaders ensure that what they’re asking these people to do is worth it,” he said. “It makes the decision to send them much harder — and it should be.”

A battle to save jobs

As soon as the Air Force announced its plans to junk the C-27, Mansfield went to battle stations.

Eight community leaders, including the president of the city’s largest bank and the publisher of the local newspaper, met in the mayor’s office to map out their defense. They concluded that advocating for the Guard’s efficiency — or the plane’s — to defend the nation wasn’t going to stoke a frenzy. They opted to make it personal.

“For us, it was a matter of saving jobs,” said John Brown, the president of Richland Bank. And Mansfield, the local leaders concluded, couldn’t afford to lose any more.

The city’s once-dominant employer, General Motors, shuttered its plant here two years ago, putting about 1,200 people out of work. The steel mill also has been shedding positions. Although the giant state correctional facility on the road to the airport has been adding guards — “The Shawshank Redemption” was filmed on the grounds of the old jail next door — city leaders didn’t want Mansfield, which sits halfway between Cleveland and Columbus, to be known only as a prison town.

They went back to the war plans they used in 2005 when the base first was targeted — banners and billboards proclaiming “Save the 179th” were erected around the city — but those mounting the fight also added new weapons. They urged residents to e-mail members of Ohio’s congressional delegation. More than 30,000 messages were sent — from a city with 50,000 residents.

“We got their attention,” said retired Guard Brig. Gen. Richard Green, a former legislative director for the National Guard Association who now lives in Mansfield and helped lead the effort.

Ohio’s two U.S. senators, Mansfield native Sherrod Brown (D) and Rob Portman (R), took up the cause. Portman grilled Air Force leaders Schwartz and Donley on their cost calculations for the C-27, their principal justification for cutting the plane. He cited Defense Department data showing that while in Afghanistan, C-27 pilots were asked to move only one pallet of cargo on 65 percent of their missions. Replacing the C-27s with larger planes that require more fuel to operate, Portman noted, would not be more efficient. “It leaves me with the feeling that you’re trying to get this analysis to match a budget decision,” he told them.

Then Mansfield got lucky. That August, the White House announced that President Obama had scheduled a campaign stop in the city and would be flying into the Mansfield base. Ohio was a swing state, and the downtrodden Mansfield area was a source of potential Democratic votes.

The day before the trip, a reporter asked White House press secretary Jay Carney whether Obama was aware that he would be landing at a base that was slated to be closed. Carney appeared flummoxed.

The next day, McCue waited on the tarmac to greet Obama. He planned to beseech the president to save his base. But the White House preempted him. By the time Obama touched down , the White House had announced that Mansfield would be receiving a “new mission.”

“It’s not by accident that we landed here,” McCue recalled Obama telling him.

During the week of the November 2012 general election, the Air Force revealed Mansfield’s “new” mission: It would receive C-130 transports — the same plane it had before the switch to the C-27.

The base was slated to receive eight C-130s — four more planes than it had when it was flying the C-27s — and the authorization to hire a few hundred more full- and part-time personnel to fly and service them.

“It would have been cheaper to have just left us with the C-27s,” McCue said. “But the Air Force, in its infinite wisdom, is now spending more on us.”

Lessons learned

In an attempt to mollify Congress and recoup some of what it shelled out for the C-27s, the Air Force has been seeking new owners for the planes. Last month, it announced that the Special Operations Command would take seven.

Air Force leaders say they have learned valuable lessons from the Mansfield fight. Instead of requiring top active-duty officers to sign nondisclosure agreements, the current service chief, Gen. Mark Welsh, has pledged to be more transparent with the Guard and reserves, and to consider input from state Guard leaders before making budget decisions that will affect them.

“We’ve taken a quantum leap forward” in communication, said Lt. Gen. Michael Moeller, the service’s deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs.

Earlier this year, Welsh convened three generals — one each from the active, reserve and Guard forces — to suggest ways for their components to improve relations. Their recommendations include removing legal restrictions on the ability of Guard and reserve personnel to train active airmen and increasing the number of Guard officers in the Air Force’s headquarters staff. It is only 3 percent today.

Welsh has agreed to accept some of the recommendations right away — but not all. “You can’t beam up a two-star air Guard general who has never had a staff tour before and expect him to work in Washington,” Moeller said.

The team’s most significant contribution, however, has been to provide Air Force leaders with new analytical tools to weigh the costs and benefits of changes to the mix of personnel and equipment. Among the factors they consider are “political viability” and the “institutional health” of the Air Force.

“It shows that we need each other,” said Maj. Gen. Brian Meenan, a reservist who flies long-haul jets for United Airlines. “There’s power in one Air Force with three components.”

The good feelings in Washington have not yet brought comfort to Mansfield. Guard officers here think the Air Force has responded with spite to the White House directive. The first three C-130s sent to the base are hand-me-downs from other states and are among the oldest in the fleet. On a recent afternoon, a team of mechanics was banging disconcertingly on the innards of an engine while another plane was taxiing for takeoff.

Once the plane lined up on a southwest-heading runway, Maj. Jeremy Ford pushed the four throttle levers forward, spinning the props to a deafening roar. The aircraft began rolling, slowly picking up speed. As Ford pulled back on the control stick, rotating for a steep 30-degree climb and then a sharp left turn, he reminded himself that he was no longer in a new C-27.

“Let’s see what the old girl can do,” he said.

After it took a brief loop over Mansfield’s rolling hills and a graceful touchdown, McCue, who was observing from the ground, said the antiquated planes worry him. Not because of their airworthiness, but because of where they are likely to fall on the Air Force’s next list of aircraft to junk. Three-decade-old C-130s, he said, “are a ripe target.”

“We’ve been set up to fail,” he said as he walked across his base. “This fight isn’t over. They’re coming after us again.”


2 sheriff's officials accused of recording encounter with FBI agent

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2 sheriff's officials accused of recording encounter with FBI agent

By Jack Leonard and Robert Faturechi

December 16, 2013, 9:57 p.m.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff's sergeants accused of lying to federal investigators secretly recorded a confrontation with an FBI agent outside the agent's home, a federal prosecutor said in court Monday.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Brandon Fox said Sheriff's Sgt. Scott Craig also left a voicemail for the agent's supervisor, saying the agent was named in a criminal complaint. Craig and Sgt. Maricella Long later went to the agent's home and told her she was going to be arrested as a result of the complaint, Fox said.

The sergeants are among seven sheriff's officials accused in an indictment of trying to stymie the FBI's probe into allegations of civil rights abuses and public corruption inside the county jail system. The indictment alleges that Craig and Long's claims to the agent that a declaration for a warrant for her arrest was underway were false.

All seven defendants face conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges. The indictment also accuses Craig and Long of making false statements to the FBI. Craig and Long, along with two other defendants, pleaded not guilty Monday. Two more entered not guilty pleas last week.

During the brief court hearing, Fox did not say how federal authorities obtained the sergeants' recording of the confrontation. Law enforcement officers, including sheriff's and FBI investigators, often covertly record interviews and interactions with witnesses or suspects.

In response to questioning by U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson, Fox gave new details about the origins of the alleged obstruction, which began after sheriff's officials discovered a cellphone on an inmate in August 2011. The FBI notified the Sheriff's Department that the cellphone belonged to federal investigators, but sheriff's officials were already discovering that for themselves, Fox said.

Using their contacts on federal law enforcement task forces, Fox said, sheriff's officials found out that one of the telephone numbers used by the inmate belonged to an FBI investigator. Sheriff's officials checked the recorded telephone conversations that the jails keep of inmate calls and found one in which an FBI agent told the inmate he would get his phone soon, Fox told the judge.

The inmate was moved to a high-security section of the jail, and the FBI went to visit him about two weeks after the phone was discovered, Fox said. Sheriff's officials "kicked the FBI out of the interview," then tried to hide the inmate from federal authorities, Fox told the judge. The inmate was moved to a station jail and the department's computer system was updated to falsely say that he had been released from custody, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorneys declined to comment following the hearing.

Later Monday, a judge released the seventh deputy, James Sexton, on bond but allowed him to keep two firearms for his protection after Fox said prosecutors believed it was an appropriate request.

After the hearing, Fox said other defendants in the case have not been allowed to have firearms but declined additional comment. Sexton's attorney, Thomas P. O'Brien, the former U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, declined to comment.

Sexton, the son of Chief Ted Sexton, said in a retaliation lawsuit filed against the department earlier this year that he spoke to federal investigators and testified before the grand jury.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

robert.faturechi@latimes.com


Tempe teen-sex sting by MCSO nets 30 arrests

Don't these pigs have any real criminals????

So it's a "felony" to solicit an imaginary teenage prostitute??? Is it also a felon to solicit an imaginary prostitute who's imaginary age is 18 or over??? Or is that just a simple misdemeanour???

Source

Tempe teen-sex sting by MCSO nets 30 arrests

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 18, 2013 6:06 AM

The online ads looked about the same as dozens of others on a website promoting “adult services,” but these girls, according the ads, were young.

When men got in touch, they quickly learned the girls were 16 years old — some were described as runaways, others were said to be siblings of older women who make a living working as prostitutes — but the girls’ ages did little to deter the most determined of their potential clients.

Dozens agreed to go to a Southeast Valley hotel to meet the teenagers and exchange money for sex. Thirty men showed up to the room and laid their money on a dresser after again affirming the girls’ ages and the purpose of the trip.

But as soon as the two girls went into the bathroom to get ready, their clients were greeted by a half-dozen Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies with guns drawn. The “girls” were detectives, and the men were arrested on felony charges of soliciting sex with a minor during a recent undercover sting by the Sheriff’s Office targeting prostitution, drug activity and sex crimes.

“I’ve been in law enforcement over 50 years — nothing surprises me,” Sheriff Joe Arpaio said. “But this is somewhat sad when you look at the background of people soliciting sex from teenagers.”

One of the suspects, 54-year-old Jerry Marfe, worked as a chemistry teacher at Betty H. Fairfax High School in Laveen. He was told that one of the girls was at cheerleading practice when he called the number on the ad just before 3:30 p.m. on a Friday in early December, according to court documents.

Marfe arrived at the hotel less than an hour later, records said.

“While in the hotel room, (the officers) made Marfe aware that they were only 16 years old. Marfe still agreed to pay them $160 in exchange for regular sexual intercourse and oral sex,” according to court records. “Marfe requested that (an officer) wear her cheerleading outfit.”

Marfe was the only teacher arrested. The other suspects ran the gamut of ages and occupations.

Some told officers they were getting married soon or having trouble with their wives.

It was not clear Tuesday if Marfe was still employed at Betty H. Fairfax. Phoenix Union High School District representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The cases have begun making their way through the court system, where the recent focus on the sex trafficking of minors — which has seen a host of politicians, including Gov. Jan Brewer and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, take a stand against the crimes — is tempered by the quest for efficient justice.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who served on Brewer’s human-trafficking task force that recommended tougher penalties for soliciting sex from minors, declined to comment on the sting because the cases are still being prosecuted.

Former Sunflower Farmers Market CEO Michael Gilliland was caught in a similar sting in 2011 and last year pleaded guilty to attempted pandering. Gilliland was sentenced to 30 days in jail and one year of probation.

The sheriff’s recent operation was not limited to targeting child predators: Investigators made 21 arrests on drug-related charges and recovered 32 pounds of methamphetamine, nearly 500 pounds of marijuana and about $35,000 in cash during the 12-day detail.

Detectives also made 18 arrests at adult businesses in the area for unlicensed employees, according to the Sheriff’s Office.


Ex-Tempe officer’s father alerted authorities of new threats from son

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Ex-Tempe officer’s father alerted authorities of new threats from son

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Dec 17, 2013 7:48 PM

A former Tempe police officer’s father called Gilbert police on Monday afternoon from Minnesota to report that his son had made new threats to kill his ex-wife’s husband, motivating Gilbert officers to issue an all-points bulletin asking police throughout the state for help in locating the ex-cop, officials said Tuesday.

Garrett Peterson, who received glowing views from his supervisors during his seven years as a Tempe patrol officer, eventually was taken into custody after a pursuit with the state Department of Public Safety and a collision on Interstate 8 with a tractor-trailer truck about 40 miles west of Yuma.

Police were relieved that no one was injured in the pursuit on Monday, or the high-speed pursuit early Saturday morning in the east Valley, when Peterson was initially accused of threatening to kill his ex-wife, their children and her husband.

Peterson “definitely made threats to his parents, which they relayed to us,” said Sgt. Jesse Sanger, a Gilbert police spokesman. “We needed to move on it fast. We had no idea where he might be.”

The latest pursuit in western Arizona started after Peterson’s father called Gilbert police shortly before 2 p.m. Sanger said it was fortunate that the U.S. Border Patrol spotted Peterson’s car only about a half hour after the bulletin was issued.

After the crash, Peterson was treated for his injuries and held in Yuma, this time on a $1 million bond on suspicion of four counts of endangerment, aggravated assault, unlawful flight from law enforcement, and criminal damage. Officer Carrick Cook, a DPS spokesman, said charges could be added depending on the result of Peterson’s blood-alcohol test.

He had been released from a Maricopa County Jail earlier on Monday after his parents posted a $10,000 bond, and he was placed on house arrest.

But police quickly determined Peterson was not at his Chandler apartment and was violating the terms of his release. On Monday morning, Tempe police went to the apartment to serve Peterson with paperwork informing him that they were launching an internal affairs investigation, said Sgt. Mike Pooley, a Tempe police spokesman.

When Peterson did not answer the door, police reached him on his cellphone. At that point, the discredited officer resigned, and Pooley said it sounded as if Peterson had been drinking. He also told Tempe police that he had a gun.

“He sounded intoxicated and we didn’t know if he was inside or not,” Pooley said, so Tempe police called Chandler police and asked them to check on Peterson’s welfare because it was a Chandler address. Chandler police did not find Peterson, either.

Despite his recent legal problems, Peterson was praised for doing thorough investigations, writing good reports and consistently showing initiative during his police career.

In a June 2011 review, a supervisor wrote, “my observations over the last year have shown Officer Peterson is a reliable employee with a strong work ethic, who has demonstrated a willingness to learn and be proactive in his approach to policing.”


The biggest Pinocchios of 2013

Sadly politicians are as well know for the lies they make up to get elected as cops are for committing perjury to frame people they consider scumbags for crimes.

Of course in both cases government is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.

Source

The biggest Pinocchios of 2013

By Glenn Kessler

December 16 at 6:00 am

It’s time for our annual round-up of the biggest Pinocchios of the year. This was not a presidential election year, so in some ways the subjects that needed to be fact checked were more substantive. In reviewing The Fact Checker’s more than 200 columns in the past year, we found an interesting evolution from statistics about gun violence to claims about President Obama’s health-care law. Our general rule of thumb held: the more complex a subject is, the more tempted politicians are to make misleading claims.

President Obama ended up with three of the most misleading claims of the year. But, despite the urging of some readers, his statement that “I didn’t set a red line” on Syria is not among them. We had looked closely at that claim and had determined that, in context, it was a bungled talking point, so that statement actually earned no rating.

As always, that and other rulings were met with vehement objections from some readers. The Fact Checker thanks the readers who have offered thoughtful rebuttals to our conclusions. In some cases, in light of new information, we adjusted Pinocchio ratings.

In compiling this list, we primarily focused on claims that had earned four Pinocchios during the year. We also tried to focus on issues of broad interest, such as gun control, health care and the size of government. To keep it simple, we have shortened the quotes in the headlines. To read the full column, click on the link embedded in the quote.

“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it.”

This memorable promise by President Obama backfired on him when the Affordable Care Act went into effect and millions of Americans started receiving cancellation notices. As we explained, part of the reason for so many cancellations is because of an unusually early (March 23, 2o10) cut-off date for grandfathering plans — and because of tight regulations written by the administration. This was our most popular fact check of the year — and Obama’s pledge also was also named PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year.”

SNIP

“I opposed the invasion of Iraq”

At least twice in 2013, Secretary of State John F. Kerry claimed that he opposed the invasion of Iraq. But not only did he vote in favor of a congressional authorization for war, but there is a rich paper trail documenting his repeated support for the attack after President George W. Bush launched it in 2003. As Kerry put it on May 3, 2003: “I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.” This is another example of after-the-fact historical revisionism.

SNIP


Widow ‘protected’ into the poorhouse gets some of her money back

Remember, government is protecting your rights!!!! [But don't count on much protection! Hell, don't count on ANY protection!!!]

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Widow ‘protected’ into the poorhouse gets some of her money back (finally)

The elderly widow wasn’t asking for much. Just a little protection so she could live out her life as she’d planned.

So that she could go out to lunch with friends or buy a new hat or new teeth.

Instead, Marie Long was protected right into the poorhouse. In just four years, the woman who came into Probate Court with $1.3 million in assets was left penniless, her life savings sucked up by the very people appointed to watch over her — all as the judge looked on.

Or away, more likely.

As a result of what happened to Marie Long, laws were changed and reforms were enacted in the hope of better protecting the most vulnerable among us.

All that is, except for Marie.

Now, at long last — and with no thanks to the courts —Marie Long, at 92, has a little of her own back.

“She should have enough to live a decent life,” her longtime attorney, Jon Kitchel, told me.

I first met Marie in October 2009, not long after she was moved into a Phoenix nursing home that accepts welfare clients. She was soft-spoken and at a loss for words as to how she had come to such a fate.

Marie had no children to look after her in her old age. Her daughter died of cancer long ago at age 16. The following year, her 20-year-old son was killed in Vietnam. When her husband, Cliff, died in 2003, Marie was in good financial shape.

But a stroke in 2005 and a family dispute over where and how she would live landed Marie under the “protection” of Maricopa County’s Probate Court.

By 2009, her $1.3 million estate was gone, much of it sucked up by attorneys and fiduciaries under the not-so-watchful eye of then-Commissioner Lindsay Ellis.

Ellis ruled that those attorneys and fiduciaries were justified in helping themselves to more than $1 million of Marie’s money. She lambasted Marie’s lawyers — Kitchel, Pat Gitre and Marie’s nephew Dan Raynak, people who for years volunteered their services to help Marie as her accounts dwindled.

Ellis wrote that their “venomous” attacks challenging the six-figure bills forced the fiduciaries and lawyers on the other side to defend themselves.

With Marie’s money, naturally.

Later, we learned that Ellis, through her judicial assistant, sent advance copies of her ruling to select attorneys — the ones who wound up with Marie’s money.

Two courts found that Ellis acted unethically, but that, they wrote, didn’t mean she was biased. The Arizona Court of Appeals called what happened to Marie “inexcusable.”

Then, it did nothing to fix it.

Instead, the courts left the bulk of Ellis’ ruling intact, approving $840,000 of the fees and ordering a retrial on the remaining bills.

The biggest remaining question: Was the law firm of Frazer Ryan Goldberg & Arnold justified in collecting $230,000 from Marie in 2009?

In recent weeks, Frazer Ryan and others awaiting court approval of their fees reached a confidential settlement with Marie. It’s believed to be the second such settlement in the case, the first involving the now-defunct Sun Valley Group, which collected $430,000 from Marie.

Kitchel said he couldn’t tell me how much of Marie’s money has been refunded. But it will be enough, he says, to get her off welfare and give her financial independence.

“She’s going to be just fine,” he told me.

Not only will she be just fine, but others should be, as well. As a result of public attention to Marie’s experiences, vulnerable people are better protected when they go to Probate Court.

It’s now easier for wards to get rid of fiduciaries they don’t like. For years, fiduciaries basically ran Probate Court, and if you tried to fire them, they got to spend a good chunk of your money fending you off.

In addition, Kitchel says, court accountants are no longer rubber-stamping the accounts but looking for padded billings. Judges are now looking out for the long-term sustainability of estates.

“The attitude has changed, and I think that the courts are pretty sensitive to the light being shined on them,” Kitchel said. “I think that they’re doing things differently now and people are more sensitive than they were in the past, sensitive to how much is being charged to the cases.”

Sensitive, finally, to little old ladies like Marie.

A one-time millionaire who can now, after four years of probate-induced poverty, buy herself lunch.

(Column published Dec. 18, 2013, The Arizona Republic.)


NSA is violating 4th Amendment

Source

NSA is violating 4th Amendment

The National Security Agency collecting and storing the phone records of virtually every American probably violates the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, according to Judge Richard Leon.

Leon’s preliminary injunction against the program, which he stayed in anticipation of an appeal, is arguably an overreach by a district court judge. But Leon is right that the program violates the 4th Amendment, properly understood.

The 4th Amendment says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The government needs “probable cause” to require the production of documents or property and the request has to be specific and particularized.

Obviously, the NSA program comports with none of this. The NSA demands the phone records of every American resident and stores them for five years. There is no specific request for particular records, nor any probable cause demonstrated before demanding that they be produced.

Supposedly there needs to be some connection to terrorism before the database of phone records is searched. But, according to Leon’s opinion, NSA has decided that on its own. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the production of records and general rules regarding accessing them, but not usually the decision of the NSA to search them in particular cases.

The NSA doesn’t have the content of phone calls. Intercepts fall within a different program. But it does have, at a minimum, which phone numbers called which other phone numbers and how long the phone conversation lasted.

The argument that this is constitutional rests on a 1979 Supreme Court decision, Smith v. Maryland, in which the court decided that an individual didn’t have a 4th Amendment protection for records produced and held by the phone company.

This was always a bad decision. Just because records are created in the course of commercial transactions and held by third parties doesn’t make them any less personal “papers and effects” intended to be protected by the 4th Amendment. Are medical records held by doctors not personal records of the patients? Are banking records not the personal records of the customers? How are phone records held by the telephone company any different?

In one of its unhelpful judge-made rules, the Supreme Court has said that the 4th Amendment applies if there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. That’s a dilution of what the 4th Amendment actually says. But there’s a simple test to demonstrate that the expectation of privacy applies here.

If I went to your telephone carrier and asked to see a record of every call you made and received for the last five years, undoubtedly you would regard that as a gigantic invasion of privacy and be outraged if the carrier complied. The 4th Amendment is intended to give the government no greater right to such personal information without a demonstration of probable cause to an independent magistrate.

Now, district court judges are supposed to follow precedent. Leon arguably overstepped in declaring Smith outdated. But he’s right.

At issue in Smith was a single request for the calls made from a single phone as part of a criminal investigation. The court was wrong that a search warrant wasn’t necessary. Regardless, that’s a far different question than collecting the phone records of every American and storing them for five years.

There isn’t a terrorism exception to the 4th Amendment. Nevertheless, the most startling revelation of the Leon decision is that the government couldn’t produce a single example where the bulk collection of phone records thwarted an imminent terrorist plot.

I believe that the NSA bulk phone records program also violates the Patriot Act, which enhanced the government’s snooping authority, but only in pursuit of specific leads of specific terrorist activities. One of its co-authors, Rep. James Sennenbrenner, agrees and is sponsoring legislation to prohibit NSA’s bulk collection of domestic data.

Congressional action would be preferable to waiting for this or some other case to wend its way to the Supreme Court. But, if necessary, the courts need to uphold the integrity of the 4th Amendment.


College Police Forces Increasingly Expand Reach

This is why the cops love the war on drugs. It gives them an easy way to make themselves look like heroes by arresting people for victimless drug war crimes.

All you have to do is illegally stop and search 100 people and you are bound to find one or two of them with drugs one them which will result in an easy arrest and a slam dunk conviction [Hey, the jury almost always believes the lie the cops tell them that the people arrested voluntary submitted to the illegal search!!!]. Of course most of the cases never make it to the court, because they are plea bargained down.

Source

College Police Forces Increasingly Expand Reach

WASHINGTON December 17, 2013 (AP)

By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press

Associated Press

The police officers who patrol America's colleges are empowered these days to do far more than respond to campus emergencies.

Campus police around the country are increasingly expanding their jurisdiction beyond the school and into the surrounding neighborhoods, blurring a town-gown divide that colleges say is arbitrary when it comes to crime. Proponents say the arrangement allows schools to keep closer tabs on students who misbehave off-campus — making it easier to refer them for disciplinary proceedings, if necessary — and gives university officers greater flexibility to investigate campus crimes committed by community members. It can also ease the workload of resource-strapped municipal police departments.

"It used to be we were responsible for the campus. Now there's an expectation, I think, especially with parents, but to a large extent among students, that we're also responsible for these areas off campus," said Jeff Corcoran, interim chief of the University of Cincinnati police force, where officers patrol areas near the school. "We're getting pushed to ignore those imaginary lines on the map and be more proactive in that area."

Still, a proposed expansion of authority has stirred concerns in Washington, D.C., where residents say university police don't have the same level of training or transparency requirements as the city police. Campus police officers in the city have arrest powers on campus but participate in a separate, shorter training academy. And because private colleges generally aren't compelled by public records law to release the same information as public institutions and government agencies, some are concerned about a lack of accountability to the city and its residents.

"If one of their policemen acted inappropriately, there would be hardly any recourse. We'd have no information, no follow-up," said Ken Durham, a longtime resident of Foggy Bottom, the neighborhood that encompasses George Washington University, part of a consortium of schools mulling broader authority for their police.

Added Marina Streznewski, president of the Foggy Bottom Association, "Expanding the police powers of a university police force without some kind of clear and transparent mechanism is a really bad idea."

The discussion is part of a bigger debate among universities about what type of powers their police forces should have. It also comes as the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the Penn State child sex abuse case have focused public attention on campus crime and on universities' obligation to report criminal acts under the federal Clery Act.

In recent weeks, authorities investigated reports of a possible gunman in separate incidents at Yale, the University of New Haven and American University in Washington, D.C. Also, four buildings at Harvard were evacuated after police received an email claiming explosives were inside. There were no injuries in any of the incidents. A person was arrested in connection with the University of New Haven scare and weapons were recovered, authorities said.

As colleges and universities consider how best to safeguard the community, several have recently weighed whether to arm their officers — a debate that inevitably resurfaces after cases like the shooting this month of a Texas college student by a campus police officer during a traffic stop.

It's not uncommon for campus police to have mutual aid agreements governing their relationship with local law enforcement, laying out the geographic boundaries of their authority and the circumstances under which they can make off-campus arrests.

But some universities are hiring additional officers to cover extra off-campus ground themselves. The primary purpose is to respond to complaints from or about off-campus students, but in many cases the officers hold the same law enforcement authority as municipal police and can arrest people, such as drunk drivers near campus, with no university affiliation.

Schools with a police presence in the community say the arrangement lets them better deal with off-campus misbehavior that may be better resolved through conversation, or disciplinary sanctions, than arrest.

Police at the University of Maryland in College Park, which stretched its jurisdiction even farther into the city this fall to encompass an influx of new student housing and expanded the student code of conduct to those areas, addresses neighbor concerns by making visits to off-campus student homes that have hosted repeat parties. Prince George's County Police Chief Mark Magaw says it's a welcome change from the days when the "university would not do anything — absolutely nothing — off their property."

"A lot of times it's almost restorative justice. You bring the community in, the community gets to know the students, the students get to know the residential homeowners," said university Police Chief David Mitchell.

Eastern Michigan University police committed two officers to patrol areas north of campus this fall after a university football player was killed at an off-campus apartment, and last month announced it would hire even more officers to help with those patrols.

DePauw University's expanded jurisdiction means police can conclude their own investigations into campus theft without having to hand the probe over to municipal law enforcement once the case crosses community boundaries, said vice president for student life Cindy Babington. The university police stretched its reach into Greencastle, Ind., following 2011 state legislation that gave campus police broader authority.

"Our police could only get so far. They weren't able to get the search warrant and see if the community members they sought had done this, had the property," she said. "So now they're able to complete the investigations themselves."

Tulane University recently expanded police jurisdiction to a one-mile perimeter beyond campus and its officers share a radio system with New Orleans police and participate in joint strategy sessions.

In Washington, a consortium of schools is contemplating giving campus police broader geographic authority. A proposal under consideration would extend university police jurisdiction to streets running through campus and to the sidewalk across the street from campus. Those boundaries would conform to the campus definition in the Clery Act, which requires schools to provide crime statistics for the area on and around campus.

"It is the thinking of our police chiefs that, right now, we report that activity as a crime on campus but we're not empowered to intercede," said Sally Kram, spokeswoman for the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area.

Though the proposal would give campus police responsibility for a broader swath of territory, Kram said there's been no discussion about seeking arrest authority off campus. Campus police are legally hamstrung now from making off-campus arrests, except when they're in active pursuit of a suspect for a crime that originated on campus,

But many residents around George Washington University have expressed opposition, raising concerns about training and professionalism and noting that private universities don't have the same legal requirement to provide detailed crime information as city police departments. GW, for instance, says while incident reports are used in criminal prosecution and are available by subpoenas in lawsuits, they are not generally made public.

"There are many people in the neighborhood who will make an assumption that a house full of young people of a ... certain age are students and they may not be," said Streznewski of the Foggy Bottom Association. "It gets really sticky when some of the people in the house are students and some aren't."

No formal proposal has been made, and details are still being worked out.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson is non-committal, saying while he understands university officers want authority to respond to off-campus complaints, he's concerned they don't have the same level of training on issues like mental health crises and use-of-force.

"I think we need to understand what exactly the campus police want and why, and what limitations would be appropriate," Mendelson said.

—————

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP


The NSA vs. the Constitution

Hey, the problem is with CONGRESS. The NSA didn't pass the unconstitutional Patriot Act, Congress did!!!

Nobody in Congress is demanding that everyone in involved in the NSA crimes be fired and put in prison. Sadly most of our Congressmen seem to support the Patriot Act because of the votes it gets them from the police and military industrial complex.

As H. L. Mencken said

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

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The NSA vs. the Constitution

The Supreme Court should bring the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches into the digital age.

By The Times editorial board

December 18, 2013

Six months after Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was indiscriminately collecting the phone records of Americans and holding on to them for years for possible use in terrorism investigations, a federal judge has rightly ruled that the program probably violates the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

In a powerful opinion released Monday in Washington, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon castigated what he called an "almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States." Yet Leon also noted that the government had not cited "a single instance" in which the data had stopped an imminent attack.

Leon is only one judge, and his opinion differs from conclusions reached by other judges regarding the legality of the NSA's bulk collection of metadata: information about the source, destination and duration of telephone calls. Even as he granted the plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction, he stayed his ruling pending an appeal by the government because of "the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues." So this was hardly the last word.

YEAR IN REVIEW: Highs, lows and an 'other' at the Supreme Court

Nonetheless, Leon's opinion is significant because it takes on — and effectively refutes — the government's principal argument for the constitutionality of the program: that under a 1979 Supreme Court decision, individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in information they turn over to third parties such as telephone companies. In that case, police, over a brief period, had used a device known as a pen register to determine that a suspect was dialing a particular number. That operation, Leon noted, "in no way resembles the daily, all-encompassing, indiscriminate dump of phone metadata that the NSA now receives."

Moreover, Leon argued, the court in 1979 couldn't have anticipated the explosion in the use of cellphones and the quantity and nature of the personal information they generate. "Put simply," he wrote, "people in 2013 have an entirely different relationship with phones than they did 34 years ago."

At least some members of the Supreme Court recognize that the doctrine of privacy developed in the 1970s needs to be reexamined. Last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court's current approach to privacy was "ill-suited to the digital age." If a federal appeals court were to endorse Leon's sound reasoning, the Supreme Court would have an opportunity to bring its interpretation of the 4th Amendment into the 21st century.


Is 1976 Robbery Legally Relevant to NSA Spying?

Source

Is 1976 Robbery Legally Relevant to NSA Spying?

WASHINGTON December 18, 2013 (AP)

By LARA JAKES AP National Security Writer

Associated Press

In 1976, a Baltimore purse-snatcher got nabbed after crank-calling his victim. And that case laid the legal groundwork for today's worldwide government surveillance of telephone records in the name of protecting the U.S. from terrorists.

Since the earlier case, a federal judge now says, the government has gone too far.

It may well take a Supreme Court ruling to settle whether the case involving one suspect's phone calls three decades ago applies to global government surveillance.

In the Baltimore case, the Supreme Court concluded the government was allowed to collect the purse-snatcher's phone records to tie him to the crime.

The National Security Agency has argued that people forfeit privacy rights when they voluntarily give their phone numbers and Internet IDs to businesses.


Legal arguments start after US judge rules NSA data grab unconstitutional

Sadly the road to tyranny has been paved with a number of trivial case like this where the Supreme Court flushed the Bill of Rights down the toilet in minor steps.

Two other cases are Terry v Ohio and Hiibel v Nevada!

The cops routinely use Terry V Ohio to flush the 4th Amendment down the toilet and illegally search people for drugs under the guise they are looking for weapons. It's odd when a cop claims he has found a cold, hard metal object on a person that feels like a gun and lo, and behold when the cop pulls it out of the guys pocket it turns out to be a soft bag of marijuana leaves in a plastic baggie. Of course the charges are never thrown out when the suspects claims that a soft, pliable bag of marijuana doesn't feel anything like a gun and the cop probably made that up.

Same for Hiibel v Nevada which flushes the 5th Amendment down the toilet and requires you to tell the police your name under certain circumstances.

Source

Legal arguments start after US judge rules NSA data grab unconstitutional

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 18 December, 2013, 9:31pm

UPDATED : Wednesday, 18 December, 2013, 9:51pm

Associated Press in Washington

Michael Lee Smith just couldn't let it go. After snatching Patricia McDonough's bag near her Baltimore home, he started calling her with threats. In one call, McDonough was asked to stand on her porch, where she spotted a car that she believed was used by her robber. Police also saw the car in the neighbourhood, and ran its licence plate number to eventually find Smith.

But that still wasn't enough to link Smith to the crime, so police in the city on America's eastern seaboard asked the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company to record numbers dialled from his home. A week after the robbery, someone from Smith's house called McDonough, giving police enough probable cause to obtain a warrant to search his home. During the search, police found a phone book that was earmarked on the page that listed McDonough's name and number. Smith was arrested, and McDonough picked him out in a line-up.

This small-time case of a Baltimore bag-snatcher, which dates back to 1976, laid the legal groundwork for today's worldwide US government surveillance of telephone records in the name of protecting Americans from terrorists.

The Supreme Court eventually heard the case of Michael Lee Smith, ruling that the government was allowed to collect his phone records to tie him to the purse-snatching. And since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the National Security Agency (NSA) has used that case to justify the collection of "metadata" - the duration of calls and the phone numbers used to make and receive them - of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

But a federal judge and even the prosecutor who pressed for Smith's conviction say the government has gone too far. Now, it may well take a new Supreme Court ruling to settle whether the Baltimore case more than three decades ago can apply to global government surveillance.

"To say that a small-time robbery on the street is a precedent for what was then unforeseen and massive electronic surveillance is simply a stretch, to put it mildly," says former Maryland attorney general Stephen Sachs, who defended the government's use of phone records to arrest and convict Smith during an argument in front of the Supreme Court. The court sided with him in a 5-3 ruling in 1979.

"For present purposes, you have to say that the trapping of information from one suspect is different, for God's sake, than trapping the data of every American who uses a telephone or the internet," Sachs says. "There's a distinction of volume, of context. But that's what the Supreme Court is going to have to decide."

Throughout his trials and appeals, Smith challenged the state's seizing his telephone records without a warrant. Courts repeatedly upheld his conviction, finding that because he knowingly used the phone company to connect his calls to McDonough's home, he had effectively given information to a third party independent of the case. And once he had done that, courts ruled, he had no reasonable right to expect the records of his phone calls to remain private.

During the 1978 Supreme Court arguments, Sachs said the legal standard in Smith's case was the same as in the days when telephone operators would place calls for clients.

"In the old days, you called an operator. My argument was, you don't have the expectation of privacy because you always gave up your information when you made a call," Sachs says.

That legal standard was accepted as recently as last month, when senior US district judge Jeffrey Miller in San Diego ruled that the NSA's collection of telephone records was constitutional in a case that linked a phone number in California to one used by a suspected operative for a Somali terror group.

The NSA says it does not listen to the content of the calls, nor does it read internet messages without specific court approval on a case-by-case basis. It says it does, however, collect and store records of the time and date calls are made, how long they last, and the numbers that are used.

But on Monday, in the first ruling to take on the NSA programme, US district judge Richard Leon in Washington found that the phone records collection was likely unconstitutional and its legal foundations far outdated for current technology.

"The almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyse the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived of in 1979," Leon wrote. He also found that the government had not provided evidence that the surveillance programmes prevented even a single imminent terror attack.

Legal arguments

The surveillance programmes were revealed in June by Edward Snowden, a contractor who smuggled classified documents out of the agency's computers and gave them to journalists.

In recent public hearings and speeches, US government lawyers have clung to the Smith ruling as the legal rationale showing the NSA's phone data grab was not intrusive or unconstitutional.

During a November meeting of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent task force that is reviewing the NSA's programmes and is expected to issue a report in January, deputy assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann said that the Baltimore case was "fundamental" to the government's argument that phone metadata is not protected by privacy rights. During that same hearing, however, senior US district judge James Carr of Toledo said the legal reasoning derived from the Baltimore case was "not a particularly reliable basis".

In the wake of Leon's ruling, legal experts and advocates for civil liberties and privacy rights are divided on whether the legal standard for surveillance will withstand the court challenges.

"The question here is, do you have the expectation of privacy for your phone records?" says Jennifer Granick, a lawyer and director of civil liberties for Stanford University's Centre for Internet and Society. "Judge Leon answered that unequivocally."

On the other hand, Brookings Institution senior fellow Benjamin Wittes questioned whether the Supreme Court is "really ready to shut down a major intelligence programme that administrations of both parties have insisted represents a crucial line of defence against terrorism". This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Spies in a legal bind


Woodstock residents rip inquiry of officer

I can just imagine what would have happened if a civilian sent a 12 year old girl the same text message. He would probably be arrested on felony charges of soliciting sex with a minor. Of course when a cop does it, it's a different story!

Source

Woodstock residents rip inquiry of officer

By Dan Hinkel Tribune reporter

7:19 a.m. CST, December 18, 2013

A line of Woodstock residents came forward to blast city officials Tuesday night over the handling of a police officer who was the focus of a recent investigation into a text message sent to a 12-year-old girl.

City council members responded by saying they would continue to look into the city's approach to Sgt. Charles “Chip” Amati and any potential action they could still take.

The Tribune revealed Nov. 27 that Amati sent a text message this summer to his then-girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter reading, “Send me some sexy pictures!” according to a copy of the message.

Under questioning by Illinois State Police investigators, Amati, 48, also acknowledged that he had used a taxpayer-funded law enforcement database to research his girlfriend’s criminal record, a police report shows. Civil liberties advocates regard misuse of the database as an invasion of privacy and officers who use the system for personal reasons can be charged with official misconduct, a felony, state police said.

McHenry County prosecutors have not charged Amati with any crime. The Woodstock police and fire commission suspended him without pay for 30 days after considering a recommendation from Chief Robert Lowen. He can serve the suspension one day at a time, at the department's discretion, within a year, the chief said.

Several speakers at the Woodstock City Council meeting argued Amati's discipline was too light.

Tara Jenkins of Woodstock voiced displeasure that the city continues to pay Amati.

“He should be charged with a class three felony and he should not be on my community's police force,” she said.

A Woodstock blogger, Gus Philpott, said, “I really think it shouldn't take a public outcry for you all to stand up and do what's right.”

Responding to the speakers, Mayor Brian Sager gave a passionate condemnation of the officer's alleged behavior.

“You have a right to be disgusted, outraged and angry,” Sager said.

Other city council members said they were dissatisfied but noted the police and fire commission doled out the punishment. City Attorney Richard Flood said that the commission, not the city council, has legal authority to dole out serious officer discipline.

The issue caught fire on social media sites recently after a popular Twitter account labeled “Anonymous” — a name corresponding to that of a hacker collective known for taking up social causes — called for Amati’s firing. City officials were bombarded with phone calls and emails, and activists used Facebook to advertise protests Tuesday night in Woodstock.

A few people turned up at the meeting wearing the stylized Guy Fawkes masks associated with Anonymous.

The city has been issuing a response letter to those concerned about the situation, calling the text message “inexcusable, reprehensible and unacceptable” but saying the investigation showed the message represented an isolated incident. City officials pointed to Amati’s 24 years of service and previously spotless disciplinary record.

City officials also noted that prosecutors have not charged Amati, and authorities have not suggested the text message itself broke any law. McHenry County prosecutors have said the fact that the sergeant was likely to face workplace discipline factored into the decision not to charge him with any of the conduct the investigation revealed.

Last month, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Combs cited Amati’s work history and background, saying, “He'd been a police officer for a long time, and he made a mistake.”

Amati had been responsible for coordinating the department’s use of the database the state police said he misused, though he has been relieved of that duty. Amati was also replaced as the agency’s spokesman.

Amati was not at Tuesday night’s meeting.

dhinkel@tribune.com


Task force urges limit on NSA snooping

F*ck the Bill of Rights and the 4th Amendment, that silly piece of paper doesn't apply here!!! This is a decision for some royal government bureaucrat to make.

Well at least that's how our government masters in Congress and the NSA seem to feel about this.

Source

Task force urges limit on NSA snooping

By Aamer Madhani USA Today Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:24 PM

WASHINGTON — A White House advisory panel has recommended to President Barack Obama that the National Security Agency no longer keep a massive phone database that includes nearly every phone call made and received in the U.S., and that the president create a new process requiring high-level approval to spy on foreign leaders.

The proposals are among 46 recommendations set out by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies that were delivered to the president last week and released Wednesday by the White House.

Obama will review the recommendations in the coming weeks and announce potential policy changes next month, said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

Obama met with the five-member review panel Wednesday to discuss the report.

“I do believe as a 33-year veteran intelligence officer that the recommendations will not undermine in any way the intelligence community’s ability keep the country safe,” Michael Morell, a former deputy CIA director and one of the panel’s members, told reporters after the meeting with Obama.

Among the other recommendations from the review panel:

Amend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which gives the government broad authority to compel a third party to produce private information relevant to a terrorism investigation. The panel says Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts should only order third parties to provide the information if the government proves that the information sought is relevant to an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. Congress should create the position of public interest advocate to represent the interests of privacy and civil liberties before the court.

Enact legislation requiring the intelligence community to regularly report to Congress and the American people on business records and metadata collected.

In deciding whether to conduct surveillance of foreign leaders, consider certain criteria, including determining whether there is a need to engage in such surveillance to address security threats to the U.S., and whether there is reason to believe that foreign leader is being “duplicitous in dealing with senior U.S. officials.” Allies, most notably Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, learned that U.S. intelligence officials were listening in on their calls.

Split leadership of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. Currently both are headed by Gen. Keith Alexander.

Make the position of director of the NSA a Senate-confirmed position, and make civilians eligible to hold the position. The panel also suggests Obama should make the next NSA director a civilian.

Bolster background checks of personnel with access to classified material. Among the fixes suggested is that vetting be conducted by the U.S. government or by a nonprofit, private-sector group. Vetting procedures should also be ongoing, rather than periodic.

The release of the report comes after a federal judge ruled this week that bulk collection of phone and Internet data is probably unconstitutional.

Obama met Tuesday with executives from 15 U.S. tech companies who urged him to “move aggressively” to overhaul the way the U.S. government conducts surveillance.

Obama tasked the advisory panel with coming up with policy recommendations in the wake of domestic and international outrage over revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The panel also included Richard Clarke, a former U.S. cybersecurity adviser; Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor; Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor; and Peter Swire, who served earlier on Obama’s National Economic Council.

Clarke said the hope was that enacting the recommendations would give “the public a sense of trust that goes beyond what it has today.”

“We are not saying that the struggle against terrorism is over or that it has declined to such an extent that we can dismantle the mechanisms we have put in place to safeguard the country,” he said. “What we are saying is, those mechanisms can be more transparent, that they can have more independent, outside judicial oversight, and there can be more mechanisms for protecting civil liberties


Poll: Health law seen as eroding coverage

Well from this article it doesn't sound like they are "public servants". I guess they are just royal rulers!!!!

Let's face it Obamacare is just a government welfare program for doctors and corporations in the medical industry. Well along with a welfare program to get Democrats reelected that trades votes for free medical care to poor people.

Source

Poll: Health law seen as eroding coverage

Associated Press Sun Dec 15, 2013 2:22 PM

WASHINGTON — Americans who already have health insurance are blaming President Barack Obama's health care overhaul for their rising premiums and deductibles, and overall 3 in 4 say the rollout of coverage for the uninsured has gone poorly.

An Associated Press-GfK poll finds that health care remains politically charged going into next year's congressional elections. Keeping the refurbished HealthCare.gov website running smoothly is just one of Obama's challenges, maybe not the biggest.

The poll found a striking level of unease about the law among people who have health insurance and aren't looking for any more government help. Those are the 85 percent of Americans who the White House says don't have to be worried about the president's historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured.

In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year — mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's passage.

Sixty-nine percent say their premiums will be going up, while 59 percent say annual deductibles or copayments are increasing.

Only 21 percent of those with private coverage said their plan is expanding to cover more types of medical care, though coverage of preventive care at no charge to the patient has been required by the law for the past couple of years.

Fourteen percent said coverage for spouses is being restricted or eliminated, and 11 percent said their plan is being discontinued.

"Rightly or wrongly, people with private insurance looking at next year are really worried about what is going to happen," said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who tracks public opinion on health care issues. "The website is not the whole story."

Employers trying to control their health insurance bills have been shifting costs to workers for years, but now those changes are blamed increasingly on "Obamacare" instead of the economy or insurance companies.

Political leanings seemed to affect perceptions of eroding coverage, with larger majorities of Republicans and independents saying their coverage will be affected.

The White House had hoped that the Oct. 1 launch of open enrollment season for the uninsured would become a teaching moment, a showcase of the president's philosophy that government can help smooth out the rough edges of life in the modern economy for working people.

Instead, the dysfunctional website became a parable for Republicans and others skeptical of government.

At the same time, a cresting wave of cancellation notices hit millions who buy their policy directly from an insurer. That undercut one of Obama's central promises — that you can keep the coverage you have if you like it. The White House never clearly communicated the many caveats to that promise.

Disapproval of Obama's handling of health care topped 60 percent in the poll.

With the website working better and enrollments picking up, Democrats are hoping negative impressions will quickly fade in the rearview mirror. The poll found that Democrats still have an edge over Republicans, by 32 percent to 22 percent, when it comes to whom the public trusts to handle health care.

But other potential bumps are just ahead for Obama's law.

It is unclear whether everyone who wants and needs coverage by Jan. 1 will be able to get it through the new online insurance markets. Some people who have to switch plans because their policies were canceled may find that their new insurance covers different drugs, or that they have to look for other doctors.

In the poll, taken just after the revamped federal website was unveiled, 11 percent of Americans said they or someone in their household had tried to sign up for health insurance in the new marketplaces.

Sixty-two percent of those said they or the person in their household ran into problems. About one-fourth of all who tried managed to enroll. Half said they were not able to buy insurance, and the remaining quarter said they weren't sure.

Phyllis Dessel, 63, of Reading, Pa., believes she is finally enrolled after 50 attempts online. The retired social worker, a political independent, currently has her own private insurance.

When Dessel described her experience, she jokingly asked, "Do you mind if I cry?"

Thanks to tax credits available under the law, she was able to save about $100 a month on the monthly premium for her new coverage. But she had to switch carriers because staying with her current insurer would have cost more than she was willing to pay. She hasn't gotten an invoice yet from her new insurance company.

The premiums she found on the new insurance marketplace were "not at all" what she expected, said Dessel. "They were much, much higher."

A supporter of Obama's overhaul, she believes changes are needed to make the coverage more affordable.

"I think with a lot of amendments or updates, it could be very, very helpful and beneficial," said Dessel. "I know a lot of people who don't have insurance. My hairdresser, my plumber don't have insurance and they're not going to get it if it's not affordable."

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 5-9 and involved online interviews with 1,367 adults. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for all respondents.

The survey was conducted using KnowledgePanel, a probability-based Internet panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Respondents to the survey were first selected randomly using phone or mail survey methods, and were later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn't otherwise have access to the Internet were provided with the ability to access the Internet at no cost to them.


Scottsdale man receives 15 years for drug manufacturer

Hmmm these draconian drug war laws are so vague you won't even know if the drug you have is illegal or not until some DEA bureaucrat says yes or no. - "manufacturing and selling synthetic drugs with properties similar to substances controlled"

Source

Scottsdale man receives 15 years for drug

By Justin Price and JJ Hensley The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed Dec 18, 2013 8:02 PM

A Scottsdale man has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for manufacturing and selling synthetic drugs with properties similar to substances controlled or banned by the U.S. government, officials said.

Judge David G. Campbell sentenced Michael Rocky Lane, 52, on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

What began as a home-based business grew to a multi-million dollar operation for Lane, whose start-up Dynamic Distribution produced “designer drugs” that were sold to individuals and smoke shops as high-inducing substances, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.

Prosecutors said they relied on a 1986 federal law banning substances with similar chemical compositions to illegal drugs that are intended to have a similar effect. The law, known as the "analogue act," also requires prosecutors to prove the substances were meant for human consumption.

A jury of 11 men and six women in July found Lane guilty of two counts of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a controlled-substance analogue, and one count of possession with the intent to distribute a controlled-substance analogue.

A U.S. Attorney’s Office statement issued Wednesday said jurors agreed with prosecutors’ argument that the chemicals in Dynamic’s designer drugs — "Amped Lady Bug Attractant Exuberance Powder," "White Water Rapid Lady Bug Attractant Exuberance Powder," and "Snowman Glass Cleaner" — were "substantially similar" to banned substances.

"This sentence reflects the seriousness of manufacturing and distributing drug analogues," U.S. Attorney John S. Leonardo said. "The defendant tried to avoid prosecution by manufacturing chemically redesigned drugs to imitate the effects of illegal drugs.”

Prior to starting up Dynamic, Lane worked as one of the lead sales personnel at Consortium Distribution, the now defunct manufacturer of “Eight Ballz Bath Salt,” a synthetic drug containing stimulant found in illegal substances, according to authorities.

When the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency temporarily categorized the stimulant used by Consortium as a Schedule I controlled substance, Lane found a replacement chemical and created a new line of bath salts named “Eight Ballz Ultra Premium Glass Cleaner,” prosecutors said.

Lane left Consortium in 2011.

The first witness for the prosecution in Lane’s trial was a 26-year-old man who graduated from Arizona State University with a biochemistry degree in December 2010. Colin Stratford told jurors he had difficulty finding a job in his field due to a marijuana conviction — until he met Lane.

Stratford said Lane quickly put him to work as a chemist who helped transform Dynamic from a small-time operation based in Lane's Cave Creek garage to a multi-million dollar enterprise headquartered at a Tempe business complex.

Stratford said he quit working with Lane once a banned stimulant showed up on a lab report, and within a few months, he was working as a DEA operative.


5 dead after Rocky Point gunbattle involving police, official says

I suspect most of the weapons used by the Mexican military in this story were supplied to them by the American government as part of our insane and unconstitutional war on drugs.

Source

5 dead after Rocky Point gunbattle involving police, official says

By Dennis Wagner, Brandon Loomis and Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 18, 2013 9:57 PM

An hours-long gun battle that pitted criminal suspects against Mexico’s federal police and military Wednesday morning in the popular resort known as Rocky Point left five of the suspects dead and many residents and tourists shaken.

“If you can imagine the U.S. Marines coming out for an incident in Los Angeles, that’s what happened here,” said Stephen Heisler, 47, an American journalist.

“It was a war zone,” added Heisler, who lives with his wife and two small children two buildings from Bella Sirena, the resort complex on Sandy Beach where the gunbattle occurred.

Official details of the shootout were sketchy, but a tourism spokeswoman for Rocky Point, also known as Puerto Peñasco, said that several additional suspects were wounded and that a U.S. citizen was carjacked but not hurt.

“This was a federal police operation, not a state operation,” said Carlos Navarro Sugich, Sonora’s attorney general, “so I don’t have a lot of information to share.”

He confirmed that state police helicopters were used in the operation.

Four of the suspects were killed in the initial confrontation and a fifth died later, he said.

The Federal Ministerial Police could not be reached for comment.

Residents near Bella Sirena indicated that they began hearing detonations of high-powered weapons shortly before 5a.m. Wednesday, as well as aircraft overhead.

Heisler said he was awakened by the sound of a helicopter just outside.

“We weren’t sure what the heck was going on,” he said. “I heard the gunfire. It was pretty intense stuff. And we didn’t know if the helicopter was friend or foe — we could see it shooting — so we took cover.”

Heisler said the shooting lasted nearly four hours, until around 9 a.m. Early on, he could see tracer rounds flying out of the chopper, which was getting return fire from the villa at Bella Sirena.

“That’s what scared the hell out of me, the tracers,” he said. “The people in the villa are firing at the chopper. And the helicopter is literally hovering right outside my window, hiding behind my building, dodging in and out. It was a goddamned war zone.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, he said, residents were still pretty much in lockdown, not allowed to leave the area, which remained filled with police and military. “No one’s going or coming from the buildings at all,” he said. “The beach is absolutely empty.”

The U.S. Consulate in Nogales, Sonora, issued a travel warning encouraging Americans “to exercise caution when visiting Puerto Peñasco.”

Rosie Glover, tourism-assistance coordinator for Rocky Point, said Mayor Gerardo Figueroa Zazueta and Sugich, the state prosecutor, held a news conference Wednesday afternoon to tell the public all was secure.

She said they also announced the additional wounded, and the carjacking of an American by someone “desperate to make a getaway.”

In a news release, Figueroa Zazueta said the shootout erupted from “a military operation specifically targeting those involved in organized crime who, unfortunately, resisted arrest.”

“The situation is now under control,” the mayor said.

“The residents of Puerto Peñasco can relax. ... Tourists living in or visiting the area should feel safe and take comfort in the fact that three levels of law enforcement came together to smother criminal activity, leaving only five dead ... all of them presumed delinquent at this time.”

The conflict zone was secured by armed forces throughout the day.

“The military did their grandest work protecting us and keeping us safe,” said Susie Flinn, a real-estate agent and resident of nearby Cholla Bay.

Rocky Point is a popular tourist destination for Arizona residents.

Eighteen months ago, six people were killed in a gunbattle in the beach town.

Glover said visits had fallen off dramatically over the past few years because of concerns about a swine-flu outbreak, border security, narcoviolence and changes in visa requirements. But she said that trend had finally turned around.

“This year, 2013, has been the best year for tourism in at least five years,” Glover said. “It’s too soon to tell what the impact will be now.”


More on that narco gun battle in Rocky Point or Puerto Peñasco

I suspect most of the weapons used by the Mexican military in this story were supplied to them by the American government as part of our insane and unconstitutional war on drugs.

Second Rocky Point or Puerto Peñasco as it's called in Spanish isn't a distant far off location in Mexico, it's just across the border and is Arizona's beach town.

The beaches of Rock Point, Mexico are closer to Phoenix then either Los Angeles or San Diego.

A later article will show these murders were committed by the Mexican military using a helicopter gunship!

Source

5 dead after Rocky Point gunbattle involving police, official says

By Dennis Wagner, Brandon Loomis and Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 18, 2013 9:57 PM

An hours-long gun battle that pitted criminal suspects against Mexico’s federal police and military Wednesday morning in the popular resort known as Rocky Point left five of the suspects dead and many residents and tourists shaken.

“If you can imagine the U.S. Marines coming out for an incident in Los Angeles, that’s what happened here,” said Stephen Heisler, 47, an American journalist.

“It was a war zone,” added Heisler, who lives with his wife and two small children two buildings from Bella Sirena, the resort complex on Sandy Beach where the gunbattle occurred.

Official details of the shootout were sketchy, but a tourism spokeswoman for Rocky Point, also known as Puerto Peñasco, said that several additional suspects were wounded and that a U.S. citizen was carjacked but not hurt.

“This was a federal police operation, not a state operation,” said Carlos Navarro Sugich, Sonora’s attorney general, “so I don’t have a lot of information to share.”

He confirmed that state police helicopters were used in the operation.

Four of the suspects were killed in the initial confrontation and a fifth died later, he said.

The Federal Ministerial Police could not be reached for comment.

Residents near Bella Sirena indicated that they began hearing detonations of high-powered weapons shortly before 5a.m. Wednesday, as well as aircraft overhead.

Heisler said he was awakened by the sound of a helicopter just outside.

“We weren’t sure what the heck was going on,” he said. “I heard the gunfire. It was pretty intense stuff. And we didn’t know if the helicopter was friend or foe — we could see it shooting — so we took cover.”

Heisler said the shooting lasted nearly four hours, until around 9 a.m. Early on, he could see tracer rounds flying out of the chopper, which was getting return fire from the villa at Bella Sirena.

“That’s what scared the hell out of me, the tracers,” he said. “The people in the villa are firing at the chopper. And the helicopter is literally hovering right outside my window, hiding behind my building, dodging in and out. It was a goddamned war zone.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, he said, residents were still pretty much in lockdown, not allowed to leave the area, which remained filled with police and military. “No one’s going or coming from the buildings at all,” he said. “The beach is absolutely empty.”

The U.S. Consulate in Nogales, Sonora, issued a travel warning encouraging Americans “to exercise caution when visiting Puerto Peñasco.”

Rosie Glover, tourism-assistance coordinator for Rocky Point, said Mayor Gerardo Figueroa Zazueta and Sugich, the state prosecutor, held a news conference Wednesday afternoon to tell the public all was secure.

She said they also announced the additional wounded, and the carjacking of an American by someone “desperate to make a getaway.”

In a news release, Figueroa Zazueta said the shootout erupted from “a military operation specifically targeting those involved in organized crime who, unfortunately, resisted arrest.”

“The situation is now under control,” the mayor said.

“The residents of Puerto Peñasco can relax. ... Tourists living in or visiting the area should feel safe and take comfort in the fact that three levels of law enforcement came together to smother criminal activity, leaving only five dead ... all of them presumed delinquent at this time.”

The conflict zone was secured by armed forces throughout the day.

“The military did their grandest work protecting us and keeping us safe,” said Susie Flinn, a real-estate agent and resident of nearby Cholla Bay.

Rocky Point is a popular tourist destination for Arizona residents.

Eighteen months ago, six people were killed in a gunbattle in the beach town.

Glover said visits had fallen off dramatically over the past few years because of concerns about a swine-flu outbreak, border security, narcoviolence and changes in visa requirements. But she said that trend had finally turned around.

“This year, 2013, has been the best year for tourism in at least five years,” Glover said. “It’s too soon to tell what the impact will be now.”


Subway vigilante Goetz fighting pot charge

Source

Subway vigilante Goetz fighting pot charge

Assocaited Press Wed Dec 18, 2013 4:11 PM

NEW YORK — Bernie Goetz said he thought he was going to be mugged by a man who turned out to be a plainclothes cop arresting him in a low-level drug sting — the same explanation he used nearly three decades ago when he opened fire on four panhandling youths on a subway train.

“I’m looking at his hands, his face, his eyes, I thought he was going to attack me,” Goetz said outside court.

He was charged last month with misdemeanor sale and possession of marijuana after he was nabbed selling $30 worth of pot to a female undercover officer he’d been flirting with in Union Square park. Manhattan prosecutors on Wednesday offered him 10 days of community service to resolve the case.

But Goetz, 65, didn’t take the deal, and he offered a rambling set of reasons why that included becoming a vegetarian, feeling coerced into taking the money from the undercover officer and believing that police are too aggressive nowadays. He said he thought the arresting officer was trying to get him to punch him to escalate the case.

“This type of hysterical war on crime, which I helped start 30 years ago, is just no longer appropriate,” he said. “The war on crime actually was won 10 years ago. What you need is a general police attitude that people in New York are well behaved.”

In 1984, Goetz thought police weren’t aggressive enough, and he took the law into his own hands by shooting four black teens with an illegal handgun on a No. 2 train in Manhattan. At least one had a screwdriver, and they were asking him for $5. Goetz said it was self-defense and the youths intended to mug him. One of the teens was paralyzed.

The shooting brought to the surface long-smoldering urban issues of race, crime and quality of life. It also thrust Goetz, a self-employed electronics expert, into the role of spokesman for what some considered a justified form of vigilantism.

Goetz was cleared of attempted murder charges and spent 250 days in jail in 1987 for a weapons conviction in the case.

It was a very different era. Murders reached an all-time high in the city in 1990, and crime was rampant. Goetz said you couldn’t have enough cops on the street then, but now it seems like there isn’t enough crime to go around.

Goetz wore all black to the court appearance, save for a “Love Animals. Don’t eat them” pin. He said he thought the arresting officer would not have been aggressive if he were a vegetarian.

He said he was in the park Nov. 1 feeding the squirrels when he met a woman and the two talked about getting high together, so he went to his nearby home and got some marijuana.

“She said she had to go,” he said. So he broke off a chunk of pot for her, and said she could take it, he said. She insisted on paying him, he recalled.

“After the third time, she said, ‘No I’d rather pay for it,’” he said. “And I said OK.”

She gave him $40, he gave her back $10 and then was arrested, he said.

Goetz’s lawyer had no comment, and advised him not to talk to reporters. He said he would push for a trial date.

“Either dismiss it, or let’s take it to trial and let a jury decide,” Goetz said.


Detective in Milke case can plead 5th, judge rules

More of the old "You think you are going to get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh"!!!!

Source

Detective in Milke case can plead 5th, judge rules

Summary of judge's ruling

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:01 PM

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Wednesday granted a former Phoenix police detective’s request to invoke his Fifth Amendment right and not testify against Debra Milke, who is accused in the murder of her son.

Milke spent 23 years on death row before her conviction was thrown out by a federal appeals court and her case sent back to Maricopa County prosecutors because her trial lawyers had been denied access to the personnel record of Armando Saldate, a detective who claimed she confessed to having her 4-year-old son murdered.

Judge Rosa Mroz has already said that if Saldate does not testify, prosecutors cannot introduce the questioned confession into evidence. Milke denies confessing, Saldate did not tape-record the supposed confession and there were no witnesses who can say that it ever took place.

Without the confession, the prosecution has a weak case.

Mroz did not specify in Wednesday’s order whether the confession will be allowed into evidence. She told The Arizona Republic that the matter will have to be argued by the opposing attorneys. Motions to preclude it are already pending, and Mroz set a status conference for Jan. 17 to discuss trial issues.

Milke’s attorney, Lori Voepel, said that she is not allowed to talk freely about the case because the judge complained about earlier remarks made to the press by the attorneys. But Voepel said that she and her co-counsel, Mike Kimerer, intend to eventually file a motion to dismiss the case.

The County Attorney’s Office declined to comment, given the judge’s prior orders not to discuss the case in the media.

In 1991, Milke, now 49, was sentenced to death after she was found guilty of helping plan the murder of her son Christopher in December 1989. The boy thought he was going to the mall to see Santa Claus. Instead, Milke’s roommate and another man took him to the desert and shot him in the head.

Milke’s conviction was based largely on the confession supposedly obtained by Saldate.

At trial, the state was not forced to turn over Saldate’s personnel record, which contained information about misconduct that could have been used to challenge his credibility.

In March of this year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that Milke be released or given a new trial. The panel of judges cited several cases in which lower courts had made judicial findings of Saldate’s misconduct. The confession could be used, according to the opinion, only if Saldate’s personnel record was also disclosed.

The 9th Circuit judges also wrote that if Saldate admits having lied in other cases, he will be discredited, and if he sticks to his original stories, he will risk committing perjury.

The judges also forwarded the ruling to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix and the U.S. Department of Justice “for possible investigation into whether Det. Saldate’s conduct, and that of his supervisors and other state and local officials, amounts to a pattern of violating the federally protected rights of Arizona residents.”

Then, over the objection of prosecutors, Milke was released on a $250,000 bond when Mroz ruled, “The existing information does not make it ‘plain and clear’ ... that the defendant committed the crimes.”

In light of the language of the 9th Circuit opinion, Saldate asked for a lawyer, and Mroz appointed one who advised him not to testify lest he risk incriminating himself.

“The 9th Circuit placed Detective Saldate in a ‘damned if he did and damned if he didn’t’ position,” said his lawyer, Larry Debus. “He had no choice.”

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and the case prosecutor, Vince Imbordino, have said publicly and in court filings that the 9th Circuit was wrong in its analysis of cases in which Saldate was supposedly found by judges to have committed misconduct.

In August, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said that it did not intend to investigate Saldate for civil-rights violations, and on Dec.6, the Justice Department likewise sent a note to Montgomery that “concluded that the evidence does not support a prosecutable violation of the applicable federal criminal civil rights statutes.”

But in her ruling Wednesday, Mroz noted that the two federal prosecutor letters implied only that their offices would not prosecute Saldate for his actions in the Milke case. That would leave him open to future perjury and possible civil-rights charges in other cases he investigated that were examined by the 9th Circuit, including at least one case in which the defendant has been executed.

Furthermore, she noted, the county prosecutor’s oral assertion that it would not prosecute Saldate would not grant him immunity against federal prosecution.

“The court finds that Saldate has demonstrated a reasonable apprehension of danger that, if compelled to answer, he would face criminal charges based on his past testimony and/or present disclosures, and that the Fifth Amendment affords protection,” Mroz wrote.

Again more of the old "You think you are going to get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!"

Source

Detective’s silence in Milke case would speak volumes

Debra Milke took a step closer to freedom this morning when a Superior Court judge ruled that former Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate can invoke his 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself rather than testifying about Milke’s supposed confession to killing her son.

Saldate’s the guy who put Milke on death row 23 years ago, testifying that she’d confessed to setting up her 4-year-old son’s murder – telling the boy that he was going to see Santa Claus when he was going to meet his maker via two bullets to the back of his head.

There were no witnesses to Milke’s “confession”, despite the fact that the detective’s partner waited outside the door. There was no recording either. Saldate didn’t even take a tape recorder to the interview – held in the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office — despite the fact that his boss told him to do so.

Milke has always maintained that she never confessed. The jury believed Saldate and Milke landed on death row.

In March, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out her conviction due to substantial questions about the detective’s character. Saldate, the three-judge panel wrote, had a “long history” of trampling people’s Miranda rights and lying under oath – something that should have been, but never was, disclosed to the Milke jury.

Now it seems the Phoenix detective has … well, let’s just call it a sudden bout of shyness about testifying again against the woman once considered Arizona’s most notorious baby killer.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery – whose case against Milke is likely DOA without Saldate’s testimony — believes the 9th Circuit exaggerated Saldate’s history. He thinks that with an explanation to jurors, he’s got a shot at putting Milke back behind bars.

But apparently, Saldate doesn’t want to explain himself. Doesn’t want to defend himself against what the appellate judges called “the detective’s lack of compunction about lying” or a tendency to violate suspects’ rights.

His attorney, Larry Debus, has advised him not to testify because he could face prosecution.

So now Saldate has a dilemma. Testify or remain silent?

Is he that guy that 9th Circuit painted him to be? Was he corrupt enough to invent a mother’s confession to murdering her son, as the appellate court suggests? If so, then silence is golden.

But if not, is he honorable enough to let a jury decide — his word against hers, with all the information out there this time? That is something for Saldate to consider, as he ponders his reputation and Milke’s future.

If he lied, then a potentially innocent woman was robbed of her life. But if he was telling the truth, then by his silence, he’s now letting a murderer go free.


India diplomat says she faced cavity search in NYC

As usual the police think they are above the law. I suspect this is a violation of any American treaties with India or the UN.

The US Constitution says treaties with foreign countries take presidence over normal laws passed by Congress.

Of course when the local cops think that the Constitution doesn't apply to them, you didn't really think that Federal cops would think the laws apply to them did you???

Source

India diplomat says she faced cavity search in NYC

Associated Press Wed Dec 18, 2013 12:00 PM

NEW DELHI — An Indian diplomat said U.S. authorities subjected her to a strip search, cavity search and DNA swabbing following her arrest on visa charges in New York City, despite her “incessant assertions of immunity.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the diplomat’s treatment as “deplorable.”

The case has sparked widespread outrage in India and infuriated the government, which revoked privileges for U.S. diplomats to protest her treatment. It has cast a pall over India-U.S. relations, which have cooled in recent years despite a 2008 nuclear deal that was hailed as a high point in the nations’ ties.

Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, was arrested Thursday outside of her daughter’s Manhattan school on charges that she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national.

Prosecutors say the maid received less than $3 per hour for her work.

In an email published in India media on Wednesday, Khobragade said she was treated like a common criminal.

“I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a holdup with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity,” she wrote.

An Indian official with direct knowledge of the case confirmed to The Associated Press that the email was authentic. The official, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the case, said India’s priority now is to get the woman returned home.

“India’s top demand right now is: Return our diplomat,” he said, adding that Khobragade, who was released on $250,000 bail, would have to report to police in New York every week.

Khobragade was arrested by the U.S. Department of State’s diplomatic security team and then handed over to U.S. marshals in New York.

The U.S. Marshals Service confirmed Tuesday that it had strip-searched Khobragade and placed her in a cell with other female defendants. It described the measures as “standard arrestee intake procedures.”

The case has touched a nerve in India, where the fear of public humiliation resonates strongly and heavy-handed treatment by the police is normally reserved for the poor. For an educated, middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable, except in the most brutal crimes.

Prosecutors say Khobragade claimed on visa application documents she paid her Indian maid $4,500 per month, but that she actually paid her less than $3 per hour. Khobragade has pleaded not guilty and plans to challenge the arrest on grounds of diplomatic immunity.

Marie Harf, U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman, said Khobragade does not have full diplomatic immunity. Instead, she has consular immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts only with respect to acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.

If convicted, Khobragade faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for visa fraud and five years for making a false declaration.

The fallout from the case was growing. India retaliated against U.S. diplomats with measures that include revoking diplomat ID cards that brought certain privileges, demanding to know the salaries paid to Indian staff in U.S. Embassy households and withdrawing import licenses that allowed the commissary at the U.S. Embassy to import alcohol and food.

Police also removed the traffic barricades near the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi in retaliation for Khobragade’s treatment. The barriers were a safety measure but India said they clogged up traffic.

On Wednesday, dozens of people protested outside the U.S. Embassy, saying Khobragade’s treatment was an insult to all Indian women.

In New Delhi, the lower house of Parliament had to be temporarily adjourned Wednesday after lawmakers noisily demanded that it adopt a resolution against the United States.

Arun Jaitely, leader of the opposition in the upper house, said the government had to register its “strongest protest” to the U.S. government for the “lack of respect for India.” He called for a review of India’s relations with the United States, a demand that was vociferously seconded by many lawmakers.

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said the arrest was a “matter of national outrage.” He promised angry lawmakers that the government would make an official statement in Parliament on the incident.

Harf said Tuesday that federal authorities would work on the issue with India.

“We understand that this is a sensitive issue for many in India,” she said. “Accordingly, we are looking into the intake procedures surrounding this arrest to ensure that all appropriate procedures were followed and every opportunity for courtesy was extended.”


Mesa, Chandler councils boost their pay

Members of the Chandler City Council vote to give themselves a pay raise!!!!!

Members of the Mesa City Council vote to give themselves a pay raise!!!!!

Mesa, Chandler councils boost their pay

When's the last time one of your "servants" told you that he was going to give himself a 25, 50 or 100 percent pay raise, and you were going to give it to him or go to jail???

OK, they are not "public servants" as they claim to be, but royal government rulers who micro-manage our lives and steal our money.

Source

Mesa, Chandler councils boost their pay

By Gary Nelson and Michelle Mitchell The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:06 PM

Members of two city councils in the Valley voted to raise their own pay last week.

Mesa council members voted 5-1 on Dec. 9 to approve recommendations by a council-appointed citizens panel, raising the council’s pay from $19,000 to $35,200 a year and the mayor’s pay from $38,000 to $73,300 annually.

Three days later, Chandler leaders voted 6-1 to raise the council’s pay from $20,000 to $29,000 annually. The mayor will receive $49,500, up from $36,000.

Raises in both cities will take effect when new council terms begin in January.

MESA CITY COUNCIL

Blistering personal attacks didn’t stop the Mesa council from approving the raise.

The vote Dec. 9 ratified the recommendations of a panel that weighed Mesa’s public-official compensation against what other cities pay.

The council rejected a similar plan during a tense meeting a year ago, but the year’s delay built into this year’s proposal made it more palatable for some, but not all.

Marcus Ray accused council members of seeking to enrich themselves through the pay raises. “I can’t imagine someone wanting to get into politics for money,” he said. “I mean, that’s the absolute evil right there. Somebody who is just full of greed.”

Gene Dufoe said he represented the Red Mountain Tea Party in opposing the pay hikes.

“We have too much financial problems with the federal government, the state government, and we don’t need the city government to add more to this,” he said.

Vice Mayor Alex Finter fired back at the critics.

“I’m looking to young Mr. Ray and anybody else from the ‘tea party’ that might be watching,” Finter said. “My deal has always been that this should be about the next council. ... If anybody thinks that I’m voting for this for my own purpose or my own enrichment, you are sorely mistaken.”

David Lanewas the only public speaker favoring the raises, saying that the “token” amounts now earned by the mayor and council members might require undue financial sacrifices by people who otherwise could serve.

Noting that the council oversees a $1.3 billion-a-year enterprise, Lane said, “It’s clear to me that to be an effective leader will take far more than a few evenings and meetings here and there.”

As he did last year, Mayor Scott Smith supported the raises.

“It was right a year ago, it’s right now,” he said. “It’s something the 38th-largest city in the country needs to do.”

Then, joking about widespread speculation that he might resign next year to run for governor, Smith said, “If you listen to the rumors, it won’t apply to me at all.”

Smith has said he will decide on the governor campaign early in 2014.

Although the pay hikes are 13 months in the future, the council’s $150-a-month vehicle allowance will be raised immediately to $350 for council members and $550 for the mayor.

CHANDLER CITY COUNCIL

The Chandler council gave itself a bump in pay last Thursday with little discussion.

Councilman Kevin Hartke cast the only dissenting vote.

Councilwoman Trinity Donovan, who proposed the pay raise but will no longer be on the City Council when it takes effect because of term limits, said the pay raise will help ensure that the city “gets the best council members possible” and not limit the candidate pool to those who are retired or have the financial flexibility to hold office.

“People who may not have been able to do it while supporting their family may think about making the choice to represent Chandler,” she said.

Chandler resident and retired city employee Barbara Masztakowski said she was upset with the proposal, particularly when employees and retirees don’t see such increases.

“We the Chandler voters should have the right to determine your compensation the same way as we put you in office,” she wrote in an e-mail to City Council members.

Victor Peterson, the only resident to speak at the council meeting, said it should not be up to City Council to decide. “I never worked anywhere that I could go to the boss and say I get a 37 percent pay raise because I want it,” he said.

The Chandler Chamber of Commerce included increased compensation for elected officials as part of its 2014 public-policy priorities.

“As Chandler continues to grow ... we just asked the council to take a look in making sure that we’re being competitive (with council salaries),” said Terri Kimble, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.


Attorney General probe of Glendale deals begins in earnest

Forget about the "in earnest" part!!! In the end at the most the people involved will get a slap on the wrist. What will probably happen is they will say there is not enough evidence for any charges and everything will be forgotten!!!

This is pretty common stuff. Like those beatings by the Border Patrol and cops.

Source

Attorney General probe of Glendale deals begins in earnest

City hands over finance data to be screened for criminal wrongdoing

By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Dec 15, 2013 10:39 PM

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has received the documents it requested from Glendale nearly three months ago in connection with an investigation into the city’s past financial practices.

City officials hand-delivered electronic copies of documents to the Attorney General’s Office on Dec. 6 to assist with an inquiry into whether former Glendale administrators accused of mismanaging millions of taxpayer dollars broke any laws.

Meanwhile, a City Council member has asked the state’s top law-enforcement agency to broaden the investigation to include previous development deals, including the Camelback Ranch Glendale spring-training ballpark.

Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office, said investigators will review documents the council member provided, as well as paperwork the city submitted in response to the state’s request. From there, state investigators will decide whether there’s enough evidence to proceed with a civil or criminal case.

“We’re going to have to spend considerable effort going through everything,” Grisham said.

In August, Glendale leaders asked Attorney General Tom Horne’s office to investigate financial and personnel issues, days after a city-commissioned audit concluded that city administrators improperly transferred more than $6 million among city trust funds to cover the true costs of an early-retirement program.

The audit also criticizes former City Manager Ed Beasley’s arrangements with the former human-resources director and the former deputy city manager, in which one worked from Mississippi for nearly a year at full pay and the other made more than $930,000 as a city consultant over about three years after he took an early-retirement buyout.

There was some immediate fallout. City Manager Brenda Fischer, on the job since July, terminated two administrators and accepted resignations from two others. Beasley and other administrators highlighted in the audit had already retired.

Last month, City Councilwoman Norma Alvarez said she met with Dan Woods, assistant chief special agent in the Attorney General’s Office, and asked that he broaden the investigation beyond the scope of the audit.

Alvarez said she delivered, among other things, copies of contracts involving the Camelback Ranch ballpark and surrounding developments. The city borrowed $200 million to build the spring-training facility, but the recession killed plans for a high-end commercial center and delayed promised sports and tourism funding.

Alvarez said she doesn’t know if any laws were broken, but she hopes state investigators can help taxpayers understand why former staff and council members made agreements she believes were not in the city’s best interest.

“I want to know how they made a deal for $200 million ... and we don’t get anything out of it,” she said. “Why did we do all those deals?”

Interim Assistant City Manager Julie Frisoni said she wasn’t aware that Alvarez had visited with state investigators, but she said it was not the first time the councilwoman has requested an attorney general’s investigation.

She said the city will wait and see what state investigators decide.

“It’s all in their hands now. We’ve delivered what they’ve requested of us,” Frisoni said.

Woods requested 25 separate types of documents in mid-September, according to e-mails The Arizona Republic obtained through a public-records request.

The documents include details about the city’s early-retirement program and trust funds, supportive documents to show whether staff provided false information to the City Council, employment agreements with two former administrators and a legal analysis indicating that former employees may have broken state laws against knowingly mishandling public funds.

On Oct. 7, City Attorney Michael Bailey and Deputy City Attorney Deborah Robberson met with Woods and other investigators at the Attorney General’s Office in Phoenix, according to the e-mails.

About a month later, Woods e-mailed the city’s attorneys, asking if they had a timeline for providing the requested documents. Bailey agreed to submit the documents the week before Thanksgiving, but e-mailed Woods to say that would be delayed. City officials then agreed to deliver the files the week after Thanksgiving, and they did so Dec. 6.

Bailey said compiling the data, and ensuring it was the right information, was time-consuming.

“I think it was just the amount of documents they were asking for. There was no delay,” Bailey said. “When you’re looking at a comprehensive investigation, it takes time.”


Ex-San Mateo County sheriff's deputy pleads not guilty to more charges related to beating

But don't worry, when San Mateo County sheriff's deputy Colin Troy Smith is on duty he never beats up suspects or commits perjury. Honest!!!! Well at least that's what the cops want us to think!!!!

Source

Ex-San Mateo County sheriff's deputy pleads not guilty to more charges related to beating

By Bonnie Eslinger

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 12/20/2013 07:36:54 PM PST

A former San Mateo County sheriff's deputy charged with assaulting his ex-girlfriend's former boyfriend in August pleaded not guilty Thursday to additional charges of violating a restraining order and intimidating a witness.

Colin Troy Smith, 42, had pleaded not guilty in September to three felony counts related to his Aug. 17 arrest -- residential burglary, assault causing great bodily injury, and battery causing serious bodily injury -- according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

Smith, who is no longer employed with the county as of this month, previously worked for Half Moon Bay as a police officer and later as a sheriff's deputy in San Carlos.

Wagstaffe said that Smith barged into his former girlfriend's home on Aug. 17, found her ex-boyfriend hiding in the bathroom and punched him repeatedly in the face, breaking his nose and eye socket. He was arrested that same day but released hours later on $50,000 bail.

Smith was arrested a second time, on Dec. 5, after he violated a restraining order the woman filed against him by going to her house the night before, yelling at her and telling her she would lose the case against him, according to Wagstaffe. He was released from custody for that incident after posting $100,000 bail.

Smith is to appear in court Jan. 28 for a preliminary hearing on all the charges.

Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@ dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.


Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control

Source

Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control

Michael Ciaglo/The Colorado Springs Gazette, via Associated Press

By ERICA GOODE

Published: December 15, 2013 368 Comments

GREELEY, Colo. — When Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County explains in speeches why he is not enforcing the state’s new gun laws, he holds up two 30-round magazines. One, he says, he had before July 1, when the law banning the possession, sale or transfer of the large-capacity magazines went into effect. The other, he “maybe” obtained afterward.

He shuffles the magazines, which look identical, and then challenges the audience to tell the difference.

“How is a deputy or an officer supposed to know which is which?” he asks.

Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.

Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.

The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.

In New York State, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed one of the toughest gun law packages in the nation last January, two sheriffs have said publicly they would not enforce the laws — inaction that Mr. Cuomo said would set “a dangerous and frightening precedent.” The sheriffs’ refusal is unlikely to have much effect in the state: According to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, since 2010 sheriffs have filed less than 2 percent of the two most common felony gun charges. The vast majority of charges are filed by the state or local police.

In Liberty County, Fla., a jury in October acquitted a sheriff who had been suspended and charged with misconduct after he released a man arrested by a deputy on charges of carrying a concealed firearm. The sheriff, who was immediately reinstated by the governor, said he was protecting the man’s Second Amendment rights.

And in California, a delegation of sheriffs met with Gov. Jerry Brown this fall to try to persuade him to veto gun bills passed by the Legislature, including measures banning semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines and lead ammunition for hunting (Mr. Brown signed the ammunition bill but vetoed the bill outlawing the rifles).

“Our way of life means nothing to these politicians, and our interests are not being promoted in the legislative halls of Sacramento or Washington, D.C.,” said Jon E. Lopey, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, Calif., one of those who met with Governor Brown. He said enforcing gun laws was not a priority for him, and he added that residents of his rural region near the Oregon border are equally frustrated by regulations imposed by the federal Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.

This year, the new gun laws in Colorado have become political flash points. Two state senators who supported the legislation were recalled in elections in September; a third resigned last month rather than face a recall. Efforts to repeal the statutes are already in the works.

Countering the elected sheriffs are some police chiefs, especially in urban areas, and state officials who say that the laws are not only enforceable but that they are already having an effect. Most gun stores have stopped selling the high-capacity magazines for personal use, although one sheriff acknowledged that some stores continued to sell them illegally. Some people who are selling or otherwise transferring guns privately are seeking background checks.

Eric Brown, a spokesman for Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, said, “Particularly on background checks, the numbers show the law is working.” The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has run 3,445 checks on private sales since the law went into effect, he said, and has denied gun sales to 70 people.

A Federal District Court judge last month ruled against a claim in the sheriffs’ lawsuit that one part of the magazine law was unconstitutionally vague. The judge also ruled that while the sheriffs could sue as individuals, they had no standing to sue in their official capacity.

Still, the state’s top law enforcement officials acknowledged that sheriffs had wide discretion in enforcing state laws.

“We’re not in the position of telling sheriffs and chiefs what to do or not to do,” said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety. “We have people calling us all the time, thinking they’ve got an issue with their sheriff, and we tell them we don’t have the authority to intervene.”

Sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws around the country are in the minority, though no statistics exist. In Colorado, though, sheriffs like Joe Pelle of Boulder County, who support the laws and have more liberal constituencies that back them, are outnumbered.

“A lot of sheriffs are claiming the Constitution, saying that they’re not going to enforce this because they personally believe it violates the Second Amendment,” Sheriff Pelle said. “But that stance in and of itself violates the Constitution.”

Even Sheriff W. Pete Palmer of Chaffee County, one of the seven sheriffs who declined to join the federal lawsuit because he felt duty-bound to carry out the laws, said he was unlikely to aggressively enforce them. He said enforcement poses “huge practical difficulties,” and besides, he has neither the resources nor the pressure from his constituents to make active enforcement a high priority. Violations of the laws are misdemeanors.

“All law enforcement agencies consider the community standards — what is it that our community wishes us to focus on — and I can tell you our community is not worried one whit about background checks or high-capacity magazines,” he said.

At their extreme, the views of sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws echo the stand of Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and the author of “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope.” Mr. Mack has argued that county sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of what is constitutional and what is not. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded by Mr. Mack, is an organization of sheriffs and other officers who support his views.

“The Supreme Court does not run my office,” Mr. Mack said in an interview. “Just because they allow something doesn’t mean that a good constitutional sheriff is going to do it.” He said that 250 sheriffs from around the country attended the association’s recent convention.

Matthew J. Parlow, a law professor at Marquette University, said that some states, including New York, had laws that allowed the governor in some circumstances to investigate and remove public officials who engaged in egregious misconduct — laws that in theory might allow the removal of sheriffs who failed to enforce state statutes.

But, he said, many governors could be reluctant to use such powers. And in most cases, any penalty for a sheriff who chose not to enforce state law would have to come from voters.

Sheriff Cooke, for his part, said that he was entitled to use discretion in enforcement, especially when he believed the laws were wrong or unenforceable.

“In my oath it says I’ll uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Colorado,” he said, as he posed for campaign photos in his office — he is running for the State Senate in 2014. “It doesn’t say I have to uphold every law passed by the Legislature.”

Jack Healy contributed reporting from Denver.


Just another Border Patrol beating and murder

Just another BP beating and murder

Hey, if you’re a sadist that enjoys beating up people a police officer is the job you want. Same if you are a racist that enjoys terrorizing people with the wrong color skin.

Source

Immigrant’s death by border agents captured on video

By Daniel González, Bob Ortega and Rob O’Dell The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Dec 16, 2013 1:08 AM

In May of 2010, eyewitnesses shot cellphone videos that show a 42-year-old undocumented immigrant handcuffed, face-down on the ground at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry and surrounded by U.S. border agents.

One agent rips the man’s pants off and another shocks him with repeated blasts from a stun gun while the victim, Anastacio Hernandez Rojas, begs for someone to help him. Hernandez Rojas wails in agony as eyewitnesses yell at the agents, “Hey! He’s not resisting, guys. Why do you guys keep pressing on him?”

The videos are disturbingly similar to the video of Rodney King being kicked and beaten with batons by Los Angeles police officers in 1991, which remains seared in the public’s memory more than 20 years after it was shot by an eyewitness.

King survived. Hernandez Rojas died of his injuries three days later in the hospital. The San Diego medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

Both cases raised much larger questions. Yet the reaction has been starkly different.

The King video ignited a fury of media coverage, provoking public outrage that led to a police investigation, felony charges against four of the officers, massive riots, and eventually civil-rights complaints and two federal convictions.

In contrast, there was no comparable national media storm over the Hernandez Rojas beating, even after the PBS program “Need to Know” last year uncovered a new, clearer video of Hernandez Rojas face-down on the ground, handcuffed. He is surrounded by more than a dozen CBP officers and Border Patrol agents.

The PBS video was big news in Southern California, in the U.S. Spanish-language media and also in Mexico, but “it certainly didn’t catch fire. It didn’t go viral,” said John Carlos Frey, a Los Angeles-based investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who helped uncover the video broadcast on PBS. “It was very sparsely covered.”

As a result, the Hernandez Rojas case has prompted far less public outrage and criticism than the Rodney King case. More than three years later, none of the officers involved has been charged with any crimes, and the Department of Homeland Security has refused to say whether any have been disciplined.

DHS also declined to comment on the case.

The footage did, however, prompt 16 members of Congress to demand an investigation, raising concerns that the Hernandez Rojas video was “emblematic” of broader training and accountability problems within the Department of Homeland Security related to use of force.

Several immigrant rights groups also are fighting for more answers.

“No, I don’t think this case has gotten the attention it has deserved when the abuse was so clear,” said Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, a Latino advocacy group based in Los Angeles that created an online petition to draw more awareness to the case.

A major reason the King case provoked such a public outcry was that he was an African-American and a U.S. citizen, and the incident touched a nerve about race and injustice in America, some analysts and immigrant-rights advocates say. King drowned accidentally last year.

Hernandez Rojas was an immigrant from Mexico who had been been living in the U.S. illegally.

“They are ‘illegal aliens’ and therefore any use of force is justified,” said Christian Ramirez, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an advocacy group. “‘They had it coming,’ is sort of the thinking among many people.”

There is also a common perception of “the Border Patrol being on the front lines in the war against terrorism, so their actions are never questioned,” Ramirez said.

The problem, however, is that those perceptions have helped create a culture of impunity, in which border agents operate under less transparency and accountability than local law-enforcement officers, said David Shirk, a political science professor and director of the Justice in Mexico Project at the University of San Diego.

As a result, when federal border agents do use force, there is less likely to be the same level of scrutiny to determine whether they acted improperly, said Shirk, an expert on border policy and security.

Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers resort to deadly force infrequently. But an investigation by The Arizona Republic of nearly 1,600 use-of-force cases found that in 42 cases in which agents or officers have killed people since 2005, none faced criminal prosecution by the Justice Department or are publicly known to have been disciplined by CBP, even though in at least nine cases, family members filed wrongful-death lawsuits.

By contrast, Shirk noted that in the King case, “there was a mechanism in place to ensure that these officers were held accountable. ... A police officer is much more accountable to the law than a DHS agent.”

Shirk is concerned that the circumstances that led to Hernandez Rojas’s death may never be fully investigated because of the lack of scrutiny and accountability under which DHS officers on the border operate.

“Agents are protected essentially by their badges, and that’s a real problem,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security has a very important public purpose, but it also should have a high level of public responsibility and accountability, and that’s not presently the case.”

Not everyone agrees.

Peter Nuñez, the former U.S. Attorney in San Diego, said he is confident the case is being properly investigated.

The video, he pointed out, has been shown “incessantly” in San Diego. A wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Hernandez Rojas is pending, a congressional inquiry is under way, and an internal investigation has been conducted. An FBI investigation also is pending.

It’s also a possibility, Nuñez said, that “everybody that’s looked at this has come to the conclusion that (nobody) did anything wrong.”

Hernandez Rojas was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, but he had lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the CBP officers and Border Patrol agents by his family. He worked as a pool plasterer.

He had five children, all U.S. citizens, ranging in age from 7 to 23.

“They miss their father very much,” his wife, Maria Puga, told The Republic. “It’s been very difficult. It’s been very hard, psychologically, for them to understand. They still say, ‘I want my dad, I want my papito.’”

The incident began after Hernandez Rojas was caught by the Border Patrol trying to re-enter the U.S. illegally to rejoin his wife after being deported several times previously.

He was carrying a jug of water as he was taken to a Border Patrol station. He was told by a Border Patrol agent to put the water in the trash.

Instead of throwing out the jug, Hernandez Rojas poured the water into a trash can, according to the lawsuit.

The agent then slapped the jug out of his hands, pushed Hernandez Rojas against a wall, and kicked his legs apart, injuring one of his ankles, according to the complaint.

Photo by Nick Oza/The Republic

Maria Puga (left), wife of Anastacio Hernandez Rojas says, says his five children "miss their father very much."

When Hernandez Rojas asked why he was being mistreated, Border Patrol agents decided to send him back to Mexico immediately, rather than give him time to make a formal complaint, the lawsuit said.

Hernandez Rojas was taken to the San Ysidro port of entry to be sent back to Mexico. That is where the situation turned.

In the incident report they filed, CBP agents said Hernandez Rojas was violent and aggressive, kicking and screaming at agents, continuing to be combative even as an officer shocked him with a stun gun repeatedly until they noticed he was “unresponsive.”

An autopsy showed Hernandez Rojas died of brain damage and a heart attack as the result of being beaten and shot shocked multiple times with a stun gun. The autopsy also found traces of methamphetamine in his system, which the autopsy noted may also have contributed to his death.

The incident happened at about 8 p.m. on a Friday under a pedestrian bridge crowded with people crossing back and forth between San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Mexico, the busiest border crossing in the world.

Many of the witnesses stopped to shoot videos on their cellphones. One man on the Mexican side shot a cellphone video, too dark to see, but with audio in which Hernandez can be heard begging for help and crying for agents to stop.

Then a year and a half later, another witness, Ashley Young, agreed to share a cellphone video she shot at the time with attorneys for Hernandez Rojas’s family and to Frey, the documentary filmmaker.

Young said in an e-mail that she didn’t share the video earlier because she was reluctant to get involved for personal reasons and was scared there might be a negative public reaction, though that didn’t happen.

She said she was interviewed by the FBI days after the video aired, and then testified in front of a federal grand jury.

Young’s video shows Hernandez Rojas lying face-down on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back, surrounded by more than a dozen CBP officers. On the video the electric sparks from the stun gun can be seen flashing as Hernandez Rojas is shocked repeatedly.

In response to the PBS documentary that included footage from Young’s video, 16 members of Congress, including Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., wrote a letter to Janet Napolitano, then-secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding a full investigation.

That prompted the Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General to conduct a general review of allegations of excessive use of force; but the report, issued in September, did not specifically examine the Hernandez Rojas case.

Grijalva said he is concerned that the Hernandez Rojas case has fallen by the wayside,

“I think there’s been, unfortunately, an acceptance that regardless” of what happened to Hernandez Rojas, his death “was somehow justified,” Grijalva said.

He said that acceptance has been fueled by political rhetoric about the need to secure the border, which makes it difficult to raise questions about possible civil-rights abuses by federal border agents.

“The acceptance goes along with the whole drum-beating and spinning and talking we’ve had about border security and ‘We need to seal the border.’ It all kind of folds in,” Grijalva said. “So, there is a horrible consequence: those deaths (such as Hernandez Rojas and others killed by Border Patrol agents) that are questionable. When you ask a question, you get into a position — ‘Oh, you are against Homeland Security? You are against the Border Patrol? You are against securing the border? You are against fighting terrorism?’ ”

The videos became huge news in Mexico, said Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana. He helped organize a protest in Tijuana against the death.

“It was front-page news every day for several days,” Clark Alfaro said. The video and audio also were aired repeatedly on TV and radio in Mexico.

As a result of the news coverage, people in Mexico were outraged, Clark Alfaro said.

“They were angry and sad and blaming the American authorities. But in the end, there was this feeling that there would be no justice on the American side.”

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón also demanded the United States conduct an investigation as well as punishment for those responsible.

In contrast, Clark Alfaro said, he is surprised by how many Americans remain unaware or indifferent about the death of Hernandez Rojas.

“Anastacio was Mexican. It happened on the border only a few meters from Tijuana,” he said. “If instead of Anastacio, we had a blond U.S. citizen, probably it would have been different. It would have been a scandal.”

Frey, the filmmaker, puts it another way.

“What if a Mexican government official shot and killed a U.S. citizen?” Frey said. “I think we’d have tanks down on the border.”

Republic photographer Nick Oza contributed to this article.


More border agents assisting local police

The article doesn't mention how the BP teams up with local cops to raise money by arresting people for victimless drug war crimes.

It's illegal for the Yuma city cops and the Yuma County Sheriff to simply stop and search every person they see for drugs.

But according to prior court decisions the BP can legally stop anybody with in X miles of the border and search them for drugs.

The BP has teamed up with either the city of Yuma or Yuma County to use that fact to raise revenue for the local governments in Yuma. The BP sets up checkpoints on Interstate 8 where it searches people for drugs.

Any people the BP arrests for drug are turned over not to the Federal Courts for prosecution but to the Yuma courts.

And of course the Yuma courts split the money with the BP.

This was documented in the Phoenix New Times a couple of years back.

Source

More border agents assisting local police

Critics say federal agents often lack training for domestic police work

By Rob O’Dell and Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Dec 17, 2013 1:27 AM

On the afternoon of March 15, 2011, at least five Border Patrol agents and another federal agent went with Sierra Vista police officers to conduct a "knock and talk" at a house in a neighborhood where police suspected a human-smuggling operation.

After agents knocked on the front screen door, a white Chevy Suburban smashed out through the garage door, rammed into law-enforcement vehicles and drove at officers, according to Sierra Vista police reports.

Federal agents fired 10 shots at the vehicle, and Sierra Vista officers fired once, with several bullets hitting the vehicle. The drivers escaped, and the Suburban was later found on a mountain in nearby Fort Huachuca.

No one was hurt, but neighbors hid during the shooting, and a stray bullet struck a nearby Hyundai Santa Fe and was later found in the back seat, the police report said.

The incident is one of an increasing number of cases nationwide in which Border Patrol agents back up local police or perform other police duties, such as serving warrants or responding to domestic disputes, even though critics say they aren't adequately trained to do so.

Other incidents have turned deadly. Five of the 24 people killed by the Border Patrol since 2010 were killed by agents who were backing up local police or helping to serve arrest warrants, an investigation by The Arizona Republic has found.

At least four of the nine Americans killed by the Border Patrol since 2010 died in these incidents, The Republic found. Three deaths occurred along the northern border with Canada — two in Maine and one in Washington.

Some of the shootings were deemed justified by investigators, although in four cases, family members dispute details of Border Patrol accounts.

From Maine to California, the Border Patrol has responded dozens of times to back up local law enforcement in the past four years, incident reports reviewed by The Republic show.

But Border Patrol agents receive substantially less training than police officers and are not required to undertake additional training to respond to incidents with local police.

A report released by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General in September found that many Border Patrol agents don't understand their own policies on when to use force.

The report also said trainees who leave the Border Patrol Academy "are not fully prepared for possible real-life situations they might encounter."

"Border Patrol agents are not adequately trained to solve problems with words," said Josiah Heyman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas-El Paso who has studied the border for 30years. "They don't have these everyday police skills."

Critics are also concerned that having the Border Patrol team up with local police opens the door for warrantless searches and immigration checks, a violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

As the number of Border Patrol agents has risen, so has the number of reports of agents backing up local police. From 2005 to 2012, the number of agents nearly doubled to more than 21,000.

During its hiring surge, the Border Patrol scaled back training and relaxed requirements — such as not requiring a high-school diploma. It sometimes skipped background checks, leading to problems with corruption and poorly trained agents.

Even more agents could be on the way. One immigration-reform proposal would put 20,000 additional agents on the ground. If it were adopted, there likely would be more instances of Border Patrol backing up local police because there would be more agents to respond to requests, said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents.

Moran said the primary reason the agency backs up local police is that Border Patrol agents want backup from local police if they need it. "We need to know the help will be there when our agents get into a difficult situation," he said.

In an interview, acting Deputy Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Kevin McAleenan said, "Backing up other law-enforcement agencies is part of the job, it's part of our responsibility."

Plainclothes Border Patrol agents were preparing to serve an administrative warrant for an undocumented immigrant at an apartment in Chula Vista, Calif., south of San Diego, in September 2012.

Valeria Tachiquin-Alvarado, a U.S. citizen, was at the apartment, which was thought to be a drug den. She left after the agents served the warrant, which did not result in an arrest.

Agents tried to stop her as she entered her car. Agents alleged that she hit one or more of them with her car as she pulled out trying to leave. One of them tried to pull the car keys out of the ignition, according to media reports.

As she drove away, Border Patrol Agent Justin Tackett either jumped or was forced onto the hood of her Honda Accord.

It traveled about 200yards with him on the hood, police and Border Patrol accounts said. Tackett, fearing for his life, fired 10 shots into the windshield from the hood of the car, killing Tachiquin-Alvarado, a 32-year-old mother of five.

However, the lawsuit alleges that Tackett fired the fatal shots while standing upright, walking toward the car as Tachiquin- Alvarado was reversing it away from him. The San Diego coroner said she tested positive for methamphetamine at the time of her death. She was on parole for a previous drug conviction.

Nine-year-old twins Isaac and Rebecca Alvarado with an image of the their mother, Valeria Tachiquin-Alvarado, who was shot and killed Sept. 28, 2012, by a border agent in Chula Vista, Calif.

The family has filed a wrongful-death suit against Tackett and the Border Patrol, claiming that Tackett was unfit for hire by the Border Patrol. The suit said he had been disciplined and resigned as he was about to be fired from a prior post with the Imperial County Sheriff's Office for "multiple acts of serious misconduct and ethical violations." He sued to get his job back at the Sheriff's Department and lost, the suit states.

The lawsuit alleges that Tackett was suspended four times as a sheriff's deputy for misconduct. He was about to be fired in 2004 for two incidents: In the first, he unlawfully searched a property without a warrant and "negligently" left a man handcuffed in a hot patrol car with the windows closed. In the second, he improperly searched a hotel room after a traffic stop.

The charges in the second case were rejected because the prosecutor said Tackett's Fourth Amendment violations were "almost too numerous" to list, the lawsuit said.

Tackett worked for then-U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter for two years before being hired by the Border Patrol. Hunter, who ran for president in 2008 on a border-security platform, could not be reached for comment.

Tachiquin-Alvarado's family said she died needlessly.

Tachiquin-Alvarado's mother, Annabell Gomez, said she wants the agent and Border Patrol to explain why her daughter was shot. "I wish it would stop, they'd stop killing people and hurting people," she said. "Who are they to have that authority? They aren't no God."

Her attorney, Eugene Iredale, said the administrative warrant for the undocumented immigrant did not allow for the plainclothes agents to detain Tachiquin-Alvarado. He said he believes the agents served the warrant in the hopes of finding drugs and either make a drug case or find informants for drug cases.

Tackett's attorney, Richard Tolles, called the incident a "highly justified shooting" and said a response to the lawsuit will be filed this week. "This is a compelling case of self-defense," Tolles said.

Moran, of the Border Patrol union, said that agents can serve administrative warrants as part of their job, adding that some intelligence units use them more often than other agents.

"It's specifically in our authority," Moran said.

He said Tackett was struck by the car and was justified in his use of deadly force, contending that if he had not, "we may have had a dead agent on our hands."

"The agent feared for his life and had no other way to to stop the vehicle," Moran said. "The agent had no choice but to use his firearm."

Border Patrol agents often deal with situations by simply making commands and generally don't have the skills or training to negotiate these complex situations, such as armed standoffs or dealing with mentally ill suspects, said Heyman, of the University of Texas-El Paso.

Manuel Rodriguez, police chief of National City, Calif., south of San Diego, said police officers get more training than Border Patrol agents, and they do so in an urban environment rather than the rural environment the Border Patrol works in.

The training is also far longer for local officers. The National City academy is six months. Several of the police academies in the Phoenix area are 18 to 20 weeks in length.

The Border Patrol says its agents receive 58 days of academy training.

Rodriguez said his police officers practice the concept of contact and cover — where one officer contacts and interacts with the subject and the other covers him or her — but sometimes, the Border Patrol doesn't practice this basic concept.

Moran said Border Patrol agents might not have specific training for local incidents, but he said he feels that agents "have a very good grasp" of law-enforcement training and principles. In all five cases, Moran said, it seemed that Border Patrol agents were justified in using deadly force.

"Overall, they are very well-trained and equipped to respond to a vast majority of the incidents they might encounter," Moran said.

Border Patrol agents responding with local police raises an additional concern — that Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure could be violated because of the difference in the missions of the Border Patrol and the police.

Annabell Gomez visits the burial site of her daughter, Valeria Tachiquin-Alvardo, on Dec. 4, 2013, with two of her grandchildren Analya Alvarado, 11, and Israel Alvarado, 6.

Border Patrol agents can't enter a house without a warrant, but agents responding to incidents with local police often check the immigration status of those whom they encounter on the call, Heyman said. This means they are arresting people whom they would not have been able to without responding to the local police calls.

"The Border Patrol use it as a measure, as a way, to arrest people they encounter in the process," he said.

This is leading to immigrant communities near the border not wanting to call the police because they know they will bring the Border Patrol with them, Heyman said.

The Border Patrol has expanded search-and-seizure powers, said James Lyall, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Those include being allowed to enter onto private property within 25miles of the border, using warrantless search powers to stop vehicles or vessels within 100miles of the border, and interrogating any "alien or person believed to be an alien" anywhere in the country, according to U.S. Code.

Some Border Patrol agents may be willing to exceed the scope of their expanded powers, Lyall said. And with the Border Patrol growing, so is collaboration with local law enforcement and civil-rights complaints, Lyall said. "It is a major problem," Lyall said. "It is essentially undermining the Fourth Amendment."

Republic photographer Nick Oza contributed to this article.


‘Pothead’ stereotype might be real, study suggests

Junk science funded by the DEA in an attempt to keep marijuana illegal??? Or real science????

Source

‘Pothead’ stereotype might be real, study suggests

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:53 PM

Shrunken structures inside the brains of heavy marijuana users might explain the stereotype of the “pothead,” brain researchers report.

Northwestern University scientists studying teens who were marijuana smokers or former smokers found that parts of the brain related to working memory appeared diminished in size -- changes that coincided with the teens’ poor performance on memory tasks.

“We observed that the shapes of brain structures related to short-term memory seemed to collapse inward or shrink in people who had a history of daily marijuana use when compared to healthy participants,” said study author Matthew Smith. He is an assistant research professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

The shrinking of these structures appeared to be more advanced in people who had started using marijuana at a younger age. This suggests that youngsters might be more susceptible to drug-related memory loss, according to the study, which was published in the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

“The brain abnormalities we’re observing are directly related to poor short-term memory performance,” Smith said. “The more that brain looks abnormal, the poorer they’re doing on memory tests.”

The paper is provocative because the participants had not been using marijuana for a couple years, indicating that memory problems might persist even if the person quits smoking the drug, said Dr. Frances Levin, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Addiction Psychiatry.

At the same time, Levin cautioned that the paper presents a chicken-or-egg problem. It’s not clear whether marijuana use caused the memory problems or people with memory problems tended to use marijuana.

“The big $64,000 question is (whether) these memory problems predate the marijuana use,” Levin said.

The study focused on nearly 100 participants sorted into four groups: healthy people who never used pot, healthy people who were former heavy pot smokers, people with schizophrenia who never used pot and schizophrenics who were former heavy pot users.

Researchers used MRI scans to study the structure of participants’ brains. Both healthy and schizophrenic marijuana users showed shrinkage of regions deep in the brain that are associated with memory.

“We found both of the marijuana-use groups had these parallel brain abnormalities,” Smith said.

Tests of working memory further found that marijuana users scored lower compared with non-users.

Working memory is the ability to remember and process information in the moment and, if needed, transfer it to long-term memory. Poor working memory can lead to poor academic performance and problems with everyday life.

Healthy people who never used marijuana scored 37 times better, on average, than healthy users who had smoked in the past on memory tests, while “clean” schizophrenics scored nearly four times better than schizophrenic marijuana users.

The study confirms earlier findings that showed memory loss in young marijuana users, said Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y.

But Krakower said more work needs to be done before it’s proven that marijuana actually causes changes in the brain. “Future research needs to be done to verify the implications of marijuana use on the … structure of the brain,” he said. “It needs to be studied in a group of people over a period of time.”

Dr. Mitch Earleywine, a professor of psychology and director of clinical training at the State University of New York at Albany, agreed that the results need to be replicated.

“Brain structural studies often look at every single spot and then capitalize on the ones that are significant by chance,” said Earleywine, author of the book Understanding Marijuana. “We’ve had no structural deficits in folks who started using as adults, so researchers went to adolescents.”

Earleywine said marijuana users have been shown to perform more poorly on memory tests due to the stress they endure taking such tests.

“If you can imagine going into a lab to take a memory test because you’ve been selected for your cannabis use, then a bevy of white-coated folks who might think that cannabis use impairs memory start giving you memory tests, you might not do so well,” he said. “We’ve found this for males in my lab.”

The Northwestern study also noted that these changes in brain structure are similar to those associated with having schizophrenia.

“If someone has a family history of schizophrenia, they are increasing their risk of developing schizophrenia if they abuse marijuana,” Smith said.

But Krakower said that assertion might be a stretch.

“I thought that was a little bit of a jump,” he said. “We know people with schizophrenia use marijuana. It’s going to be very hard to say that someone has schizophrenia because they used marijuana. That’s going to be hard to prove.”

The Northwestern research is supported by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.


A jobs program for Scottsdale Police Officers????

Think of it as a cushy jobs program for cops. Plus the cops get to pick up chicks too.

Source

New law on Scottsdale bars targeting violence

By Edward Gately and D.S. Woodfill The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:47 PM

A new ordinance that aims to bolster safety in Scottsdale’s entertainment district would have required many bars there to hire off-duty peace officers because of serious public-safety incidents, police records reviewed by The Arizona Republic show.

The ordinance, approved by the City Council in September, requires establishments to file extensive public-safety plans, meet minimum security standards and undergo security-staff training. It also requires hiring off-duty peace officers if a certain number of felony incidents are committed on the property during set periods.

The Republic analysis of Police Department records showed that, had the law been in effect, 10 of 27 current and former bars and nightclubs in the district would have needed to hire off-duty officers, based on the severity of public-safety incidents that occurred on their premises from July 1, 2012, to June 30 of this year.

Records show there were 10 reported sex crimes, about 25 reported aggravated assaults, two weapons-misconduct incidents and one homicide during that period.

The deadline for establishments to submit their public-safety plans is next month. Once their plans are approved, they will be required to meet the new security requirements, including hiring off-duty officers to assist security personnel.

The ordinance was prompted by the fatal stabbing this year of a bouncer outside Martini Ranch, then a nightclub at 7295 E. Stetson Drive in the downtown entertainment district.

The district includes the highest concentration of bars and nightclubs in Maricopa County and attracts thousands of patrons every weekend. The area is between Camelback and Indian School roads, just east of Scottsdale Road.

Guns, assaults

Police reports from the time frame range from violent and bloody fights to alcohol-fueled spectacles by partygoers whose misbehavior crossed the line into criminal misconduct.

In one incident in late June at the now-shuttered Martini Ranch, a 34-year-old man was slashed repeatedly with a box cutter on the neck, face, back and arms in a part of the bar called “The Shaker Room,” according to a police report.

It was the second knife assault in six months at the since the fatal stabbing of former Arizona State University football player Tyrice Thompson. Thompson, 27, was fatally stabbed during an altercation on Jan. 27.

In mid-March, 19-year-old James Webb was arrested on suspicion of various crimes after police said he fired a gun into the air outside El Hefe Super Macho Taqueria, 4425 N. Saddlebag Trail. A police report said Webb went to the area to “party” with friends and meet girls but that his friends were “more interested in fighting and causing trouble.”

Webb said a friend gave him the gun and told him to “fire a round off” if they got into a fight, according to police. Soon thereafter, a fight broke out and Webb fired the gun into the air, police said. The combatants and crowd scattered in all directions.

In early June, self-professed model Graseella Ghattas Bousheh was arrested at Wild Knight, 4405 N. Saddlebag Trail, after police received calls about an intoxicated woman attacking people in front of the bar by swinging her purse.

When police took Bousheh’s identification and began to question her, she became belligerent, saying that “she was a model and that she had a photo shoot in the morning in Los Angeles and that I was wasting her time,” a police report said.

Bousheh, 33, began shouting profanities and calling passers-by “dirty, stupid Americans,” according to police documents. She shouted racial epithets at the arresting officer and threatened that she would tell others that he raped her in his patrol car.

When the officer and Bousheh arrived at the jail, she began to “pull away and twist away,” according to the officers’ report.

The woman later spit on an officer while at the city jail and kicked a detention officer in the groin, causing injury, according to the report.

She was booked on suspicion of aggravated assault against an officer and disorderly conduct, among other charges.

Wild Knight has since closed and the space is now occupied by a night spot called International Scottsdale.

An eye on safety

Bill Crawford, president of the Association To Preserve Downtown Scottsdale’s Quality of Life, said he’s seen worse. He has pushed for tougher police enforcement in the area for years.

“We’ve seen some nasty, ugly, big fights,” he said. “We see knives, we see guns, we see public urination (and) public defecation, we see people passed out and vomiting on the street.”

Crawford said he started posting videos and photos online out of frustration over what he saw as a lack of action from the city and Police Department.

“There’s a real harm being done to Scottsdale’s brand, Scottsdale’s image and Scottsdale’s quality of life,” he said.

Mayor Jim Lane said the city is “looking to identify where the incidents occur and then take immediate action.”

Lane pushed for the new ordinance.

“And if they are allowed to happen without any recourse or without any development of some deterrent, then they may happen again,” Lane said. “We don’t want to establish any kind of reputation of being unsafe, particularly at that level of danger, of fatality.”

The establishments where violent incidents occurred either wouldn’t comment when contacted by The Republic or couldn’t be reached for comment.

Joe Diggs, president of the Scottsdale Downtown and Entertainment District Association, a bar-owners group, wouldn’t answer questions regarding the police records and the ordinance.

He issued the following statement:

“The members of the (association) are working hard to comply with city’s new public-safety ordinance by educating our members about the new requirements and deadlines contained in the new rules.

“Our members’ primary concern has been and will continue to be our patrons’ and employees’ safety. Members have been busy updating their public-safety operations plan and have been enrolling employees in the city’s security training. We stand ready to comply with the new requirements.”

Severity of incidents

The ordinance requires establishments with two or more felony public-safety incidents within a one-week period, or three or more incidents within a month, to hire at least two off-duty officers to supplement security personnel during peak times for at least three months.

It also requires establishments with one or more public-safety incidents involving the use or threatened use of a deadly weapon or deadly instrument, or a death or catastrophic bodily injury, to hire at least two off-duty officers to supplement existing security personnel for at least three weeks.

The council approved an amendment requiring establishments to give right of first refusal for the off-duty jobs to Scottsdale officers.

The off-duty officers would be required to work during the bar’s peak hours.

The Republic investigation showed that in every theoretical case in which a bar would have had to hire off-duty officers, it would have been because of a single occurrence of a more serious violent felony incident.

Some of the establishments, such as Axis/Radius, at 7340 E. Indian Plaza, and Martini Ranch, closed in recent months.

According to the records, a number of establishments had subsequent, violent felony incidents within the three-month period when officers would have been employed and on the premises had the ordinance been in effect.

For example, at El Hefe, an incident on March 15 that resulted in multiple felony charges would have triggered the requirement to hire off-duty officers. On June 11, when the officers still would have been on the premises, another incident — aggravated assault-disfigurement — occurred.

In addition, at Smashboxx, 7419 E. Indian Plaza, an incident occurred Feb. 17 that would have required hiring off-duty officers.

On March 31, while the officers still would have been there, another incident — aggravated assault-deadly weapon/dangerous instrument — occurred.

At American Junkie, 4363 N. 75th St., an incident on Sept. 27, 2012, that resulted in multiple felony charges would have required hiring off-duty officers, who would have been in place on Nov. 22, when a subsequent incident — aggravated assault-serious physical injury — occurred.

Joe Hill, president of the Police Officers of Scottsdale Association, said that with the presence of police officers, “bad guys are going to make other choices.”

“There’s a vast difference when they see the uniformed presence,” he said.

Cleaning up

Requiring venues to hire off-duty officers isn’t considered a penalty, Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said. The venues have to “be clean for three months” before the officers can be let go, he said.

Hill said his organization pushed for the amendment requiring that the Police Department get first right of refusal when establishments are required to hire off-duty officers.

“Anything in downtown that’s bad, we get the blame for, so if they are going to blame us, give us the opportunity and put us in the position to solve the problems,” he said.

Scottsdale officers will be more effective and consistent in providing law enforcement and can be counted on to report all incidents, Hill said.

As for the pay bars offer, Hill said, “it’s higher pay than the normal duty rate, but it’s not as much as overtime.” He would not be more specific.

He also said the department isn’t stretched thin, requiring officers to work a lot of overtime, so there shouldn’t be a shortage of them available to work for the bars.

“When you start to listen to some of the club owners ... those who protest have the most reason not to have a police officer there,” he said. “If I’m a bar owner, I would have no problem with an officer standing outside.”

Lane said he hopes to see a difference in terms of the number of public-safety incidents after the ordinance has been in effect.

“We won’t have measurable results, but we’ll just see an absence of them,” he said.

Incidents requiring off-duty officers

Scottsdale police records show 10 of 27 establishments in the area between Camelback and Indian School roads, east of Scottsdale Road, would have been required to hire an off-duty police officer if a new bar-safety ordinance had been in place at that time. The requirement kicks in if certain felonies occur on the property. Here are incidents that would have done so:

Firehouse Bar and Grill, 4312 N. Brown Ave., April 25, aggravated assault (disfigurement).

Martini Ranch (now closed), 7295 E. Stetson Drive, Jan. 29, second-degree murder, other charges.

American Junkie, 4363 N. 75th St., Sept. 27, 2012, aggravated assault (choking), other charges.

Smashboxx, 7419 E. Indian Plaza, March 31, aggravated assault (deadly weapon).

Axis/Radius, 7340 E. Indian Plaza (now closed), Jan. 5, aggravated assault (deadly weapon).

W Hotel Scottsdale, 7277 E. Camelback Road, Oct. 7, 2012, disorderly conduct involving weapon.

Wild Knight (now closed), 4405 N. Saddlebag Trail, June 23, aggravated assault (deadly weapon).

El Hefe Super Macho Taqueria, 4425 N. Saddlebag Trail, March 15, disorderly conduct involving a weapon, other charges.

Red Revolver, 7316 E. Stetson Drive, Aug. 26, 2012, aggravated assault (serious physical injury).

Dollhouse, 7419 E. Indian Plaza, Sept. 29, 2012, aggravated assault (disfigurement).

Source: Republic analysis of Scottsdale Police Department records


U.S. judge: NSA program is likely unconstitutional

Source

U.S. judge: NSA program is likely unconstitutional

Associated Press Mon Dec 16, 2013 5:55 PM

WASHINGTON — In a ruling with potentially far-reaching consequences, a federal judge declared Monday that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ telephone records likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search. The ruling, filled with blistering criticism of the Obama administration’s arguments, is the first of its kind on the controversial program.

Even if NSA’s “metadata” collection of records should pass constitutional muster, the judge said, there is little evidence it has ever prevented a terrorist attack. The collection program was disclosed by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, provoking a heated national and international debate.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction against the collecting of the phone records of two men who had challenged the program and said any such records for the men should be destroyed. But he put enforcement of that decision on hold pending a near-certain government appeal, which may well end up at the Supreme Court.

The injunction applies only to the two individual plaintiffs, but the ruling is likely to open the door to much broader challenges to the records collection and storage.

The plaintiffs are Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer, and Charles Strange, who is the father of a cryptologist technician who was killed in Afghanistan when his helicopter was shot down in 2011. The son worked for the NSA and support personnel for Navy SEAL Team VI.

Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that the two men “have a substantial likelihood of showing” that their privacy interests outweigh the government’s interest in collecting the data “and therefore the NSA’s bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.”

“I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware ‘the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,’ would be aghast,” he declared.

In addition to civil liberties critics, big communications companies are unhappy with the NSA program, concerned about a loss of business from major clients who are worried about government snooping. President Barack Obama will meet Tuesday with executives from leading technology companies. The meeting was previously scheduled, but the NSA program is sure to be on the agenda, and now the court ruling will be in the mix.

After the ruling, Andrew C. Ames, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement, “We’ve seen the opinion and are studying it. We believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found. We have no further comment at this time.”

Snowden, in a statement provided to reporter Glenn Greenwald and obtained by The Associated Press, said, “I acted on my belief that the NSA’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”

Klayman said in a telephone interview that it was a big day for the country.

“Obviously it’s a great ruling and a correct ruling, and the first time that in a long time that a court has stepped in to prevent the tyranny of the other two branches of government,” he said.

The Obama administration has defended the program as a crucial tool against terrorism.

But in his 68-page, heavily footnoted opinion, Leon concluded that the government didn’t cite a single instance in which the program “actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack.”

“I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism,” he added.

He said was staying his ruling pending appeal “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues.”

The government has argued that under a 1979 Supreme Court ruling, Smith v. Maryland, no one has an expectation of privacy in the telephone data that phone companies keep as business records. In that ruling, the high court rejected the claim that police need a warrant to obtain such records.

But Leon said that was a “far cry” from the issue in this case. The question, he said, is, “When do present-day circumstances — the evolutions in the government’s surveillance capabilities, citizens’ phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companies — become so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court 34 years ago that a precedent like Smith simply does not apply? The answer, unfortunately for the government, is now.”

He wrote that the court in 1979 couldn’t have imagined how people interact with their phones nowadays, citing the explosion of cellphones. In addition, he said, the Smith case involved a search of just a few days, while “there is the very real prospect that the (NSA) program will go on for as long as America is combatting terrorism, which realistically could be forever!”

Leon added: “The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived of in 1979.”

The judge also mocked the government’s contention that it would be burdensome to comply with any court order that requires the NSA to remove the plaintiffs from its database.

“Of course, the public has no interest in saving the government from the burdens of complying with the Constitution!” he wrote. As for the government’s complaint that other successful requests “could ultimately have a degrading effect on the utility of the program,” he said, “I will leave it to other judges to decide how to handle any future litigation in their courts.”

Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat and member of the Intelligence Committee, said Leon’s ruling “underscores what I have argued for years: The bulk collection of Americans’ phone records conflicts with Americans’ privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution and has failed to make us safer.”

Stephen Vladeck, a national security law expert at the American University law school, said Leon is the first judge to say he has serious constitutional concerns about the program.

“This is the opening salvo in a very long story, but it’s important symbolically in dispelling the invincibility of the metadata program,” he added.


Tempe officer in I-8 collision was on house arrest

Wow!!! Crooked cops sure get treated nicely by the courts!!! House arrest for a Tempe cop who threatened to kill his ex-wife?????

Source

Tempe officer in I-8 collision was on house arrest

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Dec 16, 2013 8:17 PM

A Tempe police officer was supposed to be under house arrest on Monday when he collided head-on with a semitruck near Yuma while being pursued by police, officials said.

Garrett Michael Peterson, who Tempe police say resigned Monday, had been recently released from a Maricopa County jail on a $10,000 bond. Peterson was arrested early Saturday morning after fleeing from officers trying to contact him about accusations that he threatened to kill his ex-wife, their children and her husband, authorities said.

An Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman said Peterson had minor injuries from driving the wrong way on eastbound Interstate 8 and colliding with a tractor-trailer 40 miles west of Yuma.

“We believe that impairment was a factor in it,” Officer Carrick Cook said. “This is an unfortunate situation that could have been a lot worse.”

The collision was the latest development in a bizarre story that started unfolding on Friday night, when the husband of Peterson’s ex-wife called Gilbert police and reported that Peterson had threatened repeatedly to kill them, according to court documents.

When a Gilbert officer arrived at the ex-wife’s house, her husband played a message left by Peterson on his cellphone saying, “I’m going to kill you and your whole (expletive) family,” the document said. Another message from Peterson said he would arrive at the house in about 25 minutes.

Sgt. Jesse Sanger, a Gilbert police spokesman, said Peterson and the woman were divorced in 2008.

Gilbert police were waiting for Peterson when he drove by but were unable to stop him as he fled, leading to a pursuit that reached 120 mph, the document said.

Sanger said police called off the pursuit and officers followed Peterson with a helicopter. He eventually was found early Saturday morning at Alma School Road and Loop 202 with two flat tires, Sanger said.

Peterson let a female passenger go, according to a court document, but refused to follow commands and displayed a gun, forcing a police SWAT team to respond. He eventually surrendered to police.

A breath test administered early Saturday morning found an alcohol reading of 0.255 percent, but Gilbert police are awaiting the results of a blood test that is considered more accurate, Sanger said. An open container of alcohol also was found inside Peterson’s car, according to court documents.

Peterson was arrested on suspicion of nine charges, including threatening and intimidating, endangerment and extreme driving under the influence, stemming from the Saturday morning incident. Peterson’s bond was set at $10,000 and he was ordered to be placed on house arrest and electronic monitoring upon his release from jail.

Tempe Police Chief Tom Ryff said the mistakes of Peterson and former Detective Jessica Dever-Jakusz, who resigned this fall and later was indicted a felony hindering prosecution charge, should not sully the reputation of his Police Department.

“These are distinctively different issues. Both of them involve personal decisions that were made. This has nothing to do with the way people at the Tempe Police Department do their job,” Ryff said.

He said Tempe police “responded swiftly and responsibly” to both cases, investigating Dever-Jakusz and suspending Peterson.

Ryff said Tempe police had an 82 percent approval rating from residents surveyed in 2012.

“We’re doing some great work. A sullied police agency is not going to have that kind of support,” he said.


Stores abuse shoplifting suspects

Stealing is wrong, but it certainly isn't right for stores to rob people they suspect to be criminals.

I suspect much of this is done with the consent of the local police.

Source

US stores have free rein to recoup theft losses

December 16, 2013, 12:47 pm

By COLLEEN LONG

NEW YORK (AP) — People accused of shoplifting at Macy's huge flagship store in New York City are escorted by security guards to cells in "Room 140," where they can be held for hours, asked to sign an admission of guilt and pay hundreds in fines, sometimes without any conclusive proof they stole anything.

As shoppers jam stores ahead of the December holidays, claims of racial profiling at department stores in New York have helped expose the wide latitude that laws in at least 27 states give retailers to hold and fine shoplifting suspects, even if a person hasn't yet technically stolen anything, is wrongly accused or criminal charges are dropped.

"You must remember, these people are not police officers; they are store employees," said Faruk Usar, the attorney for a 62-year-old Turkish woman who sued Macy's, which some customers say bullied them into paying fines on the spot or harassed them with letters demanding payment. "When they are detained, they are not yet even in a real jail."

Industrywide, more than $12 billion is lost to shoplifting each year. The laws, which vary on strictness and fine amounts, allow stores to try to recoup some losses. Under New York's longstanding law, retailers may collect a penalty of five times the cost of the stolen merchandise, up to $500 per item, plus as much as $1,500 if the merchandise isn't in a condition to be sold. A conviction is not necessary to bring a civil claim.

Some customers say stores have harassed them into signing admissions of guilt in order to turn a profit — not just recoup a loss.

Retailers don't divulge how much money they recoup but use it in part to offset security costs, said Barbara Staib, spokeswoman for the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. The total is a fraction of what they lose, she said.

But at least nine customers at the Macy's store immortalized in the movie "Miracle on 34th Street" say in lawsuits that the retailer is abusing the law, wrongly targeting minorities and holding customers for hours, years after it settled similar claims brought by the state attorney general by paying a $600,000 fine and changing practices. That agreement expired in 2008.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating the new claims against retailers. Last week, New York state stores agreed to post a customer "bill of rights" on their websites explicitly prohibiting profiling and unreasonable searches.

The racial profiling allegations started in New York this fall with a different retailer, Barneys New York, after two black customers said they were stopped while buying expensive merchandise. The retailer has said it does not profile, and neither customer was asked to sign a confession or pay a fine.

But the allegations grew to include Macy's. Among those complaining was Rob Brown of the HBO show "Treme," who said he was stopped after buying a $1,300 Movado watch for his mother this summer.

Brown, 29, said he too was taken to Room 140. There, he said in a federal suit filed by attorney Doug Wigdor, others being held were all "individuals of color." He was released, he said, when people realized he was a celebrity.

Elina Kazan, a spokeswoman for Cincinnati-based Macy's, said she couldn't comment on pending litigation.

Usar's client, Ayla Gursoy, was detained in 2010 after she carried two coats in her arms up several flights of stairs in the flagship store, according to her suit. Store security accused Gursoy, who speaks little English, of trying to steal. She was asked to sign a form admitting guilt and pay a fine. She refused, the police were called and she was arrested.

Gursoy and others say they were held for hours in Room 140, a bare room with two small, barred holding cells with wooden benches within the store.

Kazan said the company's practices prohibit coercion when recovering fines.

"Our policy of exercising our right to pursue a civil recovery payment is consistent with common practice in the retail industry and within the parameters of the law," she said.

Many retailers detain suspected shoplifters, industry experts said, but few have dedicated jail cells and most don't ask for payments on the spot like Macy's.

Most of the accused receive letters in the mail demanding payment from a law firm like the one used by Macy's, Palmer, Reifler & Associates, of Orlando, Florida. That firm also represents Home Depot, Wal-Mart and many other stores and sends out about 115,000 letters per month.

"We are confident in our clients' training processes and procedures for evaluating and investigating theft matters," attorney Natt Reifler said.

Letters sent to Gursoy said that if she didn't pay, she would be sued. One said she owed $400; the next said she owed $675 — the increase unexplained.

"We believe the whole purpose of her detention was to get the signature, to get the payments," Usar said shortly before his client's suit was settled in court Dec. 4. The terms were not disclosed. Her criminal charge was dismissed after no witness could testify.

___

Associated Press news researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.


Phoenix 'Melrose' arch creates identity, but cost questioned

Source

Phoenix 'Melrose' arch creates identity, but cost questioned

By Eugene Scott The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 11, 2013 4:17 PM

City officials spent nearly half a million dollars on a gateway arch designed to create a sense of place in a central Phoenix neighborhood.

While some neighbors and city leaders cheered the installment in November, others criticized the high cost, saying it takes away from more pressing issues.

The city installed the arch on Seventh Avenue between Indian School and Camelback roads to highlight the Melrose District, a central Phoenix area filled with coffee shops, antique stores and other small businesses.

“Signage like the Melrose sign provides a sense of place,” said Councilman Tom Simplot, who represents the area. “You know you have arrived, and the more we can identify our neighborhoods, the more value we build into those neighborhoods.”

Phoenix has no plans for similar projects in other areas of the city, staff said. But Simplot said every community should consider establishing projects in their neighborhoods.

“We absolutely should be looking at doing those throughout our neighborhoods in Phoenix,” he said. “What I suggest to people is to think of this as a pilot project.”

Councilman Sal DiCiccio agreed that projects that help residents and visitors distinguish neighborhoods from one another highlight the diversity of Phoenix.

“The city’s been very focused on providing identity in each area,” he said. “The most successful cities have created identity.”

However, the cost of the Melrose arch was probably a bit higher than expected, DiCiccio said. Most council members probably did not notice it because it was buried in the budget, he said.

Phoenix spent $498,000 on the project.

“Realistically, politicians ought to know what is in the budget,” he said. “It wasn’t a standout item, and there are thousands of things in the budget, but there’s no excuse to say you didn’t know if it’s in the budget.”

Advocate for arch

Business owners have been advocating for the arch for a decade, Simplot said.

The Melrose District is an urban area once rife with prostitution and crime that has been revitalized over the past decade, said Teresa Stickler, president of the Seventh Avenue Merchants Association.

“We’ve been fighting to improve the neighborhood and make it more walking friendly for all the neighbors,” she said. “It definitely feels like a small town within a big city. All the neighbors in there are very supportive of the local businesses.”

The arch is an 80-foot steel-truss structure featuring decorative lettering with 24-foot columns that light up at night. The arch is made of half-inch steel plates and weighs about 43,000 pounds, with each column weighing 9,800 pounds.

Phoenix staff, the Seventh Avenue Merchants Association and Gensler, an architecture firm, collaborated on the project’s design. And because Gensler’s is one of the city’s on-call design firms, the project didn’t require the city to seek proposals, said Matthew Heil, spokesman for the Phoenix Street Transportation Department.

Stickler said the association hopes to raise funds to build another public arch.

Other neighborhood projects

DiCiccio said it’s not unusual for residents to ask council members to support neighborhood-oriented public-art projects.

“You have individuals that are really involved in the community that want to see these types of projects come to their area,” he said.

DiCiccio highlighted similar projects across the city, such as artwork in Camelback Road tunnels in Arcadia and art along the bridle path in north-central Phoenix.

“Every district has seen something like that,” he said.

DiCiccio said erecting art projects can be costly and few residents understand just how expensive even small projects can be. But when done well, they should be seen as an investment, he said.

“I know there is a theory that this money could be used for other things, but it’s also part of living in a city and providing a certain quality of life,” Diciccio said.

Critics push back

Councilman Jim Waring, who represents northeast Phoenix, called the project “extremely expensive.”

“Obviously, I’m not against spending money in neighborhoods on things like improving roads. But I try to do it frugally,” he said.

Waring voted against the general budget that included the arch, arguing that the budget as a whole was “fiscally imprudent.”

However, he doesn’t believe that most council members were aware of the cost of the sign.

“I think there would have been some sticker shock if it weren’t buried,” he said.

Waring said he was disappointed to hear at a council policy session that the city is spending $1.5 million on public-art projects while spending about $200,000 on domestic-violence initiatives.

“I was unhappy with the juxtaposition of those two things,” he said. About “139 people were killed in Arizona last year in domestic-violence situations. A lot of them were kids.”

But Waring said residents in northeast Phoenix desiring more arts projects designating a specific neighborhood should not fear sharing their suggestions with him.

“Arches might be great, but I think we really should focus, particularly at a time where we have the food-tax money, on the nuts and bolts,” he said.

Phoenix resident Rozanne Hird isn’t impressed with the arch — or the cost.

“As a city taxpayer, I think this is the stupidest use of money I have ever seen,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Republic’s editorial board. “Our homeless population needs money, (Child Protective Services) needs help, our schools could use some money, and the list goes on. Instead, a half-million dollars was used to put up this ugly arch?”

“Someone needs their head examined for this colossal waste of money.”


N.S.A. Spied on Allies, Aid Groups and Businesses

They only violate the rights of criminals - honest!!!!

From this article it sounds like the American government only spies on people it considers to be criminals. I guess that pretty much means anybody that doesn't work for the American government.

Source

N.S.A. Spied on Allies, Aid Groups and Businesses

By JAMES GLANZ and ANDREW W. LEHREN

Published: December 20, 2013 423 Comments

Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.

While the names of some political and diplomatic leaders have previously emerged as targets, the newly disclosed intelligence documents provide a much fuller portrait of the spies’ sweeping interests in more than 60 countries.

Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, working closely with the National Security Agency, monitored the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs, and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries, according to the documents. In addition to Israel, some targets involved close allies like France and Germany, where tensions have already erupted over recent revelations about spying by the N.S.A.

Details of the surveillance are described in documents from the N.S.A. and Britain’s eavesdropping agency, known as GCHQ, dating from 2008 to 2011. The target lists appear in a set of GCHQ reports that sometimes identify which agency requested the surveillance, but more often do not. The documents were leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and shared by The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel.

The reports are spare, technical bulletins produced as the spies, typically working out of British intelligence sites, systematically tapped one international communications link after another, focusing especially on satellite transmissions. The value of each link is gauged, in part, by the number of surveillance targets found to be using it for emails, text messages or phone calls. More than 1,000 targets, which also include people suspected of being terrorists or militants, are in the reports.

It is unclear what the eavesdroppers gleaned. The documents include a few fragmentary transcripts of conversations and messages, but otherwise contain only hints that further information was available elsewhere, possibly in a larger database.

Some condemned the surveillance on Friday as unjustified and improper. “This is not the type of behavior that we expect from strategic partners,” Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said on the latest revelations of American and British spying in Europe.

Some of the surveillance relates to issues that are being scrutinized by President Obama and a panel he appointed in Washington that on Wednesday recommended tighter limits on the N.S.A., particularly on spying of foreign leaders, especially allies.

The reports show that spies monitored the email traffic of several Israeli officials, including one target identified as “Israeli prime minister,” followed by an email address. The prime minister at the time, in January 2009, was Ehud Olmert. The next month, spies intercepted the email traffic of the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, according to another report. Two Israeli embassies also appear on the target lists.

Mr. Olmert said in a telephone interview on Friday that the email address was used for correspondence with his office, which he said staff members often handled. He added that it was unlikely that any secrets could have been compromised.

“This was an unimpressive target,” Mr. Olmert said. He noted, for example, that his most sensitive discussions with President George W. Bush took place in person. “I would be surprised if there was any attempt by American intelligence in Israel to listen to the prime minister’s lines,” he said.

Mr. Barak, who declined to comment, has said publicly that he used to take it for granted that he was under surveillance.

Despite the close ties between the United States and Israel, the record of mutual spying is long: Israeli spies, including Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison for passing intelligence information to Israel, have often operated in the United States, and the United States has often turned the abilities of the N.S.A. against Israel.

Mr. Olmert’s office email was intercepted while he was dealing with fallout from Israel’s military response to rocket attacks from Gaza, but also at a particularly tense time in relations with the United States. The two countries were simultaneously at odds on Israeli preparations to attack Iran’s nuclear program and cooperating on a wave of cyberattacks on Iran’s major nuclear enrichment facility.

A year before the interception of Mr. Olmert’s office email, the documents listed another target, the Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an internationally recognized center for research in atomic and nuclear physics.

Also appearing on the surveillance lists is Joaquín Almunia, vice president of the European Commission, which, among other powers, has oversight of antitrust issues in Europe. The commission has broad authority over local and foreign companies, and it has punished a number of American companies, including Microsoft and Intel, with heavy fines for hampering fair competition. The reports say that spies intercepted Mr. Almunia’s communications in 2008 and 2009.

Mr. Almunia, a Spaniard, assumed direct authority over the commission’s antitrust office in 2010. He has been involved in a three-year standoff with Google over how the company runs its search engine. Competitors of the online giant had complained that it was prioritizing its own search results and using content like travel reviews and ratings from other websites without permission. While pushing for a settlement with Google, Mr. Almunia has warned that the company could face large fines if it does not cooperate.

The surveillance reports do not specify whether the interceptions of Mr. Almunia’s communications were requested by the N.S.A. or British spies. Nor do the reports make clear whether he was a longstanding surveillance target or swept up as part of a fleeting operation. Contacted by The Times, Mr. Almunia said he was “strongly upset” about the spying.

Ms. Hansen, the spokeswoman for the European Commission, said that it was already engaged in talks with the United States that were “needed to restore trust and confidence in the trans-Atlantic relationship.” She added that “the commission will raise these new allegations with U.S. and U.K. authorities.”

In a statement, the N.S.A. denied that it had ever carried out espionage to benefit American businesses.

“We do not use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” said Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman.

But she added that some economic spying was justified by national security needs. “The intelligence community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security,” Ms. Vines said.

Spies have a freer hand with economic targets in Britain, where the law permits intelligence gathering in the service of the “economic well-being” of the country. A GCHQ spokesman said that its policy was not to comment on intelligence matters, but that the agency “takes its obligations under the law very seriously.”

At the request of GCHQ, The Times agreed to withhold some details from the documents because of security concerns.

The surveillance reports show American and British spies’ deep appetite for information. The French companies Total, the oil and gas giant, and Thales, an electronics, logistics and transportation outfit, appear as targets, as do a French ambassador, an “Estonian Skype security team” and the German Embassy in Rwanda.

Germany is especially sensitive about American spying since reports emerged that the agency listened to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone calls. Negotiations for a proposed agreement between Germany and the United States on spying rules have recently stalled for several reasons, including the United States’ guarantee only that it would never spy on the chancellor — a promise it has refused to extend to other German officials.

Multiple United Nations Missions in Geneva are listed as targets, including Unicef and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. So is Médecins du Monde, a medical relief organization that goes into war-ravaged areas. Leigh Daynes, an executive director of the organization in Britain, responded to news about the surveillance by saying: “There is absolutely no reason for our operations to be secretly monitored.”

More obvious intelligence targets are also listed, though in smaller numbers, including people identified as “Israeli grey arms dealer,” “Taleban ministry of refugee affairs” and “various entities in Beijing.” Some of those included are described as possible members of Al Qaeda, and as suspected extremists or jihadists.

While few if any American citizens appear to be named in the documents, they make clear that some of the intercepted communications either began or ended in the United States and that N.S.A. facilities carried out interceptions around the world in collaboration with their British partners. Some of the interceptions appear to have been made at the Sugar Grove, W.Va., listening post run by the N.S.A. and code-named Timberline, and some are explicitly tied to N.S.A. target lists in the reports.

Many of the reports, written by British teams specializing in Sigint, shorthand for “signals intelligence,” are called “Bude Sigint Development Reports,” referring to a British spy campus on the Cornwall coast. The reports often reveal which countries were the endpoints for the intercepted communications, and information on which satellite was carrying the traffic.

Strengthening the likelihood that full transcripts were taken during the intercepts is the case of Mohamed Ibn Chambas, an official of the Economic Community of West African States, known as Ecowas, a regional initiative of 15 countries that promotes economic and industrial activity. Whether intentionally or through some oversight, when Mr. Chambas’s communications were intercepted in August 2009, dozens of his complete text messages were copied into one of the reports.

Referred to in the transcripts as “Dr. Chambers,” he seems to have been monitored during an especially humdrum day or two of travel. “Am glad yr day was satisfying,” Mr. Chambas texted one acquaintance. “I spent my whole day travelling ... Had to go from Abidjan to Accra to catch a flt to Monrovia ... The usual saga of intra afr.”

Later he recommended a book, “A Colonial History of Northern Ghana,” to the same person. “Interesting and informative,” Mr. Chambas texted. The high point of his day was receiving an award in Liberia, but soon he was busy working out logistics for future appointments.

“Where is the conference pl? Didnt get the invt,” he texted another contact. He discussed further details before adding, perhaps wistfully, given his grinding travel schedule: “Have a restful Sunday.”


Yemen Deaths Test Claims of New Drone Policy

Source

Yemen Deaths Test Claims of New Drone Policy

By MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: December 20, 2013 206 Comments

WASHINGTON — In some respects, the drone strike in Yemen last week resembled so many others from recent years: A hail of missiles slammed into a convoy of trucks on a remote desert road, killing at least 12 people.

But this time the trucks were part of a wedding procession, making the customary journey from the groom’s house to the house of the bride.

The Dec. 12 strike by the Pentagon, launched from an American base in Djibouti, killed at least a half-dozen innocent people, according to a number of tribal leaders and witnesses, and provoked a storm of outrage in the country. It also illuminated the reality behind the talk surrounding the Obama administration’s new drone policy, which was announced with fanfare seven months ago.

Although American officials say they are being more careful before launching drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere — and more transparent about the clandestine wars that President Obama has embraced — the strike last week offers a window on the intelligence breakdowns and continuing liability of a targeted killing program that remains almost entirely secret.

Both the Pentagon and the C.I.A. continue to wage parallel drone wars in Yemen, but neither is discussed publicly. A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment about the Dec. 12 strike, referring a reporter to a vague news release issued last week by the government of Yemen, written in Arabic.

It remains unclear whom the Americans were trying to kill in the strike, which was carried out in a desolate area southeast of Yemen’s capital, Sana. Witnesses to the strike’s aftermath said that one white pickup truck was destroyed and that two or three other vehicles were seriously damaged. The Associated Press reported Friday that the target of the strike was Shawqi Ali Ahmad al-Badani, a militant who is accused of planning a terrorist plot in August that led to the closing of more than a dozen United States Embassies. American officials declined to comment about that report.

At first, the Yemeni government, a close partner with the Obama administration on counterterrorism matters, said that all the dead were militants. But Yemeni officials conceded soon afterward that some civilians had been killed, and they gave 101 Kalashnikov rifles and about 24 million Yemeni riyals (about $110,000) to relatives of the victims as part of a traditional compensation process, a local tribal leader said.

Yemeni government officials and several local tribal leaders said that the dead included several militants with ties to Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, but no one has been able to identify them. Some witnesses who have interviewed victims’ families say they believe no militants were killed at all.

The murky details surrounding the strike raise questions about how rigorously American officials are applying the standards for lethal strikes that Mr. Obama laid out in a speech on May 23 at the National Defense University — and whether such standards are even possible in such a remote and opaque environment.

In the speech, the president said that targeted killing operations were carried out only against militants who posed a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” Over the past week, no government official has made a case in public that the people targeted in the strike posed a threat to Americans.

Moreover, the president said in May, no strike can be authorized without “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” — a bar he described as “the highest standard we can set.”

At the time, administration officials said that authority over the bulk of drone strikes would gradually shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A., a move officials said was intended partly to lift the shroud of secrecy from the targeted killing program.

But nearly seven months later, the C.I.A. still carries out a majority of drone strikes in Yemen, with the remote-controlled aircraft taking off from a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon strikes, usually launched from the Djibouti base, are cloaked in as much secrecy as those carried out by the C.I.A.

“The contradictory reports about what happened on Dec. 12 underscore the critical need for more transparency from the Obama administration and Yemeni authorities about these strikes,” said Letta Tayler of Human Rights Watch, who has done extensive research in Yemen about the drone strikes.

The very fact that the drone strike last week targeted an 11-vehicle convoy — a much larger group than Al Qaeda would typically use — suggests that the new American guidelines to rule out civilian casualties may not have been followed in this case.

And the confusion over the victims’ identities raises questions about how the United States government gathers intelligence in such a contested region and with partners whose interests may differ sharply from those of the Obama administration.

The area where the strike occurred, in the central province of Bayda, is almost completely beyond the control of the Yemeni government, and is populated by tribes whose recurring feuds can easily become tied up in the agendas of outsiders.

Over the past two years, the Saudi government — which for decades has used cash to maintain a network of influence in Yemen — has increased its payments to tribal figures in Bayda to recruit informers and deter militants, according to several tribal leaders in the area. This shadowy system appears to contribute to the secretive process of information-gathering that determines targets for drone strikes, a process in which Saudi and Yemeni officials cooperate with Americans.

But Saudi and American interests diverge in important ways in Yemen. Many of the militants there who fight in Al Qaeda’s name are expatriate Saudis whose sole goal is to bring down the Saudi government.

Because of the program’s secrecy, it is impossible to know whether the American dependence on Saudi and Yemeni intelligence results in the killing of militants who pose a danger only to Arab countries.

Some Yemeni officials have also hinted that the timing and target of the drone strike last week may have been influenced by a devastating attack two weeks ago on the Yemeni Defense Ministry in which 52 people were killed, including women, children and doctors at the ministry’s hospital.

That attack ignited a desire for revenge in Yemen’s security establishment and also damaged Al Qaeda’s reputation in Yemen, leaving the group hungry for opportunities to change the subject. Both parties, in other words, may have had reasons to manipulate the facts, both before and after the drone strike.

American officials will not say what they knew about the targets of the strike last week. But in the past, American officials have sometimes appeared to be misinformed about the accidental deaths of Yemeni civilians in drone strikes.

In one example from Aug. 1, a drone strike killed a 28-year-old man who happened to hitch a ride with three men suspected to have been Qaeda members. According to a number of witnesses, relatives and local police officials, the man, Saleh Yaslim Saeed bin Ishaq, was waiting by a gas station late at night when the three men stopped in a Land Cruiser and agreed to give him a ride.

Mr. Ishaq’s ID card and belongings were found in the burned wreckage of the vehicle, and the local police — who confirmed that the other three dead men were wanted militants — said he appeared to have been an innocent person whose presence in the car was accidental.

When contacted about the strike, American officials said they were aware only of the three militants killed. Yet the details of Mr. Ishaq’s death, and an image of his ID card, were published at the time in newspapers and on websites in Yemen.

Shuaib al-Mosawa contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen.


Involuntary commitment isn't as bad as you think

Involuntary commitment isn't as bad as you think - well at least that what the police who love to use it to get around the Constitution and jail people they suspect are criminals, but don't have a sherd of evidence to jail them with.

The US Secret Service used this trick to jail Kevin Walsh when he said that "President Bush deserved to die", even though Kevin Walsh didn't make any threats against the President.

Kevin Walsh probably isn't a good example to use because he is a racist who hates Jews, Blacks and Mexicans. But everybody including racists deserves to have the same Constitutional rights.

And even though I support Kevin Walsh's Constitutional rights, I certainly don't agree with his racist views on Jews, Blacks and Mexicans.

Last I believe all it takes to use the "mentally ill card" to put somebody in jail is for 2 people to say the person is crazy and get a mental health judge to agree with them. And in Kevin Walsh's case it was pretty easy for the judge to agree with the two Secret Service cops who said Kevin was crazy, despite the fact that these cops had never met or seen Kevin Walsh.

Source

Involuntary commitment isn't as bad as you think

By Gretchen Alexander and Carol Olson Our Turn Fri Dec 20, 2013 1:13 PM

You are concerned about your son. He has changed over the last several months, rarely showering or leaving his room, blowing up over nothing and losing weight.

He was laid off from his job. He seems suspicious about the meals you cook for him and has put paper up over the windows in his room. This morning, you found him in the front yard, yelling across the street at the neighbor, accusing him of stealing items from his room; you know the neighbor has never entered your house. You have asked your son to go to the doctor to get checked out, but he says nothing is wrong and adamantly refuses to go.

Situations like this are challenging to address, partially because of barriers to the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in our country.

A recent move by the White House to approve $100 million in funding to increase access to mental-health care in the U.S. is welcome news in the wake of a series of tragic shootings, some of which appear to have involved individuals with unrecognized or untreated mental illness. The majority of people who suffer from conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are not dangerous to others and may actually be more at risk of being victims of violence.

However, studies suggest that certain individuals with these illnesses can show an increased risk for aggression towards others, especially if they are not receiving treatment. This is only one of many reasons that improved quality and availability of mental-health treatment benefits all of us, not just those with mental illness.

Improving funding for mental-health services is not the only way in which access to services can and should be expanded. Also critically important is public education on the nature of illness and the availability of appropriate resources for treatment.

One of the most troubling aspects of mental illness is its tendency to rob its victims of insight — that is, the ability to recognize that they are suffering from a disease and could benefit from treatment. In such cases, the use of involuntary treatment can be essential, both to relieve the suffering of the person who is ill, as well as to decrease the risk of harm to the community.

3 big misconceptions

However, misconceptions about involuntary treatment persist and create barriers to access to care. One such perception is that involuntary treatment is only appropriate for individuals who are actively threatening to harm themselves or others.

Each state has its own laws for psychiatric commitment, so the requirements vary from state to state. Arizona is one of 27 states with a civil commitment statute that allows for involuntary evaluation and treatment in situations in which the person is suffering due to severe symptoms of mental illness, but lacks the capability to understand their condition and the potential benefits of treatment.

Involuntary evaluation can even occur on an outpatient basis, in cases in which the patient is not dangerous and willing to be evaluated as an outpatient. In addition, Arizona is one of 45 states with assisted outpatient treatment — laws that allow a person to be required to take medications when indicated and cooperate with monitoring by a mental-health clinic, even after discharge from a psychiatric hospital.

Another misconception that contributes to patients not receiving needed treatment is the belief that court orders for psychiatric treatment involves losing all civil liberties and becoming a ward of the state. Being placed on court-ordered treatment in Arizona means only that the person is legally required to attend clinic appointments and take medications as prescribed; there is also a provision that certain patients on court-ordered treatment are not allowed to buy firearms.

Becoming a ward of the state, on the other hand, involves having a guardian appointed by the public fiduciary. It is a completely separate and unrelated legal process and, in fact, is rarely applied for in the mental-health community.

Another common belief is that someone who is involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation will end up being “warehoused” in a psychiatric facility. In fact, the average length of stay for patients court-ordered for evaluation to Maricopa Medical Center, where almost all such evaluations are conducted, is about 14 days, and is much shorter for those cases in which the 72-hour evaluation period concludes with a finding that court-ordered treatment is not appropriate.

Most individuals with mental illness recognize their symptoms and want help to recover, and most treatment can occur on a voluntary basis. The goal of mental-health treatment is to provide care that improves a person’s ability to function independently and achieve the goals they set for themselves. In some cases, involuntary treatment can make a tremendous difference and can save lives.

As we go about our lives, interacting with family, friends and colleagues, it is important that we pay attention when those we encounter are struggling with mental-health issues, reach out to them and help them get treatment.

Dr. Gretchen B. Alexander is a past president of the Arizona Psychiatric Society and a physician in the Maricopa Medical Center Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Carol Olson is chairwoman of Maricopa Integrated Health System’s Psychiatry Department and executive chairwoman of the Psychiatry Department at University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.

Getting help

Referring someone for involuntary psychiatric evaluation can be initiated by any individual who is concerned, regardless of whether the person is a family member.

Information about initiating a petition for psychiatric evaluation in Arizona can be obtained by calling 800-631-1314 or visiting the Arizona Department of Health Services website.

General information about civil commitment and outcomes of involuntary treatment can be found at treatmentadvocacycenter.org.


Chicago police officer charged with battering senior citizen while off-duty

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Chicago police officer charged with battering senior citizen while off-duty

By Jeremy Gorner Tribune reporter

7:05 a.m. CST, December 21, 2013

A Chicago police officer will appear in court today after being arrested and charged with aggravated battery to a senior citizen, authorities said.

Details of the charge were scant. But it stems from a dispute between the officer, David Barrett, who was off-duty at the time, and an 84-year-old man who ended up getting hurt during the confrontation earlier this week in southwest suburban Oak Lawn.

Barrett, 58, who is assigned to the first deputy superintendent's office at Chicago Public Safety Headquarters, turned himself in to Oak Lawn police on Thursday, authorities said.

Oak Lawn police on Friday provided no information about the incident. But Stephen Campbell, a spokesman for the Cook County State's attorney's office, said the aggravated battery charge against Barrett is a Class 2 felony and he is scheduled to appear for bond hearing today at the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26th Street and California Avenue.

Records show Barrett is a 20-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department.

jgorner@tribune.com


Arpaio: The gift that keeps on giving

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Arpaio: The gift that keeps on giving

Maricopa County Supervisors announced two big fat lawsuit settlements involving Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former County Attorney Andrew Thomas on the Friday afternoon before Christmas week.

I hope the sheriff has put a nice little gift under the tree for the county board. Late Friday news has a way of dying over the weekend.

Certainly the board made Christmas special for Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, who were hauled away to jail by the sheriff in a vendetta move. For that, the county is handing over $3.75 million to the pair.

Nice.

In addition, a lawsuit by former County Supervisor Don Stapley was settled for $3.5 million. Stapley was one of the targets of a corruption case by Thomas and Arpaio.

Posting notice of such settlements on a Friday softens the blow of such news. Not that it matters. We’ve come to expect it. As long as the sheriff is in office just about every day is Christmas.

Arpaio is the gift that keeps on giving … away … our … money.


Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws

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Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 2:10 PM

TORONTO — Canada’s highest court struck down the country’s anti-prostitution laws in their entirety Friday, including against keeping a brothel.

The 9-0 Supreme Court ruling is a victory for sex workers seeking safer working conditions because it found that the laws violated the guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person. But the ruling won’t take effect immediately because it gave Parliament a one-year reprieve to respond with new legislation.

Prostitution isn’t illegal in Canada, but many of the activities associated with prostitution are classified as criminal offences.

The high court struck down all three prostitution-related laws: against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution, and street soliciting. The landmark ruling comes more than two decades after the Supreme Court last upheld the country’s anti-prostitution laws.

The decision upheld an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling last year that struck down the ban on brothels on the grounds that it endangered sex workers by forcing them onto the streets.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing on behalf of the court, said Canada’s social landscape has changed since 1990, when the Supreme Court upheld a ban on street solicitation.

“These appeals and the cross-appeal are not about whether prostitution should be legal or not,” she wrote. “They are about whether the laws Parliament has enacted on how prostitution may be carried out pass constitutional muster. I conclude that they do not.”

A Vancouver sex worker who was part of a group that brought the case applauded the court’s decision.

“I’m shocked and pleased that our sex laws will not cause us harm in a year,” Amy Lebovitch said in a news conference.

Katrina Pacey, a lawyer for the group of downtown Vancouver prostitutes, called it “an unbelievably important day for the sex workers but also for human rights.”

“The court recognized that sex workers have the right to protect themselves and their safety,” she said.

In 1990, the two women on Canada’s Supreme Court dissented on the ruling upholding the ban on street solicitation. This time, all six men on the court justices sided with their three female colleagues.

“The harms identified by the courts below are grossly disproportionate to the deterrence of community disruption that is the object of the law,” McLachlin wrote. “Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes.”

Sex-trade workers argued that much has changed since the high court last considered prostitution, including the horrific serial killings of prostitutes by Robert Pickton in British Columbia.


Former Tempe officer charged in police pursuit

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Former Tempe officer charged in police pursuit

By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 19, 2013 6:16 PM

A former Tempe police officer who resigned this week has officially been charged in the latest of two police pursuits, the most recent of which ended Monday when he collided with a semi-truck west of Yuma, according to court records.

Former officer Garrett Peterson was charged in a criminal complaint in Wellton Court with four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (his car), unlawful flight from pursuing law enforcement and one count of criminal damage.

A judge set bond at $1 million and said Peterson would be held in custody until a preliminary hearing on Dec. 26.

Peterson was off-duty during both pursuit incidents. He is accused of threatening to kill his ex-wife, their children and her husband during the first incident, which began last Friday night and ended early Saturday morning at the Loop 202 and Alma School Road.

But after his release from jail Monday morning, Peterson’s father reported to Gilbert police that his son was still threatening to kill his ex-wife’s husband. The U.S. Border Patrol spotted Peterson’s car on 1-40, launching the second pursuit on Monday afternoon.

Peterson resigned Monday morning when Tempe police notified him that they were starting an Internal Affairs investigation based on charges stemming from the first incident. Those charges include threatening and intimidating, endangerment, unlawful flight and extreme driving under the influence.

Despite his off-duty problems dealing with a divorce, Peterson was praised for his work as a patrol officer in a series of reviews, which cited his strong report writing and his initiative. Tempe police said they worked with Peterson to get him help for his personal problems and were saddened by the incidents.


Phoenix Police support murderer Richard Chrisman

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Ex-Phoenix officer sentenced to 7 years in shooting case

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 20, 2013 11:33 PM

Former Phoenix police Officer Richard Chrisman walked into court facing up to 15 years in prison for assaulting and killing an unarmed man during a 2010 domestic-violence call.

Chrisman walked out with a 7-year sentence and the vocal support of Phoenix police officers who again showed solidarity with their former colleague at Friday’s sentencing hearing.

The sentence handed down to Chrisman — the minimum the former officer was facing — was a disappointment to the surviving relatives of 29-year-old Danny Frank Rodriguez, who was killed in October 2010 following a brief altercation with Chrisman. Rodriguez’s family members pleaded with Superior Court Judge Warren Granville to impose the maximum sentence during Friday’s proceeding.

Granville’s decision also brought little satisfaction to Chrisman’s supporters, including a labor group representing Phoenix officers who believe Chrisman was a victim of a cowardly partner and a slanted court system.

“We feel that Rich was kind of an unfortunate victim of the justice system,” said Phoenix police Officer Ken Crane, a union administrator who spoke in support of Chrisman at Friday’s sentencing. “Clearly the judge saw that, based on everything presented, that it was worth trying to mitigate that sentence as low as he could.”

Officers filled the courtroom in support of Chrisman on Friday as they did throughout the trial, with a few screaming of their affection for the 91/2-year police veteran as he left the courtroom in a brown suit, bound for the Arizona Department of Corrections.

The trial pitted Chrisman’s version of events against that of his partner on the call, Officer Sergio Virgillo, whose report on what took place inside the south Phoenix trailer on Oct. 5, 2010, led to Chrisman’s arrest hours later.

Chrisman said he entered the home after Rodriguez resisted contact and pulled out his duty weapon to encourage Rodriguez to calm his dog.

Virgillo’s version of events had Chrisman barging into the trailer after Rodriguez asked for a warrant, putting his weapon to Rodriguez’s head and responding that the gun served as his warrant.

Virgillo told jurors he successfully de-escalated the situation toward the end of the call and was encouraging Rodriguez to leave on his bicycle when Chrisman shot Rodriguez twice in the chest.

Friday’s sentencing brought the raw emotions in the case back to the fore as relatives of Rodriguez and Chrisman alternately pleaded with Granville for a harsh sentence or for leniency.

The only opinion that mattered Friday belonged to Granville, who was a well-informed and calming presence during the six-week trial before sharing his first thoughts with 10-minute remarks at the end of the sentencing hearing.

The call and its deadly outcome hinged on the perceptions of two men, Granville said: Chrisman and Rodriguez.

The law gave Chrisman probable cause to detain Rodriguez so the officer could determine whether the 29-year-old methamphetamine user was a danger to his mother in the October 2010 call to the south Phoenix trailer park, Granville said, but the law did not give Chrisman permission to use more force than was necessary.

Where Chrisman thought he was progressing through the use-of-force protocol he learned in the Phoenix police academy — using physical force, pepper spray and a Taser in an attempt to subdue the domestic-violence suspect — Rodriguez saw an armed man who had barged into his home and was escalating his aggression, Granville said.

“Your disregard of Mr. Rodriguez’s perception led to a mismatch of a man with a gun and a man with a bicycle,” Granville said to Chrisman. “At its core, you walked in on an unarmed man in his own home and escalated the situation to a point where you felt compelled to shoot him dead.”

Granville also said, “You created the situation that caused you to believe you needed to use your gun.”

At that moment, it appeared Granville was considering a lengthy prison sentence for the former police officer.

But the judge then started detailing factors that weighed in Chrisman’s favor, including the support he has enjoyed from his former colleagues on the Phoenix Police Department and the fact that sentencing goals, such as deterrence and punishment, were accomplished in part when Chrisman forfeited his badge and was subject to public humiliation.

After Granville balanced those factors, he gave Chrisman the shortest sentence available according to Chrisman’s plea agreement.

Chrisman will report to the Department of Corrections, where he will be screened like every other inmate, said Doug Nick, a spokesman for the state prison system. Prison administrators typically consider the nature of the crime, inmates’ criminal records and whether they are subject to threats, such as by gang members, when considering where they are housed, Nick said.

And Chrisman’s law-enforcement background could play a role in where he is housed, just as any other inmate’s background would, he said.

“There’s not really a special category for ex-law enforcement,” Nick said.

Like any other inmate, Chrisman can also request some form of protective custody if he feels the need, he said.

“It’s not unusual for inmates to ask for that,” Nick said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they will get it, but it’s definitely something we consider.”

A jury in September found Chrisman guilty of aggravated assault for placing a gun to Rodriguez’s head in the early moments of the police call that Chrisman answered with Virgillo. But the jury failed to reach a verdict on the questions of whether Chrisman committed second-degree murder when he shot Rodriguez or animal cruelty when Chrisman killed Rodriguez’s dog, Junior.

The animal-cruelty charge was dismissed in the plea deal Chrisman reached with prosecutors last week. The deal required him to plead guilty to manslaughter in Rodriguez’s death and virtually guaranteed that no additional time would be added to Chrisman’s aggravated-assault sentence.


Judge strikes down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban

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Judge strikes down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 5:11 PM

SALT LAKE CITY — A federal judge struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban Friday in a decision that brings a growing shift toward allowing gay marriage to a conservative state where the Mormon church has long been against it.

The Salt Lake County clerk’s office started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Deputy Clerk Dahnelle Burton-Lee said the district attorney authorized her office to begin issuing the licenses but she couldn’t immediately say how many have been issued so far.

Just hours earlier, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby issued a 53-page ruling saying Utah’s law passed by voters in 2004 violates gay and lesbian couples’ rights to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

Shelby said the state failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way.

“In the absence of such evidence, the State’s unsupported fears and speculations are insufficient to justify the State’s refusal to dignify the family relationships of its gay and lesbian citizens,” Shelby wrote.

Ryan Bruckman, a spokesman for the Utah attorney general’s office, said the office will appeal the ruling and is asking for a stay that would stop marriage licenses from being issued to same-sex couples in the meantime.

Meanwhile, dozens of same-sex couples lined up to get marriage licenses at the Salt Lake County clerk’s office. State Sen. Jim Dabakis, chairman of the Utah Democratic Party, was there with his longtime partner, Stephen Justesen.

“I waited 27 years,” Dabakis said. “We didn’t want to get married until we could get married in Utah.”

Dabakis said people were rushing to get marriage licenses, fearing that the state will win a court order blocking them from being issued.

The ruling in Utah comes the same week New Mexico’s highest court legalized gay marriage after declaring it unconstitutional to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A new law passed in Hawaii last month now allows gay couples to marry there.

During a nearly four-hour hearing earlier this month in Salt Lake City, attorneys for the state argued that Utah’s law promotes the state’s interest in “responsible procreation” and the “optimal mode of child-rearing.” They also asserted it is not the courts’ role to determine how a state defines marriage, and that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last summer that struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act doesn’t give same-sex couples the universal right to marry.

Utah’s lawsuit was brought by three gay and lesbian couples. One of the couples was legally married in Iowa and just wants that license recognized in Utah.

Many similar challenges to same-sex marriage bans are pending in other states, but the Utah case has been closely watched because of the state’s history of staunch opposition to gay marriage as the home of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The church said in a statement Friday that it stands by its support for “traditional marriage.”

“We continue to believe that voters in Utah did the right thing by providing clear direction in the state constitution that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and we are hopeful that this view will be validated by a higher court,” the church said.

During this month’s hearing, Tomsic contended marriage is a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. She said the case embodies the civil rights movement of our time, saying discrimination has gone on long enough.

She said Utah’s law, which passed with two-thirds of the vote, is “based on prejudice and bias that is religiously grounded in this state.”

In the ruling, Shelby wrote that the right to marry is a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“These rights would be meaningless if the Constitution did not also prevent the government from interfering with the intensely personal choices an individual makes when that person decides to make a solemn commitment to another human being,” Shelby wrote.


Uganda lawmakers approve life sentence for gays

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Uganda lawmakers approve life sentence for gays

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 10:34 AM

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ugandan lawmakers on Friday passed an anti-gay bill that calls for life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts, drawing criticism from rights campaigners who called it “the worst in the world.”

When the bill was first introduced in 2009, it was widely condemned for including the death penalty, but that was removed from the revised version passed by parliament.

Instead it sets life imprisonment as the penalty for a homosexual act where one of the partners is infected with HIV, sex with minors and the disabled, as well as repeated sexual offenses among consenting adults, according to the office of a spokeswoman for Uganda’s parliament.

The bill also prescribes a seven-year jail term for a person who “conducts a marriage ceremony” for same-sex couples.

The bill was passed unanimously by the parliament, with no one voicing an objection.

President Yoweri Museveni must sign the bill within 30 days for it to become law. Although in the past he spoke disparagingly of gays, in recent times Museveni has softened his position on the matter, saying he is only opposed to gays who appear to “promote” themselves.

“In our society there were a few homosexuals,” Museveni said in March. “There was no persecution, no killings and no marginalization of these people but they were regarded as deviants. Sex among Africans including heterosexuals is confidential. If I am to kiss my wife in public, I would lose an election in Uganda.”

The passage of the bill makes it “a truly terrifying day for human rights in Uganda,” said Frank Mugisha, a prominent Ugandan gay activist, who called the legislation “the worst anti-gay law in the world.” He urged the country’s president not to sign the legislation into law.

“It will open a new era of fear and persecution,” he said. “If this law is signed by President Museveni, I’d be thrown in jail for life and in all likelihood killed.”

Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda under a colonial-era law that criminalized sexual acts “against the order of nature,” but the Ugandan lawmaker who wrote the new legislation argued that tougher legislation was needed because homosexuals from the West threatened to destroy Ugandan families and were allegedly “recruiting” Ugandan children into gay lifestyles.

Ugandan gays disputed this account, saying that Ugandan political and religious leaders had come under the influence of American evangelicals who wanted to spread their anti-gay campaign in Africa. Ugandan gays singled out Scott Lively, a Massachusetts evangelical, and sued him in March 2012 under the Alien Tort Statute that allows non-citizens to file suit in the United States if there is an alleged violation of international law.

Lively denied he wanted severe punishment for gays, and has previously told The Associated Press he never advocated violence against gays but advised therapy for them.

Ugandan gays had believed progress was being made to strengthen their rights in a country where prejudice against homosexuals is rampant. In 2012 they held their first gay pride parade and have sometimes joined street marches in support of all human rights.

Despite criticism of the anti-gay legislation abroad, it is highly popular among Ugandans who say the country has the right to pass laws that protect its children.

Amid international criticism, the bill was repeatedly shelved despite the protests of Ugandan lawmakers. Days before Christmas last year, the speaker of Uganda’s parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, said the anti-gay legislation would be passed as a “Christmas gift” to all Ugandans. She presided over the session Friday that passed the bill despite opposition from Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, who wanted the vote delayed.

David Bahati, the lawmaker who wrote the bill, said in a Facebook update Friday that the legislation was necessary “to defend our culture and to defend the future of our children.”

When the bill was first proposed, United States President Barack Obama called it “odious.”

Maria Burnett, a senior Africa researcher with Human Rights Watch, said the bill passed Friday is “still appalling” despite some amendments.

Homosexuality remains a taboo subject across many parts of Africa. Some 38 African countries — about 70 percent of the continent — criminalize homosexual activity, Amnesty International said in a report released earlier this year.

The rights group said of the new Ugandan law that it “would significantly hamper the work of human rights defenders and others who find themselves in conflict with the law merely by carrying out their legitimate activities.”


‘New Times’ journalists were arrested in dead of night

Usually when our crooked government masters make these out of court settlements the agreement always says the government is not admitting any guilt for what happened. I didn't see that in this article so I wonder if it is part of the settlement????

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‘New Times’ journalists were arrested in dead of night

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 20, 2013 10:39 PM

A six-year process that would cost Maricopa County millions of dollars began on the night of Oct. 18, 2007, at about 8:30, when Phoenix New Times editor Mike Lacey heard someone pounding at the front door of his north-central Phoenix home.

Not knocking. Not ringing the doorbell.

Pounding.

When Lacey answered, he saw a burly man in plainclothes wearing a sheriff’s badge on a chain around his neck. He was standing safely back from the stoop; his partner was at a defensive distance in case of trouble.

The deputy asked Lacey to identify himself. Then, he cuffed Lacey in front of his girlfriend, led him to a dark SUV with tinted windows and drove him to a nearby parking lot, where the two deputies started making telephone calls.

Meanwhile, at another home in the Valley, Lacey’s longtime business partner, Jim Larkin, was being led into another dark-windowed SUV, this one with Mexican license plates.

Lacey and Larkin were founders of the Phoenix New Times newspaper, and by 2007, they had built a 13-paper empire of alternative newsweeklies, including the venerable Village Voice in New York. They have since sold the newspapers.

They had been sniping at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as long as Arpaio had been in office. In 2007, they were embroiled in litigation over charges that, three years earlier, they had illegally published Arpaio’s address online.

On the day they were arrested, they had published a story they co-authored, detailing how an independent prosecutor appointed by then-County Attorney Andrew Thomas had subpoenaed the names of everyone who read the New Times online and details about the websites they had browsed before and after reading the New Times.

The prosecutor, Dennis Wilenchik, had also attempted to arrange a secret meeting with the judge presiding over the case.

Lacey and Larkin decided to put the whole story on the record, even though they knew they could be violating the secrecy of grand-jury proceedings.

“Our attorneys were very clear on the fact that this was a dangerous thing to do, and they advised against it,” Lacey said.

The attorneys were not mistaken.

Larkin was taken to a lockup in the East Valley. Lacey was driven to the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix and placed in a holding cell with the night’s catch of perpetrators. He tried to make himself look very small, he told The Arizona Republic.

Then, in an eerie “Alice’s Restaurant” moment, one of the other men in the holding cell spoke to him.

“What are you in for, White boy?” the man asked.

Lacey answered.

“Writing.”

Thomas dropped the charges against the newspaper men five days after their arrest and fired Wilenchik. Wilenchik denied he had ordered the arrests, claiming he had no such authority, and Arpaio’s chief deputy, David Hendershott, filed an affidavit claiming that he had ordered the arrests himself.

Lacey and Larkin sued.

On Friday, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors settled their federal lawsuit for a reported $3.75 million, a large chunk of which is to cover attorneys fees.

The board also settled the lawsuit lodged by former Supervisor Don Stapley for $3.5 million, partly because the county’s insurance company did not want to continue covering the costs of litigation.

Stapley had been arrested by the Sheriff’s Office, and twice, the County Attorney’s Office had obtained indictments against him alleging crimes. They were subsequently dismissed.

Several of the county supervisors said they felt that the cases should ideally have gone before juries.

“Right and wrong sometimes have to go second to a business decision,” Supervisor Steve Chucri said.

County Manager Tom Manos also told The Republic that the county wanted to clear the last of the lawsuits brought on by the actions of Arpaio and Thomas during what they called a war on political corruption.

The Lacey-Larkin arrests came a year before Thomas and his deputies first filed criminal charges against Stapley for alleged omissions on his campaign-finance documents.

But the war on county officials and judges lasted longer.

The first case against Stapley fell apart in August 2009. A month later, sheriff’s deputies arrested Stapley without a warrant, but he wasn’t re-indicted until that December.

Fellow Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was indicted on charges alleging conflict of interest, as well, and Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe was charged with bribery.

That same month, Thomas and Arpaio filed a federal racketeering charge against those people and other judges, supervisors and county officials. All those cases were dismissed by March 2010.

Thomas and one of his deputies were disbarred in 2012; a second former deputy was suspended from practicing law. Hendershott was fired.

Taxpayers are picking up almost the entire tab — more than $17 million, including the cost of defending the lawsuits.

Lacey and Larkin filed suit in Maricopa County Superior Court against Arpaio, Wilenchik and Thomas in 2008, alleging false arrest, malicious prosecution and numerous violations of their constitu- tional rights.

The case was bumped to federal court and was thrown out when a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix ruled that the defendants had absolute immunity because they were law-enforcement officials.

Lacey and Larkin appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in separate rulings in 2011 and 2012 reinstated the case by ruling that Arpaio and Wilenchik could be held liable. They filed an amended version of the lawsuit, naming Arpaio and Wilenchik.

Thomas was allowed to keep his immunity because he had hired Wilenchik to handle it for the office. Nonetheless, in announcing the settlements, the supervisors placed blame squarely on Thomas.

“What brought us here today is the shameful, expensive, almost incomprehensible story of Andrew Thomas’ abuse of power,” board Chairman Andy Kunasek said as he opened the meeting Friday.

Neither Arpaio nor Wilenchik will have to pay anything toward the settlement.

Arpaio told The Republic that the settlement was a business decision.

Wilenchik denied responsibility and said the county did not ask for his input in reaching a settlement. “While I am pleased this unfortunate and undeserved litigation has been concluded, I have always denied and will continue to deny any responsibility whatsoever for the arrests of the plaintiffs,” he said in a prepared statement. “I do so because that is a fact.”

Then, he told The Republic, “I did not negotiate or settle this or the amount and have admitted no liability and would not.”

The dispute between the New Times and Arpaio heated up in 2004, when then-reporter John Dougherty wrote an article alleging that Arpaio was using a state statute to hide lucrative real-estate holdings.

The law makes it a misdemeanor to publish online the home addresses of lawmen, but Arpaio, according to Dougherty’s report, was using the statute to shield the addresses of several properties.

According to court documents, Arpaio did not bring the issue to the attention of then-County Attorney Rick Romley because he didn’t think Romley would follow up on it. Instead, he waited until Thomas took over. Thomas declined to prosecute, and so did the Pinal County Attorney’s Office.

Then, Thomas hired Wilenchik, a former employer and political ally, to prosecute the case.

As described in a 9th Circuit ruling, Wilenchik sent two subpoenas to the New Times in August 2007 demanding that the paper reveal confidential sources (which are protected under state law), notes and documents, and that they reveal the Internet identities of everyone who read the paper online.

A month later, Wilenchik subpoened information about another New Times story, about one of Arpaio’s political opponents who claimed he had been slandered.

And in October, when the parties arrived at court, Judge Anna Baca, the presiding criminal judge who was hearing the New Times case, exploded at Wilenchik.

A woman who was friends with Baca and married to an employee of the County Attorney’s Office had called Baca to try to arrange a private meeting with Wilenchik. Baca explained that she had hung up the phone immediately, and she took Wilenchik to task for the attempt.

All this information was supposed to be secret. Lacey and Larkin decided to put it on the record.

That night, there was pounding at their doors.

Republic reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this article.

Cost breakdown

The following costs relate to lawsuits or legal claims filed by political targets of former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Thomas’ former deputy Lisa Aubuchon, former Sheriff’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott and Maricopa County. All of these cases related to the bungled government-corruption investigation into judges, county supervisors and administrators between 2008 and 2010. Ultimately, all criminal charges and the federal racketeering lawsuit were dropped.

Gary Donahoe, retired Superior Court judge: $1,275,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $767,127.

Kenneth Fields, retired Superior Court judge: $100,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $81,040.

Barbara Mundell, retired Superior Court judge: $500,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $134,273.

Anna Baca, retired Superior Court judge: $100,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $112,588.

Stephen Wetzel, former county technology director: $75,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $107,647.

Sandi Wilson, deputy county manager and county budget director: $122,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $458,318.

Don Stapley, former county supervisor: $3.5 million settlement. County legal expenses: $1,682,020.

Mary Rose Wilcox, county supervisor: $975,000 settlement, which is pending and under appeal. The county has paid her $9,938 in court-ordered legal costs. County legal expenses to date: $375,442.

Susan Schuerman, Stapley’s executive assistant: $500,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $200,201.

Conley Wolfswinkel, Stapley’s business associate: $1,400,000 settlement. County legal expenses: $1,586,152.

Andy Kunasek, county supervisor: $123,110 settlement for his 2010 legal claim. County legal expenses: $1,150.

Source: Maricopa County


County settles suits over Arpaio, Thomas

Source

County settles suits over Arpaio, Thomas

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 20, 2013 10:37 PM

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a $3.5 million legal settlement with former Supervisor Don Stapley on Friday, ending a long and public legal standoff in which both sides vowed not to settle the case.

The board’s decision — along with the $3.75 million settlement of a federal lawsuit filed by Phoenix New Times founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin — marked a symbolic end to the legal battles fought by Stapley and nine other political targets of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former County Attorney Andrew Thomas and their deputies in a crusade to root out what they claimed was government corruption among county leaders.

The two agreements approved Friday bring the taxpayer bill to more than $17 million for settlements and legal costs related to political and legal maneuvers by Arpaio and Thomas.

All 10 plaintiffs who eventually settled legal disputes with the county — county supervisors, retired Superior Court judges and other county officials — claimed Arpaio, Thomas and their deputies wrongfully targeted them in retaliation for court rulings and budget cuts.

That tab does not include a $975,000 settlement approved for Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox that is under appeal, accruing interest and legal fees. Wilcox, who claimed she was wrongly investigated by Arpaio and Thomas, recused herself from the Stapley settlement discussions, citing a conflict of interest.

“I look at all the things we could do in the county with the amount of money we’re spending today, and I’m disappointed that’s how I have to use the taxpayers’ money,” County Manager Tom Manos told The Arizona Republic.

The settlement bill does not include tangential costs the county incurred defending itself, elected officials and other employees against lawsuits, investigations and legal claims related to the actions of Thomas, Arpaio and their deputies. An Arizona Republic analysis found that those additional costs added up to at least $24.9 million as of April 2012.

The cast of characters in charge of Maricopa County has changed since the period of political and legal tumult began around 2008, prompting discord among leaders and dissatisfaction among citizens and county employees.

Three of five board members who voted on Friday’s settlements took office in 2013. A new county manager took the helm in 2012.

Thomas and his deputy Lisa Aubuchon were disbarred in 2012 for ethical lapses over the course of their political-corruption probes. Another deputy county attorney, Rachel Alexander, was suspended from practice. David Hendershott, Arpaio’s former chief deputy who came to be known as the mastermind of the sheriff’s failed corruption investigations, was fired in 2011.

Bill Montgomery replaced Thomas. Jerry Sheridan replaced Hendershott. Supervisors hail those two as key figures who helped salve the wounds of years-long conflict.

“It was a dark time,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Andy Kunasek, who also was targeted. “But I think in the best interest of the county, and I think, everybody we serve, it’s time to move forward.”

Stapley case

The warfare was triggered by budget cuts made by the board during the recession.

Viewing the cuts as politically motivated restrictions on their power as elected officials, Arpaio and Thomas responded with what they considered government-corruption investigations.

They filed criminal charges and federal racketeering lawsuits against county supervisors, as well as retired judges involved in some of the cases.

By March 2010, all the charges and the racketeering suits were dismissed. One by one, the targets sued Arpaio, Thomas and their deputies.

Stapley was indicted in November 2008 on 118 criminal counts stemming from omissions on his annual financial-disclosure forms as county supervisor. But the case fell apart when his defense attorneys realized that Maricopa County had never formalized disclosure rules. The charges were dismissed in August 2009.

A month later, the Sheriff’s Office arrested Stapley without a warrant, alleging fraudulent schemes, perjury and theft, based on allegations that he committed mortgage-loan and campaign-account fraud. He was indicted on some of those charges.

Thomas, in March 2010, asked Gila County Attorney Daisy Flores to review the charges against Stapley. She terminated the second prosecution. She concluded that there was “sufficient evidence to prove that Stapley committed seven separate felony offenses of false swearing” but that the investigation had been so mismanaged that it would be impossible to take to court.

Stapley sued the county before year’s end.

Settlement

The Board of Supervisors consistently has said it wanted to fight Stapley’s case in a jury trial scheduled for January, saying it would not approve a fellow county supervisor’s settlement. That sentiment contributed to the county’s current appeal of Wilcox’s settlement.

Wilcox said she believes the board should honor her settlement.

“I’m just really glad that he’s (Stapley’s) now completed, and it’s over for him,” Wilcox said. “And I would hope that the county would do the same for me. I don’t think you should put a double standard. If you want to put this all behind us, you have to do everything.”

The board said it decided to settle the Stapley case because it faced the risk of an expensive jury verdict, compounded by pressure from the county’s insurance company.

“I still think it’s a good deal for the family (of Stapley), but I think we would have gotten more out of a jury,” said Michael Manning, attorney for Stapley, Lacey, Larkin and several of the other plaintiffs who sued the county.

The size of Stapley’s settlement is partially due to out-of-pocket attorneys fees, totaling more than $1.6 million, Manning said. Stapley, who took a job in the private sector, was not available for comment.

Arpaio said he would not criticize the Board of Supervisors for making what amounted to a business decision to settle the cases.

Manos said the Stapley case incurred more costs than similar lawsuits because the county was preparing for a trial. The county also paid five outside law firms to represent each of the five defendants in Stapley’s case.

The county’s settlement and legal costs in the Stapley case were projected to exceed the $5 million deductible set by an outside insurance carrier, giving the insurance company discretion over settlement decisions, Manos said. The company opted to settle.

The county has insurance carriers that cover legal claims that exceed the $5 million limit on payouts from its self-insured risk trust fund.

“If there’s any good news today, it’s that we’re getting just about the last two cases behind us,” Manos said. “This has been a long and painful process and journey for the county.”

Republic reporter Michael Kiefer contributed to this article.


Phoenix woman sentenced in teenage sex case

Don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down??? You know criminals that hurt people like robbers and rapists???

And wow 17 years in prison certainly sounds like a draconian sentence for the victimless crime of humping two horny teenage boys who probably loved every minute of it!!!!

Source

Phoenix woman sentenced in teenage sex case

Associated Press Fri Dec 20, 2013 4:17 PM

A Phoenix woman accused of engaging in sex acts with teenage boys has been sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Maricopa County prosecutors say 36-year-old Jennifer Dempsey also was sentenced Friday to lifetime supervised probation with sex offender terms.

Dempsey pleaded guilty in September to molestation of a child, attempted sexual conduct with a minor and sexual conduct with a minor.

She was accused of contacting 14-year-old to 16-year-old boys online and then meeting them for sex acts. Phoenix police say she allegedly portrayed herself to at least two victims as a 16-year-old pregnant girl.

Police also say Dempsey convinced her family that she had cancer for the past five years to avoid arrest.

She allegedly shaved her head, bought wigs and had a fake chemotherapy port in her chest.


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