Homeless in Arizona

Sacrifice a politician????

Ex-ADHS employee was denied license

Arizona DHS employee Katie Jebraail is a doper?????

Will Humble's employees are dopers??? Will Humble is a drug war tyrant who is doing the best he can to prevent the people of Arizona from using the medical marijuana they are legally allowed to per Prop 203.

In this article it sounds like some of Will Humble's employees are big time dopers.

Look I don't have anything aginst dopers, but I fined it an oxymoron and rather hypocritical when dopers in the Arizona Department of Health Services are doing their best to prevent the rest of Arizona from using the medical marijuana they are legally entitled to use per Prop 203.

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Ex-ADHS employee was denied license

By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:33 PM

State health officials have fired a top behavioral-health administrator after a regulatory-board investigation found she had habitually abused drugs and lied to investigators about her addiction.

A unanimous Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners denied Katie Jebraail’s application for a counseling license, citing unprofessional conduct. A board investigation showed she had filled multiple prescriptions for large quantities of drugs at various pharmacies over the past five years and had misrepresented her medical history to the board.

Until her firing on Thursday, Jebraail was bureau chief of adult and children’s services for the state Department of Health Services’ Division of Behavioral Health.

Jebraail denied the allegations, saying they were vastly overstated. She added that the board’s report, a summary of which is posted online, discloses personal health information in violation of federal law.

Jebraail said she doesn’t plan to fight the board’s finding, but plans to hire a lawyer to help her get her medical information removed from its website.

ADHS Director Will Humble would not disclose why Jebraail was fired.

Marijuana-wrapped arrow shot at Washington jail

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Marijuana-wrapped arrow shot at Washington jail

Associated Press Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:18 PM

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A man is accused of trying to get marijuana into a Washington state jail by attaching it to an arrow he shot onto the roof.

A Whatcom County sheriff’s employee saw the man step out of his pickup truck and use a bow to launch the arrow toward the jail’s second-floor recreation area, but it missed its target.

Sheriff Bill Elfo says the man, identified as 36-year-old David Wayne Jordan, was arrested for investigation of introducing contraband into the jail, resisting arrest and obstructing law enforcement.

The Bellingham Herald reports (http://is.gd/BKajJv ) Jordan served 20 days in the jail earlier this month for assault and resisting arrest.

The sheriff says Jordan told deputies he had been aiming at a squirrel, but he couldn’t explain why he needed to attach marijuana to the arrow to go squirrel hunting.

———

Information from: The Bellingham Herald, http://www.bellinghamherald.com

Arizona lawmakers - Get congressional OK before Syria action

In this article U.S. Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema wasn't quoted at all. Does that mean the Kyrsten Sinema is no longer an anti-war person and now approves of Emperor Obama's warmongering???

Is Kyrsten Sinema now a big time supporter of the military industrial complex???

For those of you who don't remember Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to flush Arizona's medical medical marijuana laws down the toilet by slapping a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

Source

Arizona lawmakers to Obama: Get congressional OK before Syria action

By Dan Nowicki and Erin Kelly Gannett Washington Bureau Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:06 PM

Arizona Republicans on Capitol Hill are calling on President Barack Obama not to take military action against Syria without first obtaining congressional approval.

Sen. John McCain, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that the War Powers Act requires consultation with Congress and that he recommends that Obama take the time to reach out to lawmakers before initiating any military strikes, even though he may be legally able to attack without formal congressional permission.

McCain said that, earlier Wednesday, he spoke about Syria with Vice President Joe Biden.

“It would help him (Obama) enormously if he spends time with Congress and talks to Congress about it, and the American people,” McCain told The Arizona Republic after a meeting with the Arizona Small Business Association in Phoenix.

Obama reportedly is considering limited airstrikes against Syria for its military’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians and rebels.

However, Obama said Wednesday in an interview with PBS “NewsHour” that he was reviewing his options and had not made a decision.

Key lawmakers are expected to be briefed as early as today.

Reps. Trent Franks, Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon and David Schweikert, the four GOP members of Arizona’s House delegation, are among more than 100 members of Congress from both parties who have signed a letter urging Obama not to ignore them.

“If you deem that military action in Syria is necessary, Congress can reconvene at your request,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter. “We stand ready to come back into session, consider the facts before us, and share the burden of decisions made regarding U.S. involvement in the quickly escalating Syrian conflict.”

Members of Congress are in their home states for their five-week August recess and are not scheduled to reconvene until Sept. 9.

Taking military action against Syria without authorization from Congress “would violate the separation of powers clearly delineated in the Constitution,” the letter states.

“While the Founders wisely gave the Office of the President the authority to act in emergencies, they foresaw the need to ensure public debate — and the active engagement of Congress — prior to committing U.S. military assets,” the letter says.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Obama probably has the authority to act quickly if he believes “a timely strike is needed or would be advantageous” without asking Congress to reconvene. But if it appears the action could lead to broader involvement, the president “certainly would be wise to come and explain where he’s going,” he said.

“It’s not clear right now how far he wants to go, or if this is just a strike to blunt their ability to use chemical weapons,” Flake told The Republic. “Is it regime change? It seems kind of unclear about where he wants to go.”

During a question-and-answer session with the small-business group, McCain warned that the automatic defense budget cuts that took effect earlier this year as part of sequestration could hamper the military from carrying out an extended mission in Syria.

The “surgical strikes” that Obama may be contemplating probably could be done, but there could be problems if Syria turns into “a long engagement,” he said.

McCain called sequestration “the dumbest thing we ever did,” adding, “It’s the dumbest vote I ever cast.”

It's not a "bribe", it's a "deferred prosecution fee"

Posted on August 27, 2013 4:22 pm by Laurie Roberts

Shooter gets a bye (or maybe buy?) on prosecution

Sen. Don Shooter dodged a bullet late last week. Or rather, he bought the ammo before it could be used to zap him.

Shooter is one of the more colorful characters at the state Capitol, a two-term tea party patriot best known for his penchant for wearing weird hats. Mention his name around the Legislature and you’ll be regaled with the tale of the time he showed up in costume for a special session held to extend unemployment benefits.

His duds: a sombrero, a serape and a half-filled bottle of tequila.

OK, so the guy – who is also chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee — has a few judgment issues.

Which is perhaps how he came to be barging into a Yuma high school classroom in March, confronting a teacher and demanding that she stop everything to answer his questions.

Shooter has said he went to the EOC Charter High School that morning to find out why his grandson’s teacher had “repeatedly bullied and humiliated him in front of the class.”

That’s a commendable quest, right up until the moment he ignored the front-office staffer who said she wasn’t available and went barreling down the hallway and into the teacher’s classroom.

According to a Yuma police report, Shooter angrily confronted the teacher as class was in session, pointing his finger in her face and demanding that she answer his questions.

The report says the teacher felt threatened and Shooter was asked to leave three or four times – including once by a student and by an administrator who asked someone to call 911. He finally left when the teacher began recording the incident with her cell phone.

After the confrontation, he met with the school’s counselor, the report says, telling her he is “a very influential person in Yuma and the state of Arizona.”

In June, Shooter was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and interference with or disruption of an educational institution. He hired Ed Novak, one of the state’s elite attorneys, a lawyer whom I imagine doesn’t spend much time in municipal court.

Apparently, it was a good move because on Friday, the Yuma city prosecutor dropped the charges. This, provided Shooter stays out of trouble for a year, pays $1,500 in restitution to the school and forks over a $1,000 “deferred prosecution fee” to the city of Yuma.

No admission of guilt and no penalty – other than the payoff required in order to buy his way out of a prosecution and possible conviction.

Since Shooter’s coup, readers have been asking me how many mere mortals – we, the not very influential people — could storm into a school, disrupt a class then buy a dismissal of criminal charges.

The answer, apparently, is a lot of us. If we live in Yuma, that is.

Yuma City Prosecutor Jay Cairns says deferred prosecutions have been in use since before he took the job 12 years ago and that Shooter was treated no differently than anyone else would have been in those same circumstances.

“Who and what title he had was of no consequence,” he said.

If so, then Shooter’s use of a $500-an-hour – or more — attorney seems a tad overkill.

Cairns says he requires payment of a fee to the city in order to defer a prosecution, both to recover the costs of handling the case and to inflict a little pain on the formerly, but no longer charged.

“A deferred fee is to be significant enough so the individual realizes you’re getting a benefit here,” he said. “At the same time, you had a consequence and the fee should be significant enough so hopefully there’s no recidivism.”

Several other city prosecutors I’ve talked to say it’s not unusual to let someone avoid a criminal conviction if they have a clean record. But they said their cities generally require an admission of guilt and some form of counseling or community service or even a donation to a relevant charity before they will drop a case.

While it’s within a prosecutor’s discretion to do it, they raised their eyebrows at the idea of allowing someone to avoid prosecution by simply paying the city a fee.

“I don’t even know how the state bar allows that to be ethical,” one former prosecutor told me. “That’s literally, I’m giving the city money so I don’t get prosecuted.”

In this case, it was money well spent.

No conviction gives the Senate Ethics Committee just the cover it needs to avoid a hearing into whether Shooter’s conduct met the ethical standard we expect from our leaders.

That is, the ethical standard we should expect from our leaders.

Police, politicians against medical marijuana for wrong reasons

Letter: Police, politicians against medical marijuana for wrong reasons

Posted: Monday, September 9, 2013 2:17 pm

Letter to the Editor

Let’s not let Arizona’s Medical Marijuana Act get in the way of the “War on Drugs”, which is basically a full employment jobs program for cops.

Proposition 203 clearly says that ALL forms are marijuana, which includes concentrated forms of pot like hashish and hash oil are legal for medical marijuana patients: “ARS 36-2801.7 ‘Marijuana’ means all parts of any plant of the genus cannabis.”

But despite that the cops are falsely arresting medical marijuana patients who use concentrated forms of marijuana like hashish and hash oil and charging them with possession of CANNABIS, which the cops say ISN’T marijuana.

That is also why Arizona DHS Director Will Humble says that 5 year old Zander Welton can’t have his marijuana medicine which will stop his seizures. You can’t expect a 5 year old to smoke a joint, so Zander Welton is supposed to put hash oil under his tongue so his body will absorb the beneficial CBD which stops the seizures. But cold, cruel, uncaring Will Humble says hash oil is a crime, not medical marijuana.

Even with Prop 203 it’s still a crime to drive when you are stoned on pot. The only exception is medical marijuana users are not considered guilty of DUI because they have marijuana metabolites in their body. Marijuana metabolites can stay in a person’s body for weeks after they have smoke a joint and don’t mean a person is stoned.

But despite that the cops are falsely arresting stone-cold sober medical marijuana patients for DUI, simply because they have marijuana metabolites in their body.

The cops use the convoluted, cockamamie logic that because medical marijuana is “recommended”, not “prescribed” like other drugs that Prop 203 doesn’t mean what it says.

If the police and politicians hate Prop 203 because it cuts into their “war on drugs” jobs program, they should at least obey the law, while they attempt to change it. The same thing we did before we passed Prop 203.

Mike Ross

Tempe

Judge in rape case criticized for light sentence

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Judge in rape case criticized for light sentence, remarks about victim

By Christine Mai-Duc

August 28, 2013, 5:09 p.m.

A Montana judge has come under fire after handing down a 30-day sentence to a former high school teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old student and for making statements in court that the victim was "older than her chronological age" and "as much in control of the situation" as her teacher.

Outrage is particularly sharp in Billings, where the crime took place, because the girl committed suicide in 2010, just shy of her 17th birthday, as the criminal case was pending. A protest was planned for Thursday, and organizers have called on Montana District Judge G. Todd Baugh to resign.

The uproar began Monday when Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold, 54, to 15 years in prison on one count of sexual intercourse without consent, but then suspended all but 31 days and gave him credit for one day served. Prosecutors had asked for 20 years in prison, with 10 years suspended.

Baugh said that after reviewing statements made by the girl before her death, he concluded that she was a troubled youth. He then made the controversial remarks, including that he thought the girl had been "as much in control of the situation" as Rambold. The girl's mother, Auliea Hanlon, was in the courtroom and screamed at the judge before storming out, according to the Associated Press.

On Wednesday, Baugh apologized in a letter to the Billings Gazette newspaper, conceding his words were "demeaning of all women." He also said that while a 14-year-old "obviously" cannot consent, "I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape.… It was horrible enough as it is just given her age, but it wasn't this forcible beat-up rape."

Under Montana state law, minors under the age of 16 cannot consent to sex.

"I don't believe in justice anymore," Hanlon said in a statement. "She wasn't even old enough to get a driver's license."

Protest organizer Sheena Rice called the judge's language "horrific."

"Judges should be protecting our most vulnerable children … not enabling rapists by placing blame on victims," she said.

Rambold was first charged in 2008 with three felony counts of sexual intercourse without consent after the girl reported to a church counselor that she had been sexually assaulted by a teacher, court documents show.

After the girl's death, Rambold admitted to one rape charge and entered a plea agreement in which the case would be dismissed provided he complete a sex-offender treatment program and meet other conditions, including having no unsupervised contact with children.

Prosecutors re-filed the charges in December after learning he had been terminated from the treatment program for having unsupervised visits with family members who were minors, according to court documents.

Jay Lansing, Rambold's attorney, had argued that Rambold had "already suffered as a result of his conduct," losing his career and his standing in the community. Lansing, who argued for the same sentence Baugh ultimately delivered, declined to comment Wednesday.

Prosecutor Scott Twito said his office was reviewing the sentence, which relied on an exception in state law that gives the judge latitude on sentencing in cases of sex with minors.

"I think the outcome could have been very different if the judge didn't have the freedom to make those choices," said Marian Bradley, president of Montana's National Organization for Women. Bradley and others are asking the governor and attorney general to review Baugh's actions.

In a statement to The Times, Gov. Steve Bullock said Baugh's comments left him "angry" and "disappointed," but that the Judicial Standards Commission handles complaints about a judge's actions.

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

Three accused of using real guns while filming rap video

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Three accused of using real guns while filming rap video

By Peter Nickeas Tribune reporter

8:08 a.m. CDT, August 29, 2013

Weapons charges have been filed against three men caught handling real guns while filming of a rap video on the South Side, according to police.

The three were among eight people arrested by police around 3 p.m. Tuesday in the 7400 block of South Eggleston Avenue in the Englewood neighborhood. The other five do not face felony charges.

Police said the group was filming a rap music video in the backyard of a home when officers made the arrests.

Rodney Ramsey, 22, of the 2600 block of 93rd Street in Crown Point, Ind., was charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon.

Sheldon Cobb, 24, of the 500 block of Exchange Avenue in Calumet City, and Rayvon Lollis, 19, of the 2700 block of East Goodrich Avenue in Burnham, were each charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

The three are due in court today.

pnickeas@tribune.com | Twitter: @PeterNickeas

Legal marijuana sellers face quandary: No armored cars

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Legal marijuana sellers face quandary: No armored cars

By Jennifer Oldham, Bloomberg News

Posted: 08/29/2013 09:57:09 AM PDT

DENVER — Steve DeAngelo says his staff may need to carry cash in personal vehicles to pay Harborside Health Center's bills after his armored car provider told his co-founder that a federal agency ordered it to stop serving cannabis businesses.

"The only way we have to pay our bills is transporting cash from point A to point B," said DeAngelo, executive director of the medicinal marijuana collective based in Oakland, Calif., with 128,000 patients.

"This includes 15 percent of our $30 million-a-year gross that goes to the cities of San Jose and Oakland and the state of California for our taxes," he said. "This is a huge threat to the safety of my patients and staff, and beyond that it's a huge threat to the general public."

DeAngelo isn't alone. Several large marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado received similar notices from their armored vehicle services, said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Washington-based National Cannabis Industry Association.

The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the matter, Ellen Canale, a spokeswoman, said by email in response to repeated requests. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration referred questions to the Justice Department, its parent agency.

The end of armored-car service to some marijuana dispensaries underscores ongoing tension between federal law, under which cannabis remains illegal, and laws in 20 states and the District of Columbia that legalized medical marijuana consumption, plus measures in Colorado and Washington that allow those 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of pot.

Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't provided a federal response to the laws in Washington and Colorado that will also allow retail sales of pot next year.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws on Sept. 10, Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced Aug. 26.

Federal laws bar banks from offering accounts to pot shops, forcing medical marijuana firms to pay their sales taxes and other bills in cash. Cannabis businesses also are unable to obtain credit cards.

DeAngelo's car service, Dunbar Armored Inc., didn't return calls and messages for comment.

Fox, of the cannabis trade group, said that other medical marijuana dispensaries affected by the issue didn't want to come forward because of security concerns.

"In Colorado, one of our larger members told us that the DEA told their armored-car provider they couldn't provide services," he said. "As you can imagine, no one who is being put in a situation where they have to have large amounts of cash unsecured is going to want their name in the paper."

The suspension of armored-car service is the latest in what marijuana advocates say is an increasing number of federal enforcement actions against cannabis firms.

Federal officials have conducted 270 raids on medical cannabis providers since the start of the Obama administration, compared to 260 during George W. Bush's eight years in office, according to a June report by Washington-based Americans for Safe Access, a nonprofit representing patients.

The review found that the Obama administration spent more than $289 million over four and a half years on enforcement, about $100 million more than Bush did in his eight years in office.

Harborside Health Center's DeAngelo said his collective is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, which asked for detailed financial records.

His seven-year-old not-for-profit assured the city of Oakland in a safety plan it filed before it opened that it would use armored car services and that this is "one of the reasons the city felt we would run a safe facility," he said.

Rebecca Kaplan, an at-large Oakland City Council member, said the city's confident its regulation of dispensaries keeps them safe, yet it's concerned the end of armored-car service places residents in harm's way.

"There is no benefit to shifting medical cannabis funds out of armored cars and into public vehicles," said Kaplan, who was re-elected to a second four-year term last year.

"To require medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the nation to use unguarded cash systems — no rational person wouldn't understand they are creating an environment to support muggings, to support burglaries and to support crime," she said.

Kaplan said she called the city attorney's office to explore the city's legal options.

DeAngelo credits Harborside's investment in a 36-camera security system, biometric locks and a bank vault that is reinforced with 18 inches of concrete with preventing criminal incidents. Keeping cash on the premises may render that plan moot, he said.

"Some businesses do not want to go public because they fear they would be targeted for violent robberies," he said. "I also naturally have that concern. I think this is such an outrageous threat to public security that somebody had to be willing to stand up and talk about it."

Feds Won't Sue to Stop Marijuana Use in 2 States

Source

Feds Won't Sue to Stop Marijuana Use in 2 States

WASHINGTON August 29, 2013 (AP)

By PETE YOST and GENE JOHNSON Associated Press Associated Press

Despite 75 years of federal marijuana prohibition, the Justice Department said Thursday that states can let people use the drug, license people to grow it and even allow adults to stroll into stores and buy it — as long as the weed is kept away from kids, the black market and federal property.

In a sweeping new policy statement prompted by pot legalization votes in Washington and Colorado last fall, the department gave the green light to states to adopt tight regulatory schemes to oversee the medical and recreational marijuana industries burgeoning across the country.

The action, welcomed by supporters of legalization, could set the stage for more states to legalize marijuana. Alaska is scheduled to vote on the question next year, and a few other states plan similar votes in 2016.

The policy change embraces what Justice Department officials called a "trust but verify" approach between the federal government and states that enact recreational drug use.

In a memo to all 94 U.S. attorneys' offices around the country, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the federal government expects that states and local governments authorizing "marijuana-related conduct" will implement strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems that address the threat those state laws could pose to public health and safety.

"If state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust ... the federal government may seek to challenge the regulatory structure itself," the memo stated. States must ensure "that they do not undermine federal enforcement priorities," it added.

The U.S. attorney in Colorado, John Walsh, said he will continue to focus on whether Colorado's system has the resources and tools necessary to protect key federal public safety interests.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said the state is working to improve education and prevention efforts directed at young people and on enforcement tools to prevent access to marijuana by those under age 21. Colorado also is determined to keep marijuana businesses from being fronts for criminal enterprises or other illegal activity, he said, and the state is committed to preventing the export of marijuana while also enhancing efforts to keep state roads safe from impaired drivers.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also laid out guidelines for marijuana entrepreneurs.

"If you don't sell this product to children, if you keep violent crime away from your business, if you pay your taxes and you don't use this as a front for illicit activity, we're going to be able to move forward," Inslee said.

Under the new federal policy, the government's top investigative priorities range from preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors to preventing sales revenue from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels and preventing the diversion of marijuana outside of states where it is legal.

Other top-priority enforcement areas include stopping state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover for trafficking other illegal drugs and preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana. The top areas also include preventing drugged driving, preventing marijuana cultivation and possession on federal property.

The Justice Department memo says it will take a broad view of the federal priorities. For example, in preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors, enforcement could take place when marijuana trafficking takes place near an area associated with minors, or when marijuana is marketed in an appealing manner to minors or diverted to minors.

Following the votes in Colorado and Washington last year, Attorney General Eric Holder launched a review of marijuana enforcement policy that included an examination of the two states. The issue was whether they should be blocked from operating marijuana markets on the grounds that actively regulating an illegal substance conflicts with federal drug law that bans it.

Peter Bensinger, a former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the conflict between federal and state law is clear and can't be reconciled. Federal law is paramount, and Holder is "not only abandoning the law, he's breaking the law. He's not only shirking his duty, he's not living up to his oath of office," Bensinger said.

Last December, President Barack Obama said it doesn't make sense for the federal government to go after recreational drug users in a state that has legalized marijuana. Last week, the White House said that prosecution of drug traffickers remains an important priority.

A Pew Research Center poll in March found that 60 percent of Americans think the federal government shouldn't enforce federal anti-marijuana laws in states where its use has been approved. Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are especially prone to that view. But opponents are worried these moves will lead to more use by young people. Colorado and Washington were states that helped re-elect Obama.

Advocates of medical marijuana were cautious about the new policy. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that effectively allow patients to access and use medical marijuana. Threats of criminal prosecution and asset forfeiture by U.S. attorneys have closed more than 600 dispensaries in California, Colorado and Washington over the past two years, said Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for safe and legal access to therapeutic cannabis.

Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project, the nation's largest marijuana policy organization, called the policy change "a major and historic step toward ending marijuana prohibition" and "a clear signal that states are free to determine their own policies."

Kevin Sabet, the director of Project Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an anti-legalization group, predicted the new Justice Department policy will accelerate a national discussion about legalization because people will see its harms — including more drugged driving and higher high school dropout rates.

Kristi Kelly, a co-founder of three medical marijuana shops near Denver, said the Justice Department's action is a step in the right direction.

"We've been operating in a gray area for a long time. We're looking for some sort of concrete assurances that this industry is viable," she said.

A national trade group, the National Cannabis Industry Association, said it hopes steps will be taken to allow marijuana establishments access to banking services. Federally insured banks are barred from taking money from marijuana businesses because the drug is still banned by the federal government.

———

Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Alicia Caldwell in Washington and Kristen Wyatt in Denver contributed to this report.

Obama to allow recreational marijuana

Source

Obama administration to allow recreational marijuana laws to stand

By David G. Savage

August 29, 2013, 10:32 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration announced Thursday a limited pullback on federal enforcement of marijuana, saying it will not interfere with new state laws that permit recreational use of marijuana.

The Justice Department said it will not seek to veto new state laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize the recreational use of marijuana, and it will not bring federal prosecutions against dispensaries or businesses that sell small amounts of marijuana to adults.

A department official stressed, however, that marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and that U.S. prosecutors will continue to aggressively enforce the law against those who sell marijuana to minors and to criminal gangs that are involved in drug trafficking.

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder described the Obama administration’s middle-ground approach to marijuana enforcement in a call to the governors of two states.

Holder also sent new guidance to U.S. attorneys telling them to focus their prosecutions on certain federal priorities. They include preventing drug sales to minors and stopping traffickers from moving marijuana across state lines.

Under the new guidance, a marijuana dispensary will not be targeted by federal prosecutors solely because of its size or its volume, an official said.

This change could have an immediate impact in California and the other states where medical marijuana is legal under state law.

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

david.savage@latimes.com

A Sal DiCiccio win is a union loss

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A Sal DiCiccio win is a union loss

By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Aug 28, 2013 8:00 PM

In the end, the parallels between Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stayed true to the story line.

Each was not merely opposed by public-sector unions. They became totems of antipathy, accused of being hostile to the very existence of public-sector organized labor. They were so despised that union groups, likely from across the country, spent in record amounts to unseat each.

Defeating each became a test of wills, a struggle that in each case the unions would lose.

Preliminary numbers indicate DiCiccio has easily won re-election in District 6 against businesswoman Karlene Keough Parks, despite Mayor Greg Stanton’s enthusiastic support for her and a furious multimedia attack campaign against DiCiccio by public-safety union groups.

It is difficult to speculate what effect DiCiccio’s re-election will have on the contentious issues of public-employee compensation and the financial stability of pension plans. DiCiccio, after all, remains just one vote of nine on a political body, the Phoenix City Council, that does not directly control the state’s pension plans.

It is easier to see the consequences had he lost. A stern message would have been sent to every would-be reformer of public-pension programs and government spending that you represent taxpayer interests at your political peril — the very same message that unions attempted to send when they squandered millions of member dollars in their futile effort to defeat Walker.

Connections do matter in politics, especially in local races. And nowhere is that truism truer this year than in District 4, where the son of a former Phoenix mayor will face the daughter of a congressman in a runoff election.

Justin Johnson, son of former Mayor Paul Johnson, and Laura Pastor, daughter of Rep. Ed Pastor, have much going for them as individuals. Both have strong reputations as political organizers and strategists. But especially in low-turnout elections like council races, voters tend to favor familiar names.

In the District 8 race, meanwhile, the last votes were being counted even as dignitaries took their seats around the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington led by the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

For one candidate, at least, there must have been a certain kismet to Tuesday’s election.

The Rev. Warren Stewart, a leader of Arizona’s long struggle to institute a holiday honoring the civil-rights leader, appears likely to face off in a run-off election with economic-development strategist Kate Gallego.

For decades, District 8 has been represented by an African-American. Well-financed, well-prepared and enthusiastically backed by city unions, Gallego well may end that tradition.

Feds fail to enforce Do Not Call law

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Feds fail to enforce Do Not Call law

The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:55 PM

The article “Do Not Call law is being ignored” has some very interesting facts (Republic, Tuesday).

It was established in 2003. Fifty-one million phones were registered the first year. There are currently 221 million phones registered. The Federal Trade Commission gets 308,000 complaints every month about violations.

But the most interesting fact that explains why the law is being ignored is in the last sentence. “Since the Do Not Call program started (2003), the FTC has filed 106 enforcement cases against companies and individuals who have violated the rules.”

There are 308,000 complaints per month and 106 cases filed in 10 years.

Who is running the FTC, the violators or the violated?

— Pat Lindgren, Sun City

Let’s learn from politics as usual

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Let’s learn from politics as usual

Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:56 PM

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Arizona politics as usual.

When state Sen. Don Shooter invaded a high-school classroom in Yuma and verbally assaulted and intimidated his grandchild’s teacher last March, I wrote a letter to the editor predicting he would get off with a slap on the wrist.

Now, lo and behold, according to Laurie Roberts’ column, he’s done exactly that (“Colorful senator defuses case — with some fees,” Valley & State, Wednesday).

What can we, the voting public, learn from this?

1. Sen. Shooter’s attitude and behavior typifies the legislative leadership’s collective attitude toward educators throughout our state. We are nothing more than punching bags for them to bully and abuse whenever they choose.

2. Sen. Shooter most certainly does not need a raise. According to him, he is already “a very influential person in Yuma and the state of Arizona” who can afford to hire a high-powered, high-priced attorney.

And, finally, a prediction:

Yuma City Prosecutor Jay Cairns, who let Shooter buy his way out of trouble by paying an ethically questionable “deferred prosecution fee,” will soon be running for office on the Republican ticket. He will be endorsed by Sen. Shooter.

— Joe Carter, Phoenix

Atheists, Jews, Muslims and Hindus shut up and be tolerant

Source

On prayer, tolerance one-sided

Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:58 PM

A letter on Tuesday suggests we should show some maturity on prayer during governmental meetings (“Show some maturity on prayer,” Opinions).

I agree we have the right to participate in prayer if we choose. But why must those who are opposed to prayer always be the ones who have to “be mature” and show tolerance?

It seems that whenever religion and government come together, it’s always those who have different beliefs (or none at all) who have to be tolerant.

Let’s just not have prayer before the Glendale City Council meetings and let those who wish to pray do so prior to the meeting in silence.

— Jill Hudson, Glendale

Mesa family seeks medical marijuana for young son

Here is a link to the movie:

I believe they gave the child a strain of marijuana with a very high concentration of CBD or cannabidiol which prevents the seizures and a very low concentration of THC to keep the kid from getting high.

Of course don't tell sadistic Will Humble who is the head of the Arizona Department of Health Services or Arizona Governor Jan Brewer about this child. Those sadistic b*stards will do everything they can to prevent the kid from taking marijuana to get well.

Source

Mesa family seeks medical marijuana for young son

The Associated Press Wed Aug 28, 2013 4:23 PM

A Mesa family plans to give medical marijuana to their 5-year-old son to treat his seizures caused by a genetic brain defect.

Zander Welton had his first seizure when he was 9 months old and now has them weekly.

His parents say the cortical dysplasia, coupled with autism, keeps Zander from any real form of communication. He squeals and grunts, and on occasion, will bring them a cup to indicate that he’s thirsty, but otherwise doesn’t use hand gestures or form words.

After hearing about some disabled kids thriving thanks to medical marijuana, Jacob and Jennifer Welton have started the process of making Zander a legal cardholder.

The Weltons hope to start giving their son the marijuana oil drops by next week, using a syringe to pinpoint the exact dosage that works.

“If this finally works for Zander and I finally get to meet who he is, that would be amazing. Because I don’t know who he is. He’s just a little boy that’s trapped in this craziness,” Jennifer Welton said.

The Weltons have two other sons and Zander is the second oldest.

He’s undergone two brain surgeries, a third surgery for shock therapy and has been administered a series of trial and error prescription drugs.

His latest prescription made minor improvements with his seizures, but Jennifer Welton said the medication made her son more combative.

Zander’s mobility also is limited and he often reverts back to crawling after a bad seizure.

For medical marijuana treatments, the Weltons need two doctors to sign off on it. The caregiver also needs to be approved for a medical marijuana caregiver’s card and that person has to live with the recipient.

The couple connected with a naturopathic doctor and started the process to administer legal pot, learning Tuesday that their applications have been approved.

Medical marijuana isn’t covered by insurance, however. The state currently picks up the $5,000 a month tab for Zander’s prescriptions.

The CBD oil will cost about $300 a week out-of-pocket. The Weltons have been reaching out to friends and family for donations.

Source

Mesa family seeks medical marijuana for young son

The Associated Press Wed Aug 28, 2013 4:23 PM

A Mesa family plans to give medical marijuana to their 5-year-old son to treat his seizures caused by a genetic brain defect.

Zander Welton had his first seizure when he was 9 months old and now has them weekly.

His parents say the cortical dysplasia, coupled with autism, keeps Zander from any real form of communication. He squeals and grunts, and on occasion, will bring them a cup to indicate that he’s thirsty, but otherwise doesn’t use hand gestures or form words.

After hearing about some disabled kids thriving thanks to medical marijuana, Jacob and Jennifer Welton have started the process of making Zander a legal cardholder.

The Weltons hope to start giving their son the marijuana oil drops by next week, using a syringe to pinpoint the exact dosage that works.

“If this finally works for Zander and I finally get to meet who he is, that would be amazing. Because I don’t know who he is. He’s just a little boy that’s trapped in this craziness,” Jennifer Welton said.

The Weltons have two other sons and Zander is the second oldest.

He’s undergone two brain surgeries, a third surgery for shock therapy and has been administered a series of trial and error prescription drugs.

His latest prescription made minor improvements with his seizures, but Jennifer Welton said the medication made her son more combative.

Zander’s mobility also is limited and he often reverts back to crawling after a bad seizure.

For medical marijuana treatments, the Weltons need two doctors to sign off on it. The caregiver also needs to be approved for a medical marijuana caregiver’s card and that person has to live with the recipient.

The couple connected with a naturopathic doctor and started the process to administer legal pot, learning Tuesday that their applications have been approved.

Medical marijuana isn’t covered by insurance, however. The state currently picks up the $5,000 a month tab for Zander’s prescriptions.

The CBD oil will cost about $300 a week out-of-pocket. The Weltons have been reaching out to friends and family for donations.

Marijuana is the top illegal drug used worldwide

Source

Marijuana is the top illegal drug used worldwide, study says

Published August 28, 2013

Associated Press

Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug used worldwide, but addictions to popular painkillers like Vicodin, Oxycontin and codeine kill the most people, according to the first-ever global survey of illicit drug abuse.

In addition to cannabis and opioid painkillers, scientists analyzed abuse of cocaine and amphetamines in 2010, largely based on previous studies. Ecstasy and hallucinogens weren't included, because there weren't enough data. The researchers found that for all the drugs studied, men in their 20s had the highest rates of abuse. The worst-hit countries were Australia, Britain, Russia and the U.S. The study was published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet.

But there were few concrete numbers to rely on and researchers used modeling techniques to come up with their estimates.

"Even if it is not very solid data, we can say definitely that there are drug problems in most parts of the world," said Theo Vos, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the study's senior author. Vos said people tended to abuse drugs produced close to home: cocaine in North America, amphetamines and opioids in Asia and Australia. The lowest rates of drug abuse were in Asia and Africa. Of the estimated 78,000 deaths in 2010 because of illegal drug use, more than half were because of painkiller addictions.

Vos said countries with harsh laws against drugs had worse death rates for addicts when compared to countries who relied on other policies to wean people off drugs, such as needle exchange programs and methadone clinics.

Other experts warned officials needed to be on their toes to address potential health problems from drug abuse.

"The illicit use of prescribed opiates in the U.S. has only happened in the last 10 years or so," said Michael Lysnkey, of the National Addiction Centre at King's College London, who co-authored an accompanying commentary. "It's possible in another 20 years, patterns will again change in ways we can't predict."

In a related study, scientists found mental health and drug abuse problems including depression, schizophrenia and cocaine addiction kill more people worldwide than AIDS, tuberculosis, diabetes or road accidents.

In some developing countries such as India, attempts to stop AIDS have also slowed drug abuse as they focus on helping people kick their addictions, according to Vikram Patel, of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Patel recommended an approach to drug use similar to current controls on tobacco.

"A decriminalized drug policy could potentially transform the public health approach to drug use," he wrote in an email. "The enormous savings in the criminal justice system could be used to fund addiction treatment programs."

PhD in Weed: Meet The 82 Year Old Cannabis Scientist

PhD in Weed: Meet The 82 Year Old Cannabis Scientist

By Noga Tarnopolsky | August 27, 2013

JERUSALEM — An award-winning professor of medicinal chemistry and natural products at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Raphael Mechoulam is a trim gentleman who wears tweed jackets and silk scarves.

He is no slacker. At 82, he still works full-time.

Despite Mechoulam’s respectability, his greatest fame stems from two scientific breakthroughs that may earn him a warm welcome among denizens of /r/trees (sic) .

In 1964, he was the first person to synthesize THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the principal active ingredient in weed. That leap is what has enabled the scientific study of cannabis.

Before him it was all myths and smoke.

Mechoulam is almost universally referred to as the father of research on cannabinoids. (But no, he has never partaken in the stuff, he says.)

In fact, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta spent a few days in Mechoulam’s lab while researching what became his very public about-face this month on the usefulness of medical marijuana.

In 1992, almost three decades after synthesizing THC, Mechoulam identified anandamide, a naturally occurring human cannabinoid neurotransmitter, (translation: the stuff that makes you feel high when you haven’t ingested anything.)

Given the opportunity to name it, Mechoulam turned to the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning supreme bliss.

Parallel to these achievements, Mechoulam has spent the better part of a lifetime trying to secure approval for scientific experiments — only to crash into the disapproval of officialdom. “An academic lab is an open place,” he says, “and to have young people in the lab working with illegal stuff… How can the head of a lab determine whether the kid who is working on it isn’t taking a bit under the table?”

When just starting his research, in the early 1960s, Mechoulam found some unlikely allies: the narcs. He had a few friends who were cops: “Someone would say ‘hey, could you give him 5 kilos of hash? I know the guy.’”

Et voila: his career was launched.

Mechoulam is still fighting. He recently helped save Israel’s groundbreaking medical cannabis program from yet another assault by Health Ministry bureaucrats, who tried in late June to limit the forms and varieties of medical cannabis available at legal clinics.

Among other things, the ministry threatened (but failed) to ban Avidekel, a locally developed strain of cannabis containing less than 1 percent THC, the element that gets you high, and 16 percent CBD, a palliative cannabinoid that has no side effects. In other words, it doesn’t get you high.

The ministry’s principal concern was that CBD has yet to be isolated and tested in laboratory conditions, in the way that paracetamol, for example, was tested. “Scientists do not like to work with an unidentified mélange when evaluating a compound,” Mechoulam explains.

Dr. Boaz Lev, the ministry’s Associate Director General, says “remember that what we all want is the best for these patients, a medication that we know and understand and can responsibly prescribe them.”

It is easy to giggle about a bum subspecies of weed like the Israeli-developed Avidekel, but for a child undergoing chemotherapy who hopes to keep going to school, non-narcotic cannabis is no laughing matter.

One medical professional said the ministry was thwarted “because Mechoulam stood beside us and never budged, and in the end they couldn’t say no to him.”

By any measure, he is one of Israel’s most renowned scientists.

His groundbreaking article on the synthesis of THC was published almost 50 years ago, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Since then, he has been a recipient of numerous research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health, in Washington, DC.

An experiment he supervised 15 years ago at Jerusalem’s Sha’arey Tzedek Hospital had the remarkable result of diminishing the side effects of chemotherapy on “every single child” who was given TCH in drops, under the tongue. “The nausea and vomiting simply stopped. And when the chemo ended, we stopped the treatment,” he recalls.

Despite this, legal complications stemming from illicit nature of marijuana have almost completely prevented ongoing research on the effects of THC on cancer patients.

Mechoulam says this is “tragic.” Others in Israel are calling it criminal.

The beneficial effects of cannabis for pain relief and in combating chemotherapy’s side effects have long been documented. But now, experiments on cancerous growths themselves, conducted by the Spanish researcher Manuel Guzmán, show outstanding results in reducing the size of tumors in human beings.

Professor Avinoam Reches, a Hadassah Hospital professor of neurology, who as chairperson of the ethics committee of the Israel Medical Association has presided over numerous discussions on the use of medical cannabis, prescribes cannabis to patients with diagnoses known to benefit from its palliative treatments such as Parkinson’s Disease and Tourette’s Syndrome.

Asked to name any colleagues in the world of Israeli medicine who oppose this use of cannabis, Reches replied “no one comes to mind. I can’t think of anyone.”

“I use cannabis in routine ways in my patients, according to the directives that are part of the medical consensus,” he said, underscoring his practice of prescribing cannabis to long-term patients whose case histories he knows well, and mentioning the wariness he feels towards “people who I have never before met, who come in with specific complaints, asking for cannabis. These people do not always tell the truth,” he says, “and have a tendency towards over-use or abuse of the drug.”

Reches said he found it “astonishing” that questions presented to the NIH regarding scientific research on medical marijuana are directed to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Mechoulam is looking ahead. “Governments,” he says, “should set aside the recreational aspects and find a way to allow scientific research to advance.”

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

North Korea's Kim Jong Un executes ex-girlfriend???

Source

North Korea's Kim reportedly has ex-girlfriend, 11 others executed

By Carol J. Williams

August 29, 2013, 3:09 p.m.

A North Korean firing squad last week executed a former girlfriend of leader Kim Jong Un and 11 other entertainers for allegedly violating laws banning pornography, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday.

The report by Chosun Ilbo, an English-language newspaper of a Seoul media conglomerate, deemed the reported Aug. 20 executions a death blow to expectations that Kim would oversee a transition of his isolated and tyrannized people into a more open era.

Among the dozen performers shot to death while their families and former band members were forced to watch was Hyon Song Wol, a singer Kim reportedly courted a decade ago but was forced to abandon by his dictatorial father, Kim Jong Il.

Hyon was pictured by North Korean state television performing at a concert Aug. 8 in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, less than two weeks before her execution, Chosun Ilbo reported, posting a picture of the singer juxtaposed against one of Kim applauding at the concert.

The 12 members of the Unhasu Orchestra and the Wangjaesan Light Music Band were accused of violating anti-pornography laws by videotaping themselves having sex and selling copies of the tape to North Korean fans and in China.

The South Korean newspaper, which attributed reports of the executions to sources in China, said one also claimed that some of those arrested in the Aug. 17 crackdown were found to have Bibles in their possession. Like most communist countries, North Korea denounces religion as an undesirable foreign influence.

Hyon married a North Korean military officer after Kim's father forced their breakup, but reportedly continued to see the Pyongyang heir apparent even after her marriage, Chosun Ilbo said.

Kim, 30, is believed to have married Hyon's fellow band member, Ri Sol Ju, in the last year or so. Ri began showing up with Kim at cultural events in the capital a little more than a year ago, including at a female band concert in July 2012 that featured Western music, mini-skirted violinists and a parade of knock-off Disney characters. The gala raised speculation that Kim would relax longstanding constraints on artistic expression and social behavior imposed by his father and grandfather since North Korea's emergence as a separate state after World War II.

The performance that dispensed with the usual dour dress and state-mandated repertoire gave rise to "hopes that the young leader is more open to ideas from overseas, but that was apparently misreading," Chosun Ilbo concluded.

"Kim Jong Un has been viciously eliminating anyone who he deems a challenge to his authority," the newspaper said, quoting an unnamed source. The executions "show that he is fixated on consolidating his leadership."

Kim and his military and political hierarchies provoked new strain in relations with South Korea and the West this year by conducting a prohibited nuclear bomb test and proclaiming as invalid the 1953 armistice that halted fighting in the Korean War. The two sides never signed a peace treaty to formally end the conflict.

Is Obama lying about his "new" marijuana position???

Source

Marijuana advocates cheer Obama administration stand

By Ari Bloomekatz

August 29, 2013, 1:30 p.m.

Marijuana advocates in California and elsewhere cheered the Obama administration's announcement Thursday that it would not interfere with new laws in Colorado and Washington state permitting recreational use of cannabis.

But the advocates cautioned there is still a ways to go before legalization.

Dale Gieringer, a leading marijuana advocate in California, said he is encouraged by the new U.S. Justice Department memo, but he notes he has been encouraged by past memos only to see federal enforcement increase. [Obama lied before about not shaking down medical marijuana users and sellers]

“There are some weasel words in this,” he said. "They’re not going to make a priority to do something, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do it.” [Obama has given us the same lie before about medical marijuana]

The memo written by Deputy Atty. Gen. James M. Cole is a sharp turn from the last memo he wrote in 2011, in which he emphasized that commercial marijuana operations were not protected by their states’ laws.

The document released Thursday said prosecutors “should not consider the size or commercial nature of a marijuana operation alone” as a factor for enforcement. [translation - we won't shake down recreational users of marijuana - but we might if we feel like it]

“I hope the attorney general follows through with the spirit of their memo, but we’ll have to see,” Gieringer said.

But at least in writing, the Justice Department has now decided against seeking to block new state laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

They also said they will not bring federal prosecutions against dispensaries or businesses that sell small amounts of marijuana to adults. [Yea, we have heard that before - In Orange County, California they are trying to use RICA laws to seize an office building because one office was rented to a medical marijuana business]

A department official stressed, however, that marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and that U.S. prosecutors will continue to aggressively enforce the law against those who sell marijuana to minors or to criminal gangs that are involved in drug trafficking. [It's all how you define criminal gangs and drug trafficking - remember when Clinton said a BJ wasn't really sex - Emperor Obama will set the definition of criminal gangs and drug trafficking, and he could set it to include medical marijuana users or sellers]

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder described the Obama administration’s middle-ground approach to marijuana enforcement in a call to the governors of the two states.

Under the new guidance, a marijuana dispensary will not be targeted by federal prosecutors based on its size or its volume alone, an official said. [but it may be targeted for other reasons ]

This change could have an immediate effect in states where medical marijuana is legal under state law.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Thursday's announcement will reverberate not only in Washington and Colorado, but also in California and New York, and in other countries as well.

In a phone interview from Jamaica, Nadelmann said that country is moving to legalize marijuana and that some officials had been expecting opposition from the U.S. But Nadelmann said he told them there was now a lot less to fear.

"With today's announcement, it reinforces what I was saying in a huge way," Nadelmann said. "I was expecting a yellow light, but this light looks a lot more greenish than I had expected."

"The White House is essentially saying proceed with caution," he said. [proceed with caution because Obama may change his mind, if he hasn't lied about his current position]

Nadelmann said the announcement is "significant for the growing number of the other states where the majority of the electorate favor legalizing marijuana and it has international implications" for countries like Jamaica and Uruguay.

As for California, Nadelmann said "there's more or less a consensus among key allies to try and put this on the ballot in 2016."

Missouri poised to enact measure nullifying federal gun laws

Gun Bill in Missouri Would Test Limits in Nullifying U.S. Law

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: August 28, 2013 738 Comments

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here. A Missourian arrested under federal firearm statutes would even be able to sue the arresting officer.

Lawmakers are considering whether to override a veto of a gun bill by Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri, who considered the bill unconstitutional.

The law amounts to the most far-reaching states’ rights endeavor in the country, the far edge of a growing movement known as “nullification” in which a state defies federal power.

The Missouri Republican Party thinks linking guns to nullification works well, said Matt Wills, the party’s director of communications, thanks in part to the push by President Obama for tougher gun laws. “It’s probably one of the best states’ rights issues that the country’s got going right now,” he said.

The measure was vetoed last month by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, as unconstitutional. But when the legislature gathers again on Sept. 11, it will seek to override his veto, even though most experts say the courts will strike down the measure. Nearly every Republican and a dozen Democrats appear likely to vote for the override.

Richard G. Callahan, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, is concerned. He cited a recent joint operation of federal, state and local law enforcement officials that led to 159 arrests and the seizing of 267 weapons, and noted that the measure “would have outlawed such operations, and would have made criminals out of the law enforcement officers.”

In a letter explaining his veto, Mr. Nixon said the federal government’s supremacy over the states’ “is as logically sound as it is legally well established.” He said that another provision of the measure, which makes it a crime to publish the name of any gun owner, violates the First Amendment and could make a crime out of local newspapers’ traditional publication of “photos of proud young Missourians who harvest their first turkey or deer.”

But the votes for the measure were overwhelming. In the House, all but one of the 109 Republicans voted for the bill, joined by 11 Democrats. In the Senate, all 24 Republicans supported it, along with 2 Democrats. Overriding the governor’s veto would require 23 votes in the Senate and 109 in the House, where at least one Democrat would have to come on board.

The National Rifle Association, which has praised Mr. Nixon in the past for signing pro-gun legislation, has been silent about the new bill. Repeated calls to the organization were not returned.

Historically used by civil rights opponents, nullification has bloomed in recent years around a host of other issues, broadly including medical marijuana by liberals and the new health care law by conservatives.

State Representative T. J. McKenna, a Democrat from Festus, voted for the bill despite saying it was unconstitutional and raised a firestorm of protest against himself. “If you just Google my name, it’s all over the place about what a big coward I am,” he said with consternation, and “how big of a ‘craven’ I was. I had to look that up.”

The voters in his largely rural district have voiced overwhelming support for the bill, he said. “I can’t be Mr. Liberal, St. Louis wannabe,” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Just go against all my constituents?”

As for the veto override vote, he said, “I don’t know how I’m going to vote yet.”

State Representative Doug Funderburk, a Republican from St. Peters and the author of the bill, said he expected to have more than enough votes when the veto override came up for consideration.

Adam Winkler, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, who follows nullification efforts nationally, said that nearly two dozen states had passed medical marijuana laws in defiance of federal restrictions. Richard Cauchi, who tracks such health legislation for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said: “Since January 2011, at least 23 states have considered bills seeking to nullify the health care law; as of mid-2013 only one state, North Dakota, had a signed law. Its language states, however, that the nullification provisions ‘likely are not authorized by the United States Constitution.’ ”

What distinguishes the Missouri gun measure from the marijuana initiatives is its attempt to actually block federal enforcement by setting criminal penalties for federal agents, and prohibiting state officials from cooperating with federal efforts. That crosses the constitutional line, said Robert A. Levy, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute’s board of directors — a state cannot frustrate the federal government’s attempts to enforce its laws.

Mr. Levy, whose organization has taken a leading role in fighting for gun rights, said, “With the exception of a few really radical self-proclaimed constitutional authorities, state nullification of federal law is not on the radar scope.”

Still, other states have passed gun laws that challenge federal power; a recent wave began with a Firearms Freedom Act in Montana that exempts from federal regulations guns manufactured there that have not left the state.

Gary Marbut, a gun rights advocate in Montana who wrote the Firearms Freedom Act, said that such laws were “a vehicle to challenge commerce clause power,” the constitutional provision that has historically granted broad authority to Washington to regulate activities that have an impact on interstate commerce. His measure has served as a model that is spreading to other states. Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down Montana’s law, calling it “pre-empted and invalid.”

A law passed this year in Kansas has also been compared to the Missouri law. But Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, disagreed, saying it had been drafted “very carefully to ensure that there would be no situation where a state official would be trying to arrest a federal official.”

In Missouri, State Representative Jacob Hummel, a St. Louis Democrat and the minority floor leader, said that he was working to get Democrats who voted for the bill to vote against overriding the veto. “I think some cooler heads will prevail in the end,” he said, “but we will see.”

Taking up legislative time to vote for unconstitutional bills that are destined to end up failing in the courts is “a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Mr. Hummel said, adding that more and more, the legislature passes largely symbolic resolutions directed at Congress.

“We’re elected to serve the citizens of the state of Missouri, at the state level,” he said. “We were not elected to tell the federal government what to do — that’s why we have Congressional elections.”

The lone Republican opponent of the bill in the House, State Representative Jay Barnes, said, “Our Constitution is not some cheap Chinese buffet where we get to pick the parts we like and ignore the rest.” He added, “Two centuries of constitutional jurisprudence shows that this bill is plainly unconstitutional, and I’m not going to violate my oath of office.”

Mr. Funderburk, the bill’s author, clearly disagrees. And, he said, Missouri is only the beginning. “I’ve got five different states that want a copy” of the bill, he said.

Source

Missouri poised to enact measure nullifying federal gun laws

Published August 29, 2013

FoxNews.com

The Republican-led Missouri Legislature is expected to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that would expand gun rights and make federal gun regulations unenforceable -- even as similar laws adopted in other states to buck federal gun rules face legal challenges.

Several of Nixon’s fellow Democrats told The Associated Press that they would vote to override his veto when lawmakers convene in September, even while agreeing with the governor that the bill couldn’t survive a court challenge. Many of them noted that in some parts of Missouri, a “no” vote on gun legislation could be career ending.

The legislation would make it a misdemeanor for federal agents to attempt to enforce any federal gun regulations that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.” The same criminal charges would apply to journalists who publish any identifying information about gun owners. The charge would be punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Nixon said the bill infringes on the U.S. Constitution by giving precedence to state law over federal laws and by limiting the First Amendment rights of media.

The legislation is one of the boldest measures yet in a recent national trend in which states are attempting to nullify federal laws. A recent Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on gun control, marijuana use, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver’s licenses. Relatively few of those go so far as to threaten criminal charges against federal authorities.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled against a series of laws enacted in Montana that attempt to declare that federal firearms regulations don't apply to guns made and kept in that state. Similar laws have been adopted in other states.

In the Montana case, the Justice Department successfully argued that the courts have already decided Congress can use its power to regulate interstate commerce to set standards on such items as guns.

The ruling has the potential to affect similar laws in several other states and leaves open the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state of Montana has intervened in support of its law. The case also attracted the support of Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

In Missouri, gun rights legislation typically has received bipartisan support. In 2003, the Republican-led Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Bob Holden’s veto of legislation legalizing concealed guns with the help of more than two dozen Democrats. That same year, Democrats helped Republicans to override another Holden veto of a bill limiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

“We love our guns and we love hunting. It’s not worth the fight for me to vote against it,” said Rep. T.J. McKenna, D-Festus. But, he added, “the bill is completely unconstitutional, so the courts are going to have to throw it out.”

McKenna was among 11 House Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the Missouri gun legislation in May, by a 116-38 vote. The bill cleared the Senate 26-6, with two Democrats supporting it. A veto override needs a two-thirds majority in both chambers, or 109 votes in the House and 23 in the Senate.

Republicans hold 24 Senate seats. Although Republicans currently hold 109 House seats, they’re down at least one of their own. Rep. Jay Barnes was the only Republican to vote against the original bill and said he opposes a veto override.

“Our Constitution is not a Chinese buffet, which we like and do not like,” the Jefferson City attorney told the AP. “The First Amendment is part of the Constitution that we must uphold. … (And) the supremacy clause means that states cannot criminalize the activities of agents of the federal government.”

If the rest of the Republicans stick together, and none are absent, that means they will need at least one Democratic vote to override the veto.

But so far, at least three House Democrats McKenna, Keith English of Florissant and Ben Harris of Hillsboro said they would support a veto override, and Democratic Rep. Jeff Roorda of Barnhart said he was leaning toward it.

“Being a rural-area Democrat, if you don’t vote for any gun bill, it will kill you,” Harris said. “That’s what the Republicans want you to do is vote against it, because if you vote against it, they’ll send one mailer every week just blasting you about guns, and you’ll lose” re-election.

Four other Democrats who voted for the bill told the AP they were now undecided. At least one of the original Democratic “yes” votes Rep. Steve Hodges, of East Prairie said he would switch to a “no.”

This year’s vetoed gun bill is entitled the “Second Amendment Preservation Act” a label that some Democrats said makes it politically risky to oppose.

Democratic Rep. Ed Schieffer, who proclaims himself “100 percent pro-gun,” said he voted for the bill in May with an eye toward a potential 2014 state Senate campaign against Republican Rep. Jeanie Riddle, of Mokane, who also supported the bill. Schieffer, of Troy, said he is undecided whether to support a veto override.

“I personally believe that any higher court will probably rule this particular gun law unconstitutional on that, I probably agree that the governor’s right,” Schieffer said. “But I may end up still voting for the gun bill, because I don’t want to be on record for not supporting guns.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source

Missouri to nullify federal firearm laws while Obama offers new gun control measures

Published time: August 29, 2013 21:49

As the White House rolls out new plans meant to curb violent gun crime in America, residents in the state of Missouri may soon be able to bypass federal firearm laws.

United States Vice President Joe Biden announced additional steps on Thursday that the Obama administration will move forward with as part of a gun-control initiative ramped-up following last year’s mass shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school. At the same time, however, the Republican-controlled state legislature in Missouri is on the verge of defying both the governor and the US Constitution by pushing forward a bill that will prohibit local authorities from enacting federal gun laws.

Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed Republican-authored legislation last month that would make it a misdemeanor for the feds to attempt to enforce any federal gun regulations that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.” Despite shutting down the bill, however, lawmakers are expected to override his veto in the coming days and let the measure go on the books.

If passed, the law will also force journalists who publish identifying information about gun owners to pay a $1,000 fine and spend a year in jail. Gov. Nixon said it could start a precedent that would erode some First Amendment rights for the media if his veto is rejected.

In a letter to the New York Times, Nixon said the bill would make it a crime for a local newspaper to publish “photos of proud young Missourians who harvest their first turkey or deer.” According to some estimates, however, local lawmakers will likely make it impossible for the law to be vetoed anytime soon.

When the bill was originally passed in the State House, 108 of the 109 Republicans voted in favor of it, as did 11 Democrats. In the Senate, the Times reported, two-dozen Republicans and 2 Democrats signed on in support. In order for the veto to be rejected, the legislature will need 109 votes from the House and 23 from the Senate.

State Representative T. J. McKenna (D-Festus) told the Times he voted for the bill even though he doesn’t favor it because the repercussions could have been dastardly.

“If you just Google my name, it’s all over the place about what a big coward I am,” he told the paper. “I can’t be Mr. Liberal, St. Louis wannabe,” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Just go against all my constituents?”

Speaking to Fox News, McKenna added that the bill would violate constitutional law and will likely be thrown out, even if the veto override receives enough votes.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is hoping he can advance reformed gun rules on a federal level that, if the Missouri legislature has its way, will be null and void in The Show-Me State—until, of course, a court intervenes and opines otherwise.

Months after the White House announced plans to reform laws in the wake of the Newtown shooting, Biden on Thursday said the administration is looking to tackle firearm crime by launching two new front lines in their war against guns. The vice president proposed a White House plan to stop letting military weapons be re-sold to people in the US or allied countries, as well as another that would close down a loophole that currently lets Americans who are ineligible to own a firearm bypass restrictions by registering weapons in the name of a corporation or trust.

"It's simple, it's straightforward, it's common sense," Biden said.

Obama unveils modest new restrictions on some guns

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Obama unveils modest new restrictions on some guns

By Josh Lederman Associated Press Thu Aug 29, 2013 10:41 PM

WASHINGTON — Months after gun control efforts crumbled in Congress, Vice President Joe Biden stood shoulder-to-shoulder Thursday with the attorney general and the top U.S. firearms official and declared the Obama administration would take two new steps to curb American gun violence.

But the narrow, modest scope of those steps served as pointed reminders that without congressional backing, President Barack Obama’s capacity to make a difference is severely inhibited.

Still, Biden renewed a pledge from him and the president to seek legislative fixes to keep guns from those who shouldn’t have them — a pledge with grim prospects for fulfillment amid the current climate on Capitol Hill.

“If Congress won’t act, we’ll fight for a new Congress,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “It’s that simple. But we’re going to get this done.”

One new policy will bar military-grade weapons that the U.S. sells or donates to allies from being imported back into the U.S. by private entities. In the last eight years, the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to come back to the U.S., the White House said, arguing that some end up on the streets. From now on, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.

The ban will largely affect antiquated, World War II-era weapons that, while still deadly, rarely turn up at crime scenes, leaving some to question whether the new policy is much ado about nothing.

“Banning these rifles because of their use in quote-unquote crimes is like banning Model Ts because so many of them are being used as getaway cars in bank robberies,” said Ed Woods, a 47-year-old from the Chico area of Northern California.

Woods said he collects such guns because of their unique place in American history. He now wonders whether he’ll be prohibited from purchasing the type of M1 Garand rifle his father used during World War II. The U.S. later sold thousands of the vintage rifles to South Korea.

“Someday my kids will have something that possibly their grandfather, who they never had a chance to meet, is connected to,” Woods said in an interview.

Charles Heller, who lobbies for gun rights in Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, called the new regulation “another tempest in a teapot.”

“These (guns) are relics,” Heller said. “They are used in service-rifle competitions and kept in collections. They are bought by the exact people who aren’t going to do something wrong.”

The Obama administration is also proposing to close a loophole that it says allows felons and other ineligible gun purchasers to skirt the law by registering certain guns to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks before the corporation can register those guns.

Using the rule-making powers at his disposal, Obama can place that restriction only on guns regulated under the National Firearm Act, a 1934 law that only deals with the deadliest weapons, like machine guns and short-barreled shotguns. For the majority of weapons, there is no federal gun registration.

“It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s common sense,” Biden said of the measures he unveiled Thursday as he swore in Obama’s new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Todd Jones.

But Heller said gun buyers typically don’t set up trusts or corporations to avoid background checks. He said they are established to allow multiple people, often family members, to use or inherit a weapon legally.

ATF already conducts thorough checks on anyone purchasing that class of weapon, he said.

“This means absolutely nothing,” he said. “It’s a red herring meant to make people think they are doing something.”

The quick reproach from gun-control opponents, however, underscored that the same forces that thwarted gun control efforts in Congress have far from mellowed on the notion of stricter gun laws in the future.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., accused the president of governing only by executive action while failing to sufficiently enforce gun laws already on the books. And the National Rifle Association called on Obama to stop focusing his efforts on inhibiting the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

“The Obama administration has once again completely missed the mark when it comes to stopping violent crime,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

But proponents of gun control called them important steps to keep military-grade weapons out of American communities and plug a deadly hole in the background check system.

“It’s time for Congress to stop dragging its feet and pass common-sense reforms that keep criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from illegally buying guns,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino in a joint statement.

There are few signs the calculus in Congress has changed dramatically since April, when a package of measures including expanded background checks and an assault weapons ban flopped in the Senate despite intense advocacy by families of the 20 children and six adults gunned down in December in Newtown, Conn.

Republic reporter Alia Beard Rau contributed to this article.

Military has deep doubts about wisdom of striking Syria

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U.S. military officers have deep doubts about impact, wisdom of a U.S. strike on Syria

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: August 29

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

Former and current officers, many with the painful lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on their minds, said the main reservations concern the potential unintended consequences of launching cruise missiles against Syria.

Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.

“There’s a broad naivete in the political class about America’s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve,” said retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the run-up to the Iraq war, noting that many of his contemporaries are alarmed by the plan.

New cycle of attacks?

Marine Lt. Col. Gordon Miller, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, warned this week of “potentially devastating consequences, including a fresh round of chemical weapons attacks and a military response by Israel.”

“If President [Bashar al-Assad] were to absorb the strikes and use chemical weapons again, this would be a significant blow to the United States’ credibility and it would be compelled to escalate the assault on Syria to achieve the original objectives,” Miller wrote in a commentary for the think tank.

A National Security Council spokeswoman said Thursday she would not discuss “internal deliberations.” White House officials reiterated Thursday that the administration is not contemplating a protracted military engagement.

Still, many in the military are skeptical. Getting drawn into the Syrian war, they fear, could distract the Pentagon in the midst of a vexing mission: its exit from Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are still being killed regularly. A young Army officer who is wrapping up a year-long tour there said soldiers were surprised to learn about the looming strike, calling the prospect “very dangerous.”

“I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said the officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned. “We have been fighting the last 10 years a counterinsurgency war. Syria has modern weaponry. We would have to retrain for a conventional war.”

Dempsey’s warning

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned in great detail about the risks and pitfalls of U.S. military intervention in Syria.

“As we weigh our options, we should be able to conclude with some confidence that use of force will move us toward the intended outcome,” Dempsey wrote last month in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”

Dempsey has not spoken publicly about the administration’s planned strike on Syria, and it is unclear to what extent his position shifted after last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack. Dempsey said this month in an interview with ABC News that the lessons of Iraq weigh heavily on his calculations regarding Syria.

“It has branded in me the idea that the use of military power must be part of an overall strategic solution that includes international partners and a whole of government,” he said in the Aug. 4 interview. “The application of force rarely produces and, in fact, maybe never produces the outcome we seek.”

The recently retired head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, said last month at a security conference that the United States has “no moral obligation to do the impossible” in Syria. “If Americans take ownership of this, this is going to be a full-throated, very, very serious war,” said Mattis, who as Centcom chief oversaw planning for a range of U.S. military responses in Syria.

The potential consequences of a U.S. strike include a retaliatory attack by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — which supports Assad — on Israel, as well as cyberattacks on U.S. targets and infrastructure, U.S. military officials said.

“What is the political end state we’re trying to achieve?” said a retired senior officer involved in Middle East operational planning who said his concerns are widely shared by active-duty military leaders. “I don’t know what it is. We say it’s not regime change. If it’s punishment, there are other ways to punish.” The former senior officer said that those who are expressing alarm at the risks inherent in the plan “are not being heard other than in a pro-forma manner.”

President Obama said in a PBS interview on Wednesday that he is not contemplating a lengthy engagement, but instead “limited, tailored approaches.”

A retired Central Command officer said the administration’s plan would “gravely disappoint our allies and accomplish little other than to be seen as doing something.”

“It will be seen as a half measure by our allies in the Middle East,” the officer said. “Iran and Syria will portray it as proof that the U.S. is unwilling to defend its interests in the region.”

Still, some within the military, while apprehensive, support striking Syria. W. Andrew Terrill, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the limited history of the use of chemical weapons in the region suggests that a muted response from the West can be dangerous.

“There is a feeling as you look back that if you don’t stand up to chemical weapons, they’re going to take it as a green light and use them on a recurring basis,” he said.

An Army lieutenant colonel said the White House has only bad options but should resist the urge to abort the plan now.

“When a president draws a red line, for better or worse, it’s policy,” he said, referring to Obama’s declaration last year about Syria’s potential use of chemical weapons. “It cannot appear to be scared or tepid. Remember, with respect to policy choices concerning Syria, we are discussing degrees of bad and worse.” 2) put in Sheriff Joe 2) add to sheriff Joe and drugs and government

Hearing today in Sheriff Arpaio racial-profile ruling

Hearing today in Sheriff Arpaio racial-profile ruling

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:12 AM

The specific steps Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will have to take to resolve a racial-profiling ruling should become clearer after a hearing in federal court scheduled for Friday morning.

Attorneys for Arpaio and the American Civil Liberties Union have spent months negotiating a resolution to U.S. District Judge Murray Snow’s ruling that the Sheriff’s Office engaged in widespread discrimination against Latino residents through the agency’s patrol operations.

Lengthy and detailed court documents filed during the last month have offered a glimpse into the progress of those negotiations and the disputed areas where Snow will have to weigh in with his opinion.

“The MCSO maintains its stance of denying there is a problem,” attorneys for the ACLU wrote in the opening of its 30-page brief filed last week that went on to detail Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s opposition to a court-appointed monitor, increased training, the creation of a community-advisory board and collecting the data on drivers stopped by deputies that the plaintiffs desire.

The two parties agreed to increase the racial-profiling training that deputies will receive each year and to implement more systems to collect data on the nature and length of deputies’ traffic stops, according to a joint statement filed in U.S. District Court earlier this month.

Whether the Sheriff’s Office agrees to a monitor or not, Snow left little doubt at a hearing in June that one would be in place to oversee the agreement.

With that in mind, ACLU attorney Dan Pochoda said it was the sheriff’s resistance to court-ordered community input and an overhaul of the sheriff’s disciplinary system that were among the most disturbing points of contention.

“We feel is very problematic and does not indicate a desire to reverse the widespread harms done to this community,” Pochoda said.

The sheriff’s attorney, Tim Casey, said some of the ACLU’s proposals were beyond the scope of the racial profiling lawsuit, which began after sheriff’s deputies stopped a Mexican man who was legally in the United States near Cave Creek in 2007 and detained the immigrant for nine hours.

The suit was later certified as a class-action suit to include every Latino driver sheriff’s deputies have stopped since 2007.

Dozens of demonstrators are expected to gather outside the courthouse Friday morning to protest Arpaio’s resistance to a court-appointed monitor and some of the other changes proposed in the ACLU’s court filings.

If Snow issues an order from the bench on Friday it will be a break from his deliberate approach to the case so far- he took nine months to craft his opinion that the Sheriff’s Office had engaged in discrimination.

Snow oversaw a tightly managed trial in downtown Phoenix and issued his landmark ruling in May that found the sheriff’s immigration-enforcement tactics, which had brought Arpaio worldwide acclaim and criticism, amounted to constitutional violations.

Arpaio’s attorneys and the ACLU have been working since May to come to a joint resolution on the changes that need to be made in the agency in order to correct the practices that led deputies to discriminate against Latinos and to ensure they won’t occur again in the future.

Has Arpaio gone ‘Back to the Future?’

Has Arpaio gone ‘Back to the Future?’

It’s déjà Joe all over again.

There is no other explanation for the recent behavior of the local county sheriff.

Out of nowhere Joe Arpaio has expressed sympathy — not disdain — for the plight of illegal border crossers. Out of nowhere he has expressed disdain — not sympathy — for the self-proclaimed militia members who patrol the border.

It’s as if Arpaio climbed into a 1981 DeLorean time machine, hit the gas pedal and … BOOM! … it’s 2003.

Has the Toughest Sheriff in America has gone “Back to the Future?”

Ten years ago, before Arpaio went on his anti-immigrant rampage, I had several conversations with him about bodies his deputies had discovered dumped in a remote area near the I-10 and Buckeye.

“It’s like I told you,” Arpaio said at the time, “if I had nine dead bodies in Scottsdale, people would be a lot more interested. Am I right?”

Another time, a running gun battle between rival gangs of human smugglers left shot-up vehicles and dead bodies over a wide stretch of freeway.

The sheriff said, “It’s like the old Mafia wars where you try to get rid of the competition… And it’s going to get worse.” [Of course if you legalize drugs, the violence and crime will end the very next day, and people will buy their drugs at Circle K and Walgreen's where they buy their beer.]

That combination of empathy and concern continued for Arpaio until April, 2005.

It ended abruptly when an Army reservist from Michigan named Patrick Haab held a group of suspected illegal immigrants at gunpoint at a freeway rest stop.

At first, Arpaio was appalled. He said of Haab, “You don’t go around pulling guns on people. Being illegal is not a serious crime.” [Of course Sheriff Joe's goons don't arrest dishwashers, maids and gardeners for the petty crime of being illegal, they slap bogus felony identity theft and forgery charges on them because they made up a Social Security number to get the job]

It turned out, however, that the general public as well as recently-elected County Attorney Andrew Thomas were solidly behind Haab. They supported him completely.

So Arpaio reversed his position.

He joined the rapidly growing anti-immigrant army and rose in the ranks to what appeared to be Commander in Chief. (At least if you count appearances on Fox News.)

But that was then.

In the past year or so the public’s attitude has changed. Softened.

Arpaio’s office was sued by the Justice Department. And a federal judge ruled that his policing practices were discriminatory and violated the Constitution. A federal monitor might be appointed to oversee his department. On top of that Arpaio’s reelection was closer than ever.

So the sheriff has taken a step back — perhaps even a leap.

Last weekend a member of the Arizona Minuteman (border patrol wannabes) was arrested for pointing a rifle at a sheriff’s deputy he mistook for a drug smuggler. [More or less the exact same thing that Patrick Haab did to some Mexicans, but Patrick Haab wasn't prosecuted for anything]

“If they continue this, there could be some dead militia out there,” an angry Arpaio said.

He warned about the “chaos” that would be caused by private citizens acting like law enforcement, adding, “I have to commend my deputy for not killing this person, which easily could have happened. He’s lucky he didn’t see 30 rounds fired into him.”

In addition, Arpaio has instituted a program in which his deputies erect white crosses to mark the spots they find the bodies of immigrants who died crossing into the U.S. [f*ck that First Amendment thing about separation of church and state!!!]

“The crosses symbolize death,” Arpaio said, adding, “This is just one way to try and save some lives.” [and he is hoping he will get a few votes from the Christian nut jobs in the next election for erecting the crosses]

It’s a nice sentiment, a caring sentiment.

Of course, a skeptical person might question the sheriff’s sudden decision to humanize individuals he’s spent years dehumanizing. A suspicious individual might wonder if this is calculated public relations scheme to convince federal Judge G. Murray Snow, who ruled against Arpaio, that the sheriff would never again allow his deputies to racially profile people. [Naaaah!!!! Sheriff Joe isn't a publicity hound like Ernie Hancock who would make up a calculated public relations scheme. OK, I lied about that, Sheriff Joe is one of the few people who are bigger publicity hounds then Ernie Hancock]

Personally, I hope Judge Snow is not so cynical.

I hope he is willing to give Arpaio the benefit of the doubt. I hope the judge is open-minded enough to believe the sheriff is being sincere … and wise enough to appoint a monitor to watch over Arpaio’s department. Just in case.

This is Arizona, after all, where politicians like Arpaio leap back and forth on issues the way Marty McFly and the “Back to the Future” cast leapt back and forth in time.

And just like the movie, there are lots of sequels. 2) put in government and drugs, snowden and anti-war

NSA paying U.S. companies for access to communications networks

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NSA paying U.S. companies for access to communications networks

By Craig Timberg and Barton Gellman, Published: August 29

The National Security Agency is paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.S. companies for clandestine access to their communications networks, filtering vast traffic flows for foreign targets in a process that also sweeps in large volumes of American telephone calls, e-mails and instant messages.

The bulk of the spending, detailed in a multi-volume intelligence budget obtained by The Washington Post, goes to participants in a Corporate Partner Access Project for major U.S. telecommunications providers. The documents open an important window into surveillance operations on U.S. territory that have been the subject of debate since they were revealed by The Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper in June.

New details of the corporate-partner project, which falls under the NSA’s Special Source Operations, confirm that the agency taps into “high volume circuit and packet-switched networks,” according to the spending blueprint for fiscal 2013. The program was expected to cost $278 million in the current fiscal year, down nearly one-third from its peak of $394 million in 2011.

Voluntary cooperation from the “backbone” providers of global communications dates to the 1970s under the cover name BLARNEY, according to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. These relationships long predate the PRISM program disclosed in June, under which American technology companies hand over customer data after receiving orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In briefing slides, the NSA described BLARNEY and three other corporate projects — OAKSTAR, FAIRVIEW and STORMBREW — under the heading of “passive” or “upstream” collection. They capture data as they move across fiber-optic cables and the gateways that direct global communications traffic.

The documents offer a rare view of a secret surveillance economy in which government officials set financial terms for programs capable of peering into the lives of almost anyone who uses a phone, computer or other device connected to the Internet.

Although the companies are required to comply with lawful surveillance orders, privacy advocates say the multimillion-dollar payments could create a profit motive to offer more than the required assistance.

“It turns surveillance into a revenue stream, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “The fact that the government is paying money to telephone companies to turn over information that they are compelled to turn over is very troubling.”

Verizon, AT&T and other major telecommunications companies declined to comment for this article, although several industry officials noted that government surveillance laws explicitly call for companies to receive reasonable reimbursement for their costs.

Previous news reports have made clear that companies frequently seek such payments, but never before has their overall scale been disclosed.

The budget documents do not list individual companies, although they do break down spending among several NSA programs, listed by their code names.

There is no record in the documents obtained by The Post of money set aside to pay technology companies that provide information to the NSA’s PRISM program. That program is the source of 91 percent of the 250 million Internet communications collected through Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which authorizes PRISM and the upstream programs, according to an 2011 opinion and order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Several of the companies that provide information to PRISM, including Apple, Facebook and Google, say they take no payments from the government when they comply with national security requests. Others say they do take payments in some circumstances. The Guardian reported last week that the NSA had covered “millions of dollars” in costs that some technology companies incurred to comply with government demands for information.

Telecommunications companies generally do charge to comply with surveillance requests, which come from state, local and federal law enforcement officials as well as intelligence agencies.

Former telecommunications executive Paul Kouroupas, a security officer who worked at Global Crossing for 12 years, said that some companies welcome the revenue and enter into contracts in which the government makes higher payments than otherwise available to firms receiving re­imbursement for complying with surveillance orders.

These contractual payments, he said, could cover the cost of buying and installing new equipment, along with a reasonable profit. These voluntary agreements simplify the government’s access to surveillance, he said.

“It certainly lubricates the [surveillance] infrastructure,” Kouroupas said. He declined to say whether Global Crossing, which operated a fiber-optic network spanning several continents and was bought by Level 3 Communications in 2011, had such a contract. A spokesman for Level 3 Communications declined to comment.

In response to questions in 2012 from then-Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who was elected to the Senate in June, several telecommunications companies detailed their prices for surveillance services to law enforcement agencies under individual warrants and subpoenas. AT&T, for example, reported that it charges $325 to activate surveillance of an account and also a daily rate of $5 or $10, depending on the information gathered. For providing the numbers that have accessed cell towers, meanwhile, AT&T charged $75 per tower, the company said in a letter.

No payments have been previously disclosed for mass surveillance access to traffic flowing across a company’s infrastructure.

Lawyer Albert Gidari Jr., a partner at Perkins Coie who represents technology and telecommunications companies, said that surveillance efforts are expensive, requiring teams of attorneys to sift through requests and execute the ones deemed reasonable. Government agencies, meanwhile, sometimes balk at paying the full costs incurred by companies

“They lose a ton of money,” Gidari said. “And yet the government is still unsatisfied with it.”

The budget documents obtained by The Post list $65.96 million for BLARNEY, $94.74 million for FAIRVIEW, $46.04 million for STORMBREW and $9.41 million for OAKSTAR. It is unclear why the total of these four programs amounts to less than the overall budget of $278 million.

Among the possible costs covered by these amounts are “network and circuit leases, equipment hardware and software maintenance, secure network connectivity, and covert site leases,” the documents say. They also list in a separate line item $56.6 million in payments for “Foreign Partner Access,” although it is not clear whether these are for foreign companies, foreign governments or other foreign entities.

Some privacy advocates favor payments to companies when they comply with surveillance efforts because the costs can be a brake on overly broad requests by government officials. Invoices also can provide a paper trail to help expose the extent of spying.

But if the payments are too high, they may persuade companies to go beyond legal requirements in providing information, said Chris Soghoian, a technology expert with the American Civil Liberties Union who has studied government payments related to surveillance requests.

“I’m worried that the checks might grease the wheels a little bit,” he said.

Shamed into war?

Shamed into war?

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: August 29

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action.

Or more accurately, shamed into action. Which is the worst possible reason. A president doesn’t commit soldiers to a war for which he has zero enthusiasm. Nor does one go to war for demonstration purposes.

Want to send a message? Call Western Union. A Tomahawk missile is for killing. A serious instrument of war demands a serious purpose.

The purpose can be either punitive or strategic: either a spasm of conscience that will inflame our opponents yet leave not a trace, or a considered application of abundant American power to alter the strategic equation that is now heavily favoring our worst enemies in the heart of the Middle East.

There are risks to any attack. Blowback terror from Syria and its terrorist allies. Threatened retaliation by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel — that could lead to a guns-of-August regional conflagration. Moreover, a mere punitive pinprick after which Assad emerges from the smoke intact and emboldened would demonstrate nothing but U.S. weakness and ineffectiveness.

In 1998, after al-Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa, Bill Clinton lobbed a few cruise missiles into empty tents in Afghanistan. That showed ’em.

It did. It showed terminal unseriousness. Al-Qaeda got the message. Two years later, the USS Cole. A year after that, 9/11.

Yet even Clinton gathered the wherewithal to launch a sustained air campaign against Serbia. That wasn’t a mere message. That was a military strategy designed to stop the Serbs from ravaging Kosovo. It succeeded.

If Obama is planning a message-sending three-day attack, preceded by leaks telling the Syrians to move their important military assets to safety, better that he do nothing. Why run the considerable risk if nothing important is changed?

The only defensible action would be an attack with a strategic purpose, a sustained campaign aimed at changing the balance of forces by removing the Syrian regime’s decisive military advantage — air power.

Of Assad’s 20 air bases, notes retired Gen. Jack Keane, six are primary. Attack them: the runways, the fighters, the helicopters, the fuel depots, the nearby command structures. Render them inoperable.

We don’t need to take down Syria’s air defense system, as we did in Libya. To disable air power, we can use standoff systems — cruise missiles fired from ships offshore and from aircraft loaded with long-range, smart munitions that need not overfly Syrian territory.

Depriving Assad of his total control of the air and making resupply from Iran and Russia far more difficult would alter the course of the war. That is a serious purpose.

Would the American people support it? They are justifiably war-weary and want no part of this conflict. And why should they? In three years, Obama has done nothing to prepare the country for such a serious engagement. Not one speech. No explanation of what’s at stake.

On the contrary. Last year Obama told us repeatedly that the tide of war is receding. This year, he grandly declared that the entire war on terror “must end.” If he wants Tomahawks to fly, he’d better have a good reason, tell it to the American people and get the support of their representatives in Congress, the way George W. Bush did for both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

It’s rather shameful that while the British prime minister recalled Parliament to debate possible airstrikes — late Thursday, Parliament actually voted down British participation — Obama has made not a gesture in that direction.

If you are going to do this, Mr. President, do it constitutionally. And seriously. This is not about you and your conscience. It’s about applying American power to do precisely what you now deny this is about — helping Assad go, as you told the world he must.

Otherwise, just send Assad a text message. You might incur a roaming charge, but it’s still cheaper than a three-day, highly telegraphed, perfectly useless demonstration strike.

Dick Foreman wants a TAX INCREASE for the Tempe Schools????

Source

Continuation of override does NOT mean tax increase

My Turn by DICK FOREMAN

If I had a nickel for every vote that ultimately defeated last November’s maintenance and operation budget override request for the Tempe Union High School District, I still wouldn’t have enough money to buy my wife and daughter a ticket to the movies, popcorn and drinks.

That campaign lost in 2012 by 811 votes. Other Southeast Valley school districts had similar fates. Chandler Unified lost; Higley lost. And Gilbert didn’t just lose, its override was crushed.

In fact, half of all schools throughout Arizona lost in their request to budget the legislatively approved, authorized rate. But in the Southeast Valley, we outdid the state average. We managed a 100 percent failure rate. [Well for us taxpayers that is a 100 percent success rate at crushing overpaid school bureaucrats.]

Couple these losses with multiple years of state budget cuts to school funding, and the reality is stark, humbling and demoralizing for most educators.

So, where are we now? Many taxpayers believe we need a plan for our schools that doesn’t raise taxes. Many education advocates are now simply seeking to maintain current spending without any increases in tax rates, too. And here’s the good news for both sides: IT CAN BE DONE! [If you ask me it sounds like you are asking for a tax increase that is called something else, so you government bureaucrats can pretend it isn't a tax increase, while at the same time shake us down for more money!!!]

Recently, I joined a representative group of Tempe Union parents, civic leaders and concerned taxpayers to review the M&O Override, the 10 or 15 percent options, and what we would recommend to the governing board. For the typical taxpayer, the difference is only about a buck and a half a month between the two options; a couple nickels a day. [a couple nickels a day sounds like a con mans way of saying a dime a day, or $3.10 a month or $37.20 a year which I want to keep myself instead of giving to some under worked over paid government bureaucrat that is always whining asking for more money!!!] The same is true, more or less, throughout the Southeast Valley.

In Tempe, community leaders such as Angie Taylor Thornton supported a 15 percent override. So did Mel Hannah from Tempe Union’s Desert Vista High School site council.

But Rosalie Hirano, whose passion for education takes second place to nobody, joined me in urging a Tempe Union Citizen Finance Committee recommendation of 10 percent. [that sounds like a 10 percent tax increase, which you will probably say isn't a tax increase and call by some other name] While our citizens committee was about equally split between a 10 percent and 15 percent override recommendation, the governing board chose the lower amount. [Look Dick, a 10 percent tax increase is too much, so is a 15 percent tax increase. Why don't you guys just shut up and try to educate the kids with the money we gave you!!!]

Message to taxpayers: “We heard you and we’re holding the line on spending. Will you support us now?” [Dick, I think you are asking for more money??? Or a TAX INCREASE????? You didn't hear us!!!! We don't want a stinking tax increase!!! Now shut up and go back to work!]

In Tempe, failure to support a continuation of the current 10 percent override would cut nearly $6.5 million per year from existing budgets. [I think way your saying is you want a 10 PERCENT TAX INCREASE????] About 85 percent of that money will come out of the classroom.

I do believe taxpayers want schools to tighten their belts and not ask for an increase. I do not believe Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler or Higley taxpayers wish to lay off teachers, increase class sizes or put our children literally in the streets as we scale back or eliminate many after-school programs to enable further, massive cuts.

My message today is simple. Your yes vote will NOT increase your current tax rate on any proposed Maintenance and Operation Override if the school district is asking for a “continuation.” It will simply maintain it exactly where it is. Not one penny more. [Well Dick, it sounds like you are a double talking politician!!!! A yes vote won't increase the current tax rate, but IT WILL INCREASE NEXT YEARS TAX RATE.]

So, if your local school governing board, such as Tempe Union, asks your permission to continue an existing override, they are respecting the taxpayers’ wish to hold the line on spending. They are NOT proposing an increase in taxes. [That is 100 percent BS Dick. It is too a TAX INCREASE. It's a tax increase for next year or next semester, next session or what ever you government school parasites call it!!!!]

Let’s keep that in mind. And if we’re still short a few nickels a day, may I suggest checking the creases in the couch before we cut classroom spending again?

Dick Foreman is an education advocate and community volunteer who lives in Tempe.

Tempe dispensary reaches out to disabled Mesa boy seeking medical marijuana

That is a bunch of rubbish. Read this article!!!

Source

Tempe dispensary reaches out to disabled Mesa boy seeking medical marijuana

Posted: Friday, August 30, 2013 1:32 pm

By Nohelani Graf, ABC15.com

It's been a busy 48 hours for Jennifer, Jacob and Zander Welton.

"It's kind of crazy how many people wanted to get ahold of Zander's story," said Jennifer.

ABC15 first reported the story on the 5-year-old with cortical dysplasia on Tuesday.

The genetic brain defect causes Zander to have seizures. Some are so severe, he forgets to breathe. Each one takes a severe toll.

"He'll go from walking around okay to crawling and we have to build him back up,' said Jennifer.

Brain surgeries and meds haven't worked. Desperate for a cure, or at least some relief, the Weltons are turning to cannabis.

Dr. Elaine Burns of Southwest Medical Marijuana Evaluation center is one of two doctors who have signed off on Zander's treatment and will also be monitoring his progress and helping guide his dosages.

"Mom and dad will get to know who Zander is. And if that's what this medication can do for them, I’m all for giving it a try," says Burns.

The biggest hurdle now is money.

Jacob is a stay-at-home dad for their three sons. Jennifer is the breadwinner. The cost of Zander's medication, an expected $300 a week, will all be out-of-pocket.

After seeing Zander's story, Harvest of Tempe offered to provide all the cannabis oil Zander will need to ease his suffering.

It will supply Zander's dad Jacob who is now a legal medical marijuana caregiver and Jacob will then administer the CBD oil drops to his son twice a day.

"We exist in order to try and help people. To the extent we're able to do that, we're honored," said Steven White, with Harvest of Tempe.

"It’s so nice to see how many people are willing to step out and help, all you need to do is ask for it," says Jennifer.

The family has set up a Facebook page called Zander Welton's Journey. People can go there to donate.

Even though the dispensary offered to supply the CBD oil free of charge, the Weltons still want to help cover the production costs.

Money raised will also help pay for Zander's visits to Dr. Burns which aren't covered by insurance either.

Phoenix police: Father of dead baby smoked pot next to car

Source

Phoenix police: Father of dead baby smoked pot next to car

By Justin Price The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Aug 30, 2013 10:01 AM

The father of a 3-month-old who was left in a car in Phoenix and died had been smoking marijuana in front of the car while his infant son was still inside, according to court documents released Friday.

Daniel Gray’s son, Jamison, died after being left in the vehicle for more than an hour after Gray went to his work place near Scottsdale and Thunderbird roads, according to Phoenix police.

The witness observed Gray and the employee standing in front of the parked car outside B.T. Sports Pub and assumed they were smoking marijuana, according to Maricopa County Superior Court documents.

When investigators questioned the employee seen with Gray, that employee admitted that Gray asked him for marijuana and that both went to stand in front of the vehicle.

The employee was unaware that the infant was still in the car, according to the documents. Gray did not tell detectives about what he and the other employee were doing.

Gray was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and child abuse, police first announced Thursday night.

Gray, a kitchen manager at the pub, had told police he had “lost track of time” while checking on business there.

By the time the infant was removed from the vehicle, he was unresponsive. Jamison was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

He was the 30th child in the United States this year to die after being left in a hot car, according to data provided by KidsandCars.org.

Accused MCSO captain resigned after demotion

Source

Accused MCSO captain assigned to Cave Creek resigned after demotion

By JJ Hensley and Philip Haldiman The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 30, 2013 1:06 PM

A Maricopa County sheriff’s captain in charge of the Cave Creek district resigned after he was demoted. He was accused of pressuring a subordinate to drop charges against an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer suspected of DUI.

The Sheriff’s Office demoted Rich Burden in late June. And because he was still in a six-month probationary period after his promotion to captain, administrators could demote him without cause. He resigned two days later.

Burden and at least one current sheriff’s employee remain the subjects of internal investigations, according to sheriff’s administrators. However, the agency would not reveal any information about the allegations that led to Burden’s demotion or the internal probe.

“The resignation was initiated by Richie and not originated by anyone else,” Deputy Chief Jack MacIntyre said. “I won’t get in to any details on any ongoing internal-affairs investigation.”

The Sheriff’s Office has denied a request from The Arizona Republic for documents related to the internal investigations, citing the deputies’ rights to appeal and due process.

But DPS released records about the April arrest of an officer near Cave Creek that offer some detail about the allegations Burden and other deputies face.

J.D. Freese, a 24-year DPS veteran, was leaving the Hideaway Grill on Cave Creek Road on his motorcycle after drinking nine Jack Daniels and colas in four hours when a sheriff’s deputy stopped Freese for speeding, according to police reports.

Deputy Shaun Eversole said Freese showed signs of impairment during roadside sobriety tests and blew 0.103 percent on a preliminary breath test, so he had Freese taken to the sheriff’s Cave Creek Substation on suspicion of DUI. The legal blood-alcohol limit is 0.08 percent.

When Eversole was at the station later in the evening, he heard a detective on the phone with Burden and said both questioned him about arresting the DPS officer.

According to the report, Eversole also believed sheriff’s Detective Steven Horath and Burden were members of the same law-enforcement motorcycle gang as Freese, the Iron Pigs, an allegation Freese later denied.

Whether the three were connected through a motorcycle club or their larger law-enforcement family, the implications were clear, according to Eversole.

“They told Deputy Eversole he should let Officer Freese go and drop all the charges against him,” according to the DPS report. “They told Deputy Eversole that Officer Freese would ‘take a bullet’ for him. ... Captain Burden told him he should have released Officer Freese because even he, Captain Burden, had driven home drunk previously.”

A video posted online in 2011 shows a man identified as Burden, then a lieutenant, talking about drinking and driving with the philosophy: “I am not drinking and driving at all. I drink then drive.”

He was promoted to captain less than 18 months later.

Burden also played a minor, but significant role in defusing the internecine warfare that plagued the county in the late 2000s. Burden refused a request from then-Chief Deputy David Hendershott to write a search warrant that would authorize deputies to investigate whether county administrators swept their offices for listening devices they believed the Sheriff’s Office had planted.

Several detectives refused Hendershott’s demands for the warrant, according to an internal report, before Hendershott ordered Burden to deliver the warrant by 7 a.m. the following morning.

Burden laughed, realized Hendershott was serious, then refused. But Hendershott continued to insist that Burden deliver the search warrant, according to Sheriff’s Office internal reports.

Frustrated, Burden said he went home and had a couple of beers. The phone calls continued, with Hendershott threatening to “machine gun” detectives who would not cooperate with his request.

“And I said then, ‘(expletive) pull the trigger,’ ” Burden recounted, before telling investigators that he hung up on Hendershott.

Burden declined requests for comment on the recent allegations or his resignation.

Prosecutors dismissed the DUI allegation against Freese in late August, but he had already retired from DPS to pursue a career in motorcycle repair, according to the state investigation.

Sheriff’s Lt. Kip Rustenburg took over for Burden in the Cave Creek area.

Cave Creek does not have its own police department, so the town contracts with the Sheriff’s Office for public-safety services.

Mayor Vincent Francia said Burden was conscientious about protecting the community and providing timely and open communications. Burden went the extra mile to make sure the town was satisfied with sheriff’s deputies, Francia said.

“It was his overall attitude. Burden kept in touch with me, wanting to know if his officers were performing to what we expected, or updating me on investigations or accidents,” Francia said. “He knew we had a contractual arrangement but didn’t take it for granted.”

Affordable Care Act needs fixes to address costs

Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS on affordable health care

OK Kyrsten Sinema didn't say it exactly that way, but that's how congressmen or congresswoman in her case get reelected.

Last but not least Kyrsten Sinema is being a real hypocrite in this editorial she or her staff wrote.

Kristen Sinema didn't say a word about how she attempted to make it outrageously expensive for medical marijuana patients to get their drugs when she attempted to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

If Kyrsten Sinema has been successful in passing her outrageously high 300 percent tax on medical marijuana it would certainly bankrupt the family of Zander Welton who in this article needs to spend $300 a week on medical marijuana to prevent Zander from having seizures.

If Kyrsten Sinema's tax had become law the family of Zander Welton would have been facing a weekly bill of $1,200 for medical marijuana with $900 of that going to pay for taxes which would go to the state of Arizona, while the medical marijuana would only have cost $300.

Source

Affordable Care Act needs fixes to address costs

By Kyrsten Sinema My Turn Sun Sep 1, 2013 7:31 PM

Three years ago, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act [i.e. Obamacare - an oxymoron when called the affordable care act!!!] to ensure better access to quality care for all Americans. The law is by no means perfect, but now that it is in place, it’s Congress’ duty to improve it for the benefit of hard-working Americans. [Well in reality it will screw the hard working Americans who actually work and force them to pay for the health care of deadbeats who don't work]

Every sound legislative solution requires dialogue from both parties in order for the law to stand the test of time. [Kyrsten Sinema really knows how to shovel the BS!!! Obamacare is anything but a sound legislative solution] The fixes we make to the Affordable Care Act cannot be simply Republican or Democratic ideas. [Well in reality they are socialist ideas, brought to you by the American socialist parties who now go by the name of the Democrats and the Republicans]

The ACA [Obamacare] addressed access to health care, but it did not effectively contain the rising costs of health care. [And in reality it will do anything but reduce health care costs. Expecting the government to reduce health care costs is like expecting an arsonist with a can of gasoline to put out fires] I am working with Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House to make important fixes. I have co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to help control costs and improve transparency, including:

House Resolution 763 to repeal an annual tax on insurance providers. I do not believe that we should let insurance companies off the hook, but the reality is this tax will simply be passed on to individuals and employers, increasing their health-care costs. Repealing the tax will help keep down the cost of insurance. [Come on Kyrsten Sinema, you must be lying about repealing a tax???? I don't think you have ever met a tax which you didn't LOVE]

The Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act to ensure that Medicare benefits are not arbitrarily cut.

The Protect Medical Innovation Act to repeal the tax on medical devices. Arizona’s Congressional District 9 is home to some of America’s most innovative companies within the medical-device industry. The repeal of this tax will help companies like Tempe’s Medtronic create jobs and develop new technologies that improve the quality of health care while driving down the cost. [OK, now I get it Kyrsten Sinema, I bet the folks at Tempe’s Medtronic gave you a boatload of cash as a bribe, oops, I mean campaign contribution and now you want to repeal the tax for them???? Hey, you gotta pass laws for the special interest groups that give you bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions!!!]

It is my job to listen to the families and businesses in Congressional District 9 and ensure the law works for them. [Rubbish, your job, as you appear to do it, it to get as much cash and pork for yourself and the special interest groups that helped you get elected as you can.]

Families and businesses are making serious health-care-related decisions in the coming months, and it is important they have all the information they need and the law is implemented as smoothly as possible.

I’ve heard from families and businesses concerned about the lack of specific information regarding implementation of the ACA, what the law means for them and and what the marketplace costs and options will be. This frustrating lack of information from the federal government is hampering their ability to plan for the future. [Well Kyrsten Sinema, you can only blame that on those idiots, or perhaps better said crooks in Congress who pass all those laws. And, hey, aren't you one of those idiots or crooks???]

My staff and I are working to help businesses and families navigate the current law. [Well I doubt that, but I bet a few people who read this self serving editorial will believe it and vote for you again]

That’s why I supported a one-year delay of the health-insurance mandate for employers and families. This delay will give Congress time to make fixes to the law, and provide businesses time to understand and prepare for the law. [The only fixes that Congress needs to make to the law it to repeal it!!!!]

We’ll be holding a series of workshops this fall to help businesses understand the law and make it work for them, and we’ve invited the Small Business Administration in Arizona to present at these workshops. [Yea, if you have one or two SBA bureaucrats there it won't look like the sole purpose of the workshops are to help you get re-elected!!!]

As our community prepares for the ACA’s implementation, I appreciate the parts of the law that give us security and certainty. Because of this law, children cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions and students can continue receiving care under their parents’ existing plans. In Arizona, the Medicaid provisions of the ACA will help disabled veterans, seniors and those who previously lost access to critical health programs get the care they need.

Beginning in January, adults will no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

I think we can all agree that these improvements are critical for thousands in Arizona and millions across the country. [Well you thunk WRONG Kyrsten!!! Most Americans don't want Obamacare and want you to repeal the stupid, unconstitutional law!!!]

I look forward to continuing our work both here and in Washington to strengthen the ACA and ensure the provision of quality and affordable care for Arizona’s hard-working families.

Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, represents Arizona’s Congressional District 9 in the U.S. House of Representatives. [Well in reality she was elected by those people, but represents herself and the special interest groups who funded her campaign for Congress.]

Mississippi sheriff indicted on 31 charges

Mississippi sheriff indicted on 31 charges

Associated Press Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:43 PM

JACKSON, Miss. — A south Mississippi sheriff has been indicted on 31 counts, including charges accusing him of pushing an arrest in a murder case, even though a detective thought the suspect was innocent, and of snooping on employees at a restaurant that refused to accept a check from him.

The indictment against longtime Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd was dated Thursday and made public Friday. It charges him with using his office to retaliate against people he considered political and personal foes, including the police chief and a city alderman in Ocean Springs, one of the cities in Jackson County. The charges include fraud, extortion, embezzlement, witness tampering and perjury.

One of the charges said Byrd pressured a detective to sign a criminal affidavit and seek an arrest warrant against a man in a murder investigation in 2007 when the detective did not believe the man committed the crime. The indictment said Byrd was running for re-election at the time and wanted to be able to say there were no unsolved murders in the coastal Mississippi county of about 140,000 people.

An extortion charge in the indictment said Byrd pressured a female deputy to engage in sexual acts and threatened to give her a bad recommendation if she left his department.

Byrd’s lawyer, Joe Sam Owen, did not immediately respond to a message left Friday at his office. A message left for the sheriff’s chief deputy was not immediately returned.

District Attorney Tony Lawrence said in a written statement that Mississippi law prevents him from discussing the details of the case.

Several south Mississippi news organizations said Byrd turned himself in Thursday and was released on bond.

Byrd is a Republican in his fourth term.

Another of the charges said Byrd ordered the surveillance of Ocean Springs Police Chief Keith Davis in retaliation for Davis “embarrassing” Byrd by disclosing a July 2012 shooting involving narcotics task force agents. The shooting involved two agents, with one accused of shooting toward the feet of another in the task force headquarters. Byrd also is charged with hindering prosecution by ordering that evidence in the case be concealed.

Another count in the 15-page indictment said Byrd sent narcotics agents to perform surveillance on employees of a Mexican restaurant because the eatery had refused to accept a check from him. He’s also accused of sending officers to watch a man who objected to the location of a hotel in Ocean Springs and using the power of his office in refusing to pay for repairs to his lawn mower.

Some of the counts are related to testimony in a case involving former Ocean Springs Alderman James Hagan, who was charged with child exploitation related to an alleged image on his city laptop. The district attorney’s office later declined to prosecute the case.

Some of the fraud charges are related to the money it cost for the agents to conduct what the grand jury considered illegitimate surveillance ordered by Byrd.

Embezzlement charges accuse him of sending department employees to solicit money for at work at events like bass tournaments and paying them with Jackson County funds.

The Mississippi Supreme Court appointed Judge William F. Coleman, a retired Hinds County Circuit Judge, to preside over the case because the Jackson County judges recused themselves.

———

Follow Holbrook Mohr at http://twitter.com/holbrookmohr 2) put in drugs and government, and the stuff on our arrest at pagago park 2) put in drugs and government

Arizona: Medical pot excludes resin-based products

Source

Arizona: Medical pot excludes resin-based products

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:59 PM

The Arizona Department of Health Services is kicking off a campaign to educate cardholders and dispensaries about which forms of marijuana are OK under the voter-approved Medical Marijuana Act and which are a felony to possess.

Director Will Humble said the act’s definitions differ from the state’s criminal code. So, while cardholders can legally buy what is defined as “usable marijuana” or any food product made from “usable marijuana,” they can be prosecuted for possessing products made by extracting resin from the plant.

Humble said he doesn’t know of any dispensaries selling products made by extracting resin.

“It’s kind of a subtle thing, but it could be really, really important to somebody’s liberty,” he said.

Changing the act to allow resins would require going back to the voters or persuading a majority of legislators to make the change.

9 million in U.S. use sleeping pills before bed

I suspect that medical marijuana is a lot safer and more effective then many of these prescription drugs or over the counter drugs used to help people sleep.

Of course don't tell that to Arizona Drug Czar Will Humble, or is that Arizona Department of Health Services Will Humble. He will say it is BS unless you have a study from the DEA, FDA and a note from your mom!!!

Source

9 million in U.S. use sleeping pills before bed

By Mike Stobbe Associated Press Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:12 PM

Can’t get enough shuteye? Nearly 9 million U.S. adults resort to prescription sleeping pills — and most are white, female, educated and 50 or older, according to the first government study of its kind.

But that’s only part of the picture. Experts believe there are millions more who try options like over-the-counter medicines or chamomile tea, or simply suffer through sleepless nights.

“Not everyone is running out to get a prescription drug,” said Russell Rosenberg, an Atlanta-based sleep researcher.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study was based on interviews with 17,000 adults from 2005 through 2010. Study participants were even asked to bring in any medicines they were taking.

Overall, 4 percent of adults said they’d taken a prescription sleeping pill or sedative in the previous month.

The study did not say whether use is increasing. But a CDC researcher calculated that use rose from 3.3 percent in 2003-2006 to 4.3 percent in 2007-2010.

That echoes U.S. market research that indicate an increase in insomnia in recent decades.

For adults, the recommended amount of sleep is 7 to 9 hours each night.

Doctors offer tips for good sleeping that include sticking to a regular bedtime schedule, getting exercise each day and avoiding caffeine and nicotine at night.

Phoenix Council aided Cavazos in taking city to the cleaners

Posted on September 4, 2013 1:33 pm by Laurie Roberts

Phoenix Council aided Cavazos in taking city to the cleaners

It is, of course, easy to be nauseated at the sight of Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos, taking the city’s taxpayers to the cleaners.

I know I certainly want to heave every time I think about the quarter of a million dollars in parting gifts about to be bestowed on the guy, as he departs for greener pastures.

But remember two things:

1. He’s only doing what the Phoenix City Council allowed him to do, given the contract city leaders gave the guy — a contract that allows him to consider even his $600-a-month car allowance and his $100 a month cell phone allowance as pensionable income.

And 2. He’s able to stick it to taxpayers even more painfully than he otherwise would have, thanks to a 33 percent retroactive pay raise the City Council voted 8-1 to quietly gave him last fall. Now all that year’s worth of sick leave thathe accrued early in his career at a lower pay grade is about to be paid out (and much of it applied to his pension) at his new pay rate of $151 an hour.

Nice deal, if you can get it. And in Phoenix, you apparently can if you’re the top guy.

Be angry at Cavazos, but don’t forget the enablers who offered up all this largess, courtesy of taxpayers: Mayor Greg Stanton and the Phoenix City Council – everyone, that is, but Councilman Jim Waring, who at least voted no on the ridiculous 33 percent pay raise.

Mum’s still the word over at city hall on why the City Council suddenlyoffered Cavazos that ridiculous raise, which allowed him not only to boost his pension but leverage a better deal in his new job in Santa Ana. This, though rank-and-file city employees still haven’t had their pay and benefits restored given the city’s budget woes.

Perhaps someday, the truth will come out about what happened here. Of course, by then Cavazos will be gone, having lined his pockets and laughed all the way to the bank.

Praise MLK, then bomb Syria

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema supports bombing Syria

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema supports bombing Syria????

From this I suspect that Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema now supports Emperor Obama's suspected plan to bomb Syria.

"Reps. Ron Barber, Ed Pastor, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema said they would wait for information from the White House before passing judgment"

I know the local Arizona anti-war folks have already sent out emails asking people to protest the suspect plan of Emperor Obama to bomb Syria. Why's isn't Kyrsten Sinema on that bandwagon???

I suspect Kyrsten Sinema now supports the military industrial complex because she is not denouncing President Obama's plan to bomb Syria.

Source

Arizona lawmakers unconvinced for motivation for Syria attack

By Rebekah L. Sanders and Erin Kelly The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 30, 2013 10:37 PM

As President Barack Obama’s administration attempted Friday to build a stronger case to Congress and the American public for “limited” U.S. military intervention in Syria, it was met with reluctance from some lawmakers, including members of Arizona’s delegation.

Arizona House members said they remained skeptical of the case for intervention without more detail from the White House. They continued to demand that the president seek approval from Congress before ordering a military strike.

Members on both sides of the aisle questioned whether Obama’s motive for intervening now, two years after the civil war began and an estimated 100,000 deaths later, is to “save face.” The president previously declared the use of chemical weapons in Syria a “red line” that would require American action. The White House says it has evidence chemical weapons were used against civilians.

Obama said Friday that he was not considering “any open-ended commitment” and would not put “boots on the ground.”

Among Arizona’s representatives in Washington, only U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called for a more severe response than it appears the president is contemplating.

In a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., McCain called for military action that would “take out Assad’s air power, ballistic missiles, command and control, and other significant military targets” in an effort to “shift the balance of power on the battlefield” against Syrian President Bashar Assad and his forces.

The senators expressed concern that the Obama administration’s response to the alleged atrocity won’t “be equal to the gravity of the crime itself and the U.S. national-security interests at stake in Syria.”

“The purpose of military action in Syria should not be to help the president save face. It should not be merely cosmetic,” said McCain and Graham, who both sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain was unavailable to speak with The Republic because he was in Los Angeles to appear on “The Tonight Show.”

The debate comes as U.S. officials announced Friday that hey are confident the Syrian regime deployed chemical weapons last week in opposition-controlled or contested areas near Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people, including hundreds of women and children.

In the strongest terms yet, Secretary of State John Kerry said the evidence is clear and there is no need to wait for U.N. investigators to finish evaluating the situation.

“Our concern is not just about some far-off land oceans away,” Kerry said from the Treaty Room at the State Department. “Our concern with the cause of the defenseless people of Syria is about choices that will directly affect our role in the world and our interests in the world. ...

“(W)e need to ask, ‘What is the risk of doing nothing?’ ”

Kerry said the administration is “mindful” of the public’s fear of repeating the experience of Iraq, when faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction led President George W. Bush to order attacks and launch the country into a decade of war.

“We will not repeat that moment,” Kerry said, noting that the White House had taken “unprecedented moves” to inform the public by releasing an unclassified report by American intelligence analysts on the chemical attacks in Syria.

But Arizona’s U.S. House members, who are home on recess until Sept. 9, said they wanted more information.

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., who was briefed by White House staff Friday in a conference call with other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he remains “skeptical” about the call to intervene in Syria. Most House members have not received personal briefings.

“I repeat my call to President Obama to specifically detail his ultimate objectives and strategy for engaging further in the ongoing Syrian conflict,” Salmon said in a statement. “(The president should) clearly identify his goals and what he constitutes as victory in Syria before the United States moves forward with military intervention.”

Fellow Republican Rep. Paul Gosar took the strongest stance against intervention. Contrary to the administration’s argument, Gosar said, there is “no U.S. interest at stake.”

He called attention to Obama’s past opposition to military intervention in Iraq.

“President Obama should listen to Senator Obama, who understood no president could authorize unilateral military action without an actual and imminent threat to our country,” Gosar said in a statement.

Republican Rep. David Schweikert repeated the demand that the president seek congressional approval before moving forward. More than 100 lawmakers, including Arizona’s four GOP members, signed a letter underlining that demand.

Democrats said they, too, were skeptical, but took a more measured tone.

Reps. Ron Barber, Ed Pastor, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema said they would wait for information from the White House before passing judgment.

“Nobody wants to rush into it,” Pastor said in an interview, arguing that the president should wait until Congress returns. “I don’t want to send a bunch of missiles over there and we end up in a worse situation than before.”

Pastor, a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he questions why the president wants to act now. “(Thousands of) people were killed by bullets and bombs and shrapnel, and that wasn’t enough for us to go in and do something,” he said. “The question I have for the administration is: ‘Is it a political reason? A saving-face reason? Is it a moral reason?’”

Kirkpatrick said, “It’s critical that Congress is closely consulted and the American people are properly informed.”

Republican Rep. Trent Franks, usually an outspoken voice on national-security issues and the Middle East, did not respond to a request for comment. Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva did not respond.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said through his press secretary that he was withholding comment until he received a briefing from the administration today.

Republic reporter Dan Nowicki contributed to this article.

Pension fund loses money then doles out bonuses to the staff?

Posted on August 30, 2013 5:16 pm by Laurie Roberts

Pension fund loses money then doles out bonuses to the staff?

So let’s see, the pension funds for Arizona’s public safety workers, correctional officers and elected officials have lost money in three of the last five years, forcing taxpayers to kick in hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the plans afloat.

Overall, the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System trust has lost value since 2008 due to bad investments – if you ignore last year’s scheme to inflate its assets by $90 million, that is.

So naturally, the folks who manage these funds have been raking in hefty raises and bonuses, all paid for by … well, I think you know who’s picking up the tab.

The board that oversees the PSPRS trust met privately this week to discuss “employment performance” of its two top administrators and “various allegations related to management and staff.”

And apparently didn’t see a problem.

“Though the board believes there is no need to take specific action at this time, it will continue to monitor any areas of concern and will take appropriate action as necessary,” Brian Tobin, a Phoenix Fire Department deputy chief who chairs the seven-member board, said in a prepared statement.

Well, pardon the rest of us – the ones who are kicking in major dough to prop up the pension trust — if we do have an area of concern.

Namely just this: how in the heck can the people responsible for investing the state’s pension funds lose money on those investments then collect bonuses for their fine work?

And since when do state employees get guaranteed raises, investment-incentive bonuses, retention bonuses and whatever other sort of bounty these guys can dream up?

Who do they think they are, David Cavazos?

In recent weeks, reporter Craig Harris has uncovered the questionable dealings of the PSPRS trust, which funds pensions for Arizona’s police and firefighters, correctional officers and elected officials.

His stories paint a picture of a trust that inflated the value of its real-estate assets by $90 million in fiscal 2012 in order to boost the bottom line and avoid showing an overall loss in the fund over the last five years. Several senior-level employees resigned after objecting to reporting higher real-estate values supplied by the property manager rather than lower ones from an independent appraiser.

Boosting asset values can enhance bonuses for the trust staff, though we are, of course, assured by trust officials that that didn’t happen.

No, they were apparently going to get bonuses regardless.

Roughly $1.4 million in bonuses, retroactive raises and relocation reimbursements were doled out to 14 employees between 2008 and 2012, Harris reports. That’s an average of $294,000 a year over five years when the trust lost money.

Trust Administrator Jim Hacking got a $56,000 retention bonus in 2010, on top of his base salary of $234,000.

Chief Investment Officer Ryan Parham got $481,000 in extra pay over the last five years. This, on top of a $254,000 base salary that will bump to $268,000 on Sept. 20, thanks to a guaranteed 5.5 percent raise. In just just two years, this guy’s base pay will have jumped $28,000. And if he sticks around another year, he’ll get a $75,000 retention bonus. His counterpart in the much larger and healthier Arizona State Retirement System, meanwhile, somehow manages to scrape by on $185,000 a year, with no bonuses.

Deputy Chief Investment Officer Marty Anderson got $265,000 in bonuses over the last five years with a $60,000 retention bonus headed his way if he sticks around until March.

Doug Cole, a lobbyist who doubles as the trust’s spokesman, says bonuses are needed to attract and retain top talent. He points out that even though the trust lost money over the last five years, it would have lost $42 million more but for the efforts of the investment staff.

So because they only lost roughly $80 million, as opposed to $120 million, they deserve six-figure bonuses?

Nice work, if you can get it and apparently, they can.

Andrew Wilder, spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer, didn’t return calls but sent me a statement saying she’s “on record that lucrative bonuses and payouts by state agencies are not good public policy.”

Given that, I’d be interested in her opinion of the PSPRS board, which sets compensation policy and is loaded with her appointees.

The board met privately Tuesday but sees “no need to take specific action at this time.”

I suppose not.

The trust, after all, cannot fail. No matter how underfunded it is or how much it loses, it’s got a guaranteed pipeline of cash to keep it afloat.

Yours.

Claim filed in crash that killed Tucson boy

Claim filed in crash that killed Tucson boy

Associated Press Fri Aug 30, 2013 2:10 AM

TUCSON — The family of a young boy who was fatally struck by Pima County Sheriff’s Department vehicle has filed a claim seeking $50 million in damages.

Authorities say 10-year-old Xavier Arturo Sanchez died July 15 when he was hit by the marked driven by sheriff’s deputy.

Tucson police investigators decided against submitting the case to the county Attorney’s Office because they felt the circumstances didn’t warrant criminal charges against the deputy.

The deputy was en route to a non-emergency call for service about a civil matter when he hit the boy with his vehicle.

Authorities say the deputy tried to swerve to miss Sanchez and wasn’t speeding.

The Arizona Daily Star (http://bit.ly/18o1wx2) says a lawyer for the boy’s father filed the claim, a precursor to a lawsuit. Sheriff’s officials declined comment.

———

Information from: Arizona Daily Star, http://www.azstarnet.com

How do you spell revenue??? Photo radar bandits!!!!

Emanuel announces 50 speed camera locations

By Hal Dardick Clout Street

6:59 a.m. CDT, August 31, 2013

Just as most Chicagoans were heading into the holiday weekend and tuning out the news, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the full list of 50 locations where the city will put up ticket-issuing speed cameras near parks and schools by the end of the year.

The Emanuel administration previously had announced 12 of the locations where one or more of the cops in a box will be keeping an eye on motorists during school and park hours. A news release issued Friday afternoon includes the other 38 sites.

Each camera, like those already up, will trigger warning tickets during the first 30 days. After that, drivers exceeding the speed limit by between 6 and 10 mph will get $35 tickets in the mail. Those exceeding the limit by more than 10 mph will get $100 tickets.

Near parks, the cameras will be active when the parks are open, generally from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week. The speed limits near parks is 30 mph.

Near schools, the cameras will be active from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on school days. From 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., the speed limit in those areas is 20 mph when children are present and 30 mph when they are not. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., the limit is 30 mph.

Under state law, the city can install the cameras at up to 300 schools and parks in designated safety zones. A Tribune analysis showed they could cover nearly half the city.

Although Emanuel repeatedly has said the program is designed to make the city’s children safer, it’s clear that it also will significantly beef up city revenue.

If as many tickets are issued by the cameras as violations counted during test runs, the city could issue $1.2 million in fines a month in each safety zone. That would end up bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, far more money than the city’s estimated $40 million to $60 million a year.

Here's a list of the speed camera locations:

Four of the locations were to have cameras up and issuing warning tickets for their first 30 days of operation by the end of this week.

*Gompers Park, 4222 W. Foster Ave.

*Garfield Park, 100 N. Central Park Ave.

*Washington Park, 5331 S. King Drive

*Marquette Park, 6743 S. Kedzie Ave.

At eight other locations, cameras will be up by the end of September:

*Legion Park, 3100 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.

*Humboldt Park 1440 N. Humboldt Drive

*Jones College Prep, 606 S. State St.

*Douglas Park, 1401 S. Sacramento Drive

*McKinley Park 2210 W. Pershing Road

*Curie High School; 4959 S. Archer Ave.

*Abbott Park, 49 E. 95th St.

*Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, 3857 W. 111th St.

The other locations where they will be up by the end of the year:

*Abbott Park, 49 E. 95th St.

*Bogan Computer Technical High School, 3939 W. 79th St.

*Jonathan Burr Elementary School, 1621 W. Wabansia Ave.

*Challenger Playlot Park, 1100 W. Irving Park Rd.

*Christopher Elementary School, 5042 S. Artesian Ave.

*Frances Xavier Warde School, 751 N. State St.

*Gage Park, 2415 W. 55th St.

*Hancock Elementary School, 4034 W. 56th St.

*Harvard Elementary School, 7525 S. Harvard Ave.

*Horan Park, 3035 W. Van Buren St.

*Horner Park, 2741 W. Montrose Ave.

*Icci Academy, 6435 W. Belmont Ave.

*Jefferson Park, 4822 N. Long Ave.

*Lane Tech College Prep High School, 2501 W. Addison St.

*Lorca Elementary School, 3231 N. Springfield Ave.

*Major Taylor Bike Trail, 970 W. 115th St.

*McGuane Park, 2901 S. Poplar Ave.

*Merrimac Park, 6343 W. Irving Park Rd.

*Morgan Park High School, 1744 W. Pryor Ave.

*Ogden Plaza Park, 429 N. Columbus Dr.

*Orr Academy High School, 730 N. Pulaski Rd.

*Park No. 499, 3925 E. 104th St.

*Lucy Parsons Park, 4701 W. Belmont Ave.

*Pickard Elementary School, 2301 W. 21st Place

*Portage Park, 4100 N. Long Ave.

*Prosser Vocational High School, 2148 N. Long Ave.

*Riis Park, 6100 W. Fullerton Ave.

*Roberto Clemente High School, 1147 N. Western Ave.

*Rosenblum Park, 2000 E. 75th St.

*Sauganash Elementary School, 6040 N. Kilpatrick Ave.

*Schaefer Playlot Park, 2415 N. Marshfield Ave.

*Senn Playlot Park, 5887 N. Ridge Ave.

*Sherman Park, 1307 W. 52nd St.

*St. Genevieve Catholic School, 4854 W. Montana St.

*St. Rita of Cascia High School, 7740 S. Western Ave.

*Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph St.

*Warren Elementary School, 9239 S. Jeffery Ave.

*Welles Park, 2333 W. Sunnyside Ave.

hdardick@tribune.com Twitter @ReporterHal

How do you spell revenue??? .05 DUI arrests!!!!

Source

Push to lower legal limit of intoxication to 0.05 stirs debate

By Ted Gregory, Chicago Tribune reporter

September 1, 2013

IOWA CITY, Iowa— Timothy Brown has put hundreds of drunken drivers behind the wheel.

In the research center where he works, the drivers ingest vodka or 151-proof alcohol and get behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Malibu mounted in a metal pod about the size of a two-car garage. Then they take a spin in what's considered the world's most sophisticated driving simulator, while Brown and his colleagues gather data.

Brown is using that data to better understand the difference in driving abilities of someone who is sober, someone who has had a few drinks and someone who has had a few more drinks. That work has been made especially timely by a controversial National Transportation Safety Board recommendation to lower the legal limit of intoxication to a blood alcohol content of 0.05 from 0.08.

Brown, senior research associate at the $100 million National Advanced Driving Simulator in Iowa, is looking to isolate the precise differences in driving performance with no alcohol in the blood and at a level of 0.05. His work is expected to shed light on the national debate.

"My heart doesn't tell me anything," Brown said when asked for his best guess on whether 0.05 was serious impairment. He acknowledges that diminished performance happens at 0.05 but would not elaborate "because I'm a researcher and the data drives me."

Over Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest holiday driving weekends when an estimated 30 million drivers will take to the roads, authorities will be on the lookout for those who attempt the potentially dangerous mix of drinking and driving. But what constitutes dangerous driving is once again up for debate.

Calling impaired driving "a national epidemic," NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman made the 0.05 recommendation in May. It was one of several proposals that include high-visibility DUI enforcement, expanded use of alcohol-sensing technology and ignition interlock devices, and more DUI treatment courts.

Research suggests that lowering the legal limit of intoxication to 0.05 could save 500 to 1,000 lives a year. [And just making driving illegal altogether could save tens of thousands of lives every year]

But many safe-driving advocates are conspicuously silent on the issue of whether 0.05 is high enough impairment to merit criminal charges. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is standing down, as is Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White. The venerable Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which notes that it never takes formal positions on policy, said police will have trouble enforcing 0.05.

At the core of concerns about 0.05 is the tricky issue of when alcohol impairment becomes criminally negligent. How does slight alcohol impairment differ from impairment caused by drowsiness, cellphone use, medication, aging or other conditions? Is it reckless to get behind the wheel after two glasses of wine at a dinner party? A large beer at a Blackhawks game? A couple of cocktails at a reception?

Research on the topic is voluminous — and resembles a weaving car.

The National Sleep Foundation states that drowsiness is very similar to alcohol impairment and "can impair driving performance as much or more so than alcohol," according to a report on the topic. Being sleepy can slow reaction times, limit vision and create lapses in judgment and delays in processing information, the foundation states.

"In other words," the foundation reports, "driving sleepy is like driving drunk."

A 2003 study by University of Utah showed that motorists who talk on cellphones — hands-free or not — are as impaired as drivers at a 0.08 BAC. Study participants drove slower and hit the brakes and accelerated later than those driving undistracted. Drunken drivers drove slower than cellphone users and undistracted drivers but more aggressively. They also followed more closely and hit their brakes more erratically, the research showed.

As to whether such a thing as responsible drinking and driving exists, some research shows that lane deviations and attention lapses occur at a BAC as low as 0.001. MADD and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recommend no one drive after drinking.

But the American Beverage Institute, which represents restaurant and bar owners, calls the 0.05 recommendation an effort to "criminalize perfectly responsible behavior," saying that less than 1 percent of traffic fatalities in the U.S. are caused by drivers with a BAC from 0.05 to 0.08. The organization points to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data showing that 70 percent of drunken driving deaths involve a driver with a BAC of 0.15 or higher.

In making its recommendation in May, the NTSB noted that more than 100 countries, including many in Europe, have set 0.05 as the legal limit of intoxication and experienced significant drops in traffic fatalities after doing so. Drunken driving accounts for nearly 10,000 traffic fatalities a year in the U.S.

"The research clearly shows that drivers with a BAC above 0.05 are impaired and at a significantly greater risk of being involved in a crash where someone is killed or injured," the NTSB's Hersman said in recommending the lower level.

Sarah Longwell, managing director of the American Beverage Institute, contends the NTSB research lacks context. The significantly greater risk that the NTSB points out is no different than the risk that accompanies listening to a loud car radio or having a passenger talking to the driver, she said.

Emphasizing other countries that set their legal definition of intoxication at 0.05 is "an apples to oranges comparison" to the U.S., Longwell said. Many of those countries have "vastly different" driving, mass transit and drinking cultures, she said. In addition, the countries imposed "other draconian measures," including random breath testing, that contributed to the decline in traffic fatalities and would be unacceptable in the U.S., Longwell added.

"We're going to stand by 0.08 as the law," she said.

'Pretty harsh'

Clarifying alcohol's effect on the body can be tricky.

Generally speaking, the liver, brain, pancreas and stomach break down and eliminate alcohol through enzymes that convert the substance into water and carbon dioxide, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports.

During that conversion, one of the enzymes metabolizes into "a highly toxic substance and known carcinogen," acetaldehyde. That substance and an alcohol-metabolizing enzyme known as cytochrome contribute to the development of cancers in the respiratory tract, liver, colon or rectum and breast, Health and Human Services research shows.

Alcohol's effect on the brain is considered harmful but somewhat uncertain. In its 24-page "Beyond Hangovers: Understanding alcohol's impact on your health," even the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism states, "There still is much we do not understand about how the brain works and how alcohol affects it."

What research does show is that alcohol can slow communication between chemical neurotransmitters that carry messages between the brain's estimated 100 billion neurons. Some research indicates that acetaldehyde may contribute to that impairment. Lab animals that received acetaldehyde exhibited impaired coordination and memory and sleepiness, according to research published in 2006 in the journal Alcohol Research & Health.

Brain regions most vulnerable to alcohol include the cerebellum, which controls motor skills; the limbic system, where memory and emotion are centered; and the cerebral cortex, which connects to the nervous system and deals with the ability to think, plan, remember, solve problems and interact socially.

The metabolism of alcohol varies based on genetics, including variations in those enzymes, and environmental factors such as the amount a person drinks and his or her diet, the Department of Health and Human Services states.

"Regardless of how much a person consumes," a department report notes, "the body can only metabolize a certain amount of alcohol every hour," an amount "that varies widely among individuals and depends on a range of factors, including liver size and body mass."

That wide variance may contribute to lawmakers' reluctance to embrace 0.05 as the new drunk.

No Illinois legislators are pitching bills to lower the legal level of intoxication, said state Rep. John D'Amico, D-Chicago, chairman of the Vehicles and Safety Committee.

"You don't want anybody driving drunk, obviously," D'Amico said. "But this would be limiting everybody to one beer. That'd be pretty harsh."

He also said the lower level "would have a domino effect." Restaurants, bars and sports stadiums would suffer.

Call for ignition interlocks

Illinois Secretary of State White, considered a leader in fighting drunken driving, is taking a pass on tinkering with the 0.08 level (adopted in 1997), a spokesman said. White is planning instead to push for legislation that would expand for repeat offenders the use of ignition interlocks — in-car breath testers that prevent the engine from running if alcohol is detected on the driver's breath, the spokesman said.

Wider use of ignition interlocks is central to MADD's efforts, too. J.T. Griffin, the organization's senior vice president of public policy, said MADD supports 0.08 as the limit of legal intoxication in large part because research over 50 years shows definitively that everyone is seriously impaired at that level. Impairment below 0.08 becomes a little more uncertain.

Griffin said pushing to make 0.08 the law "was such a tough battle to fight. We sort of established it as the across-the-board level."

MADD is taking a more practical approach — including recommending that ignition interlocks be mandatory for all DUI offenders — in continuing its fight against drunken driving. Twenty-one states and four counties in California require interlocks for all drunken driving offenders. In Illinois, first-time DUI offenders must obtain one if they want to drive.

"We're doing a lot of really positive things," Griffin said, "and we feel like we've got a lot of momentum. To shift to 0.05 really goes against what we're doing."

Like many, Griffin said impairment happens below 0.08, but "what that level is, I don't really know."

Which is why Brown's work at the simulator may be illuminating. He said he's downloaded the data file from a key 2008 project that focused on blood alcohol levels and impaired driving and will begin re-crunching the analysis in a couple of weeks. He may have preliminary results in October, he said.

But getting there won't be as exciting as watching the pod slide, tilt and spin in the research center.

"This," Brown said, "mainly involves sitting in front of a computer screen."

tgregory@tribune.com

Investiga Policía de Mesa a yerberías

Investiga Policía de Mesa a yerberías

Phoenix, Arizona

por Samuel Murillo - Aug. 30, 2013 10:22 AM

La Voz

Trece personas que trabajaban en yerberías del área metropolitana de Phoenix fueron arrestadas por oficiales del Departamento de Policía de Mesa y enfrentan cargos de vender ilegalmente medicamentos controlados manufacturados en México.

Los detenidos fueron el resultado de un año de investigaciones encubiertas, informó Tony Landato, portavoz de la corporación policial.

De acuerdo con la Policía, se sirvieron en total 14 órdenes de arresto en dichos negocios dedicados a la venta de hierbas y medicamentos alternativos muy populares entre la comunidad hispana.

Las órdenes de arresto se ejecutaron también en las casas de personas sospechosas de operar este tipo de negocios.

Las detenciones se realizaron en varias sucursales de las yerberías "Los 3 Amigos" y "El Renacer", ubicadas en las ciudades de Mesa, Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler y Scottsdale.

La investigación se centró en la venta ilegal de fármacos manufacturados en México que son vendidos sin prescripción médica.

Landato dijo que como parte de la investigación la policía aseguró casas, negocios, vehículos y varias cuentas de banco.

La noticia sobre el caso se propagó rápidamente entre la comunidad hispana en Mesa.

Las yerberias son un recurso muy popular entre la comunidad hispana para adquirir hierbas medicinales y medicamentos procedentes de México sin la exigencia de una receta.

El portavoz de la policía de Mesa informó que la investigación continúa con el apoyo de otras agencias del orden en el Valle del Sol y que debido a ello se reservan los nombres de los detenidos por el momento.

Agregó que ninguno de los sospechosos puso resistencia al arresto.

Con información de los reporteros de Arizona Republic, Jim Walsh y Astrid Verdugo.

Judge delays ruling in Arpaio racial profiling case

Judge delays ruling in Arpaio racial profiling case

Posted: Friday, August 30, 2013 5:06 pm

Associated Press

A federal judge delayed a ruling in the racial profiling case against Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office Friday as both sides remain at odds over key remedies to ensure the agency adheres to constitutional requirements.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow found in May that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office singled out Latinos and deputies unreasonably prolonged detentions, marking the first finding by a court that the agency covering Arizona's most populous county engages in racial profiling.

Snow delayed a ruling in the case in June after parties indicated they wanted more time to reach an agreement, though it was clear during Friday's hearing that neither side would cave to the other's demands.

"I presume that you're now leaving it up to me to take your outline and create an order, and that's what I intend to do," Snow told attorneys.

The judge gave the lawyers until Sept. 18 to file additional briefs in the case and said he would issue a final order soon thereafter.

One key proposal that attorneys for the Sheriff's Office vehemently objected to is for deputies to note to dispatchers why they have stopped a vehicle before they make contact with the driver.

Given that the case arose after a small group of Latinos sued the agency for violating their constitutional rights, saying they were detained simply because of their race, the plaintiffs' attorneys said such a requirement is crucial to discern the motivation of the stop.

Maricopa County Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan told the judge it would be burdensome and risky since "traffic stops are one of the most dangerous things that deputies do."

"It takes less than a second to say, 'I'm pulling this car over because it was speeding,'" said Cecillia Wang, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is representing the plaintiffs, adding that such a requirement is needed "given the record ... of racial profiling of Latinos in this county."

Another key point of contention is the appointment of a monitor to oversee the agency's adherence to the judge's eventual order.

Arpaio says allowing a monitor means every policy decision would have to be cleared through the observer and would nullify his authority.

"Obviously, my client opposes the appointment of any monitor," Tim Casey, one of Arpaio's lawyers, told the judge.

Casey said in addition to usurping the sheriff's authority, the agency is concerned about how much power the monitor would have, and how privy the observer would be to sensitive information, including ongoing investigations and search warrants.

"Basically, the concern is one of safety," Casey said. "The more people who know, the greater the risk of being burned."

Despite the objections, Snow indicated that a monitor would be appointed and would have significant authority.

"It will be the monitor's obligation to determine when the MCSO is in full compliance," the judge said.

Arpaio's office also opposes the plaintiffs' proposal to create an advisory board aimed at improving the department's relationship with the Latino community.

Casey argued the Sheriff's Office already has a community outreach liaison, and that "the sheriff recognizes there needs to be some improvement."

"There's a positive effect if my client goes to the Latino community voluntarily," he said, adding that if it were court-ordered and coupled with an advisory board, it would appear as if the sheriff was being forced to build better relations, "throwing fuel on the fire."

ACLU attorney Dan Pochoda snapped back that the stance "reflects the sheriff's anti-Latino attitude."

Snow's May ruling doesn't altogether bar Arpaio, 81, from enforcing the state's immigration laws, but it does impose a long list of restrictions on the sheriff's patrols, some of which focused heavily on Latino areas in the county. They include prohibitions on using race as a factor in deciding whether to stop a vehicle with a Latino occupant and on detaining Latino passengers only on the suspicion that they're in the country illegally.

The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit last year that also alleges racial profiling in Arpaio's immigration patrols. Its suit, however, claims broader civil rights violations, such as allegations that Arpaio's office retaliates against its critics and punishes Latino jail inmates with limited English skills for speaking Spanish. Arpaio has denied the claims.

Don't expect to get a fair trial in Maricopa County!!!

Milke retrial promises to be next Arizona courthouse circus

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:29 PM

On Friday, Debra Milke’s defense attorney asked the court to let her out of jail on $50,000 bond during her upcoming retrial.

The prosecutor said that she should be denied bond altogether but that he would accept a bond set at $5million.

Milke’s eccentric ex-husband said that if Milke is released, he will sue the state for $4billion.

The judge took the defense and prosecution proposals under advisement.

Milke, 49, spent years on Arizona’s death row for the December 1989 murder of her 4-year-old son, Christopher. The child was told he was going to see Santa Claus at the mall, but instead, Milke’s roommate and would-be suitor, James Styers, and his friend Roger Scott, took the boy to the desert and shot him in the head.

Styers and Scott are still on death row.

But Milke’s conviction and sentence were overturned in March by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the case was sent back to Maricopa County Superior Court with orders to retry Milke or set her free.

At issue is a questionable confession that Milke claims she never made.

In her first trial, the jury decision came down to her word against that of Armando Saldate, a Phoenix police detective who claimed she confessed, though the confession was not recorded and there were no witnesses that it ever took place. The 9th Circuit panel of judges said the confession should not have been allowed into evidence without providing Milke with the tawdry personnel record of the detective.

Friday’s hearing in Superior Court was supposed to be about whether Milke can be released on bond. But, in fact, it focused on the confession, which prosecutor Vince Imbordino and his boss, County Attorney Bill Montgomery, insist should be admitted. Montgomery and Imbordino expect that Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz will ignore the 9th Circuit ruling. Mroz has repeatedly said that the higher-court ruling is “the law of the case.”

Milke’s attorneys, Mike Kimerer and Lori Voepel, have asked that the confession be suppressed altogether. Mroz has set a hearing on the matter for Sept. 23. But that creates another problem: The 9th Circuit has ordered that Milke go back to trial by Oct. 7.; If she is not, according to the ruling, she must be released from custody.

Imbordino indicated Friday that he will be filing motions in federal court to get that date pushed back so that Milke can remain in custody. Imbordino hopes to push the trial back to January.

When Mroz asked Kimerer what he thought would be an appropriate bond for Milke, he suggested $50,000, electronic monitoring and some sort of house arrest. One of Milke’s supporters has made a house available to her, he said.

There were other tidbits of information that leaked out of the lawyers’ conversation with Mroz.

Scott, the accomplice to triggerman Styers, confessed his part in the murder in 1989 and implicated Milke. But he did not testify in her first trial, and so, his confession was not allowed into evidence. The prosecution in the retrial hoped to make a deal with Scott to get him to testify in the retrial, but Imbordino told the court on Friday that would not likely happen.

Imbordino also said Saldate, the former police detective, would like to have the court appoint an attorney to represent him in the event he does testify in the retrial.

Then, Milke’s ex-husband, who goes by the name of Arizona Milke, addressed the court, first with a martial-arts salute and then with words in an Asian language.

Mroz, who is of Asian descent, smiled politely. Arizona Milke then addressed some of Debra Milke’s supporters in the gallery in German — she was born to German parents and her mother lives in Switzerland. She has supporters in Europe, and books have been written about her there.

Arizona also told the judge that he feared that Debra would flee on the “underground railroad to South America,” which he claimed prominent Nazis used to escape Europe after World War II.

He also said of his ex-wife, “I really doubt she would survive to get to trial” if she were to be released.

“Mr. Milke, I hope you are not threatening her,” Mroz said.

He said that he was concerned that she would lapse into alcoholism. “So, you don’t want her released for her own safety,” Mroz summarized.

Then, Arizona said that if she were released, he would file a $4billion lawsuit against the state and another, for $1billion, against his ex-wife. “That’s a pretty good factor to keep her locked up,” he said.

Sinema visits Arizona troops in Afghanistan

Source

Sinema visits Arizona troops in Afghanistan

By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Aug 31, 2013 10:51 PM

U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., spent three days last week in Afghanistan as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit troops and learn about the U.S. military drawdown.

The one-time anti-war protester said she wanted to personally thank the men and women in uniform for their sacrifices. She pledged to help veterans transition once they return home.

“Sometimes when troops are overseas working these incredibly long hours in a difficult situation, they’re not always hearing how much they’re appreciated,” Sinema said in an interview Friday after a multiple-leg journey back to Phoenix. “As you know, I did not support the United States’ engagement in Iraq and have long had concerns about Afghanistan. ... But I obviously have always been 100 percent supportive of our military.”

Over meals and at briefings at various bases and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Sinema said she met Arizona service members who, in some cases, were serving their sixth tour of duty.

One of five House lawmakers on the trip, Sinema was the only member not on the Armed Services or Homeland Security committees. But the freshman Democrat said she began lobbying to go to Afghanistan almost as soon as she was sworn in as a freshman this January. The arrangements were made by the Department of Defense and the State Department.

Sinema said the experience gave her additional perspective on the coalition forces’ role as advisers to the Afghan military and the country’s transition to local civilian control, expected to be completed by early 2014.

The trip brought to life debates on Capitol Hill, Sinema said: “Getting a PowerPoint briefing in Washington does not compare.”

One such issue was whether the U.S. should purchase Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan forces instead of American-made Chinooks or Black Hawks. But Sinema said after talking with Afghan and U.S. staffers on the ground, she understood their argument that the Russian-made choppers are simpler to operate and maintain and more likely to be of lasting use to the Afghan National Security Force.

Sinema received criticism last year from Democratic and Republican opponents in the race for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District for her peace activism in the early 2000s. The district includes parts of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Chandler.

She countered by pointing to state legislation she worked on to help military families and noted that she has family members in the military, including brothers who are Marine Corps and Navy veterans. Military issues are sure to come up again in 2014, as one Republican running for her seat is Wendy Rogers, a retired Air Force pilot.

Sinema said Friday that she still remains wary of military action in some cases, including in Syria. She has called on the president to release more information about his objectives. But Sinema, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the Rwandan conflict and has studied humanitarian crises, said she has supported military intervention in some cases, such as in Sudan where she says it was clear genocide was occurring.

Sinema said she will support veterans issues in Congress. Her office said she has co-sponsored more than 40 veterans and military family bills, including legislation that would help eliminate the Department of Veterans Affairs’ administrative backlog.

Opponents of U.S. involvement in Syria arrested in Tempe

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema used to go to these demonstrations, but from the way she votes and acts it sounds like she has flipped sides and is now on the side of the military industrial complex.

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema also supports the police state and when she was an Arizona Legislator introduced a bill that would have flushed Arizona's medical marijuana laws down the toilet by slapping a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

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Opponents of U.S. involvement in Syria arrested in Tempe

By Karen Schmidt The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Aug 31, 2013 10:27 PM

Three people protesting a possible U.S. intervention in the Syrian conflict were arrested Saturday night in Tempe, according to Tempe Police spokesman Greg Duarte.

Spokesman Mike Pooley said protesters were marching on Mill Avenue at around 8 p.m. when some were taken into custody. Charges, respectively, against the three protesters were: disorderly conduct, blocking a thoroughfare and disturbing a police horse, Pooley said.

"Right now we have several officers assisting us in trying to maintain a peaceful protest," Pooley said.

About 100 to 150 protesters marched, chanting "Hands off Syria." There were no reports of violence.

Layal Rabat, whose family is from Syria, was at the protest with her mother, aunt and uncle.

“We don’t want the United States to interfere with what’s happening in Syria and we don’t want to be led into another war," Rabat said. "The situation in Syria is very unclear.”

Rabat said protesters marched from Ash and University to Mill Avenue because it was a “heavily trafficked area” and “a good time to make people aware of the cause.”

"We have plenty of our own problems in the United States," protester Andrea Garcia said. "We don’t belong in any more foreign wars."

The local demonstration is one of many that have been held around the world and in the U.S. to protest possible U.S. intervention in Syria.

The Associated Press reported protests in London, Frankfurt, Germany and Jordan. Closer to home protests are planned in Boston and Houston, according to the AP. The latter city also is planning a protest in favor of the U.S. engaging in military action in Syria, according to the AP.

Man shot for carrying underwear sues

Man shot for carrying underwear sues

Fri Aug 30, 2013 12:02 PM

PITTSBURGH — A man is suing a central Pennsylvania police department saying he did nothing to provoke an officer who shot him and claimed he thought black boxer shorts the half-naked man was holding were a gun.

James Weyant, 46, acknowledges in a complaint that he took off his ill-fitting boxer shorts while walking through an alley from a friend’s house about 4 a.m. April 8.

But Weyant contends a large hoodie and T-shirt kept his privates covered and argued he did nothing to provoke being shot by Officer Mark Sprouse. Sprouse has reported Weyant was acting erratically and didn’t respond to a command to drop his “weapon” — which turned out to be a pair of black “Guitar Hero” boxers.

“He wasn’t menacing anybody, or drugged up or drunk, or threatening anybody,” Weyant’s attorney, Douglas Stoehr, told The Associated Press. “Jim did not even know it was a police cruiser until it screeched to a halt next to him.”

Police in Altoona, about 85 miles east of Pittsburgh, did not immediately respond to a call and email seeking comment Friday on the federal civil rights lawsuit first reported by the Altoona Mirror .

Weyant has recovered from being wounded in the right armpit and shoulder, but still has “shooting” arm pain and cannot properly grip some items with that hand, Stoehr said. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio has ruled that the shooting was justified, and Police Chief Janice Freehling, who did not immediately return a call seeking comment, also told the newspaper that an internal investigation found Sprouse didn’t violate any policies or procedures. He has returned to normal patrol duties.

Stoehr, the attorney, said he’s not sure why the officer considered his 5-foot-5, 135-pound client’s behavior erratic, let alone threatening.

“I wouldn’t do this, probably you wouldn’t do it, but some guys wear these long shorts out in public,” Stoehr said. “It’s perfectly acceptable in today’s society.”

Stoehr contends Weyant, who works as a laborer, couldn’t sleep and decided to walk to an ex-girlfriend’s house. When Weyant arrived, a dog began barking so, rather than disturb anyone, Weyant started walking home.

But, the lawsuit said, the boxers “were aged and losing their elasticity, thereby resulting in a poor fit.” Weyant tired of holding up the shorts while carrying a cigarette, so he took them off and carried them in his left hand, the lawsuit said.

Weyant had to be up for work two to three hours later and was returning home when the officer pulled up, Stoehr said. Weyant, who was interviewed by the state police and internal investigators who reviewed the shooting, claims Sprouse exited his car with his gun drawn and started shooting without shouting any kind of command, Stoehr said.

“Here’s the crux of the matter: The officer sees something in his hand and thinks it’s a weapon,” Stoehr said. “But if it’s dark and you can’t see anything, how do you know that?”

Man arrested for stealing Mesa squad car

Man arrested for stealing Mesa squad car

MESA, AZ - One man was arrested after allegedly stealing a Mesa squad car overnight.

Police said they were interviewing someone related to a disturbance call when another person jumped into the squad car and took off.

Police were able to located the vehicle using its GPS signal, but it was unoccupied when found. Using a police helicopter, officers found the suspect hiding in some bushes nearby.

Officers said nothing appeared to be stolen from the vehicle, which did contain a loaded rifle.

[What to do in Syria; Medical Marijuana]

The Vent: Sept. 1 [What to do in Syria; Medical Marijuana]

'The Vent'

Posted: Sunday, September 1, 2013 11:17 am

SNIP

“If there was only one place to legally purchase alcohol in Mesa how much would it cost? A lot! There is only one place to legally purchase marijuana so how much does it cost? A lot! The Mexican drug cartels and the politicians on their payroll want it that way.”

Commuter-rail cops rake in huge salaries

Commuter-rail cops rake in huge salaries

By MICHAEL GARTLAND

Posted: 1:27 AM, September 1, 2013

These cops are riding the rails of gold.

Nearly nine out of 10 MTA police officers who patrol the Staten Island Railway, Long Island Railroad and Metro-North rake in more than $100,000 a year, according to MTA salary data obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request.

The commuter-rail cops averaged $27,000 in annual overtime and more than $127,000 in total pay last year. More than 86 percent took in $100,000 or more in total earnings, and 11 cops topped $200,000.

The biggest cheese of all — bagging an eye-popping $234,641.84 last year — was Brian Sullivan, a Metro-North detective sergeant who joined the force in July 1992.

He took home $76,000 in overtime and almost $158,000 in base pay, which, in a 40-hour work week, would mean he was paid $75.96 an hour. But according to the MTA, his hourly pay rate in 2012 was only $53.21 an hour. Sullivan’s total earnings could buy more than 93,800 MetroCard rides, 11,732 round-trip tickets from Grand Central Station to New Rochelle, or eight MTA police cars.

“They clearly have a problem,” said Gene Russianoff, of the Straphangers Campaign. “Authorities — unlike the mayor of the city, who’s elected — their people are appointed. They’re not subject to the same kind of legal and political restrictions.”

The 657-member MTA Police Department patrols MTA trains, stations and railways in 14 counties in New York and Connecticut. Its $2.9 million budget is covered by fares collected from city straphangers and suburban commuters.

Sullivan declined to talk with The Post.

“The only other detective sergeant in the northern district was off sick for six months in 2012, so Sullivan worked a lot,” said MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders.

He isn’t the MTA police’s overtime king by a long shot, though.

That title goes to Winston Henvill, a police officer who took in $99,000 in OT last year.

Henvill declined to say what the overtime was for, and referred questions to the MTA.

Aubrey Grant, an officer who joined the force a mere eight years ago, clocked in almost $99,000 in OT alone; Officer Richard Ciullo banked $94,000; and Officer Stephen Lucarini got $91,000. None of the three returned calls.

Anders said the OT was necessary because of terrorist threats.

Last year’s OT — $17 million in all — reflects a major increase compared to the beaucoup bucks — $16 million — MTA cops made the year before.

Overtime per cop averaged $27,000 annually in 2012 — about $1,000 less than what most cops took home in OT in 2011. Most of the overtime pay for the top earners comes from federal counterterrorism grant money, Anders noted. Annually, those grants to the MTA Police total more than $5 million.

The overtime is needed because the threats are real, Anders said.

“The terrorism budget allows us to provide extra coverage to keep our transit system safe,” she said.

Ex-officer tells jury he shot suspect out of fear

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Ex-officer tells jury he shot suspect out of fear

By J.J. Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Sep 3, 2013 10:22 PM

The narrative in the second-degree murder trial of a former Phoenix police officer remained unchanged for much of the first half of the proceeding as the prosecutor presented his version of the events leading up to a domestic-violence suspect’s fatal shooting.

The key facts, according to the ex-officer’s partner: Richard Chrisman jammed his gun into Danny Frank Rodriguez’s head almost as soon as he entered Rodriguez’s trailer, and Rodriguez put his hands up and was backing away from Chrisman when the fatal shots were fired.

In emotional testimony on Tuesday, Chrisman gave a starkly different account of the October 2010 incident. The nine-year police veteran said he feared for his life during a struggle with a 29-year-old methamphetamine user after his partner had abandoned him.

The key distinction between Chrisman’s testimony and that of Officer Sergio Virgillo, Chrisman’s partner on the call, came during descriptions of the end of the struggle, as Rodriguez went for the mountain bike standing between himself and Chrisman.

Chrisman, 39, had shot Rodriguez’s dog seconds earlier and said one thought occurred to him as he saw the suspect reach for the bike.

“He’s going to smash my brains in,” Chrisman said.

Before Rodriguez could do anything with the bicycle, Chrisman shot him twice in the chest.

Chrisman appeared to choke back tears several times during his testimony, first when he described his relationship with his wife and as he recounted his attempts to subdue Rodriguez.

Chrisman paused to compose himself several times as he neared the final moments of the fatal encounter.

But the former officer was also a poised presence on the witness stand, frequently directing his remarks at jurors instead of his attorney, Patrick Gann, who was posing the questions.

Gann used duct tape to lay out in the courtroom the boundaries of the 13- by 15-foot living room in the home Rodriguez shared with his mother, and he used it to walk Chrisman through the events of October5, 2010.

Gann’s questions allowed Chrisman to talk about Rodriguez’s criminal history, which Chrisman said he accessed en route to the domestic-violence call; concerns that arose after Chrisman arrived on the scene; and Chrisman’s disappointment that Virgillo, his partner on the call, was a non-factor for much of the confrontation.

Gann asked the former patrol officer why he never called for backup during the brief exchange with Rodriguez.

“I thought I had one,” Chrisman replied, referring to Virgillo, who he said was outside the trailer for most of the call.

Chrisman spent part of his time on the stand Tuesday going through the criminal-history information he gathered on Rodriguez. He also recounted the escalating force he used against Rodriguez: It began with a brief physical struggle when Chrisman entered the trailer, he said, adding that he was forced to pull out his weapon to threaten Rodriguez’s dog. Chrisman said he then holstered his weapon and again used physical force on Rodriguez before deploying pepper spray, attempting to use his Taser and ultimately firing his weapon.

Chrisman said he was forced to shoot Rodriguez’s pit bull when it charged him after Virgillo shocked Rodriguez with a Taser, momentarily stunning him. When the dog came around the coffee table at Chrisman, the officer fired twice.

“(Rodriguez) jumps up and like lunges, he swings his hand out almost like he’s trying to stop bullets,” Chrisman said, recalling Rodriguez’s actions as the dog was shot. “He swings at my gun, he reaches out and tries to grab my gun and he’s yelling at me, ‘Why’d you shoot my ... dog?’”

Virgillo testified early on in the trial that he could not see Chrisman’s gun in the brief exchange but he could see Rodriguez’s hands the whole time, and he never reached for the weapon.

Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Juan Martinez attacked Chrisman’s credibility, first through a series of questions about whether Chrisman was being honest when he claimed to have four children — two are biological children and two are stepchildren — and later when he pointed out apparent inconsistencies in Chrisman’s testimony.

Earlier in the day, Chrisman referred to a compound bow and arrow that were barely visible in photos of Rodriguez’s house. But under Martinez’s questioning, Chrisman admitted he never knew those weapons were in the home at the time he felt Rodriguez was threatening him.

Under questioning, Chrisman also said he did not properly test-fire his Taser that day, a required step that could have alerted Chrisman to his faulty Taser before he tried to shock Rodriguez.

Martinez reminded Chrisman of earlier testimony from two experts that indicated there were gunshot-residue markings on Rodriguez’s arm, known as stippling, which Martinez believes to be an indication that Rodriguez had at least one hand up when he was shot.

“If he’s holding on to (the bike), sir, how is it that the stippling pattern shows he had a hand up ... was he lifting it with one hand?” Martinez said.

“I don’t know,” Chrisman replied.

Martinez is expected to continue his cross-examination of Chrisman today.

Manning seeks presidential pardon in leaks case

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Manning seeks presidential pardon in leaks case

By David Dishneau Associated Press Wed Sep 4, 2013 6:37 AM

HAGERSTOWN, Maryland — U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning is seeking a presidential pardon for leaking classified information that her lawyer says did not merit protection.

The Pvt. Manning Support Network released documents Wednesday that attorney David Coombs filed a day earlier with the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of the Army.

Manning, previously known as Bradley Manning, has declared her desire to live as a woman while serving a 35-year prison sentence.

In her petition for pardon and commutation of sentence, Manning writes: “The decisions I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in.”

Manning says she regrets if her actions caused harm.

The leaked material was given to the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks.

Jeff Flake a Libertarian? No Way!!!!!

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Flake, McCain criticize Obama over Syria delay

By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Sep 3, 2013 10:11 PM

Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain on Tuesday criticized President Barack Obama for allowing Syria time to prepare for a U.S. attack as his administration seeks congressional approval for the military action.

During a more than three-hour hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the two Arizona Republicans questioned Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about plans for the military strike proposed Saturday by Obama. Flake and McCain both sit on the panel, which has primary jurisdiction over the resolution authorizing the use of military force sought by the president.

Flake noted that Obama did not seek congressional approval before taking military action in Libya in 2011 and, given the evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government has used chemical weapons against its own people, could have struck already in Syria, too.

Flake said Obama maintains he has the authority to take action against Syria with or without Congress and delaying an attack gives the Assad regime precious time to prepare.

“I think one would have to suspend disbelief to assume that we wouldn’t be better off attacking those targets right now, or a week ago, than waiting three weeks for Congress to take action,” Flake told Kerry.

Kerry responded that he “would far rather be playing our hand than his (Assad’s) at this point in time.”

U.S. military leaders have assured Obama that pausing while Congress debates the issue would not hurt the mission of degrading Assad’s chemical-weapons capabilities and could offer some advantages, such as giving Obama more time to explain the situation to the American public and work with international allies. He said the United States can adjust its military tactics to match any moves that Assad might make in the meantime.

“I think the president made a courageous decision to take the time to build the strength that makes America stronger by acting in unity with the United States Congress,” Kerry said.

In a more personal response to Flake, Kerry cited the Constitution, which in Article I gives Congress the power to declare war.

“It’s somewhat surprising to me that a member of Congress, particularly one on the Foreign Relations Committee, is going to question the president fulfilling the vision of the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution and divided power in foreign policy, to have the president come here and honor the original intent of the Founding Fathers in ways that do not do anything to detract from the mission itself,” Kerry told Flake.

Later in the hearing, McCain revisited the impact of the delay, mentioning a news report that said the Syrians already are hiding weapons and moving troops.

“When you tell the enemy you’re going to attack them, they’re obviously going to disperse and try to make it harder,” McCain told Kerry. “... It’s ridiculous to think that it’s not wise from a pure military standpoint not to warn the enemy that you’re going to attack.”

In an interview with The Arizona Republic after the hearing, Flake said he doesn’t buy the argument that Obama is following the Constitution, because he didn’t seek Congress’ approval prior to intervening in Libya. While the Syrians may not be able to move airfields and other fixed installations, they have time to take other steps such as redeploying assets into civilian neighborhoods, Flake said.

Overall, though, Flake said he agreed that the United States could lose credibility if it doesn’t back up Obama’s vow to respond to Assad’s crossing of the “red line” by using chemical weapons.

“Having said that, you can lose more credibility with a poorly structured response,” he said.

The hearing did yield one light moment: A Washington Post photographer captured an image of McCain playing poker on his iPhone during the Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

McCain later came clean on Twitter.

He tweeted: “Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing — worst of all I lost!”

Scottsdale creates a jobs program for cops???

Scottsdale bar public-safety ordinance draft ready for council

By Edward Gately The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Sep 3, 2013 7:59 AM

A proposed public-safety ordinance prompted by two stabbings at a Scottsdale nightclub is ready to go before the City Council on Sept. 10.

The ordinance requires establishments to file new public-safety plans, includes minimum standards for security personnel and requires those businesses with felony incidents to hire off-duty peace officers. If any establishment is found in repeated violation of the ordinance, it could be shut down.

The ordinance is the result of Mayor Jim Lane, other city officials and downtown bar owners coming together to examine the issue of safety in the aftermath of the January fatal stabbing of Tyrice Thompson outside Martini Ranch, 7295 E. Stetson Drive, in the downtown entertainment district. He was a bouncer there.

A second stabbing occurred at Martini Ranch in June.

The 20th version of the ordinance includes more changes made in response to public input, said J.P. Twist, Lane’s chief of staff. The most recent public meeting on the proposed ordinance took place Aug. 8.

“When government considers regulating an entire industry, it must do it with careful consideration to the impact it will have on those affected by it,” Lane said. “City staff have done an admirable job working with the community over the past six months to identify the proper balance between the goals of the ordinance and the concerns of those affected by it.”

The ordinance requires establishments to immediately report to the Scottsdale Police Department any act constituting a felony public-safety incidentthat occurs on the premises. The fine for false reporting has been increased from $500 to $1,000 for the first violation. The fine for a second or subsequent violation within a year is $2,000.

The second change eases the ratio of required security personnel to the number of patrons for establishments where 90 percent of the patrons are seated, as opposed to standing and walking around.

The ordinance requires establishments have at least one security worker per 50 patrons during peak hours for the first 500 patrons, and at least one additional security worker per 75 patrons beyond that.

The ordinance still 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 peace officers to supplement security personnel during peak times for at least three months. The requirements are stricter for more serious felony offenses, such as use or threatened use of a deadly weapon, death or catastrophic injury.

Some community activist groups still have concerns about the ordinance, saying it doesn’t go far enough in forcing establishments to ensure a safe environment for patrons.

Sonnie Kirtley, chairwoman of the Coalition of Greater Scottsdale, said her organization believes the fines for violating the ordinance, $500 for a first violation and $1,000 for a subsequent violation within a year, are too lenient, and that live entertainment should have been left among criteria for applicability.

The Association to Preserve Downtown Scottsdale’s Quality of Life also has continuing concerns about the ordinance.

The time limits for the occurrence of public-safety incidents should be extended to at least 90 days, said Bill Crawford, the association’s president.

“Two in a week isn’t long enough to establish a pattern because after one, all of a sudden everyone will be on their best behavior,” he said. “It should be at least a 30-day period and the time frame should be 90 days.”

The Coalition of Greater Scottsdale advocates a six-month time frame for the occurrence of public-safety incidents, Kirtley said.

Critics also say the fines for violation constitute a “slap on the wrist,” and that the ordinance gives too much “power and discretion” to Chief of Police Alan Rodbell. The power instead should be shared by a committee of city officials, Crawford said. 2) put on drugs, snowden, government, anti-war

Drug agents secretly getting nearly instant access to AT&T files

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Drug agents secretly getting nearly instant access to AT&T files

By Gene Johnson and Eileen Sullivan Associated Press Tue Sep 3, 2013 9:23 AM

SEATTLE — For at least six years, federal drug and other agents have had near-immediate access to billions of phone-call records dating back decades in a collaboration with AT&T that officials have taken pains to keep secret, newly released documents show.

The program, called the Hemisphere Project, is paid for by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. It allows investigators armed with subpoenas to quickly mine the company’s vast database to help track down drug traffickers or other suspects who switch cellphones to avoid detection.

Details of the Hemisphere Project come amid a national debate about the federal government’s access to phone records, particularly the bulk collection of phone records for national-security purposes.

Hemisphere, however, takes a different approach from that of the National Security Agency, which maintains a database of call records handed over by phone companies as authorized by the USA Patriot Act.

“Subpoenaing drug dealers’ phone records is a bread-and-butter tactic in the course of criminal investigations,” Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said in an e-mail.

“The records are maintained at all times by the phone company, not the government. This program simply streamlines the process of serving the subpoena to the phone company so law enforcement can quickly keep up with drug dealers when they switch phone numbers to try to avoid detection.”

The Associated Press independently obtained a series of slides detailing Hemisphere. They show the database includes not just records of AT&T customers, but of any call that passes through an AT&T switch.

The federal government pays the salaries of four AT&T employees who work in three federal anti-drug offices around the country to expedite subpoena requests, an Obama administration official told the AP on Monday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he or she was not authorized to discuss the program, and said that two of the AT&T employees are based at the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area office in Atlanta, one at the HIDTA office in Houston, and one at the office in Los Angeles.

The Hemisphere database includes records that date back to 1987, the official said, but typical narcotics investigations focus on records no older than 18 months.

To keep the program secret, investigators who request searches of the database are instructed to “never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,” one of the slides noted.

Agents are told that when they obtain information through a Hemisphere program subpoena, they should “wall off” the program by filing a duplicative subpoena directly to the target’s phone company or by simply writing that the information was obtained through an AT&T subpoena.

It wasn’t immediately clear what percentage of U.S. calls are routed through AT&T switches and thus have records captured in Hemisphere. One slide says the program includes records “for a tremendous amount of international numbers that place calls through or roam on the AT&T network.”

“While we cannot comment on any particular matter, we, like all other companies, must respond to valid subpoenas issued by law enforcement,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said in an e-mail.

According to the slides, the program is useful for investigators trying to track down drug traffickers or other criminals who frequently change phones or use multiple phones. If agents become aware of a phone number previously used by a suspect, they can write an administrative subpoena, with no judicial oversight required, for records about that number.

Hemisphere analysts can track the number’s call history or other characteristics and compare it to the history and characteristics of phones still in use — thus winnowing down a list of possible current phone numbers for the suspect, along with their location.

“Hemisphere results can be returned via email within an hour of the subpoenaed request and include (call detail records) that are less than one hour old at the time of the search,” one slide said.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the program raises several privacy concerns, including that if a query returns call records that are similar to, but not, those of the suspect, agents could be reviewing call records of people who haven’t done anything wrong.

“One of the points that occurred to me immediately is the very strong suspicion that there’s been very little judicial oversight of this program,” Rotenberg said. “The obvious question is: Who is determining whether these authorities have been properly used?”

Washington state peace activist Drew Hendricks provided the slides to the AP on Monday. He said he obtained them in response to a series of public-records requests he filed with West Coast police agencies, initially seeking information about a law-enforcement conference that had been held in Spokane, Wash.

In the Northwest, the DEA and Department of Homeland Security make most of the Hemisphere requests through administrative subpoenas, one slide noted. Since late last year, AT&T has also accepted requests by court orders from local police agencies in Washington state.

As of June, Hemisphere had processed 679 requests from the Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. And since 2007, the Los Angeles Hemisphere program had processed more than 4,400 requests.

In connection with the controversy over the NSA’s sweeping up of call records, some lawmakers have suggested that phone companies store the records instead, and allow federal agents or analysts to request specific data when necessary.

“This way each query would require a specific government warrant before the FISA Court, and Americans would have more confidence that their privacy is being protected, while achieving the same national security results,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a July 31 statement.

U.S. documents detail al-Qaeda’s efforts to fight back against drones

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U.S. documents detail al-Qaeda’s efforts to fight back against drones

By Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman, Published: September 3 E-mail the writers

Al-Qaeda’s leadership has assigned cells of engineers to find ways to shoot down, jam or remotely hijack U.S. drones, hoping to exploit the technological vulnerabilities of a weapons system that has inflicted huge losses upon the terrorist network, according to top-secret U.S. intelligence documents.

Although there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has forced a drone crash or interfered with flight operations, U.S. intelligence officials have closely tracked the group’s persistent efforts to develop a counterdrone strategy since 2010, the documents show.

Al-Qaeda commanders are hoping a technological breakthrough can curb the U.S. drone campaign, which has killed an estimated 3,000 people over the past decade. The airstrikes have forced ­al-Qaeda operatives and other militants to take extreme measures to limit their movements in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and other places. But the drone attacks have also taken a heavy toll on civilians, generating a bitter popular backlash against U.S. policies toward those countries.

Details of al-Qaeda’s attempts to fight back against the drone campaign are contained in a classified intelligence report provided to The Washington Post by Edward Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor. The top-secret report, titled “Threats to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” is a summary of dozens of intelligence assessments posted by U.S. spy agencies since 2006.

U.S. intelligence analysts noted in their assessments that information about drone operational systems is available in the public realm. But The Post is withholding some detailed portions of the classified material that could shed light on specific weaknesses of certain aircraft.

Under President Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, drones have revolutionized warfare and become a pillar of the U.S. government’s counterterrorism strategy, enabling the CIA and the military to track down enemies in some of the remotest parts of the planet. Drone strikes have left al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan scrambling to survive.

U.S. spy agencies have concluded that al-Qaeda faces “substantial” challenges in devising an effective way to attack drones, according to the top-secret report disclosed by Snowden. Still, U.S. officials and aviation experts acknowledge that unmanned aircraft have a weak spot: the satellite links and remote controls that enable pilots to fly them from thousands of miles away.

In July 2010, a U.S. spy agency intercepted electronic communications indicating that senior al-Qaeda leaders had distributed a “strategy guide” to operatives around the world advising them how “to anticipate and defeat” unmanned aircraft. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported that al-Qaeda was sponsoring simultaneous research projects to develop jammers to interfere with GPS signals and infrared tags that drone operators rely on to pinpoint missile targets.

Other projects in the works included the development of observation balloons and small radio-controlled aircraft, or hobby planes, which insurgents apparently saw as having potential for monitoring the flight patterns of U.S. drones, according to the report.

Al-Qaeda cell leaders in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan were “determining the practical application of technologies being developed for battlefield applications,” analysts from the DIA wrote. The analysts added that they believed al-Qaeda “cell leadership is tracking the progress of each project and can redirect components from one project to another.”

The technological vulnerabilities of drones are no secret. The U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board issued an unclassified report two years ago warning that “increasingly capable adversaries” in countries such as Afghanistan could threaten drone operations by inventing inexpensive countermeasures.

The board said insurgents might try to use “lasers and dazzlers” to render a drone ineffective by blinding its cameras and sensors. It also predicted that insurgents might use rudimentary acoustic receivers to detect drones and “simple jammer techniques” to interfere with navigation and communications.

Researchers have since proved that the threat is not just theoretical. Last year, a research team from the University of Texas at Austin demonstrated to the Department of Homeland Security that it was possible to commandeer a small civilian drone by “spoofing” its GPS signal with a ground transmitter and charting a different navigational course.

Trained engineers

Al-Qaeda has a long history of attracting trained engineers and others with a scientific background. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, holds a mechanical-engineering degree and is such an inveterate tinkerer that the CIA allowed him to fiddle around with new designs for a vacuum cleaner after he was captured a decade ago.

In 2010, the CIA noted in a secret report that al-Qaeda was placing special emphasis on the recruitment of technicians and that “the skills most in demand” included expertise in drones and missile technology. In July of that year, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, an al-Qaeda operations chief, told a jihadist Web site that the network did not need “ordinary fighters” and that it was looking instead for “specialist staff” to join the organization.

That same year, authorities in Turkey said they arrested an al-Qaeda member who was developing plans to shoot down small NATO surveillance drones in Afghanistan. The suspect, a 23-year-old mathematics student, was using software to conduct ballistics research for drone attacks, according to Turkish officials.

Al-Qaeda leaders have become increasingly open about their ­anti-drone efforts. In March, a new English-language online jihadist magazine called Azan published a story titled “The Drone Chain.” The article derided drone armaments as “evil missiles designed by the devils of the world” but reassured readers that jihadists had been working on “various technologies” to hack, manipulate and destroy unmanned aircraft.

At the same time, the magazine indicated that those efforts needed a boost, and it issued an emergency plea for scientific help: “Any opinions, thoughts, ideas and practical implementations to defeat this drone technology must be communicated to us as early as possible because these would aid greatly . . . against the crusader- zionist enemy.”

In the absence of a high-tech silver bullet, al-Qaeda affiliates around the world have taken to sharing hard-earned lessons about the importance of basic defensive measures.

Islamist extremists in North Africa this year distributed a photocopied tipsheet with 22 recommendations for avoiding drone strikes. Among the suggestions are several ideas for camouflage as well as dubious advice on using radio or microwave transmitters to “confuse the frequencies used to control the drone.”

The Associated Press in February found a copy of the tipsheet in Mali, left behind by Islamist fighters fleeing the city of Timbuktu. It was written by a jihadist in Yemen two years earlier and has circulated among al-Qaeda franchises since then.

‘GPS jamming capability’

In January 2011, U.S. intelligence agencies detected an unusual electronic signal emanating from near Miran Shah, a jihadist haven in North Waziristan, Pakistan. The DIA called the signal “the first observed test of a new terrorist GPS jamming capability.”

The test apparently did not pose a threat to military GPS frequencies or encrypted communications links. In addition, whoever was beaming the mysterious signal mistakenly thought that jamming ground-based GPS receivers would interfere with drones’ ability to aim missiles or munitions at fixed targets, according to the DIA report.

Despite such missteps, ­al-Qaeda has been undeterred. In a separate 2011 report, the DIA stated that affiliates in Miran Shah and the Pakistani city of Karachi were pursuing other “R&D projects,” including one effort to shoot down drones with portable shoulder-fired missiles, known as manpads.

Army intelligence analysts uncovered similar projects, including attempts to develop laser detectors that could give warning whenever a U.S. Predator drone was about to fire a laser-guided Hellfire missile, according to a summary of a classified Army report.

In 2011, the DIA concluded that an “al-Qaeda-affiliated research and development cell currently lacks the technical knowledge to successfully integrate and deploy a counterdrone strike system.” DIA analysts added, however, that if al-Qaeda engineers were to “overcome these substantial design challenges, we believe such a system probably would be highly disruptive for U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

The Air Force and CIA rely heavily on Predator and Reaper drones to hunt for al-Qaeda targets and other insurgents in several countries. Both aircraft can stay aloft for more than 20 hours to conduct surveillance missions and can be armed with Hellfire missiles.

The drones are flown by remote control via satellite data links, usually by pilots and sensor operators stationed thousands of miles away at bases in the United States. Those satellite links are encrypted, which makes the connections extremely difficult to hack.

It is only slightly less of a challenge for al-Qaeda fighters to spot a high-flying drone with the naked eye. Predators and Reapers loiter at altitudes above 20,000 feet, and their powerful cameras focus on objects several miles over the horizon, so their presence is hard to detect.

The satellite links, however, are the Achilles’ heel of drone operations. “Lost link” incidents — triggered when a satellite moves out of range or a drone drops a signal — are relatively common. The connections are usually reestablished within seconds or minutes. The aircraft are programmed to fly in a loop pattern or return to their launching spot during prolonged disruptions.

On several occasions, however, lost links have led to crashes. In September, an Air Force Predator slammed into mountainous terrain along the Iraq-Turkey border after the satellite data links were lost and the drone crew could no longer communicate with the aircraft.

In December 2011, a stealth U.S. spy drone operated by the CIA crashed in Iranian territory. Iran said it downed the advanced RQ-170 drone in an “electronic ambush.” U.S. officials said they did not believe that the drone had been hacked or jammed. They said a technical malfunction was probably to blame.

Although the navigational satellite links are encrypted, other drone transmissions are sometimes left unprotected.

In 2009, the U.S. military discovered that Iraqi insurgents had hacked into video feeds from Predator and Shadow drones using off-the-shelf software. The drones had been transmitting full-motion video to U.S. troops on the ground, but the Air Force had not encrypted those data links, leaving them vulnerable.

Air Force officials acknowledged the flaw and said they would work to encrypt all video feeds from its fleet of Predator drones by 2014. In their classified assessments, U.S. intelligence agencies sought to play down the insurgents’ hacking handiwork. Although analysts were concerned about the interceptions of the video feeds, they said there was no sign that insurgents had been able to seize control of the drone itself.

“While the ability of insurgent forces to view unencrypted or to break into encrypted data streams has been a concern for some time, indications to date are that insurgents have not been able to wrest [drone] control from its mission control ground station,” a 2010 report concluded.

The report went on to suggest that allowing insurgents to intercept video feeds might actually have “a deterrent effect” by demonstrating the extent to which U.S. forces were able to watch their movements.

Growing unease

Still, summaries of the classified reports indicate a growing unease among U.S. agencies about al-Qaeda’s determination to find a way to neutralize drones.

“Al-Qaida Engineers in Pakistan Continue Development of Laser-Warning Systems in Effort To Counter UAV Strikes,” read the headline of one report in 2011, using the military acronym for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Beyond the threat that ­al-Qaeda might figure out how to hack or shoot down a drone, however, U.S. spy agencies worried that their drone campaign was becoming increasingly vulnerable to public opposition.

Intelligence analysts took careful note of al-Qaeda’s efforts to portray drone strikes as cowardly or immoral, beginning in January 2011 with a report titled “Al-Qa’ida Explores Manipulating Public Opinion to Curb CT Pressure.”

Analysts also questioned whether they were losing the rhetorical battle in the media, the courts and even among “citizens with legitimate social agendas.” One 2010 report predicted that drone operations “could be brought under increased scrutiny, perceived to be illegitimate, openly resisted or undermined.”

In response, intelligence agencies floated their own ideas to influence public perceptions. One unclassified report said the phrase “drone strike” should never be uttered, calling it “a loaded term.”

“Drones connote mindless automatons with no capability for independent thought or action,” the report said. “Strikes connote a first attack, which leaves the victim unable to respond. Other phrases employed to evoke an emotional response include ‘Kill List,’ ‘Hit Squads,’ ‘Robot Warfare,’ or ‘Aerial Assassins.’ ”

Instead, the report advised referring to “lethal UAV operations.” It also suggested “elevating the conversation” to more-abstract issues, such as the “Inherent Right of Self-Defense” and “Pre-emptive and Preventive Military Action.”

Greg Miller contributed to this report.

45 Enemies of Freedom

Source

45 ENEMIES OF FREEDOM

People who have been trying to control your life since reason was founded in 1968

From the August/September 2013 issue

In 2003, to celebrate 35 years of publishing a monthly magazine dedicated to Free Minds and Free Markets, reason named “35 Heroes of Freedom”—innovators, economists, singers, anti-communists, pornographers, professional athletes, and even the occasional politician who contributed to making the world a freer place since 1968.

These weren’t necessarily the 35 best human beings to span the globe. Richard Nixon, for example, was selected for encouraging “cynicism about government” through his rampant abuses of power. And, well, let’s say Dennis Rodman hasn’t aged particularly well. But the list reflected the happy, unpredictable cacophony that has helped liberate the world one novel or deregulation or electric guitar at a time.

Our 45th anniversary has come along at a darker time. The post-9/11 lurch toward unchecked law enforcement power has now become a permanent feature of our bipartisan consensus, with a Democratic president now ordering assassinations of American teenagers and with millions of Americans unaware that the feds are combing through their telecommunications. Keynesians in Washington responded to the financial crisis of 2008 by ushering in a lost decade of government spending, sluggish growth, and the worst employment numbers since Jimmy Carter was president. And after an initially promising Arab Spring, whole swaths of the Middle East seem poised for a long, sectarian, transnational war.

So it’s fitting that this time around we’re anointing reason’s 45 Enemies of Freedom. Again, these aren’t the worst human beings who bestrode the planet since 1968 (though Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden rank right down there). Some, like John McCain, are even genuine American heroes. What unites them is their active effort to control individuals rather than allow them free choice, to wield power recklessly rather than act on the recognition that the stuff inherently corrupts, and to popularize lies in a world that's desperate for truth.

You’ll see some familiar names there (we can’t quit you, Tricky Dick!) and some others that deserve to be more notorious. But in our otherwise alphabetical list we’ll start with the man who nearly everyone on our staff nominated, a figure who embodies so much that is wrong with public policy and the political conversation in these United States.

1. Michael Bloomberg

Here is how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained the importance of his widely derided 16-ounce limit on servings of sugar-sweetened beverages after a state judge overturned it last March: “We have a responsibility as human beings to do something, to save each other, to save the lives of ourselves, our families, our friends, and all of the rest of the people that live on God’s planet.” Bloomberg literally thinks he is saving the world one slightly smaller serving of soda at a time.

As grandiose as that may seem, it is consistent with Bloomberg’s view of government. A few years ago in a speech at the United Nations, he declared that “to halt the worldwide epidemic of non-communicable diseases, governments at all levels must make healthy solutions the default social option,” which he described as “government’s highest duty.” On Bloomberg’s to-do list for government, apparently, defending us against our own unhealthy habits ranks above defending us against foreign invaders or marauding criminals.

Public health is not the only area where Bloomberg’s authoritarian tendencies are apparent. There is his enthusiasm for gun control, his illegal crackdown on pot smokers, and his unflagging defense of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, which portrays the Fourth Amendment as a gratuitous barrier to effective policing. But his determination to halt “epidemics” of risky behavior shows him at his most arrogantly ambitious.

Bloomberg has pursued that goal not only by meddling with people’s drink orders but by banning trans fats, pressuring food companies to reduce the salt content of their products, imposing heavy cigarette taxes, severely restricting the locations where people are allowed to smoke (even outdoors), mandating anti-smoking posters in stores that sell cigarettes (a policy that, like his big beverage ban, was rejected by the courts), and proposing a rule that would require merchants to hide tobacco products from people who might want to buy them.

The attitude driving Bloomberg’s crusade to “make healthy solutions the default social option” is reflected in another comment he made after his pint-sized pop prescription ran into legal trouble. “It was not a setback for me,” said the billionaire with degrees from Johns Hopkins and Harvard. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I watch my diet. This is not for me.” No, indeed. It is for those poor, benighted souls who think it is acceptable to drink a 20-ounce soda.

2. Idi Amin

The bombastic Ugandan dictator and self-appointed Conqueror of the British Empire lived in luxury during his 1970s rule while overseeing a unique brand of sadism that included mass killings, forced deportations, and torture.

3. Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Maricopa County, Arizona’s chief law enforcement officer is famous mostly for publicly degrading inmates: forcing them to live in a tent city, work on chain gangs, wear pink underwear. Meanwhile, his more serious transgressions receive far less attention. Arpaio has created citizen posses to track down and arrest illegal immigrants, overseen a jail staff that has violently abused inmates (resulting in the death of three prisoners and the paralysis of a fourth), and used law enforcement resources to harass and intimidate his political opponents.

4. Osama bin Laden

His desire to impose an Islamic caliphate marks the late terrorist as decidedly anti-liberty. But Osama bin Laden’s real crime against freedom was masterminding the murderous 9/11 terror attacks, which not only slaughtered nearly 3,000 people, but also inspired the U.S. government to react with overseas wars, the PATRIOT Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Transportation Security Administration. It is thanks in no small part to bin Laden that the United States is far less free.

5. Leonid Brezhnev

Give Brezhnev credit for this much: He made it a lot harder to imagine that communism would be exciting. If Stalin was the supervillain who made the Soviet Union an empire and Khrushchev was the Cold War confrontationist, Brezhnev was the bland figure who enforced a deadly conformity. An adept at bureaucratic warfare, Brezhnev consolidated his power over the course of the ’60s and ’70s as he spread his mixture of economic stagnation and banal totalitarianism throughout the eastern bloc.

6. Fidel Castro

His iron grip over Cuba lasted for more than 50 years of individual, physical, and social ruin. Though Castro formally stepped down as leader in 2008, he passed the reins of the police state to his brother and still serves as an elder statesman of the least free country in the Western Hemisphere.

7. Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney makes the list instead of George W. Bush or Barack Obama because the former vice president provided the intellectual and legal template that both presidents followed to curtail our freedoms. In the wake of 9/11, Cheney, a lifelong defender of executive branch power, pushed the Bush administration to increase secrecy, surveillance, and war. It’s the most lasting legacy in a four-decade career that includes intimate involvement in both Iraq wars, plus the conflicts in Afghanistan, Panama, and Somalia.

8. Hillary Clinton

“It takes a village,” Hillary Clinton famously wrote, and we’ve learned since that her meaning encompassed villages in Iraq and Afghanistan to house American troops, villages of taxpayers to fund her favored programs, and villages of snoops to staff a national security state. Those villages must be prudish, too, given Clinton’s longstanding fear of video-game sex. To Hillary’s credit, she does advocate Internet freedom for villages overseas. Too bad she doesn’t promote the same idea at home.

9. Paul Ehrlich

In 1968’s dystopian bestseller The Population Bomb, this biologist predicted that “hundreds of millions” would die in massive famines in the 1970s. Erlich lamented that it was technically and politically impossible to sterilize people through the water and food supplies, the antidote for which would be rationed by the government. Meanwhile, on a mostly voluntary basis, the global fertility rate has fallen by more than half since the 1960s. Freedom, and the economic growth it generates, turn out to be the best contraceptive.

10. Dianne Feinstein

Say Feinstein’s name in front of anybody who takes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seriously and watch that person’s face curdle. The California senator’s federal assault weapons ban, which passed in 1994 and expired in 2004, failed to have any noticeable impact on crime rates. She didn’t allow such facts to keep her from using the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 to unsuccessfully attempt to reinstate the ban. Like the National Rifle Association, she also blames youth violence on video games and has threatened new regulations on that industry as well.

11. Daryl Gates

Inventor of the SWAT team and four-star general in America’s war on drugs, Gates is as responsible as any other law enforcement officer for the blunt, pseudo- military instrument our police forces have become. Thanks to significant incidences of wrong-door raids and dangerous prank calls that send SWAT teams to innocent families’ homes, Americans don’t even have to be doing drugs or breaking any laws to witness the fruits of Gates’ labor.

12. Newt Gingrich

Gingrich rose to fame as a politician, but he’s more like an annoying dinner-party guest: He’ll say anything to get attention. During the 2012 campaign, the former speaker of the House called fellow Republican Paul Ryan’s budget proposal a “radical” form of “right-wing social engineering”—but later said he’d vote for it. In 2005, he declared his support for an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, even going so far as to predict that it could be done in a way to “make most libertarians relatively happy.” By 2012, he was saying the mandate was “fundamentally wrong” and “unconstitutional.” Gingrich never truly stands for anything except himself.

13. Steven Hayne

For 20 years, Mississippi prosecutors looking for a way to put a friendly thumb on the scales of justice turned to Dr. Steven Hayne. A graduate of Brown Medical School, Hayne performed roughly 1,500 autopsies per year at the behest of prosecutors—1,175 more per year than is permitted by the National Association of Medical Examiners. The result? A lot of bad evidence and a lot of faulty convictions. Thanks to Radley Balko’s investigatory work in reason and elsewhere, Hayne is no longer performing autopsies in Mississippi. Sadly, the number of false convictions he contributed to is suspected to be in the hundreds.

14. Eric Hobsbawm

Until his death last year at the age of 95, British historian Eric Hobsbawm enjoyed the dubious honor of being perhaps the world’s most prominent academic apologist for communism. Asked in 1994 if the murder of “15, 20 million people might have been justified” if the result was the establishment of a Marxist society, the lifelong Communist Party member replied, “yes.”

15. J. Edgar Hoover

The FBI’s investigations into militias during the 1990s and Muslims in the 2000s trace their roots to the tenure of James Edgar Hoover. The agency’s longest-serving director, Hoover was famous for investigating groups that challenged the American government and its empire. He spied on and entrapped leftists, and he smeared and undermined civil rights leaders.

16. Jeffrey Immelt

In fairness, anyone who ran General Electric would probably make this list. Not because the blue-chip energy/media/whatever company is particularly evil, but because it’s particularly big, and as such it’s a natural poster boy for modern-day crony capitalism. GE has spent more than $200 million on lobbying already this young century. Immelt, head of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, reacted to the 2008 financial crisis by claiming, “The interaction between government and business will change forever.…The government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.” That’s exactly the problem.

17. Michael Jacobson

The most zealous of the foodie nanny-staters, Michael Jacobson is the guy who makes Mayor Bloomberg seem like a reasonable moderate. The Ralph Nader protégé co-founded the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 1971 to fight for fat taxes, ominous warning labels, and laws requiring that broadcasters give a minute advertising time to broccoli for each minute of Froot Loops. His group, he once said, “is proud about finding something wrong with practically everything.”

18. Ed Jagels

During the 1980s, Kern County (California) District Attorney Ed Jagels led the nation in prosecuting bogus Satanic child molestation cases. Without any physical evidence, Jagels, his prosecutors, and local police coached and cajoled children into accusing their parents and neighbors of sexual abuse that never actually happened. Years later, when witnesses recanted, Jagels called them liars. Eventually, 25 of his 26 Satanic molestation convictions were overturned.

19. Leon Kass

As the propounder of the idea of “the wisdom of repugnance,” philosopher Leon Kass holds that viscera trump reason. Kass opposed in vitro fertilization on the grounds that it was dehumanizing, but the more than 5 million IVF babies born since then have been quite human. As head of George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, Kass sought to ban research on potentially lifesaving technologies such as human embryonic stem cells and cloning. He argues against using human ingenuity to liberate ourselves from the natural horrors of disease, disability, and death.

20. Ruhollah Khomeini

Leader of the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah, the ayatollah created the modern blueprint for an atavistic, Islamic revolution. As Iran’s supreme leader, Khomeini ordered the murder of his political opponents, waged a deadly war with Iraq, supported the sacking of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and offered a bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie.

21. Henry Kissinger

As secretary of state and national security advisor under presidents Nixon and Ford, Kissinger embodied a ruthless, amoral vision of America’s place in the world. From the “secret” bombing of Cambodia to the “Christmas” bombing of North Vietnam, from his complicity in the coup that installed a repressive dictatorship in Chile to his green light for Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor, Kissinger may not be the only answer to the question “Why do they hate us?”—but he’s a far larger part of the answer than any one man should be.

22. Naomi Klein

Before her 2007 book Shock Doctrine slandered all of modern libertarian thought as a scam dreamed up by the dictator-loving rich to screw over the poor, Klein had a noisy and altogether self-defeating career as an anti-branding activist. Her “No Logo” campaign and 2000 book, designed to ride the wave of anti-globalization to lead a revolt against advertising, instead became a go-to manual for marketers seeking to exploit the yearning for authenticity. Meanwhile, the anti-globalization movement died a richly deserved death.

23. Paul Krugman

The Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist is a reliable advocate of economic intervention and deficit spending, arguing that the problem with failed government stimulus programs to fight the recession of the ’00s was that they didn’t go far enough. Krugman’s low point in 2012 was recommending (only mostly in jest) that it would be a good thing if the government wasted huge sums of taxpayer money preparing for an alien invasion. Keep this man’s hands away from any rocks—he might try to break nearby windows to “stimulate” the economy.

24. Loki

The sneering (fictional) baddie in the 2012 superhero blockbuster, The Avengers, sticks to a familiar supervillain playbook: His aim is world domination, and he’s got a cosmic doohicky and an army of alien invaders to make it happen. But the justification he offers for his global power grab sounds more like a terrestrial dictator: “It’s the unspoken truth of humanity,” he tells a cowering crowd, “that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled.” Fortunately, like all supervillains, he was made to be defeated.

25. Jeffrey Loria

A successful New York art dealer (unlike you, he owns an original Picasso), Loria spent years pleading poverty to the taxpayers of Miami-Dade County so that they would pay for a fancy new stadium to house his professional baseball franchise, the Marlins. Locals finally agreed to cover what’s projected to be $2.4 billion in costs, only to discover that Loria had actually been turning large profits while fielding a mediocre, underpaid team. With his stadium safely finished, Loria promptly dismantled his club, which is now the worst in Major League Baseball.

26. Mao Tse-Tung

As the founder and leader of the People’s Republic of China, this Communist despot’s cruelly stupid collectivist policies killed at least 35 million Chinese citizens. He kept the hundreds of millions who managed to survive in impoverished bondage until his death in 1976.

27. John McCain

It is possible to be both an enemy of freedom and a genuine American hero. John McCain endured unbearable punishments and greatly boosted camp morale during his five-year Viet Cong prison stint, for which he deserves our gratitude. He has also been among the most consistently interventionist politicians in the United States Senate, agitating for never-ending “rogue-state rollback” while focusing his war at home on political speech and the healthy American trait he derides as “cynicism.” It’s fitting McCain would close out his career barking sporadic insults (like “wacko bird”) at a new generation of more libertarian legislators.

28. Jenny McCarthy

A second-string actress who has managed to stay in the limelight by promoting the bogus theory that vaccines cause autism, McCarthy traffics in pseudoscience and fear. Partly as a result of her widely publicized yet scientifically ignorant pronouncements, hundreds of thousands of fearful parents have needlessly endangered the health and lives of their children.

29. Robert McNamara

Did anyone fuse the roles of technocrat and destroyer more completely than Robert Strange McNamara? He was a functionary from Ford Motor Company when John F. Kennedy brought him in to run the Pentagon, and in that role he systematically escalated the Vietnam War as though the conflict were an assembly line. When he took over the World Bank in 1968, he continued to couple technocratic planning with mass destruction, sponsoring vast “development projects” whose most notable effect was to evict peasants from their land. Robert McNamara: the Organization Man as monster.

30. Newton Minow

The godfather of boob-tube nannying, Minow was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963. There he was a key advocate for the regulation of television. In a 1961 speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, he famously described the era’s television programming as a “vast wasteland,” railed against the medium’s “mayhem, violence, sadism, murder,” and proposed that TV content should be strictly regulated in the name of the “public interest.”

31. Robert Moses

The most authoritarian city planner in New York history, Moses wielded eminent domain and many other government powers, unleashing his bulldozers and wrecking balls on the homes, businesses, and churches of as many as half a million powerless citizens, many of them black, brown, or poor.

32. Robert Mugabe

The racist, homophobic, and corrupt president of Zimbabwe has overseen record levels of inflation, destroying the purchasing power of citizens in a previously much more prosperous country. Forbidden from exiting the country with any assets, Zimbabweans have had to live under Mugabe’s brutal misrule for decades.

33. Richard Nixon

This American president launched the modern drug war, imposed wage and price controls, kept a pointless war going in Vietnam long after he knew it was hopeless, and imposed massive new bureaucracies on the American economy. Nixon’s vision of government in general had no clear limits, and his view of executive power helped him commit and collude in crimes that he thought were not crimes because he did them. Richard Nixon should be a cautionary tale for all future presidents, but all too often he serves as an example.

34. Henry Paulson

When the nation’s financial markets collapsed in the fall of 2008, Hank Paulson, secretary of the treasury for President George W. Bush, came in with guns blazing. In September of 2008, he proposed the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a scheme he falsely advertised as a way to remove “illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy.” Instead it became a justification for an endless series of bailouts, including of non-banks like General Motors. Even TARP’s biggest proponents acknowledge that the economy has underperformed the past five years.

35. Sean Penn

When not chewing the scenery in overrated Oscar-winning films, the multimillionaire brother of Christopher Penn spends much of his time acting as an apologist for authoritarians like the late Hugo Chavez and the still-breathing Fidel Castro. When Chavez died, Penn said: “the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion.” That’s one way of putting it.

36. Pol Pot

A French school flunkie turned peasant revolutionary, Pol Pot might have been the most efficient murderer in communism’s grisly history. It took the dictator and his Khmer Rouge less than four years to kill and centrally plan to death up to 3 million people—20 percent of the Cambodian population.

37. Vladimir Putin

While many were optimistic that Russia would manage to modernize after almost a century of Marxist misery, the former KGB agent and Russian president has vindicated skeptics of liberal progress while clamping down on free speech, mucking about in Russia’s “near abroad,” and supporting horrid governments such as the Assad regime in Syria.

38. Bruce Ratner

A real estate tycoon and serial beneficiary of eminent domain abuse, Ratner partnered with New York officials in 2001 to forcibly evict some 55 midtown businesses standing in the way of a new headquarters for the New York Times Company. A few years later in Brooklyn, Ratner and his government allies seized and razed dozens of homes and businesses in order to build a basketball arena for a team then owned by Ratner himself.

39. Diane Ravitch

A school reformer turned union flack, this New York University professor did an about-face after four decades as one of the nation’s most prominent charter advocates. Part of the right-wing think tank braintrust that hatched the initial policy proposals for vouchers, she now says “Vouchers are a con, intended to destroy public education.” She has been welcomed with open arms by defenders of the status quo.

40. John Rawls

The philosophical father of 20th century liberalism, Rawls’ seminal Theory of Justice (1971) has dominated moral and political philosophy for decades. His framing of “justice as fairness” and his notion that societies should be arranged to improve the lot of the least advantaged subtly underpin nearly all of our national policy debates, lending a justification to multitudinous extensions of state power. His longtime rival, the libertarian thinker Robert Nozick, offered an alternative based in property rights and personal liberty. Sadly, Rawls has been more influential.

If (bad) conservative screenwriters set out to create a smugly liberal, lens-hungry New York senator, they’d come up with Charles Schumer—and they’d be criticized for creating a strawman. But Schumer is, somehow, real. He crusades sneeringly against guns, drugs, breakfast cereal, cybercurrencies, and caffeinated powders while supporting security-state legislation and cozying up with crony capitalists on Wall Street.

42. Steven Seagal

Starring in 20 of the worst action flicks ever made, all with titles like Above the Law and Executive Decision, Seagal also produced several ludicrous environmental message-movies, including one that ends with his character giving a four-minute speech about how “the internal combustion engine has been obsolete for 50 years.” He has made two truly awful records and been serially accused of sexual harassment, but what separates Seagal from most Hollywood scumbags is that he has also actively participated in gross law enforcement abuse, including a raid in Arizona that damaged a man’s house and killed his puppy.

43. Lamar Smith

The Internet threatened to shut down in protest last year when Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that sought to grant movie studios and record labels unprecedented power to police copyright. Under SOPA, studios and labels would’ve had the power to block offending sites from showing up in Google search results, and the authority to tell service providers which sites their customers couldn’t visit. In an Orwellian twist, SOPA also would have empowered “content creators” to prevent Internet users from discussing—on Facebook and other social media sites—how to circumvent SOPA.

44. Aaron Sorkin

A virtual assembly line for fictional authority-worship, Sorkin is the dramatist of choice for progressive technocrats. In the worlds detailed in West Wing and The Newsroom, all of America’s problems could be solved if those dumb, undereducated conservatives and independents would listen to their incorruptible Ivy League betters. Sorkin longs for an imaginary golden age of American government that never existed. Bonus points for being just as misogynist as any of the archconservatives he loathes.

45. Elizabeth Warren

One of the left’s foremost academic activists, Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat recently elected to the Senate, is a Harvard professor with a history of using shoddy scholarship to promote dubious public policies. She has exaggerated the prevalence of medical bankruptcy, argued that student loan rates should be set equal to bank loan rates, and pushed for controls on everything from credit cards to home loans. Warren’s life project amounts to an argument that most people are too stupid to know what to do with their money unless the government steps in to help.

Files show NSA cracks, weakens Internet encryption

Files show NSA cracks, weakens Internet encryption

By Michael Winter USA Today Thu Sep 5, 2013 4:51 PM

U.S. and British intelligence agencies have cracked the encryption designed to provide online privacy and security, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show.

In their clandestine, decade-long effort to defeat digital scrambling, the National Security Agency, along with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have used supercomputers to crack encryption codes and have inserted secret portals into software with the help of technology companies, the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica reported Thursday.

The NSA has also maintained control over international encryption standards.

As the Times points out, encryption "guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world."

The NSA calls its decryption efforts the "price of admission for the U.S. to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace."

A 2010 memo describing an NSA briefing to British agents about the secret hacking said, "For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies. Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable."

The GCHQ is working to penetrate encrypted traffic on what it called the "big four" service providers ---Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook, the Guardian said.

N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web

The article says the NSA has been getting makers of ICs or integrated circuits to put back doors into their products so the NSA can read or listen to your data before the chip encrypts it.

The article says the NSA is also working with software vendors like Microsoft getting them to put back doors in their software products, again so the NSA can grab the data before the software encrypts it.

Chapel-run program at Sky Harbor seeks funds

Phoenix spends $75,000 a year on church at Sky Harbor Airport???

From this article it sounds like the City of Phoenix has been violating the Arizona Constitution and illegally shoveling $7,000 a month to the chapel at Sky Harbor Airport

Source

Chapel-run program at Sky Harbor seeks funds

Travelers Aid assists those in distress; city not renewing contract

By Amy B Wang The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Sep 1, 2013 9:25 PM

A place of refuge for travelers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is seeking help of its own.

The Sky Harbor interfaith chapel needs about $7,000 a month to continue Travelers Aid services after Phoenix did not renew its contract for the program earlier this year, Chaplain Al Young said. [So Phoenix has been mixing government and religion in violation of the Arizona Constitution and giving this church at Sky Harbor Airport $7,000 a month to operate???]

Many airports around the world have interfaith chapels, enclaves where anyone can seek momentary respite from the potentially stressful environment outside. Sky Harbor is unusual in that its chapel also houses the airport’s Travelers Aid program, Young said. [But per the Arizona Constitution and US Constitution government run airports are not allowed to mix religion and government and fund churches or chapels!!]

He said the Travelers Aid program serves as a “safety net” for those who are in distress — perhaps homeless, recovering from an addiction, stranded or fleeing a domestic-violence situation — and have nowhere else to turn after getting to the airport. [Homeless folks at the airport??? Last time I checked Homeland Security was chasing homeless folks out of the airport]

Although the airport chaplain held the contract for the Travelers Aid program, it is completely separate from the airport chaplaincy and the services provided there, Sky Harbor spokeswoman Deborah Ostreicher said.

She said airport staff and volunteers have access to local resources that can provide support for victims of domestic violence, the homeless and other cases, which were often handled by Travelers Aid.

“The Travelers Aid contract was put into effect when the airport had fewer police officers, operational staff and volunteers,” Ostreicher said in an e-mail. “Now with over 400 customer-service volunteers and increased airport staffing and police, it is no longer necessary to contract this service.”

The religious ministry is funded entirely by donations from other sources, so the chapel itself is not in danger of closing, Young said. But without Travelers Aid, the chapel’s reach is limited. [But from this article it sounds like a bunch of tax dollars are being used illegally at the church or chapel!!!]

Travelers Aid case manager Nancy Tyler, who until last month was the lone case manager working out of the chapel for the Sky Harbor Travelers Aid, has agreed to an indefinite furlough.

There are people who need more than a just a temporary quiet place, Young said.

Tyler’s reports are filled with stories of misunderstandings, of people trying to escape domestic violence, of travelers who wind up stuck in Phoenix without money or means to get to where they need to go.

Sometimes, a little bit of communication makes all the difference, she wrote.

In June, Tyler received a call from a distraught man in Chicago who said his elderly, disabled mother was stuck at a gate in Terminal 2. Her connecting flight had been canceled, and he said no one from the airline had assisted her. Tyler worked with the airline to put her on another flight and helped the man’s mother get to Terminal 4 — to his immense relief, Tyler said.

Young said the chapel’s calming atmosphere is a natural environment for such a program. Tucked behind a currency exchange on the third floor of Terminal 4, it’s easy to miss. Every hour, at 27 minutes after the hour, a PA announcement mentions the chapel. [Did the taxpayers pay for this message????]

“We say it’s probably one of the best-kept secrets at the airport,” Young said. “Even regular travelers aren’t always aware there is a chapel.” [And because of the Arizona Constitution there shouldn't be a religious chapel at at government run airport]

Step through the chapel doors, and gone are footsteps of people rushing to catch flights. Once inside, only a water fountain in the corner of a dim room is audible. A small shelf holds about two dozen religious texts, while a table by the entrance offers pamphlets on everything from alcohol addiction to overcoming loneliness.

At one time, the chapel had 13 chaplains. Now, there are six: four full time and two part time, all volunteers.

“Their role is to rove through the airport, be observant,” Young said. “If someone is showing signs of distress, (they) step up and introduce themselves and ask if there’s any help they can offer.” [I thought per the Homeland Security rules only PASSENGERS were allowed to rove through the airport????]

The chapel receives an estimated 400 to 500 visitors each month, Young said. [So it costs between $14 and $17.50 for each person that visits the chapel] About half are airport employees; the rest travelers. Some come to pray or simply sit in silence. Others ended up there for the Travelers Aid program.

“While the chapel ministry is an important part of what we do, the other side of it is a social service that we have been providing ... for stranded and distressed travelers,” Young said. “This is the program that we feel most needs support from the community.”

The city approved a one-year trial run of the program in June 2006, then extended it for seven years at about $75,000 annually. [So it looks like the city of Phoenix is violating the Arizona Constitution and mixing government and religion at Sky Harbor Airport] The chapel wants to raise enough money to resurrect its Travelers Aid program and rehire Tyler. “Her knowledge is just indispensable,” Young said.

To make a donation, visit www.skyharborchapel.org/travelers-aid.

Detective Scarcella is a liar who would frame is mother for murder????

Detective Scarcella is a liar who would frame is mother for murder????

As Doubts Over Detective Grew, Prosecutors Also Made Missteps

By FRANCES ROBLES

Published: September 5, 2013 118 Comments

After a murder defendant took the stand and accused a Brooklyn homicide detective, Louis Scarcella, of beating a false confession out of him, the detective had someone important vouch for his trustworthiness to the jury: the prosecutor.

“The defense wants you to accept that Detective Scarcella is going to come in here and throw away 24 years of his life, wants you to believe that Scarcella is going to risk his pension, his livelihood and his profession to obtain a confession,” said Kyle C. Reeves, then a prosecutor with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. “He’s going to risk all that? Very, very unlikely.”

Despite the confident speech, by the time Mr. Reeves defended the detective in that 1997 murder trial there was already growing evidence available to prosecutors that Mr. Scarcella’s work was marred by persistent and troubling patterns.

In a 1983 hearing, a judge said that Mr. Scarcella had answered “I don’t remember” so many times on the stand that the defendant accused of attempted rape had more credibility than the detective. In the years that followed, at least six murder defendants claimed in their trials or appeals that the detective had developed their confessions himself, noting the customary video documenting the interrogation did not exist. And one witness had appeared in so many of his cases that even defendants in other cases cited her as proof that the detective was soliciting false testimony.

But prosecutors continued to pursue the cases Mr. Scarcella brought and continued to tell jurors and appeals judges to ignore any accusations of wrongdoing.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, has ordered a review of nearly 40 cases investigated by Mr. Scarcella, who is now retired. The review came after Mr. Hynes’s office revealed six months ago that the detective’s flawed investigation had put an innocent man behind bars for two decades and news reports found further problems with his work.

An examination by The New York Times of some cases Mr. Scarcella handled indicates that prosecutors in the district attorney’s office itself either ignored warning signs in the detective’s work or made missteps of their own.

“Our experience all around the city is that errors by police and errors by prosecutors go hand in hand and frequently become a toxic mixture,” said Steven Banks, the chief attorney for the Legal Aid Society, which represents many of the defendants whose cases are under review. “There are a series of circumstances that should have set off alarm bells both at the precinct and in the prosecutor’s office.”

Mr. Scarcella declined to comment on Thursday, saying he had retained a lawyer.

In defending his cases, Mr. Scarcella has repeatedly cited the oversight of prosecutors. “If what I did was so bad, it shouldn’t have been brought to trial,” he said in an interview in April.

The district attorney’s office has so far refused to release a full list of cases under review and declined to discuss particular ones. In addition, it is unclear what individual prosecutors knew about Mr. Scarcella and the accusations against him. But the potential problems seen in a sampling of cases in which Mr. Scarcella testified raises the prospect that innocent people may be serving life sentences for crimes they did not commit, or that guilty people whose cases were compromised could go free.

That 1997 murder case in which the prosecutor rose to defend Mr. Scarcella was emblematic of flaws in the detective’s cases: contradictory witnesses, disputed confessions and prosecutors willing to accept his findings and take them to trial.

Jabbar Washington, who is serving 25 years to life, was convicted of taking part in a home invasion in 1995 that left one person dead and two others seriously injured. The case against him was built around his own confession and the testimony of a woman who said she saw the crime, but there were reasons to be skeptical of both.

Mr. Washington claimed the detective had told him what to say and then beat him until he confessed. The district attorney’s office accepted the confession, which had been videotaped, even though it started with the same two sentences uttered by suspects Mr. Scarcella had interrogated in other cases. Mr. Reeves, who defended the detective’s honesty during his closing argument, declined to comment.

The lead witness told Mr. Scarcella she could identify the killer, who had worn a mask, but she was unable to do so at trial. In response to an appeal years later, an assistant district attorney, Marie-Claude P. Wrenn-Myers, acknowledged that the witness had been “equivocal and somewhat inarticulate.”

“But,” she added, “the jury could consider Detective Scarcella’s testimony in tandem with hers.”

Critics, including political opponents, defense lawyers and inmates, have questioned the propriety of Mr. Hynes leading the investigation into his office’s work, particularly because most of the cases under review were prosecuted on his watch. (The district attorney’s office said 10 of the cases were closed under Elizabeth Holtzman, who was district attorney before Mr. Hynes took office in 1990, but his office defended them if they were appealed.)

The critics note that Mr. Hynes, 78, is seeking re-election and that Mr. Scarcella’s daughter works in the office as a prosecutor. In a brief interview, Mr. Hynes said that so far no glaring problems had been discovered in the review. He said the detective’s sloppy work was not brought to the office’s attention until a year ago, when it reopened the case that led to an exoneration. Even in that case, he found no reason to blame the prosecutors.

“I am not going to second-guess the assistants involved,” Mr. Hynes said. “They are very good trial lawyers.”

Glossing Over Actions

In March, Mr. Hynes announced that he would support the release of David Ranta, who had served two decades in prison for the 1990 murder of an Orthodox rabbi. The district attorney’s staff documented a series of problems with Mr. Scarcella’s work in the case, like covering up the steps he took investigating another suspect.

But in court records and public interviews Mr. Hynes and his staff glossed over questionable actions by prosecutors that included making unauthorized tape recordings, overlooking inconsistencies in the evidence and offering a generous deal to an informer even after he changed his stories.

Those in the office at the time recall significant pressure from Mr. Hynes to win a conviction. Mr. Hynes, who had recently been elected district attorney, represented the state at the arraignment and also appeared at the grand jury. (A spokesman said the district attorney initially had “no recollection” of being at either hearing, though he later said Mr. Hynes remembered attending the grand jury proceedings.)

A two-month investigation initially focused on another man who prosecutors now believe was the real killer. But when that suspect died, Mr. Scarcella switched his focus to Mr. Ranta.

Mr. Hynes assigned the case to two top prosecutors in the office: Suzanne M. Mondo, now a judge, and Barry M. Schreiber, now a private lawyer and campaign contributor to Mr. Hynes. They were handed a case built on the words of a prostitute, a drug addict, a rapist and a jailhouse informer who had been lavished with favors by Mr. Scarcella for weeks.

Prosecutors promised the informer — Alan Bloom, who was facing over 100 years in prison for a string of armed robberies — immunity from charges related to the murder and a sentence of as little as three and a third years for the robberies. They gave him the deal even though he had failed his first lie-detector test and initially named someone else as responsible for the murder.

Other problems were later discovered. Mr. Ranta’s confession included incorrect key details, like the color of the getaway car. A hair sample found in the vehicle was not a match for him, and years later, when investigators sought to test it against another suspect, it had been destroyed.

A witness was less than certain when he identified Mr. Ranta in a police lineup, saying “I think,” but when the district attorney’s office made a transcript of the recording it edited out the hedge and did not turn over the audio tape until the close of trial. Two decades later, that witness recanted and said that just before entering the lineup room, where a prosecutor was present, a police officer told him whom to pick. That admission forced Mr. Hynes’s office to reopen the case.

That is when investigators found a previously unknown tape recording made by an informer at the request of prosecutors but never turned over to the defense. On it, an informer chatted on the phone with Mr. Ranta, who called from jail to profess his innocence and mention other witnesses who could have helped his case. Supervisors at the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit were angered by the discovery of the tape because they felt it was an unauthorized recording because Mr. Ranta already had counsel, a lawyer familiar with the case said.

Mr. Schreiber, who did not respond to requests for comment, told his former colleagues that he did not recall making the recording, court records show. The trial lawyer, Michael F. Baum, the first to bring the problems with the case to the office’s attention, said, “The fact is, there were red flags all over this case.”

A Long-Evident Pattern

Defense lawyers called them “magical confessions” — the surprising admissions of guilt that Mr. Scarcella was able to quickly elicit from stubborn suspects. While the district attorney’s office is now reviewing questions about how he managed to get those confessions, the pattern of his questionable tactics was evident for years.

Sundhe Moses, who was accused of killing a 4-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet, took the stand in his own defense in 1997 to say that he signed a confession only because the detective had knocked him around. Mr. Moses says he told the prosecutor that the detective had abused him and that the confession was fiction.

“He didn’t want to hear it,” Mr. Moses said by phone from prison, where he is serving 16 years to life.

In some cases, appeal records show inmates claimed that when they confessed to Mr. Scarcella, the details they allegedly gave did not even match the evidence, that they had been tricked or forced to make untrue statements, or that they had been asked to sign a blank piece of paper only to have the supposed confession written on it later. In some cases, when the prosecutor arrived to videotape a confession, the suspect denied telling Mr. Scarcella he had committed the crime.

Hector Lopez, who was convicted of arson and murder in 1995 and has been writing letters from prison detailing evidence he says shows his confession was fabricated, said it was odd that prosecutors had turned on Mr. Scarcella.

“They supported him all those years,” Mr. Lopez said. “Now that he is retired they are throwing him under the bus? If he was still working, they’d be covering it up.”

One of Mr. Scarcella’s former sergeants, Dennis Singleton, said that years before he retired in 1999, some detectives grew skeptical of the investigator’s cocky “superstar” image and refused to work with him. But if Mr. Scarcella took shortcuts, Mr. Singleton felt that the district attorney’s office should share the blame.

Eventually a similar skepticism emerged in corners of the district attorney’s office. One current top prosecutor said that even those who respected the detective cooled toward him after 1992, when video taken by a defense investigator showed Mr. Scarcella removing informers from jail for unauthorized outings. Some prosecutors began to review the detective’s work more thoroughly, the lawyer recalled.

But even some of those who were suspicious of Mr. Scarcella acknowledged that they mostly kept their concerns to themselves, saying that his ability to clear cases had made him popular with the bosses.

“Some prosecutors were leery; they didn’t trust it,” said one former investigator, who did not want to be identified publicly while criticizing his former supervisors. “He was one of the best detectives in the city. He’s turning over all these cases, and the bosses loved him. You’re going to go to the boss and say, ‘This doesn’t look right’?’”

Peter J. Tartaglia, a former police lieutenant who worked with Mr. Scarcella, had little patience for the second-guessing of the detective’s work.

“Every single one of those cases were scrutinized by high up,” Mr. Tartaglia said. “They were scrutinized by the bureau chief of homicide. Do you know who the bureau chief of homicide had coffee with every day? Charlie Hynes. If there was any doubt any bureau chief had, Charlie Hynes heard that question and the answer.”

Some prosecutors have emerged to defend Mr. Scarcella. They say what may now seem like red flags to others were just a reality of working in law enforcement, particularly in that era.

Douglas M. Nadjari, a former assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case against Mr. Lopez and is convinced of his guilt, said that dealing with defendants who denied confessing did not necessarily mean the admission was fake. He said Mr. Scarcella simply had a gift for getting suspects to open up and they sometimes regretted doing so.

“Lou would take the confession and say, ‘He’s ready to talk,’ ” Mr. Nadjari said. “When I got there with the video recorder, sometimes they clammed up. It’s a sign they thought it over a second time.”

Jeffrey I. Ginsberg, a former assistant district attorney who also prosecuted two of the convictions under review, said the cases might look bad in retrospect, but they needed to be considered in the context of the 1980s and ’90s, when the crack epidemic was helping fuel a crime wave.

“The witnesses often came in orange jumpsuits,” said Mr. Ginsberg, referring to the outfit worn by inmates. “I was not afraid to go to trial on a weak case. I was not afraid to lose. I was not lying and cheating to get a conviction.”

‘Willful Blindness’

One witness who came from jail was Rayquan Shabazz, a burglar with a knack for getting caught. He kept the telephone number of Kenneth M. Taub, the chief of the Brooklyn district attorney’s homicide unit, tucked in his Bible to have it handy whenever he was arrested.

With a budding career as a jailhouse informer, Mr. Shabazz reached out to Mr. Taub in 1996, promising information that would help win a conviction in a gruesome murder.

Harry Kaufman, a subway token booth clerk, was working an overnight shift at the Kingston-Throop subway station when a group of teenagers approached his booth brandishing a soda bottle filled with gasoline. One of the teenagers squirted the gasoline into the coin slot; another dropped a match. The blast was heard a block away.

Mr. Scarcella, the investigator on the case, quickly zeroed in on Thomas Malik. The case seemed strong: the other teenagers pointed to him as the one who lighted the match, and Mr. Malik confessed on video. But there were problems for the prosecutors because testimony from co-defendants was inadmissible in court and Mr. Malik claimed he confessed only after Mr. Scarcella slammed his head into a locker.

Enter Mr. Shabazz. He told the jury that he had heard Mr. Malik not only admit to the crime, but also plot to have his co-defendants killed as well.

Mr. Malik was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life. Mr. Shabazz, who had previously testified for prosecutors in both Brooklyn and Queens, told the jury that Mr. Taub helped get his sentence reduced.

Being a jailhouse mole was so rewarding that Mr. Shabazz kept at it, even as it became increasingly clear that many of his tips were false.

Six years after Mr. Malik’s conviction, law enforcement agencies had wasted so many resources investigating Mr. Shabazz’s tips that the inmate was criminally charged and, after he pleaded guilty to false reporting, was barred from contacting law enforcement as long as he was in state custody.

“This defendant has persistently made up false reports about the planned assassinations of a judge, prosecutors, correction and police personnel and witnesses in an attempt to curry favor with law enforcement and obtain consideration,” Justice Carol Berkman of State Supreme Court in Manhattan wrote in 2003. “This defendant poses a very significant threat to the integrity of the criminal justice process.”

Mr. Malik’s lawyer, Ronald L. Kuby, who is seeking to have his conviction overturned, said: “Using a man like Rayquan Shabazz to be a roving informer on an intermittent basis is prosecutorial misconduct. It’s part of institutional willful blindness.”

The files on the nearly 40 cases under review, including Mr. Malik’s, have been distributed to lawyers throughout the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which could lead them to confront errors and oversights made by current leaders in the office.

District Attorney Hynes, known for standing by longtime lieutenants even when they face accusations of misconduct, also convened a civilian panel to examine his office’s investigation of the Scarcella cases and to make recommendations. That panel includes several of his friends and donors.

The review has complicated Mr. Hynes’s bid to be elected for a seventh term. His opponent in the Democratic primary next week, Kenneth P. Thompson, 47, a private lawyer and former federal prosecutor, has criticized how the investigation has been conducted and questioned whether the problems are more far-reaching.

Mr. Hynes said that if any cases appeared to be the “same as Ranta” — which led to the initial exoneration — he would immediately move to have the convict released. “We have not gotten to a point where we have found anything that appears to be problematic,” he said.

Google encrypts data amid backlash against NSA spying

Remember the bottom line is if you don't want cops reading your emails don't put them on the internet. If you don't want cops listening to your conversations don't have them on a telephone that is connect to any public networks, or any network that broadcasts the call on radio waves.

Sure that's an inconvenience and hard to do, but it's a lot easier then spending 5 or 10 years in prison for committing a victimless drug war crime.

Source

Google encrypts data amid backlash against NSA spying

By Craig Timberg, Published: September 6 E-mail the writers

Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday.

The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that U.S. government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs.

Google’s encryption initiative, initially approved last year, was accelerated in June as the tech giant struggled to guard its reputation as a reliable steward of user information amid controversy about the NSA’s PRISM program, first reported in The Washington Post and the Guardian that month. PRISM obtains data from American technology companies, including Google, under various legal authorities.

Encrypting information flowing among data centers will not make it impossible for intelligence agencies to snoop on individual users of Google services, nor will it have any effect on legal requirements that the company comply with court orders or valid national security requests for data. But company officials and independent security experts said that increasingly widespread use of encryption technology makes mass surveillance more difficult — whether conducted by governments or other sophisticated hackers.

“It’s an arms race,” said Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering at Google, based in Mountain View, Calif. “We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.”

Experts say that, aside from the U.S. government, sophisticated government hacking efforts emanate from China, Russia, Britain and Israel.

The NSA seeks to defeat encryption through a variety of means, including by obtaining encryption “keys” to decode communications, by using super-computers to break codes, and by influencing encryption standards to make them more vulnerable to outside attack, according to reports Thursday by the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica, based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

But those reports made clear that encryption — essentially converting data into what appears to be gibberish when intercepted by outsiders — complicates government surveillance efforts, requiring that resources be devoted to decoding or otherwise defeating the systems. [Unless their is a backdoor that allows the government to quickly decrypt your messages I suspect this is true. So the question is "Is there a backdoor"] Among the most common tactics, experts say, is to hack into individual computers or other devices used by people targeted for surveillance, making what amounts to an end run around coded communications.

Security experts say the time and energy required to defeat encryption forces surveillance efforts to be targeted more narrowly on the highest-priority targets — such as terrorism suspects — and limits the ability of governments to simply cast a net into the huge rivers of data flowing across the Internet.

“If the NSA wants to get into your system, they are going to get in . . . . Most of the people in my community are realistic about that,” said Christopher Soghoian, a computer security expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is all about making dragnet surveillance impossible.”

The NSA declined to comment for this article. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement Thursday saying: “Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their secrets, and today terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that.”

The U.S. intelligence community has been reeling since news reports based on Snowden’s documents began revealing remarkable new detail about how the government collects, analyzes and disseminates information — including, in some circumstances, the e-mails, video chats and phone communications of American citizens.

Many of the documents portray U.S. companies as pliant “Corporate Partners” or “Providers” of information. While telecommunications companies have generally declined to comment on their relationships with government surveillance, some technology companies have reacted with outrage at the depictions in the NSA documents released by Snowden. They have joined civil liberties groups in demanding more transparency and insisting that information is turned over to the government only when required by law, often in the form of a court order.

In June, Google and Microsoft asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow them greater latitude in reporting how much information they must turn over to the government. On Friday, Yahoo issued its first “government transparency report,” saying it had received 12,444 requests for data from the U.S. government this year, covering the accounts of 40,322 users.

Google has long been more aggressive than its peers within the U.S. technology industry in deploying encryption technology. It turned on encryption in its popular Gmail service in 2010, and since then has added similar protections for Google searches for most users.

Yet even as it encrypted much of the data flowing between Google and its users, the information traveling between its data centers offered rare points of vulnerability to potential intruders, especially government surveillance agencies, security officials said. User information — including copies of e-mails, search queries, videos and Web browsing history — typically is stored in several data centers that transmit information to each other on high-speed fiber-optic lines.

Several other companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, increasingly have begun using encryption for some of their services, though the quality varies by company. Communications between services — when an e-mail, for example, is sent from a user of Gmail to a user of Microsoft’s Outlook mail — are not generally encrypted, appearing to surveillance systems as what experts call “clear text.”

Google officials declined to provide details on the cost of its new encryption efforts, the numbers of data centers involved, or the exact technology used. Officials did say that it will be what experts call “end-to-end,” meaning that both the servers in the data centers and the information on the fiber-optic lines connecting them will be encrypted using “very strong” technology. The project is expected to be completed soon, months ahead of the original schedule.

Grosse echoed comments from other Google officials, saying that the company resists government surveillance and has never weakened its encryption systems to make snooping easier — as some companies reportedly have, according to the Snowden documents detailed by the Times and the Guardian on Thursday.

“This is a just a point of personal honor,” Grosse said. “It will not happen here.”

Security experts said news reports detailing the extent of NSA efforts to defeat encryption were startling. It was widely presumed that the agency was working to gain access to protected information, but the efforts were far more extensive than understood and reportedly contributed to the creation of vulnerabilities that other hackers, including foreign governments, could exploit.

Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins cryptography expert, applauded Google’s move to harden its defenses against government surveillance, but said recent revelations make clear the many weaknesses of commonly used encryption technology, much of which dates back to the 1990s or earlier. He called for renewed efforts among companies and independent researchers to update systems — the hardware, the software and the algorithms.

“The idea that humans can communicate safely is something we should fight for,” Green said.

But he said he wasn’t sure that would happen: “A lot of people in the next week are going to say, this is too hard. Let’s forget about the NSA.”

Haylet Tsukayama contributed to this report.

Google argues for right to continue scanning Gmail

But is Google sleeping with the government and turning this information over to Uncle Sam, along with state, county and city cops???

Again if you don't want cops reading your email you shouldn't be using the internet to send it. If you don't want cops listening to you phone calls you shouldn't be using public networks that the police can monitor, or placing calls that use radio waves, such as cell phones.

Yes, it's a pain in the but to keep the government from spying on you, but it's a lot easier then doing 5 to 10 years in a Federal prison for a victimless drug war crime.

Source

Google argues for right to continue scanning Gmail

By Martha Mendoza Associated Press Thu Sep 5, 2013 9:48 AM

SAN JOSE, California — Google’s attorneys say their long-running practice of electronically scanning the contents of people’s Gmail accounts to help sell ads is legal, and they are asking a U.S. judge to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to stop the practice.

In court records filed in advance of a federal hearing scheduled for Thursday, Google argues that “all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing.”

The class action lawsuit filed in May says Google “unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people’s private email messages” in violation of California’s privacy laws and federal wiretapping statutes. The lawsuit notes that the company even scans messages sent to any of the 425 million active Gmail users from non-Gmail users who never agreed to the company’s terms.

Google has repeatedly described how it targets its advertising based on words that show up in Gmail messages. For example, the company says if someone has received a lot of messages about photography or cameras, then it might display an advertisement from a local camera store. Google says the process is fully automated, “and no humans read your email ...”

Privacy advocates have long questioned the practice.

“People believe, for better or worse, that their email is private correspondence, not subject to the eyes of a $180 billion corporation and its whims,” said Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court

Retiring Phoenix City Manager Cavazos able to ‘spike’ his city pension

Retiring Phoenix City Manager Cavazos able to ‘spike’ his city pension

By Craig Harris and Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Sep 4, 2013 10:11 AM

Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos can boost his pension when he retires next month by cashing in City Council-approved perks and roughly $200,000 of unused sick leave, a practice known as “pension spiking” that he was asked to end just six weeks ago, records obtained by The Arizona Republic and 12 News show.

Cavazos and city officials, under his directive, refuse to disclose the total value of his pension package, citing a sealed divorce agreement with his ex-wife, Julie Ann, who will receive part of his pension benefits. A city spokeswoman said Tuesday that that amount will be disclosed when Cavazos retires Oct. 16.

Cavazos declined to be interviewed in depth about his pension, but he did discuss his overall compensation and wrote in a response to Republic Media, which owns 12 News and The Arizona Republic, that his annual pension from the City of Phoenix Employees’ Retirement Systems will be $117,000 to $127,000. He stated that the figure is based “substantially” on the “below market” salary he was paid before getting a raise of nearly 33 percent last year.

He noted that he, like other city employees, made financial concessions to help the city’s budget.

Cavazos would not disclose how much of his additional pension payments his ex-wife would receive under their divorce settlement. Efforts to reach her were unsuccessful.

The Republic estimates that the total annual city pension payout for Cavazos and his ex-wife together will be at least $220,000, based on a review of his contract, other public records and an interview with Jackie Temple, the city retirement program’s interim administrator.

However, that pension amount could rise depending on how much unused sick leave Cavazos trades in to increase his credited length of city service, one of two key factors in determining the annual amount of a public pension.

Cavazos indicated in a response to media that he plans to trade in sick leave, but he did not disclose how many hours he will exchange to increase his pension.

Cavazos also will be able to significantly increase his final compensation, the other key factor in calculating an annual pension, because of details written into his contract such as being able to cash unused sick leave and the council-approved retroactive pay raise.

Benefits add up

Cavazos will have had a city career of nearly 27 years when he retires next month. Under his contract as city manager, he contributes 2 percent of his pay to the city’s retirement system. Nearly all other employees contribute at least 5 percent of their pay.

His monthly pension payment will be calculated based on the three years his salary was the highest. The values of the following also will be added into the formula to determine his pension:

Up to 60 percent of the roughly 2,194 hours — more than a year — of unused sick leave he accrued before becoming city manager.

All 208 hours of unused vacation pay he accrued.

A $600-a-month car allowance and a $100-a-month cellphone allowance, as well as annual longevity bonuses of $4,000.

Deferred compensation, and about $1,500 a month in extra pay he has received in lieu of not acquiring additional sick-leave hours as city manager.

Cavazos also will take with him a deferred retirement account, to which the city contributes about $35,000 a year or 11 percent of his salary. That money also is factored in to his pension calculation, according to Temple.

Cavazos will become the second consecutive Phoenix city manager to significantly spike his pension under a lucrative City Council-approved benefits and compensation package.

Before retiring in 2009, then-City Manager Frank Fairbanks, Cavazos’ predecessor, boosted his pay through little-known bonuses, by cashing in unused sick leave and vacation, and adding in other perks that elevated his annual pension to $246,813, an amount that was more than his base pay when he worked — and larger than that of any retired U.S. president.

Cavazos, 53, is retiring to become city manager in Santa Ana, Calif., at a base salary of $315,000. His total compensation package, which includes a housing allowance, will exceed a half-million dollars.

“When you pay somebody, if you just look at the cost, it’s a big number. But you have to put that in context of what you get for it,” Cavazos said. “You can never focus on cost. You have to focus on revenue. You have to focus on what it brings.

“If you just focus on cost, you’re going to get the absolute cheapest price. And I don’t think the city of Phoenix wants the cheapest city manager. I think they want the best city manager, and that’s exactly what Santa Ana wanted.”

One of the biggest factors in enhancing the city pension for Cavazos is the nearly 33 percent raise that Mayor Greg Stanton and the City Council approved for him late last year, retroactive to July 2012. That brought Cavazos’ annual base pay to $315,000 — the same amount he will receive in the much smaller Santa Ana.

The council-approved pay raise will significantly increase the amount Cavazos will be paid for his unused sick leave and vacation hours when he leaves, because those calculations will be made at his new hourly rate of $151.44, even though all his sick hours were accrued when Cavazos was paid less.

The Republic calculated Cavazos’ sick-leave payout at $199,401 and his vacation payout at $31,500, based on the city manager’s contract and his most recent sick-leave and vacation balances.

‘Spiking’ assailed

Pension spiking is a contributor to the city’s rapidly escalating pension costs, which have been influenced by poor investment returns during the recession and during the dot-com bust in the early 2000s. The city expects to contribute $127 million to its pension plan this fiscal year on behalf of municipal workers and an additional $129 million to the statewide Public Safety Personnel Retirement System for its police officers and firefighters.

The escalating costs and spiking by top police and fire administrators were such that Stanton and two City Council members in late July asked Cavazos to end the policy that allows pension spiking.

Their concerns were fueled by an Arizona Republic investigation earlier this year that found spiking allowed 10 Phoenix public-safety officials to boost their lump-sum retirement benefits to more than $700,000 each and obtain annual pensions greater than $114,000 each.

Those public-safety officials spiked their pensions by cashing out unused sick leave and vacation. They also calculated into their final compensation things like deferred compensation, payment for emergency shifts, bonuses and allowances for vehicles and cellphones. Those calculations boosted the final salaries used to determine pension benefits.

All public-safety officers are allowed to spike, though the most costly cases have been top managers at the high end of the pay range.

A July memo from Stanton and council members Thelda Williams and Daniel Valenzuela called on Cavazos to find a way to end pension spiking for public-safety employees. The memo took to task “executive level” employees who have abused the pension system and “given a bad name to all employees.”

Though one of Stanton’s campaign planks was to end pension spiking, he has taken no formal legislative action to end a practice that critics say drives up the cost to taxpayers. Stanton did not return repeated calls for this story, but he issued a statement that said city staff members are working on issues raised in his memo.

“Staff will be prepared to report to the council in the fall, as requested,” Stanton said.

Williams was taken aback when informed of the amount of Cavazos’ pension and sick-leave payout based on Republic calculations. She said she thought the council had changed Cavazos’ contract to prevent the pension spiking that occurred when Fairbanks retired in 2009. However, Cavazos got nearly the exact same benefits in his seven-page contract as Fairbanks, except for a $40,000 performance bonus.

“I thought we were pretty clear when we negotiated it, that was not supposed to happen,” she said of pension spiking. “When we negotiated David’s contract, I thought we removed that. Well, if it’s in his contract, it’s our mistake, not his. We should have read the final draft a little closer. I thought that was included in the changes.”

However, Williams said the size of his pension seems like a step in the right direction given that it was smaller than that of Fairbanks. She expects the council will take steps to ensure the next city manager’s contract eliminates pension spiking altogether.

“(The) council has learned a lot in the last few years when it comes to pensions and pension spiking,” Williams said. “I think we’ve learned our lesson. I think pension spiking will be gone. I think that’s for sure. We want to be fair, but we want to also be fair to taxpayers.”

Valenzuela said that although he agrees the practice of pension spiking is a problem citywide, he does not begrudge Cavazos for taking advantage of the provisions in his contract. He said the council approved Cavazos’ contract knowing that the provisions were in there, so it would be out of place for it to criticize him now.

“Personally, I don’t believe that David’s retirement should negatively impact his legacy,” Valenzuela said. “David has done a great job. We all know that. ... I don’t think anyone should be criticized when they finally retire.”

Councilman Sal DiCiccio, an outspoken critic of the city pension system’s cost to taxpayers, said the council needs to take a vote immediately to end pension spiking.

“It’s not just David, it’s everyone,” said DiCiccio, who also approved the pay raise for Cavazos.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative taxpayer-watchdog group, is suing Phoenix to stop pension spiking for public-safety officers. Its attorney, Jon Riches, called it “unbelievable” that Cavazos now is spiking his pension.

“Not only has he been derelict in his duty to take care of the pension issue for public-safety officers, it appears he has been exploiting a different pension for himself,” Riches said. “It is problematic and irresponsible government.”

Cavazos, however, stopped letting city employees count for their pension benefits unused sick leave accrued after July 1, 2012. His order did not apply to himself because he had already stopped accruing sick leave and traded in those hours for more money.

12 News reporter Brahm Resnik contributed to this article.

----------------------------

Cavazos pension payout

The Arizona Republic projects that David Cavazos’ total annual pension benefits will exceed $220,000 a year when he retires next month. The calculation is based on the roughly $1.2 million in total compensation he is expected to have earned over the three years before his retirement. That sum is divided by three to arrive at his final average salary. That average is multiplied by his nearly 27 years of service, after which a multiplier of 2 percent is applied to arrive at an annual pension figure.

Here’s the projected compensation breakdown:

Top three-years’ salary: $815,000.

Sick-leave cash-out: $199,401.

Sick-leave buyback: $54,000.

Deferred compensation: $89,648.

Vacation cash-out: $31,500.

Vehicle allowance: $21,600.

Longevity bonuses: $12,000.

Cellphone allowance: $3,600.

How do you spell revenue??? DUI tickets.

Source

Over 600 DUI citations issued over Labor Day weekend

By Courtland Jeffrey Arizona Republic -12 News Breaking News Team Wed Sep 4, 2013 7:57 PM

Law enforcement agencies around the state arrested 656 DUI suspects over the long holiday weekend.

The Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety led the campaign, which included a force of 2,052 police officers and sheriff’s deputies who saturated roads and orchestrated checkpoints to catch intoxicated drivers between Aug. 29 and the early-morning hours of Sept. 3.

Of the total arrests, 196 people were cited for extreme DUI, which indicates a blood-alcohol content of .15 or higher; the legal limit is .08.

DUI drug arrests increased, with 126 citations up from 97 over Labor Day 2012, according to Governor’s Office of Highway Safety data.

Push for legal pot gets boost as feds ease enforcement

Source

Push for legal pot gets boost as feds ease enforcement

By Donna Leinwand Leger USA Today Wed Sep 4, 2013 9:43 PM

Marijuana movements already simmering across the country could get a big boost from the Obama administration’s announcement that it would take a laid-back approach to states with softer laws on marijuana.

“This is one of the most significant milestones in the movement toward ending marijuana prohibition,” said Mason Tvert, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates marijuana legalization and regulation. The group has led several ballot initiatives across the U.S. “The federal government for the first time ever has sent a clear signal to states that they can adopt their own marijuana policies if they do them in a responsible manner.”

Two states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and 20 states have approved it for medical use. Until Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement last Thursday, marijuana users in those states could have faced federal prosecution even if they adhered to state laws and local regulations.

Under the new guidelines, the Justice Department will not challenge state laws and prosecutors may not bring cases against individual users unless they violate eight federal priorities, including marijuana distribution to minors or as a cover for drug-trafficking operations.

Political opponents of marijuana legalization can no longer cite the federal government as a reason to squelch the pushes, Tvert said.

Advocates of marijuana legalization are gearing up for 2014 and 2016 elections with ballot initiatives in a number of states, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Nevada and Oregon, said Stephen Gutwillig, deputy executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates a public-health approach to drug use. Tvert said he expects to see legalization measures by 2016 in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana and Nevada.

“The victories in Colorado and Washington were already so significant that a number of activists in a number of states were already planning similar campaigns,” Gutwillig said. “The announcement, if anything, will embolden those campaigns and potentially inspire activists and elected officials elsewhere who were waiting to see the official federal response.”

The Safer Arizona ballot initiative, which is modeled after Colorado’s law, would amend the state Constitution to allow people age 18 and older “to consume or possess limited amounts” of marijuana. It would also authorize state officials to license production facilities, marijuana stores and other facilities.

“The intent of the initiative is to legalize marijuana in Arizona and to treat it as we treat alcohol,” Dennis Bohlke, the 59-year-old computer programmer who is leading the effort, told The Arizona Republic in June.

Bohlke said he has no major financial backing to fund signature gathering. The initiative needs 259,213 valid signatures by July 3 to qualify for the November 2014 ballot.

Arizona voters approved the use of medicinal marijuana in 2010 for conditions such as chronic pain and cancer. More than 35,000 Arizonans participate in the program, which is overseen by the state Department of Health Services.

Drug-abuse-prevention groups say they will work to derail the movement. Arthur Dean, CEO of the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America, said he had expected the Justice Department to “reaffirm federal law and slow down this freight train.”

“Instead, this decision sends a message to our citizens, youth, communities, states and the international community at large that the enforcement of federal law related to marijuana is not a priority,” Dean said. “We remain gravely concerned that we, as a nation, are turning a blind eye to the serious public-health and public-safety threats associated with widespread marijuana use.”

Gutwillig sees the greatest potential for the movement among state legislators who may have feared tangling with the Justice Department if they passed laws in conflict with federal statutes. The new federal guidelines tell states that robust state regulation of marijuana will likely meet federal drug-control goals if they keep drugs from kids and criminals.

The Drug Policy Alliance expects to see bills on a range of marijuana laws, Gutwillig said.

“Just from a policy perspective, that’s going to encourage state elected officials. This isn’t just the feds looking the other way,” he said. “This is an acknowledgment that state regulation can work in concert with the federal government on a more effective way of dealing with the realities of marijuana in our communities today.”

Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.

No medical marijuana for Zander Welton???

Will Humble and Jan Brewer want to destroy the life of Zander Welton???

Will Humble and Jan Brewer want to destroy the life of Zander Welton???

When most people read Arizona's medical marijuana laws it clearly says ANY form of marijuana is legal for medical marijuana patients to use. This should include hashish, hash oil and other concentrated forms of marijuana.

Arizona's medical marijuana law which is Prop 203 and is ARS 36-2801 says in ARS 36-2801.7 and in ARS 36-2801.15 that marijuana is

”MARIJUANA” MEANS ALL PARTS OF ANY PLANT OF THE GENUS CANNABIS WHETHER GROWING OR NOT, AND THE SEEDS OF SUCH PLANT.

and

”USABLE MARIJUANA” MEANS THE DRIED FLOWERS OF THE MARIJUANA PLANT, AND ANY MIXTURE OR PREPARATION THEREOF, BUT DOES NOT INCLUDE THE SEEDS, STALKS AND ROOTS OF THE PLANT AND DOES NOT INCLUDE THE WEIGHT OF ANY NON-MARIJUANA INGREDIENTS COMBINED WITH MARIJUANA AND PREPARED FOR CONSUMPTION AS FOOD OR DRINK.

But sadly many elected officials and government employees, including the police hate marijuana and are doing there best to prevent the the citizens of Arizona from using medical marijuana as allowed in Prop 203.

The police have been arresting medical marijuana patients who use hashish and other concentrated forms of marijuana claiming that that Prop 203 doesn't cover hashish.

I suspect this is why Will Humble is trying to prevent 5 year old Zander Welton from using the concentrated marijuana.

The police are also terrorizing medical marijuana patients who drive by falsely arresting them for DUI, or drunk driving.

Prop 203 very clearly says that driving will intoxicated is still illegal for medical marijuana patients.

Prop 203 also wisely says that a medical marijuana patient can't be arrested solely because they have marijuana metabolites in their body. Marijuana metabolites can remain in a persons body for a month or longer after a person uses marijuana, while the marijuana high will only last a few hours.

But the police have been arresting medical marijuana users for DUI who are stone cold sober solely because they have marijuana metabolites in their body.

But Prop 203 which is Arizona's medical marijuana law in ARS 36-2802.D, clearly says if you are a medical marijuana patient you can not be arrested for DUI because you have marijuana metabolites in you body:

ARS 36-2802.D Operating, navigating or being in actual physical control of any motor vehicle, aircraft or motorboat while under the influence of marijuana, except that a registered qualifying patient shall not be considered to be under the influence of marijuana solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment.

5-year-old Mesa boy approved for medical marijuana card, state law may not allow it

MESA, AZ - Doctors approved a medical marijuana card for a 5-year-old Mesa boy to help with a genetic illness, but he might not be able to use it due to unclear state laws.

Five-year-old Zander Welton has cortical dysplasia, a genetic brain defect that leads to seizures. He underwent brain surgeries and attempted a number of medications without seeing any results.

As a last resort, his parents turned to an oil form of cannabis for a cure. The treatment was approved by two doctors and everything was set to go. That was until the Arizona Department of Health Services posted a blog indicating that the alternative form of marijuana that Zander was planning to use, may not be legal for dispensaries to sell.

The blog has Zander’s family and those trying to help him at a complete loss. Representatives from the dispensary Harvest of Tempe who were hoping to help provide Zander with the alternative form of marijuana have put a halt to their efforts.

“It's hard for us to tell patients, 'Hey this is medicine, smoke it.' We would prefer to provide them alternative means of ingestion. To any extent that any ruling or any decision takes away from those options, it's frustrating for us,” said attorney and Harvest of Tempe board member Steve White.

The Arizona Department of Health services issued the following statement in regards to the issue:

"We’re developing guidance to clarify these issues for dispensaries. The guidance will provide clarity regarding extraction processes for mixing and/or preparing edibles and liquid suspensions from the dried flowers of the marijuana plant. We expect to have the guidance by mid-September."

Video shows Long Beach police striking a suspect

Source

Video shows Long Beach police striking a suspect

By Ruben Vives, Richard Winton and Kate Mather

September 4, 2013, 9:52 p.m.

A video posted to YouTube showing Long Beach police repeatedly using a Taser and baton on a man has prompted an internal investigation and raised questions about the officers' actions.

Police training experts who reviewed the 4 1/2-minute recording were divided about whether it amounted to excessive force. Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell said he understands that there is community concern about the video and vowed a vigorous investigation. [Yea, stupid, uninformed citizens always think it's police brutality when the cops are seen beating an unarmed man laying on the ground. Those dumb civilians just don't understand police work. Or at least that's what the sadistic cops want us to think]

"It is too early to make any judgments.… The YouTube video is certainly disturbing," the chief said. "Any time you see someone hit with the baton, there is level of discomfort." [Yea, and it really is a bitch convincing those dumb civilians that there wasn't any police brutality.]

The incident unfolded about 6 p.m. Monday, when officers were called to Locust Avenue and South Street after receiving multiple 911 calls about a fight outside a liquor store, Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton said. Surveillance footage showed a man later identified by police as Porfirio Santos-Lopez, 46, hitting another man in the head.

Eaton said Santos-Lopez acted irrational when first approached by police, and at one point punched the asphalt.

"As the officer tried to communicate with him, he started to yell," Eaton said. "He asked the officer to kill him."

Maria Ruiz, 29, said she was cutting hair at a nearby beauty salon when she saw three or four officers trying to speak to the man. She doesn't speak English, but said it looked like the officers and the man were arguing. Ruiz said a client told her that at one point, the man yelled "Shoot me!" to police.

"It looked like they were trying to arrest him but he didn't want them to," Ruiz said. "He tried to kick and punch one of the officers and that's when they took him down."

Surveillance footage from a nearby business shows Santos-Lopez falling to the ground, apparently after being Tasered. The video then shows two officers hitting him at least six times with batons.

The video posted to YouTube — taken by a witness — begins a short time later, and depicts another round of baton strikes. Santos-Lopez is seen lying on his back as one officer hits him six times in the legs, with Santos-Lopez sometimes kicking between blows. A Taser can be heard, although it is not clear exactly how many times it was used. [It's not police brutality when a cop is beating an unarmed man laying on his back with a billy club. Well at least that's what the cops want us to think]

At one point, the officers can be heard commanding Santos-Lopez to "roll over," with the man responding "Why?" But most of what the officers and Santos-Lopez say is unclear.

Eaton said Santos-Lopez refused orders to roll on his stomach, prompting officers to use batons and a Taser as "tools for us to use and get a combative subject into custody."

"It wasn't that he couldn't understand," Eaton said. "He refused to go on his stomach." [Well at least that's what the cops want us to think]

Police officials said the baton blows were delivered to Santos-Lopez's arms, legs and possibly his torso. The department trains officers to avoid the head, neck, throat, kidneys and groin areas, which could result in permanent damage.

Santos-Lopez was eventually taken into custody and transported to Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where he remained Wednesday. Santos-Lopez suffered a broken right arm, a partially collapsed left lung and needed stitches in both legs, his girlfriend said. Police said they were unaware of the lung injury. [Yea, he must have gotten that injury when he was beaten up by the police in some other city. I bet those cops in Los Angeles did it!!!!]

Eaton said beer cans were found near the scene, and after his arrest Santos-Lopez told officers he had used methamphetamine before the incident. His girlfriend denied that he used drugs.

The officers involved remain on regular duty, Eaton said.

Greg Meyer, a former LAPD captain and use-of-force expert, said the baton blows shown on the YouTube video appeared to follow protocol. He cautioned that the recording did not show the full context of the interaction or clarify exactly how Santos-Lopez was injured. [Yea, those dumb *ss civilians always think it's police brutality when they see a video tape of six or seven cops beating up an unarmed man. Those dumb civilians just don't understand police work.]

"It doesn't appear from the video that the police officers were doing anything wrong," Meyer said. "But we still don't know all the facts here." [I have never heard of a police beating where the police thought the cops doing the beating were in the wrong]

But Larry Smith, a use-of-force expert and retired Fontana police sergeant and former training specialist, said the response looked excessive because of the baton use. He questioned why the officers didn't exhaust other nonlethal measures — such as pepper spray — or move in to handcuff Santos-Lopez after he was Tasered. [Hey, it's more fun to have some "stun gun fun" or in this case some sadistic "billy club fun"]

"To me, he must not have been that violent, because otherwise the other officers would have jumped in," Smith said. "They could have always just dog-piled him and then you're not hitting him with a baton."

Lee Ann Hernandez, 59 — who has dated Santos-Lopez for four years and refers to him as her husband — said the father of three hadn't been acting like himself lately. She said he started hearing voices and seeing people who weren't there six months ago. He worried that Hernandez's late husband was trying to hurt him, she said.

Santos-Lopez's behavior worsened in recent weeks, Hernandez said. He would constantly call police and paramedics, she said, and she would ask that they take him to a psychiatric facility. Hernandez said authorities told her they couldn't because Santos-Lopez was not a danger to himself. They gave her the number of a police psychiatric unit, she said, but they never returned her calls.

"They had no right to beat him up like that," she said. "They don't need to be doing that to someone like that."

ruben.vives@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

Times staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report.

Phoenix detective facing possible extreme DUI charge

Source

Phoenix detective facing possible extreme DUI charge

By D.S. Woodfill The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Sep 6, 2013 6:06 AM

A Phoenix detective is on administrative leave and facing a possible charge of extreme drunk driving.

Detective Lori Demski, 36, a 9-year veteran of the Phoenix Police Department, was arrested Aug. 11 within the bounds of the agency’s Mountain View precinct.

Demski’s neighbor alerted authorities after witnessing Demski drive away from her home near 19th Avenue and Interstate 17. Phoenix police Sgt. Steve Martos, a department spokesman, said the neighbor spotted signs indicating Demski might be drunk.

Martos said he did not know where Demski went to when she left in her vehicle that night, which was about 11 p.m.

“I presume it was a short trip because … we were en route to that location, and by the time we got there, she was returning home,” Martos said.

Phoenix Municipal Court records show Demski is accused of extreme DUI, which indicates a blood-alcohol content of .15 or greater. The legal limit is .08.

Court records indicate that tests at the scene determined Demski had a blood-alcohol level of at least .20, but prosecutors are awaiting official toxicology results to show exactly how much alcohol Demski may have had in her system.

Martos said that process can take six weeks.

“So at this point were just … waiting for the criminal portion to move forward.”

Demski could not be reached for comment.

The degree of intoxication will determine what penalties she could face. Under Arizona law, persons found guilty of an extreme DUI with blood-alcohol content of .15 receive a mandatory sentence of at least 30 days in jail and fines. The jailtime increases to a minimum of 45 days and fines are doubled for someone convicted of extreme DUI with a blood-alcohol content of .20.

Demski is on paid, routine administrative leave from her assignment at the department’s Family Investigations Bureau, and an internal investigation is underway.

Martos said Demski was one his subordinate at the police department and that he doesn’t believe she’s ever been in trouble for a reason related to alcohol.

“I thought she was a good officer,” he added.

End shady pension 'spiking' now

End shady pension 'spiking' now

The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Sep 5, 2013 6:49 PM

“My plan will also eliminate abuses like pension spiking.”

— Mayor-elect Greg Stanton, November 2011

[I don't think Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton intended to keep that promise then he intended to keep his promise to repeal the 2 percent sales tax that mostly is used raise money to pay the cops]

The fast-rising cost of public-employee pensions is a big concern of taxpayers. But cost isn’t the biggest concern.

The real gripe? The sense that at contract-negotiation time, no one is in the room representing them. [i.e. represent the TAXPAYERS. I suspect that the mayor and city council members really work for the employees of the city of Phoenix despite being elected by the taxpayers. And when the shovel pork to the employees of Phoenix, they make it a two way street and pork gets shoveled to the mayor, the city council members, and the special interest groups that helped them get elected!!!]

It is the gnawing suspicion that city unions and city executives are motivated by the same belief, which is that maximizing benefits for one group guarantees all their boats will rise on a fast-rushing tide.

That approach is pushing the financial burden of taxpayers to its limits. It also makes even the most egregious of abuses, such as pension spiking, so infuriatingly difficult to end.

Despite the firm, square-jawed declarations of political office-seekers like Stanton, who vowed to end “abuses like pension spiking” during his campaign two years ago, the practice continues. [As I said before I am sure that Stanton lied when he made the pledge to end pension spiking, just like he lied when he said he would repeal the 2 percent sales tax that is used to pay the cops]

The abuse that prompted Stanton to promise its demise two years ago has returned. An outgoing and well-compensated executive is seeing his retirement benefits stuffed to the bursting point.

When Phoenix City Manager Frank Fairbanks retired in 2009, he included unused vacation, leave and sick time, as well as bonuses, car allowances and all manner of fine-print benefits to boost his pension to $246,813 per year.

Public outrage was profound. Reform of the practice rose to the top of the list of 2011 Phoenix election issues. Yet nothing has changed. And now, history is repeating.

City Manager David Cavazos — tabbed in July by Mayor Stanton to (finally) end pension spiking by retiring firefighters and police officers — took a management job in California and retired with his own thoroughly spiked pension, estimated at $220,000.

On Wednesday, Stanton and Vice Mayor Bill Gates announced their intent to eliminate pension spiking in the next city manager’s contract.

We’ll see.

There are serious unintended consequences to this foot-dragging on ending pension spiking.

For one, the public outrage over this executive-level abuse enhances the argument for hiring an outsider as city manager over any internal candidate. Cavazos made the smart financial decision to seek another job as soon as he qualified for a pension. Anyone hired from inside would be in the same position in a few years. Why take the risk?

That risk rises considerably should Stanton and Co. fail to end the pension-spiking practice — not exactly inconceivable considering their recent track record.

Also, it heightens the suspicion that no one is on the public’s side of the negotiating table at public-employee contract time.

The mayor and council have had ample opportunity to address the abuse in the two-plus years it has been a headline-grabbing issue, yet almost nothing has happened. Promising some vague action sometime in the future does not enhance confidence.

Pension spiking needs to end. Today.

Who needs back up files when you have the NSA????

Who needs backup files when the goons at the NSA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the TSA, the BATF, and DEA backing up all our files and emails for us for free.

Don't think of it as the government flushing the Bill of Rights down the toilet!!!

Think of it as a free file backup service run by government goons!!!!

---

Ex-Markham police official admits lying to FBI

Ex-Markham police official admits lying to FBI

By Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune reporter

7:55 p.m. CDT, September 5, 2013

Tony DeBois, a notorious former deputy police chief of Markham, admits he had sex with a woman in his city office and lied about it to the FBI, but that's where his agreement with federal authorities ends.

Prosecutors allege DeBois forced himself on a prisoner. DeBois contends he had consensual sex with another woman and that he lied about it to federal agents only to keep it from his then-fiancee.

Now both the woman in custody and the woman DeBois says he had sex with are expected to take the witness stand to tell competing stories in what promises to be a scandalous sentencing hearing in January.

DeBois, 41, was originally charged in March with violating a detainee's civil rights through aggravated sexual abuse. But in an unusual deal unveiled Thursday, he pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements to the FBI, a charge that was filed earlier this week. The original charges will be dropped, Assistant U.S. Attorney April Perry said.

DeBois faces up to five years in prison but could also receive probation.

In his plea agreement, DeBois admitted lying in an interview last October with FBI agents when he said the only woman he had had sex with in his office was his fiancee, whom he later married.

But prosecutors alleged DeBois coerced a woman who was in police custody into having sex with him.

After court, Terry Ekl, one of DeBois' lawyers, called the accuser a "stone-cold liar and perjurer" who misled a grand jury investigating allegations of corruption in the south suburban department.

Ekl said it was the first time in his lengthy career that he had seen prosecutors agree to a plea deal when there was still a dispute about the facts of the case.

"They did this because they couldn't prove the (civil rights) allegation in court," he said.

A longtime controversial cop who got his start in corruption-plagued Harvey, DeBois parlayed his political connections with Markham Mayor David Webb Jr. into a rapid rise there from patrol to deputy chief even as he became a magnet for lawsuits.

For years, DeBois was a well-known figure on Markham's streets, riding up and down Kedzie Avenue in a city-owned black Dodge Charger. One resident, Clarence Allen, who settled an excessive-force suit against DeBois, told the Tribune the burly officer acted as if he were Denzel Washington from the movie "Training Day."

According to an FBI affidavit, DeBois was investigated in 2012 over alleged threats he made to kidnap his ex-wife. "All it takes is me making one phone call and poof you'll be gone and who will your cute little boys have to call mommy," the FBI quoted him as writing her in one email. DeBois has not been charged with any wrongdoing in that matter.

Last year, a Markham police officer arrested on allegations he stole money during the search of a warehouse told authorities that in 2010 he had seen DeBois pocket $4,500 in counterfeit cash seized from a target of an investigation before coercing the man's female associate, who was also in custody, into having sex in his office, court records show.

DeBois declined comment as he left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after his guilty plea Thursday, but Ekl said the lawsuits against DeBois are a natural result of his aggressive policing style and not evidence of corruption. He said DeBois may be guilty of bad judgment but that his sexual dalliances do not amount to "a heinous federal crime."

"What a terrible, terrible thing for a person to do, to lie about sex," Ekl said sarcastically.

jmeisner@tribune.com

Marana says commercial pot growers not welcome

Marana says commercial pot growers not welcome

The Associated Press Thu Sep 5, 2013 12:23 PM

MARANA — Marana says commercial growers of medical marijuana aren’t welcome unless they’re dispensaries located within the Tucson suburb.

The Marana Town Council has approved a ban proposed by the police chief in response to a proposal for an indoor marijuana farm that would supply a dispensary in Ajo (AH-hoe) in western Pima County.

Police Chief Terry Rozema said transporting marijuana from the farm to the store would attract crime and stretch police resources thin.

It is reported that town leaders feared farmers would grow marijuana in Marana to supply many dispensaries.

Puerto Rico to Debate Medical Use of Marijuana

Puerto Rico to Debate Medical Use of Marijuana

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico September 6, 2013 (AP)

By DANICA COTO Associated Press

Associated Press

Legislators in Puerto Rico are preparing to debate a bill that would allow people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes in this conservative U.S. territory, officials said Thursday.

The measure would create a system to legally produce the substance and allow state health officials to regulate it, said Rep. Jose Baez, one of the bill's two authors.

It calls for a classification of medical conditions and requirements that would allow patients to smoke marijuana in their homes. Conditions would range from cancer to glaucoma to anxiety.

The measure also would allow the island's health department to award special permits to patients to grow their own pot if they couldn't afford to buy it at an authorized clinic or if they lived too far from the clinics.

"Treating this strictly as something that should be punished has clearly not worked," said Rep. Carlos Vargas, the bill's other author.

The proposal comes shortly after the U.S. federal government pledged not to prosecute or block state pot-legalization laws on the condition that states enact strict and effective regulations.

Last year, Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalize marijuana use for those over 21. The law, however, bans the public use of marijuana.

Eighteen other states and Washington, D.C., allow medical use of marijuana.

Both Baez and Vargas said Puerto Rico lawmakers should follow their lead.

"This legislature cannot ignore U.S. trends, especially when these reforms offer concrete and proven solutions to various social and economic problems that are affecting Puerto Rico," the bill's introduction says.

Earlier this year, a former Puerto Rico police chief who is now a senator introduced a bill that would legalize marijuana for personal use. Sen. Miguel Pereira, a former federal prosecutor and corrections secretary, said at the time that possession cases were costing the government money and noted that 80 percent of inmates were serving time for non-violent crimes.

The bill, which drew widespread criticism, is still in committee.

Although Puerto Rico is one of several Caribbean islands, including Jamaica and St. Lucia, where activists have pushed to legalize marijuana use, opponents remain.

Sen. Jose Perez said he opposes both pot bills, and in particular feels the medical marijuana measure has too many loopholes.

"How are they going to control this?" he said. "It's a delicate subject. I think they're rushing into this."

Perez said he also worries that people not authorized to grow, buy or sell marijuana for medical use will abuse the system to obtain it.

"Young people are not prepared for this," he said. "If they don't have control over alcohol, who's to say they're going to have control over drugs?"

WIll Mayor Stanton keep his promise to pension spiking?

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WIll Mayor Stanton keep his promise to end food tax pension spiking?

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton announced this week that he won’t support any contract that allows the next city manager to spike his pension.

OK, I admit I was impressed. Briefly.

Then I remembered that Stanton pledged to end all pension spiking during his campaign.

In 2011.

“My plan will also eliminate abuses like pension spiking,” he said at the time, when outlining his proposals for pension reform.

So naturally, he took office and became the swing vote, joining with four other members of the Phoenix City Council (Michael Johnson, Michael Nowakowski, Tom Simplot, and Daniel Valenzuela) to approve employee contracts that allowed pension spiking to continue.

Now the city’s top employee has elevated the fine art of the spike into one spectacular slam dunk. City Manager David Cavazos will depart next month with a pension so laden with padding that it’ll easily plump up past $200,000 – all at the expense of taxpayers who must foot the bill.

Thus comes Stanton’s announcement this week that the next guy who holds the job won’t be able to employ unused sick leave, vacation, bonuses or even his car and cell phone allowances to artificially inflate his pension.

“As I’ve said before, pension spiking undermines the public’s trust that compensation for our employees is fair,” Stanton said this week in a joint press release with Vice Mayor Bill Gates. “It needs to end.”

So, why not end it then, mayor? For everyone. As you promised in 2011.

Not surprisingly, Stanton didn’t return a call so I could ask him that question.

Swell perk, the spike.

In Phoenix, city workers get a generous amount of leave time — 40.5 days a year for entry-level employees — and if they don’t use it all, they’re paid for a portion of it when they retire, all calculated at their final, presumably highest rate of pay. That cash-out, along with deferred compensation, bonuses and other fringe benefits, is then counted as “salary” in order to boost their pensions.

It’s how a guy like former City Manager Frank Fairbanks retired in 2009 with a pension larger than the ones given U.S. presidents.

Last year, in response to public pressure, Phoenix cut back on spiking by its civilian employees. But they can still pump up their pensions with unused vacation pay as well as with sick leave accrued before July 2012.

And the city still allows police and firefighters to spike their pensions despite a state law that forbids it.

Stanton in July called on the city to end spiking when it negotiates next year’s labor contracts for police and firefighters. His call came two months after Republic reporter Craig Harris wrote about high-echelon fire officials who spiked their way toward becoming near-instant millionaires upon retirement.

Ever since Harris’ May story, Councilman Sal DiCiccio has been calling on Stanton to schedule a public discussion and vote to immediately end spiking.

Cue the crickets from the mayor.

Now, with Cavazos’ impending slurp, DiCiccio says he believes he has the council votes to end pension spiking for all employees when their contracts end on June 30. He’s started an online petition (stoppensionspiking.com) and he, Councilwoman Thelda Williams and Councilman Jim Waring are asking Stanton to schedule a vote this month, before negotiations for new employee contracts begin in October.

“The only thing the mayor has to do, he just has to set up a meeting,” DiCiccio told me. “I’m hoping this month that he allows the council to vote.”

((DiCiccio would also like a vote to prevent Cavazos from spiking his pension. That, however, doesn’t seem likely (or legal) given that the right to spike is in his contract – the one approved by DiCiccio and the rest of the City Council in 2009.))

While they’re at it – if, in fact, they get to it – city leaders might also want to reconsider the practice of allowing employees to save up copious amounts of sick and vacation leave in order to score a bonanza upon retirement. Phoenix paid out nearly $8.5 million last year as retiring employees cashed out their unused leave, according to city records. Over the last decade, they’ve collected $102 million.

Then compounded that bonanza by using those payouts to increase the retirement pay they will get for the rest of their lives.

To quote a certain mayor, “pension spiking undermines the public’s trust that compensation for our employees is fair.”

The question, 613 days into his term, is this:

What are you going to do about it mayor?

(Column published Sept. 7, 2013, The Arizona Republic.)

Crackdown puts focus on fake IDs

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Crackdown puts focus on fake IDs

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Sep 6, 2013 10:04 PM

The state Department of Liquor Licenses and Control has received a $50,000 grant for liquor enforcement and education, specifically fake-ID-recognition training, the latest among efforts by state and local agencies to crack down on underage drinking.

The grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety is among several that the department has received in the past five years.

The announcement of the grant comes on the heels of last month’s Safe and Sober campaign, during which Tempe police and several other law-enforcement agencies cracked down on under-age drinking and drunken driving.

The grant will go toward fake-ID-recognition training for law-enforcement officers and liquor licensees statewide.

“It’s a huge problem for liquor licensees, because those fake IDs have gotten so good,” said Lee Hill, communications director for the liquor department.

The department also offers flashlights and other tools that help officers and business owners illuminate safety features on driver’s licenses. It offers free training to members of the public as well — the only requirement is that there is a group of 50 or more people and a venue for the training.

“It’s a health and safety issue. It puts the underage at risk” when they use fake IDs, Hill said.

Hill said the need for detection of fake IDs is growing, especially given the increasingly complex technology used in making the cards and a recent high-profile case involving the death of an underage Arizona State University student who used a fake ID at a Tempe Marketplace bar.

The bar, Cadillac Ranch, was fined $6,000 by state regulators. The 19-year-old patron disappeared last November after he was kicked out of Cadillac Ranch, where he had been served alcohol. His body was found the next month in the Salt River.

“They were cited for it, and somebody lost their life,” Hill said.

The Tempe Police Department works with local businesses, the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety and state liquor-department investigators on outreach, prevention and enforcement efforts, according to Molly Enright, a Tempe police spokeswoman.

Tempe officers also provide training to their staff and management on trends involving fake ID cards and how to spot them, she said.

In 2012, Tempe police and businesses licensed to sell alcohol in downtown Tempe seized 1,761 fake or fraudulent IDs used by minors to enter liquor-selling establishments. Fraudulent IDs are authentic licenses stolen or borrowed from a friend or family member who is 21 or older.

So far in 2013, more than 1,500 fake or false IDs have been seized. The increase is largely attributed to overseas businesses selling fake IDs online, Tempe Officer Rob Ferraro said.

Law-enforcement officers and sheriff’s deputies made 1,367 arrests during last month’s Safe and Sober campaign, the first of its kind by Tempe police.

Of the arrests, 309 were on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs; 381 minors suspected of possessing; and 125 minors accused of consumption.

Republic reporter Jim Walsh contributed to this article.

Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption

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Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption

By SCOTT SHANE and NICOLE PERLROTH

Published: September 6, 2013

After disclosures about the National Security Agency’s stealth campaign to counter Internet privacy protections, a congressman has proposed legislation that would prohibit the agency from installing “back doors” into encryption, the electronic scrambling that protects e-mail, online transactions and other communications.

Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is also a physicist, said Friday that he believed the N.S.A. was overreaching and could hurt American interests, including the reputations of American companies whose products the agency may have altered or influenced.

“We pay them to spy,” Mr. Holt said. “But if in the process they degrade the security of the encryption we all use, it’s a net national disservice.”

Mr. Holt, whose Surveillance State Repeal Act would eliminate much of the escalation in the government’s spying powers undertaken after the 2001 terrorist attacks, was responding to news reports about N.S.A. documents showing that the agency has spent billions of dollars over the last decade in an effort to defeat or bypass encryption. The reports, by The New York Times, ProPublica and The Guardian, were posted online on Thursday.

The agency has encouraged or coerced companies to install back doors in encryption software and hardware, worked to weaken international standards for encryption and employed custom-built supercomputers to break codes or find mathematical vulnerabilities to exploit, according to the documents, disclosed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The documents show that N.S.A. cryptographers have made major progress in breaking the encryption in common use for everyday transactions on the Web, like Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, as well as the virtual private networks, or VPNs, that many businesses use for confidential communications among employees.

Intelligence officials say that many of their most important targets, including terrorist groups, use the same Webmail and other Internet services that many Americans use, so it is crucial to be able to penetrate the encryption that protects them. In an intense competition with other sophisticated cyberespionage services, including those of China and Russia, the N.S.A. cannot rule large parts of the Internet off limits, the officials argue.

A statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., criticized the reports, saying that it was “not news” that the N.S.A. works to break encryption, and that the articles would damage American intelligence collection.

The reports, the statement said, “reveal specific and classified details about how we conduct this critical intelligence activity.”

“Anything that yesterday’s disclosures add to the ongoing public debate,” it continued, “is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and critical national security decisions.”

But if intelligence officials felt a sense of betrayal by the disclosures, Internet security experts felt a similar letdown — at the N.S.A. actions.

“There’s widespread disappointment,” said Dan Kaminsky, a prominent security researcher. “This has been the stuff of wild-eyed accusations for years. A lot of people are heartbroken to find out it’s not just wild-eyed accusations.”

Sascha Meinrath, the director of the Open Technology Institute, a research group in Washington, said the reports were “a startling indication that the U.S. has been a remarkably irresponsible steward of the Internet,” which he said the N.S.A. was trying to turn into “a massive platform for detailed, intrusive and unrestrained surveillance.”

Companies like Google and Facebook have been moving to new systems that, in principle, would make government eavesdropping more difficult. Google is in the process of encrypting all data that travels via fiber-optic lines between its data centers. The company speeded up the process in June after the initial N.S.A. disclosures, according to two people who were briefed on Google’s plans but were not authorized to speak publicly about them. The acceleration of the process was first reported Friday by The Washington Post.

For services like Gmail, once data reaches a user’s computer it has been encrypted. But as messages and other data like search queries travel internally among Google’s data centers they are not encrypted, largely because it is technically complicated and expensive to do.

Facebook announced last month that it would also transition to a novel encryption method, called perfect forward secrecy, that makes eavesdropping far more difficult.

Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington, said the quandary posed by the N.S.A.’s efforts against encryption began with its dual role: eavesdropping on foreign communications while protecting American communications.

“Invariably the two missions collide,” he said. “We don’t dispute that their ability to capture foreign intelligence is quite important. The question is whether their pursuit of that mission threatens to undermine the security and privacy of Internet communications.”

Mr. Rotenberg is a veteran of what were known as the “crypto wars” of the 1990s, when the N.S.A. proposed the Clipper Chip, a government back door that would be built into every encryption program.

That proposal was defeated by a diverse coalition of technology businesses and privacy advocates, including Mr. Rotenberg’s organization. But the documents make clear that the N.S.A. never gave up on the goal of being able to read everything and has made what memos call “breakthroughs” in recent years in its efforts.

A complicating factor is the role of the major American Internet companies, which have been the target of counterencryption efforts by both the N.S.A. and its closely allied British counterpart, GCHQ. One document describes “new access opportunities” in Google systems; the company said on Thursday that it had not given the agencies access and was aware of no breach of its security.

But the perception of an N.S.A. intrusion into the networks of major Internet companies, whether surreptitious or with the companies’ cooperation, could hurt business, especially in international markets.

“What buyer is going to purchase a product that has been deliberately made less secure?” asked Mr. Holt, the congressman. “Even if N.S.A. does it with the purest motive, it can ruin the reputations of billion-dollar companies.”

In addition, news that the N.S.A. is inserting vulnerabilities into widely used technologies could put American lawmakers and technology companies in a bind with regard to China.

Over the last two years, American lawmakers have accused two of China’s largest telecommunications companies, Huawei Technologies and ZTE, of doing something parallel to what the N.S.A. has done: planting back doors into their equipment to allow for eavesdropping by the Chinese government and military.

Both companies have denied collaborating with the Chinese government, but the allegations have eliminated the companies’ hopes for significant business growth in the United States. After an investigation last year, the House Intelligence Committee concluded that government agencies should be barred from doing business with Huawei and ZTE, and that American companies should avoid buying their equipment.

Some foreign governments and companies have also said that they would not rely on the Chinese companies’ equipment out of security concerns. Last year, Australia barred Huawei from bidding on contracts in Australia’s $38 billion national broadband network. And this year, as part of its effort to acquire Sprint Nextel, SoftBank of Japan pledged that it would not use Huawei equipment in Sprint’s cellphone network.

Fight vs. Rx abuse sees progress

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Fight vs. Rx abuse sees progress

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Sep 7, 2013 10:47 PM

It started with an uptick in reported prescription-drug abuse that analysts noticed in the state’s annual youth survey.

But as the analysts began examining prescription-drug abuse in Arizona, they found data that showed the problem has spread far beyond the state’s teenagers. Consider:

Hospital emergency rooms saw an 86 percent increase in admissions related to painkiller abuse between 2008 and 2011.

Nearly half of emergency-room admissions for painkiller abuse were paid for through Arizona’s public health-care program or through Medicaid.

The number of deaths involving prescription drugs increased by more than 50 percent between 2006 and 2010.

“There were enough prescription pain relievers prescribed in 2012 to medicate every single adult in Arizona for two weeks,” said Shana Malone, a research analyst at the state Criminal Justice Commission.

“The take-home point was: It’s affecting everyone,” she said.

The news was alarming enough to prompt a wide-ranging group of pharmacists, prosecutors, doctors, police officers and educators to address the problem through a comprehensive prevention program. A year later, experts say the efforts are starting to pay off.

The goal now, Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk said, is to replicate the program’s success in Yavapai, Pinal, Graham and Greenlee counties in the rest of the state.

Polk’s office had already established relationships with some groups through Yavapai County’s substance-abuse coalition, but the prescription-drug initiative brought an even more diverse group together. They quickly realized they shared a common problem and would need to work together to find a solution, she said.

“Our coalition has been successful because we forged relationships with community partners that we might not necessarily have had relationships with,” Polk said. “I knew who our mental-health providers were, but not where I can pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m seeing.’ Everybody was so happy with the ability to bring together partners and leaders who have the ability to say, ‘Yes, we can do that.’ ”

Since the program began in Yavapai County, Polk said, narcotics detectives have reported a decrease in the number of prescription drugs they encounter, residents have disposed of thousands of pounds of unwanted prescriptions at secure drop boxes, and evidence of the program’s success is visible in pharmacies and doctor’s offices where pamphlets alert patients to the dangers of addiction.

Eventually, those fighting prescription-drug abuse hope to track achievements through a reduction in ER visits and overdoses, but for now, simply getting a handle on what Arizona residents are being prescribed is a measure of success.

The most valuable tool is the prescription-drug management program, said Dr. Leon Cattolico, a Prescott physician who participates in the program.

The statewide database allows doctors, pharmacists and police to see which controlled substances patients have been prescribed, who wrote and filled the prescriptions, and how many days’ supply the patients received.

The program can help prevent “doctor shopping,” whereby patients visit multiple doctors, emergency rooms and urgent-care clinics to stock up on pills and feed their addictions, Cattolico said.

“It helps you gauge if patients are telling the truth,” Cattolico said. “So when they say, ‘Gee, doc, I haven’t had a prescription in six months,’ you can look and see that they got one last week.”

When the reduction program started, 11 percent of the doctors in Yavapai County used the database. That number has tripled in the past year thanks to the outreach efforts of the Prescott-based coalition, Polk said.

Cattolico said with two out of every three doctors still not using the system, there is plenty of room for improvement.

“We’re still working on that, still trying to convince physicians that there’s value on this site,” he said.

The education effort for doctors in Arizona also comes through report cards that physicians receive every quarter that show how frequently other physicians with similar practices are writing the same prescriptions.

The reports are not punitive but are intended to share new information with doctors and alert them if their prescription-writing practices are out of line with their colleagues’, said Phil Stevenson, director of the analysis center at the Criminal Justice Commission, which has helped coordinate the prevention program.

“We’re just trying to bring awareness in their practices,” Stevenson said. “This is a public-health problem, even though it has a significant public-safety nexus.”

Because experts first began recognizing the prescription-drug-abuse problem in surveys from schoolchildren, an educational component figures prominently in prevention efforts, with schools in participating counties offering a curriculum that teaches parents how to communicate with their kids about the pills in the medicine cabinet. More than 90 percent of children in Arizona who abuse prescription drugs get them from their friends and family, according to analysts.

Experts recognize that informed doctors taking a more judicious approach to prescription writing and a prevention effort targeting school-age children do not automatically translate into fewer addicts.

Eventually, the state will need more treatment programs for prescription-drug abusers who have come to terms with their addiction, Cattolico said.

“We don’t have enough places to send them to start the treatment. What’s happening now is you see a patient in the office and you sit down and discuss it with them: ‘I’ve seen you have been to four other doctors this month; you think you may have a problem?’ If they say, ‘Yes, I do. How do I get help?’ Then we’re stuck,” he said.

“If it rolls across the state and is as successful as we’ve been, hopefully it will lead to some new methods of treatment.”

From ‘Reefer Madness’ to reefer sanity?

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Posted on September 7, 2013 5:37 pm by EJ Montini

From ‘Reefer Madness’ to reefer sanity?

Not long ago if someone told Dennis Bohlke the federal government would help him get marijuana legalized in Arizona he’d have said, “Are you high?”

“But,” he added, “It happened. And it was great news. Maybe the country and our state will finally come to their senses.”

The Department of Justice announced last week it would not interfere with states like Colorado and Washington, which passed referendums legalizing marijuana use.

Bohlke is treasurer of a group called the Safer Arizona Committee, which is working to put an initiative to legalize marijuana on the 2014 ballot. In order for that to happen the group will have to collect 259,213 valid signatures by July 3 of next year.

“A lot of people, many of them legislators I’ve spoken with, were worried that if we passed our initiative the federal government would step in and stop us from implementing it,” he said. “Now, that concern is gone. That will help us in convincing the public. Although I believe the public already has changed its attitude about marijuana.”

The initiative would create a constitutional amendment that allows for possession of marijuana and sale. Like alcohol it would be regulated by state and local governments. And sales would be taxed.

The initiative also could correct an unjust aspect of Arizona’s drunk-driving laws in which the mere presence of a marijuana metabolite in a suspect’s system constitutes “proof” that the person was impaired. Some marijuana residues can linger in a person’s system for weeks with no impairment. It’s like being arrested for DUI because you had a drink days ago. The new initiative would require proof of impairment by way of a video-taped field sobriety test.

Bohlke is fighting a case of his own against a marijuana DUI charge.

“Our DUI law is one of the reasons I got into this,” he said. “Average Joe citizens are being convicted for crimes they are not guilty of, and that isn’t right. We’re turning into a police state where common sense and evidence doesn’t mean anything. We need to change that.”

The DOJ policy shift came in response to the new marijuana laws in Colorado and Washington. Essentially, the federal government promises not to prevent those laws from going into effect as long as the states have “a strong and effective state regulatory system.”

Such a system would keep pot from being sold to minors; crack down on criminal enterprises; make sure the plants weren’t grown on public land, and keep marijuana off federal property (where it’s still illegal), among other things.

It’s a long way from the wacky 1936 propaganda film “Reefer Madness,” which was used as part of a government campaign against the “evil weed.”

Not everyone believes legalization is a good idea, of course. Prosecutors like Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery are against changing Arizona’s law. Montgomery doesn’t even want to alter the law that allows people who aren’t actually impaired to be convicted of DUI. [Let's face it, the "war on drugs" is nothing more then a jobs program for cops, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, judges and prison guards. They certainly don't want it to end, because their high paying jobs will end with it.]

The chairman of the Safer Arizona Committee, Robert Clark, told me a while back, “It is silly to demonize a plant. We’ve been getting very positive response from the public. I believe awareness on this issue has increased a lot in recent years. This is about personal rights and liberties. We spend so much time and money for low- level enforcement, money that could be so much better spent going after the real bad guys.”

Bohlke, the committee’s treasurer, says taxpayers should think of the initiative in terms of fairness and economics.

“Thousands of people are arrested for marijuana possession each year,” he said. “Each of those prosecutions probably costs a couple of thousand dollars. It’s a tremendous waste of state resources.” [And that's why cops and prosecutors love the war on drugs. Each of those "couple of thousand dollars" goes into the wallets of the cops, and prosecutors.]

He said the summer heat has made it difficult to collect signatures but the committee (saferarizona.com) expects a surge through the fall and winter.

“I believe there are enough people who want the law changed,” “Bohlke said. “Sooner or later, it will happen.”

And then all those decades of wasted law enforcement resources and taxpayer dollars will be recognized as the real “reefer madness.”

(Column for Sept. 8, 2013, Arizona Republic)

Yerberias: ¿Costumbre o clandestinaje?

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Yerberias: ¿Costumbre o clandestinaje?

Phoenix, Arizona

por Samuel Murillo - Sept. 6, 2013 09:25 AM

La Voz

Una llamada anónima reportando la venta clandestina de fármacos controlados en yerberias locales puso al descubierto una práctica que es común e ilegal entre hispanos.

A raíz de la denuncia, la policía de Mesa realizó una investigación encubierta que tuvo un año de duración, la cual, hasta la semana pasada, resultó en el arresto de 13 personas acusadas de vender ilegalmente drogas prescritas procedentes de México, y de un sujeto que presuntamente fungía como el distribuidor de la mercancía prohibida.

Entre los detenidos figuran propietarios y empleados de varias localidades de las yerberias El Renacer y Los 3 Amigos, ubicadas en Mesa, Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale y Tolleson.

La policía confiscó miles de cajas de pastillas de viagra, valium, amoxicilina, pentrexil, entre otras, según el sargento Tony Landato, vocero del Departamento de Policía de Mesa.

La adquisición clandestina de antibióticos y de una amplia variedad de drogas prescritas en algunos centros herbolarios es algo típico entre miembros de la comunidad hispana, reconocieron autoridades de la policía, de la Junta Estatal de Farmacéuticos de Arizona y la propietaria de una yerberia que no está involucrada en este caso.

"Son sustancias ilegales como cualquier otra. Si las posees (o) vendes...estás violando la ley", aclaró Landato.

Muchos consumidores hispanos acuden a las yerberias con la intención de comprar remedios herbolarios, medicamentos naturistas y en algunos casos medicinas controladas procedentes de sus países de origen.

Marta Socarras, portavoz en español de la Junta Estatal de Farmacéuticos de Arizona, mencionó que esta popularidad se debe a que muchas personas se sienten más confiadas acudiendo a estos centros de medicina naturista que a una farmacia.

De acuerdo con Norma Noriega, propietaria de yerberias San Francisco, es común que a sus establecimientos lleguen clientes preguntando por antibióticos.

"Nosotros nunca hemos vendido cosas ilegales, está prohibido vender medicina de prescripción sin receta", aclaró.

El negocio de Noriega tiene 22 años de presencia en el Valle del Sol. Actualmente cuenta con siete localidades en las ciudades de Glendale, Chandler, Phoenix y Mesa.

Ella aseguró que la venta clandestina de antibióticos es algo que no solamente afecta a los negocios que cometen el ilícito, pero principalmente a las personas que los consumen sin tener un diagnóstico médico.

"Nosotros solo vendemos cosas naturales por la misma razón. Los antibióticos no solo combaten la infección sino que disminuyen las defensas del sistema inmunológico", mencionó.

De acuerdo con Socarras, el problema con la automedicación de antibióticos es que la persona que los consume crea inmunidad en su organismo para tratar infecciones en el futuro.

"El riesgo es muy alto", señaló Socarras.

"Prefiero dormir tranquila que ganar diez dólares más con algo ilegal", dijo Noriega.

De acuerdo a Landato la investigación sobre la venta clandestina de antibióticos y otras drogas prescritas en yerberías del Valle sigue abierta, por lo que no se descartan futuras redadas a este tipo de negocios.

La Junta Estatal de Farmacéuticos tiene un grupo de inspectores que monitorea a las yerberias para detectar la venta clandestina de fármacos.

Sin embargo, es muy limitado su campo de acción debido a que los operadores de las yerberias son cautelosos al recibir las auditorias, dijo Socarras.

NSA can access most smartphone data

Report: NSA can access most smartphone data

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press

Updated 12:53 pm, Sunday, September 8, 2013

BERLIN (AP) — The U.S. National Security Agency is able to crack protective measures on iPhones, BlackBerry and Android devices, giving it access to users' data on all major smartphones, according to a report Sunday in German news weekly Der Spiegel.

The magazine cited internal documents from the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ in which the agencies describe setting up dedicated teams for each type of phone as part of their effort to gather intelligence on potential threats such as terrorists.

The data obtained this way includes contacts, call lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information, Der Spiegel reported. The documents don't indicate that the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of phone users but rather that these techniques are used to eavesdrop on specific individuals, the magazine said.

The article doesn't explain how the magazine obtained the documents, which are described as "secret." But one of its authors is Laura Poitras, an American filmmaker with close contacts to NSA leaker Edward Snowden who has published several articles about the NSA in Der Spiegel in recent weeks.

The documents outline how, starting in May 2009, intelligence agents were unable to access some information on BlackBerry phones for about a year after the Canadian manufacturer began using a new method to compress the data. After GCHQ cracked that problem, too, analysts celebrated their achievement with the word "Champagne," Der Spiegel reported.

The magazine printed several slides alleged to have come from an NSA presentation referencing the film "1984," based on George Orwell's book set in a totalitarian surveillance state. The slides — which show stills from the film, former Apple Inc. chairman Steve Jobs holding an iPhone, and iPhone buyers celebrating their purchase — are captioned: "Who knew in 1984...that this would be big brother...and the zombies would be paying customers?"

Snowden's revelations have sparked a heated debate in Germany about the country's cooperation with the United States in intelligence matters.

On Saturday, thousands of people in Berlin protested the NSA's alleged mass surveillance of Internet users. Many held placards with slogans such as "Stop watching us."

Separately, an incident in which a German police helicopter was used to photograph the roof of the American consulate in Frankfurt has caused a minor diplomatic incident between the two countries.

German magazine Focus reported Sunday that U.S. Ambassador John B. Emerson complained about the overflight, which German media reported was ordered by top officials after reports that the consulate housed a secret espionage site.

A U.S. embassy spokesman downplayed the story, saying "the helicopter incident was, naturally enough, the subject of embassy conversation with the Foreign Ministry, but no demarche or letter of complaint about the incident was sent to the German government."

___

Frank Jordans can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

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Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

By Ellen Nakashima, Published: September 7 E-mail the writer

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later.

“The government says, ‘We’re not targeting U.S. persons,’ ” said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “But then they never say, ‘We turn around and deliberately search for Americans’ records in what we took from the wire.’ That, to me, is not so different from targeting Americans at the outset.”

The court decision allowed the NSA “to query the vast majority” of its e-mail and phone call databases using the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of Americans and legal residents without a warrant, according to Bates’s opinion.

The queries must be “reasonably likely to yield foreign intelligence information.” And the results are subject to the NSA’s privacy rules.

The court in 2008 imposed a wholesale ban on such searches at the government’s request, said Alex Joel, civil liberties protection officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The government included this restriction “to remain consistent with NSA policies and procedures that NSA applied to other authorized collection activities,” he said.

But in 2011, to more rapidly and effectively identify relevant foreign intelligence communications, “we did ask the court” to lift the ban, ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt said in an interview. “We wanted to be able to do it,” he said, referring to the searching of Americans’ communications without a warrant.

Joel gave hypothetical examples of why the authority was needed, such as when the NSA learns of a rapidly developing terrorist plot and suspects that a U.S. person may be a conspirator. Searching for communications to, from or about that person can help assess that person’s involvement and whether he is in touch with terrorists who are surveillance targets, he said. Officials would not say how many searches have been conducted.

The court’s expansion of authority went largely unnoticed when the opinion was released, but it formed the basis for cryptic warnings last year by a pair of Democratic senators, Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Mark Udall (Colo.), that the administration had a “back-door search loophole” that enabled the NSA to scour intercepted communications for those of Americans. They introduced legislation to require a warrant, but they were barred by classification rules from disclosing the court’s authorization or whether the NSA was already conducting such searches.

“The [surveillance] Court documents declassified recently show that in late 2011 the court authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless searches of individual Americans’ communications using an authority intended to target only foreigners,” Wyden said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Our intelligence agencies need the authority to target the communications of foreigners, but for government agencies to deliberately read the e-mails or listen to the phone calls of individual Americans, the Constitution requires a warrant.”

Senior administration officials disagree. “If we’re validly targeting foreigners and we happen to collect communications of Americans, we don’t have to close our eyes to that,” Litt said. “I’m not aware of other situations where once we have lawfully collected information, we have to go back and get a warrant to look at the information we’ve already collected.”

The searches take place under a surveillance program Congress authorized in 2008 under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under that law, the target must be a foreigner “reasonably believed” to be outside the United States, and the court must approve the targeting procedures in an order good for one year.

But — and this was the nub of the criticism — a warrant for each target would no longer be required. That means that communications with Americans could be picked up without a court first determining that there is probable cause that the people they were talking to were terrorists, spies or “foreign powers.”

That is why it is important to require a warrant before searching for Americans’ data, Udall said. “Our founders laid out a roadmap where Americans’ privacy rights are protected before their communications are seized or searched — not after the fact,” he said in a statement to The Post.

Another change approved by Bates allows the agency to keep the e-mails of or concerning Americans for up to six years, with an extension possible for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purposes. Because the retention period begins “from the expiration date” of the one-year surveillance period, the court effectively added up to one year of shelf life for the e-mails collected at the beginning of the period.

Joel said that the change was intended to standardize retention periods across the agencies and that the more generous standard was “already in use” by another agency.

The NSA intercepts more than 250 million Internet communications each year under Section 702. Ninety-one percent are from U.S. Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo. The rest come from “upstream” companies that route Internet traffic to, from and within the United States. The expanded search authority applies only to the downstream collection.

Barton Gellman contributed to this report.

107-year-old man killed by police SWAT team in Arkansas

107-year-old man killed by police SWAT team in Arkansas

3:32 p.m. CDT, September 8, 2013

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas - Authorities say a 107-year-old man threatened two people with a gun and shot at police through a door before he was killed in a shootout with a police SWAT team today at a home in Pine Bluff, Ark.

The fatal shots were fired on Saturday night after Pine Bluff police responded to a report that the man, Monroe Isadore, pointed a gun at two people in the home in Pine Bluff, a city of roughly 48,000 people about 45 miles south of Little Rock, according to police who confirmed local TV reports.

When police arrived at the home on Saturday afternoon, they removed the two people from the house and then entered to begin negotiations. Isadore then shot at them through the door, according to the reports confirmed by police.

No officers were struck, and police called for backup, including a Special Weapons and Tactics unit.

Negotiations were started and SWAT officers inserted a camera into the room where Isadore was holed up. Officers saw that Isadore had a handgun, according to the reports confirmed by police.

When negotiations failed, SWAT officers threw gas into the room. Isadore fired and officers entered the room. When Isadore shot at them again, the officers returned fire, killing Isadore, according to the reports confirmed by police.

Police said the coroner confirmed Isadore's age as 107.

No officers were injured in the incident, which is under investigation, a Pine Bluff police spokesman said.

Shirakawa's deal doesn't affect latest charges

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Shirakawa's deal doesn't affect latest charges, Santa Clara County DA's office insists

By Karen de Sá

kdesa@mercurynews.com

Posted: 09/06/2013 08:14:49 PM PDT | Updated: a day ago

SAN JOSE -- George Shirakawa Jr. should not be allowed to wiggle out of the latest felony charge against him, prosecutors argue in court documents filed late Friday, even though the case landed after the former Santa Clara County supervisor had agreed to a sweeping plea deal that spared him prison time for a dozen separate political crimes.

"There is no legal theory whereby the defendant's guilty plea and settlement agreement ... immunizes him from prosecution for the current felony," Assistant District Attorney Karyn Sinunu-Towery writes to the court.

It has been almost six months since Shirakawa pleaded guilty to the original set of charges involving perjury on campaign finance forms and theft of public Former Santa Clara County District 2 Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. heads to court t in San Jose, Calif., on June 7, 2013. (LiPo Ching, Bay Area News Group) funds. But he has yet to be sentenced, due to a legal kerfuffle resulting from the additional charge filed in June.

That case -- based on DNA evidence pulled from a postage stamp -- alleges Shirakawa mailed illegal campaign fliers in 2010 to discredit a political rival of his close associate, Xavier Campos, now a San Jose councilman.

Shirakawa's legal team says the new charge violates a plea agreement finalized in March, and should be dismissed. In court documents filed last month, attorney Jay Rorty stated, "Mr. Shirakawa sought and anticipated a global resolution of all potential charges," and infers that the DA's office must have known he was a suspect in the illegal mailer case and chose not to tell the defense.

In court papers filed Friday, Sinunu-Towery counters that her office knew nothing about Shirakawa's involvement with the campaign mailers until well after the plea deal with him was complete, and that prosecutors would never offer up blanket immunity for crimes unknown. Shirakawa provided a DNA sample when he was first arrested March 1; he pleaded guilty to the original set of charges March 18. On April 22, the state Attorney General's Office revealed Shirakawa's DNA had come back as a match to a cold case.

Prosecutors now state that despite turning over mounds of documents to Shirakawa's lawyers, the defense "offers not a single document, email, memo or report from the DA's Office internal files to support its argument" that the campaign flier connection was previously known.

The newest case against Shirakawa amounts to more court appearances and more costly attorney time for the embattled East San Jose resident. And with the loss of his $143,031 annual supervisor's salary, tens of thousands owed to county taxpayers, and $50,000 in fines to pay the Fair Political Practices Commission for 10 violations of the Political Reform Act, Shirakawa has had to rely on the good graces of others to pay his mounting bills.

Many former friends, political associates, employees and colleagues have said they feel duped and exploited by the longtime local leader, who has blamed depression and a gambling addiction for his crimes. But well-known developer John Vidovich has remained by his side, stating his sympathies for Shirakawa.

After establishing a legal defense fund for himself in December with a meager $100, Shirakawa has since received $10,000 from Vidovich's Sunnyvale-based De Anza Building & Maintenance, money he has used to pay the first of his two lawyers.

A judge's decision on whether to dismiss the newest charge against Shirakawa is expected later this month.

Contact Karen de Sá at 408-920-5781.

Legislature stepping away from drug war

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Legislature stepping away from drug war

By George Skelton Capitol Journal

September 8, 2013, 7:31 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — If you get busted using methamphetamine, the D.A. can charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony. His choice. But if you're caught with cocaine or heroin, there's no option. It's a felony.

If there's logic in that, it escapes me. They're all addictive and destructive to mind and body.

Get high on one hard drug and you might receive a get-out-of-jail-free card. But another earns you a lifetime bad-guy tag.

The Legislature, as it rushes toward adjournment of its annual session Friday, is moving to correct that puzzling contradiction.

It is retreating a bit from the decades-long war on drugs.

"The war on drugs is a colossal failure," says Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks).

Yes, that Tim Donnelly, arguably California's most conservative state lawmaker, a self-proclaimed tea party Republican and one-time Minuteman vigilante who patrolled the border searching for Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally.

Donnelly last week cast a crucial vote that secured Assembly passage of a drug-sentencing bill by liberal Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). The measure now awaits Senate approval of Assembly amendments, then will be sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. No telling his view.

The bill, SB 649, would provide prosecutors the flexibility to treat all low-level drug possession offenses as either a misdemeanor or a felony — what's known as a "wobbler."

"We give nonviolent drug offenders long terms, offer them no treatment while they're incarcerated and then release them back into the community with few job prospects or options to receive an education," Leno says.

His bill, he continues, would allow local governments to reduce lockup costs and spend their money on drug rehabilitation, mental health services and probation, "reserving limited jail space for serious criminals."

Simple possession for personal use of meth already is a wobbler. This bill would add other hard drugs such as crack cocaine, powder cocaine and heroin.

It wouldn't affect sellers or manufacturers of hard drugs. Those crimes would remain felonies.

And users who steal or rob to finance their drug habits still would face felonies.

If it were left to him, Leno would make all drug possession offenses a misdemeanor. Thirteen other states have done that, varying widely from New York and Massachusetts to Wyoming and Mississippi.

"On average," the senator says, "reducing penalties to misdemeanors has resulted in lower drug use, higher rates of drug treatment participation and even less property and violent crime."

Leno sponsored a misdemeanor-only bill last year, and it failed miserably on the Senate floor.

Some liberals would legalize all drug use. That would be foolish. People — especially kids — should not be able to just walk into a Safeway and get blotto. Alcohol is bad enough. These are not "victimless" crimes. They destroy families.

It's important to remember that Leno is not proposing legalization, or even treating hard drugs like marijuana. Smoking pot in California, at worst, is considered an infraction, like a traffic ticket. No one gets jailed these days for toking weed.

Not many are even locked up in state prison solely for possessing hard drugs — only 827 out of 133,000 total inmates, according to the state corrections department. All were sentenced before Brown's 2011 "realignment" that shifted incarceration of most low-level offenders to local jails.

Drug users now are sent to state prison only if they've previously been convicted of a serious or violent crime.

But Leno's bill could help relieve local jail crowding. Someone can be sentenced for up to three years for felony drug possession. But he'd serve only a year, at most, for a misdemeanor and probably be ordered into drug treatment upon release. Or perhaps he'd only be sentenced to treatment and probation, with no jail time.

Felons are branded for life. They can't obtain a college grant and are lucky to find a minimum wage job. If only convicted of a misdemeanor, however, they've got a much better chance of assimilating into the productive workforce.

"I'm deeply conflicted," Donnelly told the Assembly. "I know that's probably a shock to many of you."

The San Bernardino County lawmaker recalled leading Bible study and teaching life skills in a prison fire camp, indicating he was impressed by many inmates. "Do we want to fill our [cells] with people who really need to go and get serious treatment?" he asked.

Donnelly announced that he would abstain from voting, then changed his mind when the bill fell short of the simple majority needed for passage.

But before voting, the conservative told me, he consulted with an ACLU lobbyist — certainly a first.

The bill passed with no votes to spare, 41 to 31. Seven Democrats opposed it. One other Republican supported the measure, freshman Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside.

The GOP consensus was articulated by Assemblyman Donald P. Wagner (R-Irvine). The bill "minimizes the consequences of addictive behavior," he said. "We need to maintain strong laws."

But outside Sacramento, conservatives are changing their tune on this issue.

A group called Right on Crime, a Texas-based think tank, recently declared that "it makes sense to use shorter terms and provide meaningful treatment" for low-level drug possession offenders.

"Nearly all of us know someone who has struggled with addiction" but has no other criminal record, the group said. "And it would be difficult to imagine that individual … being incarcerated next to violent criminals."

The group's website includes supportive quotes from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, a onetime California prosecutor.

Leno's bill provides two new weapons in the war on drugs: compassion and common sense.

george.skelton@latimes.com

Journalist Facing Prison Over a Link

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A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link

By DAVID CARR

Published: September 8, 2013

Barrett Brown makes for a pretty complicated victim. A Dallas-based journalist obsessed with the government’s ties to private security firms, Mr. Brown has been in jail for a year, facing charges that carry a combined penalty of more than 100 years in prison.

Professionally, his career embodies many of the conflicts and contradictions of journalism in the digital era. He has written for The Guardian, Vanity Fair and The Huffington Post, but as with so many of his peers, the line between his journalism and his activism is nonexistent. He has served in the past as a spokesman of sorts for Anonymous, the hacker collective, although some members of the group did not always appreciate his work on its behalf.

In 2007, he co-wrote a well-received book, “Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny,” and over time, he has developed an expertise in the growing alliance between large security firms and the government, arguing that the relationship came at a high cost to privacy.

From all accounts, including his own, Mr. Brown, now 32, is a real piece of work. He was known to call some of his subjects on the phone and harass them. He has been public about his struggles with heroin and tends to see conspiracies everywhere he turns. Oh, and he also threatened an F.B.I. agent and his family by name, on a video, and put it on YouTube, so there’s that.

But that’s not the primary reason Mr. Brown is facing the rest of his life in prison. In 2010, he formed an online collective named Project PM with a mission of investigating documents unearthed by Anonymous and others. If Anonymous and groups like it were the wrecking crew, Mr. Brown and his allies were the people who assembled the pieces of the rubble into meaningful insights.

Project PM first looked at the documents spilled by the hack of HBGary Federal, a security firm, in February 2011 and uncovered a remarkable campaign of coordinated disinformation against advocacy groups, which Mr. Brown wrote about in The Guardian, among other places.

Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern and a fan of Mr. Brown’s work, wrote in The Huffington Post that, “Project PM under Brown’s leadership began to slowly untangle the web of connections between the U.S. government, corporations, lobbyists and a shadowy group of private military and infosecurity consultants.”

In December 2011, approximately five million e-mails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, an intelligence contractor, were hacked by Anonymous and posted on WikiLeaks. The files contained revelations about close and perhaps inappropriate ties between government security agencies and private contractors. In a chat room for Project PM, Mr. Brown posted a link to it.

Among the millions of Stratfor files were data containing credit cards and security codes, part of the vast trove of internal company documents. The credit card data was of no interest or use to Mr. Brown, but it was of great interest to the government. In December 2012 he was charged with 12 counts related to identity theft. Over all he faces 17 charges — including three related to the purported threat of the F.B.I. officer and two obstruction of justice counts — that carry a possible sentence of 105 years, and he awaits trial in a jail in Mansfield, Tex.

According to one of the indictments, by linking to the files, Mr. Brown “provided access to data stolen from company Stratfor Global Intelligence to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders’ identification information, and the authentication features for the credit cards.”

Because Mr. Brown has been closely aligned with Anonymous and various other online groups, some of whom view sowing mayhem as very much a part of their work, his version of journalism is tougher to pin down and, sometimes, tougher to defend.

But keep in mind that no one has accused Mr. Brown of playing a role in the actual stealing of the data, only of posting a link to the trove of documents.

Journalists from other news organizations link to stolen information frequently. Just last week, The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica collaborated on a significant article about the National Security Agency’s effort to defeat encryption technologies. The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden, a private contractor working for the government who this summer leaked millions of pages of documents to the reporter Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian along with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post.

By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities in the Northern District of Texas — Mr. Brown lives in Dallas — are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it. In the news release announcing the indictment, the United States attorney’s office explained, “By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.”

And the magnitude of the charges is confounding. Jeremy Hammond, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to participating in the actual hacking of Stratfor in the first place, is facing a sentence of 10 years.

Last week, Mr. Brown and his lawyers agreed to an order that allows him to continue to work on articles, but not say anything about his case that is not in the public record.

Speaking by phone on Thursday, Charles Swift, one of his lawyers, spoke carefully.

“Mr. Brown is presumed innocent of the charges against him and in support of the presumption, the defense anticipates challenging both the legal assumptions and the facts that underlie the charges against him,” he said.

Others who are not subject to the order say the aggressive set of charges suggests the government is trying to send a message beyond the specifics of the case.

“The big reason this matters is that he transferred a link, something all of us do every single day, and ended up being charged for it,” said Jennifer Lynch, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that presses for Internet freedom and privacy. “I think that this administration is trying to prosecute the release of information in any way it can.”

There are other wrinkles in the case. When the F.B.I. tried to serve a warrant on Mr. Brown in March 2012, he was at his mother’s house. The F.B.I. said that his mother tried to conceal his laptop and it charged her with obstruction of justice. (She pleaded guilty in March of this year and is awaiting sentencing.)

The action against his mother enraged Mr. Brown and in September 2012 he made a rambling series of posts to YouTube in which he said he was in withdrawal from heroin addiction. He proceeded to threaten an F.B.I. agent involved in the arrest, saying, “I don’t say I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his (expletive) kids ... How do you like them apples?”

The feds did not like them apples. After he was arrested, a judge ruled he was “a danger to the safety of the community and a risk of flight.” In the video, Mr. Brown looks more like a strung-out heroin addict than a threat to anyone, but threats are threats, especially when made against the F.B.I.

“The YouTube video was a mistake, a big one,” said Gregg Housh, a friend of Mr. Brown’s who first introduced him to the activities of Anonymous. “But it is important to remember that the majority of the 105 years he faces are the result of linking to a file. He did not and has not hacked anything, and the link he posted has been posted by many, many other news organizations.”

At a time of high government secrecy with increasing amounts of information deemed classified, other routes to the truth have emerged, many of them digital. News organizations in receipt of leaked documents are increasingly confronting tough decisions about what to publish, and are defending their practices in court and in the court of public opinion, not to mention before an administration determined to aggressively prosecute leakers.

In public statements since his arrest, Mr. Brown has acknowledged that he made some bad choices. But punishment needs to fit the crime and in this instance, much of what has Mr. Brown staring at a century behind bars seems on the right side of the law, beginning with the First Amendment of the Constitution.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

The Reinvention of an Anti-War Activist

Kyrsten Sinema isn't an Anti-War Activist???

Please note this is the same Kyrsten Sinema who when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana in an attempt to flush Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act down the toilet.

Kyrsten Sinema is also a gun grabber and wants to flush the Second Amendment down the toilet.

Source

The Reinvention of an Anti-War Activist

Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman 07.23.2012 - 10:00 AM

You wouldn’t normally expect Washington Democrats to spend much time fretting over a congressional primary in Arizona. But the three-way Democratic race between Kyrsten Sinema, Andrei Cherny, and David Schapira is getting a surprising amount of attention from national Democrats, the pro-Israel community and the political media.

Ten years ago, Sinema was one of those radical left-wing activists who donned pink tutus at anti-war rallies and organized with anti-Israel groups. Today, the 36-year-old is running for Congress as an AIPAC-supporting moderate who would have voted in favor of the Afghanistan intervention.

The problem? Some Democrats say her evolution doesn’t add up. For one, Sinema’s been involved with anti-Israel and anti-war groups much more recently than her campaign has acknowledged. And while she recently released a strongly-worded pro-Israel position paper [hmmm... an atheist, anti-war activist that supports war mongering Israel??], her latest comments on foreign policy issues have been dodgy and confusing. [I suspect that is very intentional, so she won't lose any votes from fence sitters who don't know if she is for or against something]

“Is she for or against killing bin Laden?” asked former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. “Based on her record, you don’t know. You would think when you’re considering a member of Congress, you would know their positions on these issues.”

One Democratic Arizona state representative who has worked with Sinema said her views are impossible to decipher. [Again I suspect that is very intentional, so she won't lose any votes from fence sitters who don't know if she is for or against something]

“When she wanted to be an activist, she was anti-war, all these kinds of things that now she says she never was,” he said. “I don’t think she actually has a foreign policy core, I think she has a political core.” [hmmm so Kyrsten Sinema is now denying being an anti-war activist????]

According to the Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, Sinema didn’t just dabble in radical circles; she helped organize and lead extreme anti-war groups that took anti-Israel positions on issues like the right of return and Israel’s self defense. Townhall’s Guy Benson reported that she was involved in anarchist riots that encouraged property destruction. [To be honest Sinema always has been a socialist like Drew Sullivan's Phoenix Anarchists, but I don't ever remember hearing about her at a Phoenix Anarchist event. ]

Sinema’s campaign disputed the claim that she was involved with anti-Israel activism, calling it a smear tactic by opponents.

“These weren’t anti-Israel groups. These were ‘Let’s not go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan groups,’” Sinema’s spokesman Rodd McLeod told me. He acknowledged that there may have been anti-Israel elements at some of the rallies she attended, but that this never represented her own view. “Frankly it’s sexist. She has to agree with the people she marches with, when she’s a 25-year-old grad student?”

That phrasing is slightly misleading, since Sinema’s involvement with radical and anti-Israel causes continued well beyond her mid-20s. Two years ago, Sinema was a featured speaker at an anti-war rally sponsored by Code Pink, the End the War Coalition, and Women in Black. She also sat on the board of the Progressive Democrats of America in 2006 and 2007, when she was entering her second term as an Arizona state representative. During that time, PDA issued a statement condemning the pro-Israel lobby and equating it with Palestinian terrorism.

“PDA opposes the powerful and dangerous lobbies that distort US foreign policy in the Middle East, much as we condemn those Palestinians guilty of waging and supporting terrorist war against Israeli civilians,” read the statement.

The organization also blamed Israeli policy for Palestinian terror attacks.

“[W]hile we condemn such terrorism, it remains our belief that the root cause of violence in Israel and Palestine is the Israeli occupation and intransigence, despite Israel’s trumpeted withdrawal from Gaza.”

When I raised this with McLeod, he said he wasn’t aware Sinema was ever a PDA board member and that the statement didn’t reflect her views. “She does not believe Israeli intransigence is the root cause of the conflict,” he said. “To conflate terrorism…with political activity is just absurd. She would never support that.”

Some of Sinema’s positions on national security are also unclear. In a May questionnaire requesting an endorsement from the PDA, Sinema wrote that she “led efforts opposing these wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] before they even started.” [So was Sinema always been a war monger, who hangs out with anti-war folks????]

That same month, she told The Hill newspaper that she would have voted to authorize the 2001 Afghanistan intervention if she had been in Congress at the time — and added that she also supports military intervention in Sudan and Somalia.

The campaign doesn’t believe this is a contradiction. “She makes a distinction between an invasion and occupation, and the use of military force,” McLeod explained.

Sinema also seems unfamiliar with some of the content in her staunchly pro-Israel position paper. The Jewish Journal’s Shmuel Rosner obtained private email conversations in which Sinema contradicted portions of the paper and seemed perplexed by what a “demilitarized” Palestinian state meant.

When I asked McLeod how much involvement Sinema had with the paper, he said she had done much of the work herself. “I did one edit on it, but she worked with members of the community on it.”

But in one of the emails cited by the Jewish Journal, Sinema claimed that her staff had written the paper, not her. [Yea, a typical lying politician. Blame your STAFF for any statements that make you look bad!!!!]

“You are right, staff writes position papers,” she wrote. “I will ask staff to edit and get an updated and accurate position uploaded to the website this week.”

Sinema refused to answer questions about her history when I called her on the phone. Instead, she said I would have to request an interview through her office.

“I assume you got this [cell phone] number from my opponents, and I’m sure they’re trying to spread some horrible stories about me,” she said,

When I got in touch with her spokesperson, McLeod, he said Sinema was busy and wouldn’t have time to talk to me directly.

Kyrsten Sinema isn't an atheist?????

Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona Democrat, To Replace Pete Stark As Sole Atheist In Congress

Religion News Service | By Kimberly Winston Posted: 11/08/2012 7:35 am EST Updated: 11/09/2012 4:46 pm EST

(RNS) Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., the only openly atheist member of Congress, lost his race for another term on Tuesday (Nov. 6).

But secularists will not remain unrepresented in the Capitol. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, a former Arizona state senator who was raised Mormon and is a bisexual, has narrowly won her pitch for a House seat by 2,000 votes.

"We are sad to see Pete Stark go," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, which gave Stark its Humanist of the Year award in 2008.

"He was a pioneer for us, and by being open about his lack of a belief in God we hope that he has opened the door for people like Kyrsten Sinema and others that will come after her."

While Sinema's campaign was initially unavailable for comment after Tuesday's election, spokesman Justin Unga said Friday that Sinema does not consider herself a nonbeliever, adding that she prefers a "secular approach.''

"Kyrsten believes the terms non-theist, atheist or nonbeliever are not befitting of her life's work or personal character,'' Unga said in email. "She does not identify as any of the above.''

Stark, who turns 80 this year, is the dean of the California congressional delegation and has served Fremont, a religiously diverse community near San Jose, since 1972. He "came out" as a nonbeliever in 2007, and went on to win two re-election bids. But this time he faced recent redistricting and a fellow Democratic challenger, Eric Salwell, almost 50 years his junior.

"I don't think his lack of belief in a god had anything to do with the results of this election," Speckhardt said. "The numbers were close."

But during the campaign, Salwell raised Stark's 2011 vote against reaffirming "In God We Trust" as the national motto, a vote in which he was joined by just eight other lawmakers. The outspoken Stark accused Salwell of taking bribes, an accusation which he eventually had to apologize for.

Still, Speckhardt said Stark's achievements for nontheists include his opposition to the war in Iraq and his support of health care reform and civil rights. He also worked for congressional recognition of Darwin Day and the National Day of Reason, which nontheists observe to promote science education and critical thinking.

"Humanism is not just a lack of belief in God, it is a positive, progressive philosophy," Speckhardt said. "So for us, he has done things every day."

Sinema, 36, has much in common with Stark ideologically. Having previously served as both an Arizona state senator and representative, she has a long record of supporting women's rights, marriage equality, gay rights and science education.

Even though Sinema does not claim the atheist mantle, nontheist groups consider her one of their own.

"This is a step forward in that she was able to run openly as a nontheist and it didn't seem to be an issue," said Lauren Anderson Youngblood, communications manager for the Secular Coalition for America, whose Arizona branch supported Sinema's election. "That is a great thing for the community, especially because with the loss of Pete Stark, we are left with a big hole."

Editor's note: The post has been updated to reflect input from the Sinema campaign about Sinema's beliefs. [And of course that probably seems to change on who she wants to vote for her. ]

PLEA endorses Sinema's congressional bid

Police officers LOVE Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema

Phoenix Law Enforcement Association endorses Sinema's congressional bid

Police officers LOVE Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema.

I suspect the reason Kyrsten Sinema tried to flush Arizona's medical marijuana act down the toilet by interdicting a bill that would have slapped a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana was to keep her cop friends who give her lots of money happy.

Source

PLEA endorses Sinema's congressional bid

Posted: Jan 05, 2012 4:14 PM Updated: Jan 17, 2013 4:14 PM

By Phil Benson - email

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association on Thursday endorsed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema's run for Congress.

Sinema, of Phoenix, declared her candidacy Tuesday and resigned from the Arizona Senate to run for the U.S. House seat from Arizona's 9th Congressional District.

"As a state legislator, Kyrsten did more than just give lip service in support of law enforcement and police officers," said Levi Bolton, spokesperson for PLEA. "She stood by those words and voted on numerous occasions to support us." [See the police will tell you themselves that Kyrsten Sinema supports the police state. Her attempt to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana is the best example of that I can give you]

"Kyrsten's proven commitment to protecting those who protect our community will make her a strong and effective advocate for police and first responders in Congress," Bolton added.

The newly drawn 9th District includes much of central Maricopa County, taking in Tempe and parts of Phoenix and Mesa.

At least one other prominent Democrat may run for the seat. State Sen. David Schapira of Tempe has said he may run.

Republican U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle also lives in the district, but he may run instead in an adjacent district.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will pick a replacement to serve the rest of Sinema's Senate term.

Copyright 2012 KPHO. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Drive to curb size of public-employee pensions

Goldwater co-founder launches drive to curb size of public-employee pensions

Posted: Monday, September 9, 2013 2:45 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — Saying he doesn't want a Detroit-like bankruptcy here, a GOP activist is hoping to get voters to curb the size of pensions for public employees.

The initiative drive launched by Roy Miller would limit the annual budget growth of city and county budgets until their existing pension funding is considered “adequate.”

Miller's conceded that, when it comes to pensions and predicting future costs, there can be a lot of wiggle room as future earnings are built on assumptions like what the stock market will do and where interest rates will go.

But the measure sets a floor of 80 percent of future obligations as what would be considered “adequate.” And with the state's largest retirement system several points below that — and years away from 80 percent — the initiative could cause an immediate hit to spending in virtually all counties and cities.

A separate provision of the initiative would totally wipe out any pension benefits for any elected official not already in office if and when it is approved.

State lawmakers just this past year approved sweeping curbs in what has been the most generous pension plan for the entire state, allowing politicians to retire at 80 percent of their highest salary after just 20 years. That plan also included guaranteed cost-of-living increases for retirees which has actually boosted payments to beyond what they were earning while in office.

The new law puts future elected officials into a “defined contribution” plan, much like a 401(k) offered by many companies. That ties retirement benefits to the actual earnings of the plan, versus some state-set guarantee.

Miller insisted even that is too generous.

“I believe that elected officials ought to be policymakers,” he said. “They ought to not be career positions.”

He said they should take time to serve the public ``and then go back into the real world.''

But Miller's initiative, like the changes approved by the Legislature, would not affect those already in office or retired. That's because it's illegal in Arizona to tinker with benefits already earned.

The issue of adequate funding for public employee pensions gained national attention when Detroit, unable to meet its bills, filed for bankruptcy protection. Among the allegations has been that the city's pension system was severely underfunded, leaving city taxpayers on the hook for future obligations.

Pension funds have taken a sharp hit since the recession, with managers finding they are unable to earn as much on their investments as they had a decade earlier. The stock market dropped and fixed-income investments were paying very little.

This applies particularly to “defined benefit” plans, the kind that most public employees have, where they are guaranteed a set pension based on salary and years of service.

The result is that the Arizona State Retirement System, the state's largest — and the one that serves counties, schools and most cities — was 75.7 percent funded as of June 2012.

ASRS spokesman David Cannella said numbers for the fiscal year that ended this past June are still being compiled. But he said funding should be closed to that, “maybe a little bit lower.”

Cannella said ASRS managers have done what they could to correct the problem by increasing the contribution rates that both employers and employees make. That currently stands at 11.54 percent each.

A decade ago, with the economy booming, it was just 2 percent, though it had been higher in some years before that.

But Cannella said that, even with an improving economy, he does not think the system will get to 80 percent until around 2021.

That would trigger the spending curbs in the initiative for each of the local governments with employees in the ASRS.

A few cities have their own retirement plans. And they could find themselves in worse shape.

In Tucson, for example, the latest publicly available figures put the system liabilities at $340 million above assets. That translates out to a funding ratio of less than 64 percent.

That funding has led to a separate initiative drive in Tucson to totally scrap that city's current defined benefit plan in favor of a defined contribution plan.

Miller has until July 3 to get the 172,809 valid signatures on petitions needed to put the issue on the 2014 ballot.

He said he has sufficient financial commitments to hire the necessary paid circulators to get to that point, though he would not identify sources. Miller said he would worry about the costs of a campaign if the measure qualifies for the ballot.

This isn't the only initiative push dealing with public employees by Miller, a co-founder of the conservative and anti-union Goldwater Institute.

He is spearheading a separate proposal to amend the Arizona Constitution to require all workers, public and private, to give annual approval before deductions could to be taken from their paychecks for political purposes. That includes not just supporting or opposing candidates but even lobbying at the Legislature.

Miller acknowledged that could curtail the political influence of unions.

Liar - Kerry’s claim that he opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq

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Kerry’s claim that he opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq

Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 09/10/2013

“You know, Senator Chuck Hagel, when he was senator, Senator Chuck Hagel, now secretary of defense, and when I was a senator, we opposed the president’s decision to go into Iraq, but we know full well how that evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.”

— Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in an interview with MSNBC, Sept. 5, 2013

This is at least the second time since becoming secretary that Kerry has asserted that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. The first time the Kerry made this claim, during a student forum in Ethiopia, his statement mysteriously disappeared from the official State Department transcript.

But then he said it again, on television, also dragging Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel into the mix. So let’s take a trip back in time and see what Kerry actually said in 2003.

The Facts

When it comes to war, Kerry often takes a highly nuanced position. He voted against the congressional resolution authorizing force in the 1991 Gulf War, but voted for the 2002 resolution that supported military action against Iraq. Both votes turned out to be bad political bets.

When Kerry opposed the 1991 resolution, he complained that the George H.W. Bush administration had done too little to involve the rest of the world in its campaign to oust Iraq from Kuwait. But in 2002, he praised the coalition that had been formed for the first Gulf War, in part to complain that George W. Bush had thus far failed to secure the same level of cooperation.

When Kerry voted for the 2002 resolution, he warned he would not support war if Bush failed to win the support of the international community in the absence of an imminent threat. “Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the president is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies,” Kerry said.

But Kerry also said that the burden to avoid war was on the Iraqi leader: “Saddam Hussein has a choice: He can continue to defy the international community, or he can fulfill his longstanding obligations to disarm. He is the person who has brought the world to this brink of confrontation.”

Thus, as the war approached in early 2003, Kerry appeared generally supportive, though critical of the administration’s diplomatic efforts. He was listed in news reports as one of the Democratic presidential aspirants who backed an invasion, though some reporters noted the Hamlet quality of his remarks.

As the Los Angeles Times headlined one article in January of that year, “On Iraq, Kerry Appears Either Torn or Shrewd.” The newspaper noted that “virtually all of Kerry’s rivals for the 2004 Democratic nomination believe he is trying to straddle the issue by shifting his emphasis at different times and for different audiences.”

By the time of the March invasion, after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s United Nations presentation on Iraq’s alleged weapons, Kerry backed the attack, according to articles that appeared in the Boston Globe (and which were written by one of his current aides at the State Department).

“It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism,” Kerry said. “If so, the only exit strategy is victory. This is our common mission and the world’s cause. We’re in this together. We want to complete the mission while safeguarding our troops, avoiding innocent civilian casualties, disarming Saddam Hussein, and engaging the community of nations to rebuild Iraq,” he said.

Kerry criticized what he called “a failure of diplomacy of a massive order” but told gthe Globe that if he were president, he may not have been able to avoid war.

Similarly, Hagel — who later also emerged as a harsh critic of the administration’s handling of the war — voted for the 2002 resolution and also supported the invasion.

“This war is bigger than just killing Saddam Hussein,” Hagel told CBS News on March 21, 2003. “The fact is, as we have stated for 12 years, his regime has been in violation of the United Nations resolutions. His regime has possessed, or probably still does possess, weapons of mass destruction. So we shouldn’t personalize it. We should dismantle his regime, disarm his regime and work with the people of Iraq and in that region to give that country a new start, and hopefully that will be a start with democratic institutions and freedom for all people.”

A Kerry aide sent The Fact Checker a few clips of comments that Kerry made in 2004, as he was challenging Bush for the presidency, that that if he had been president and had access to the same intelligence that Bush had, he would not have gone to war in Iraq. But that’s not the same as claiming he opposed the decision to attack Iraq in 2003.

The Pinocchio Test

Many politicians have a tendency to look back at their past statements with rose-colored glasses. But given that Kerry has now twice in recent months made the claim that he opposed the war in Iraq, this is clearly not a case of a momentary slip-up.

For Kerry, the uncomfortable fact remains that he voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq, he believed the intelligence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he said there was little choice but to launch an invasion to disarm him. Kerry may have been highly critical of Bush’s diplomatic efforts in advance of the invasion, but that is not the same thing as opposing the war when it started.

It’s time for the secretary to stop making this claim. In trying to make a distinction between his vote to authorize the war and his later dismay at how it turned out, Kerry earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

Marijuana use on the rise among young adults, fiftysomethings

Marijuana use on the rise among young adults, fiftysomethings

By Emily Alpert

September 9, 2013, 5:21 p.m.

The growing popularity of marijuana has propelled a rise in drug use among Americans, including those in their 50s and 60s, a recently released national survey shows.

Marijuana remains the most common drug, and it increased in popularity from 2007 to 2012, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found. Rising marijuana use helped drive up drug use among young adults, more than a fifth of whom said they had used "illicit drugs" in the previous month. Almost 19% of adults ages 18 to 25 had recently used marijuana.

Drug use also rose among adults ages 50 to 64, the study found. The surge was especially strong among Americans in their late 50s, whose rates of illicit drug use grew from 1.9% up to 6.6% between 2002 and 2012. Researchers believe the increase is largely because baby boomers, who were more likely to use drugs than earlier generations, are aging into that group.

Marijuana use has increased as legalization wins more support from Americans, with a majority telling the Pew Research Center in a poll this year that the drug should be legal. Though marijuana use was on the rise, many other drugs have dwindled in use or stayed about the same: Cocaine was less common in 2012 than in 2006, when only 1% of Americans said they had used it in the last month. Less than 640,000 people said they had started using it in the last year, compared with 1 million new users a decade earlier.

Methamphetamine use fell slightly, while hallucinogens were used about as frequently as a decade earlier, the study showed. There was also little change in Americans using psychotherapeutic drugs for reasons other than those prescribed.

The new study also examined alcohol and tobacco use. Underage drinking fell between 2002 and 2012: Last year, less than a quarter of underage people said they drank alcohol in the last month, compared with 28.8% of underage people a decade earlier.

Smoking has also declined among teenagers, though a separate survey recently showed that electronic cigarettes had become increasingly popular with teens.

The annual survey includes about 70,000 teens and adults and is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Most of the questions are answered privately on a computer; in some instances an interviewer asks a question out loud and enters what the person says.

Man arrested for drunk horse riding

Source

Man's journey is cut short when suspected of riding horse drunk

By Mitchell Byars and Ashley Dean, Daily Camera

Posted: 09/10/2013 07:55:15 AM PDT

BOULDER — A 45-year-old Colorado Springs man is facing charges of drunken horseback riding, animal cruelty and the prohibited use of weapons after University of Colorado police on Monday interrupted what he claimed was a 600-mile journey from Larkspur to Bryce, Utah, to attend a wedding.

Police began receiving calls about Patrick Neal Schumacher's unusual journey around 2:14 p.m., according to CU police spokesman Ryan Huff.

Witnesses said the man later identified as Schumacher and his horse were seen wandering into traffic while riding north on Broadway. They also reported seeing the rider repeatedly hit the horse near Broadway and Baseline Road; police sad the man struck the horse hard enough that it reared up on its hind legs.

CU police found the would-be cowboy and his horse, Dillon, on University Hill near Broadway and College Avenue.

According to a campus police, Schumacher was slumped over to the right and forcing people off the sidewalks. Officers asked him to dismount and gave him a roadside sobriety test, which Schumacher failed, police said.

Schumacher also had a dog -- a pug named Bufford -- in a backpack, and officers found a small black powder pistol and beer in one of his saddlebags.

According to CU police, when officers asked Schumacher about striking the horse, he told them he was smacking flies off Dillon's head.

Schumacher was arrested on suspicion of charges of animal cruelty, prohibited use of weapons and reckless endangerment, all misdemeanors, as well as riding a horse while under the influence of alcohol, a traffic infraction.

CU police said Schumacher told officers that he was on his way to his brother's wedding, attempting an approximately 600-mile trek to Utah. Schumacher said he'd previously lost his driver's license, so he decided to make the journey by horseback, according to police.

As for Dillon and Bufford, the animals have been impounded with the help of the Boulder Police Department Animal Control Unit, Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, and the Humane Society of Boulder Valley.

Schumacher remained in custody at the Boulder County Jail on Monday night.

Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Kyrsten Sinema

The Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Kyrsten Sinema

March 29th, 2012

PHOENIX, ARIZ. – Saturday, the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS) endorsed Kyrsten Sinema for Congress. AZCOPS represents over 4,800 uniformed deputy sheriffs, police, juvenile corrections and probation officers around Arizona. AZCOPS joins the Arizona Highway Patrol Association, Arizona Police Association and Phoenix Law Enforcement Association representing the most law enforcement endorsements for any of the Congressional District 9 candidates in the race, showing Sinema as the strongest candidate on law enforcement issues.

“Kyrsten Sinema has stood up for law enforcement and we are proud to stand with her,” said Ed Neidkowski, President of AZCOPS. “Her record in the Arizona legislature shows she knows what law enforcement officers and their families need and that’s why we want to send her to Congress.”

“Our law enforcement officers stand for us every day,” Sinema said. “I’m proud to stand up for them.”

Kyrsten Sinema is running for Congress in Arizona’s new Congressional District 9, based in Phoenix, Tempe and the East Valley. In 2011, Kyrsten was lauded by the Arizona Republic for her “remarkable” ability to “partner with Republicans in both the House and Senate” to pass legislation while remaining “a staunch defender of key Democratic priorities.”

ARIZONA FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE LOVES KYRSTEN SINEMA

ARIZONA FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE STAND WITH KYRSTEN SINEMA

July 12th, 2012

Phoenix, AZ – Today, the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police announced their endorsement of Kyrsten Sinema in her race for Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District. The F.O.P. is one of Arizona’s largest organizations of sworn law enforcement officers. They are committed to improving the working conditions of law enforcement officers and the safety of those who serve and protect our communities. Many of the benefits and rights afforded to Arizona law enforcement officers are the result of efforts by the Arizona F.O.P.

“Sinema will be the right kind of leader in Congress,” said John Ortolano, President of the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police. “To get the job done at the Arizona legislature she reached across the aisle and put families first. Her strong support for public safety and working standards make her the right choice for Congress.”

“The Fraternal Order of Police stand with our campaign as I’ve been honored to stand with them over the years,” said Sinema. “I’m humbled to have their support. The work that they to do protect our keep our neighborhoods and families safe is vital the communities in CD9 and in our state.”

National Association of Police Organizations backs Sinema

National Association of Police Organizations back Sinema for Congress

Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2012 10:37 am

Updated: 12:43 pm, Tue Sep 11, 2012.

Send submissions to Beverly Stidham, Ahwatukee Foothills News

The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) announced Friday its support for Kyrsten Sinema’s campaign for Congress. NAPO is a coalition of police unions and associations from across the United States that serves to advance the interests of America’s law enforcement through legislative and legal advocacy, political action and education.

They join the Fraternal Order of Police, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, Arizona Police Association, Arizona Highway Patrol Association and the Professional Fire Fighters Association in their support of Sinema’s campaign.

Sinema was born and raised in Arizona, the child of an educator and homemaker. She grew up poor; when she was a child, her family lived in an abandoned gas station for two years while her stepfather tried to find a job.

In order to help kids who had some of the same disadvantages she did, Sinema became a school social worker.

For more information, visit www.KyrstenSinema.com.

Kyrsten Sinema thinks you are guilty till proven innocent???

Source

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sinema bill to crack down on human trafficking passes committee unanimously

By Arizona House Democrats at 2:26 PM

STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – A bill that gives police more tools to arrest criminals who traffic people for sex or labor slavery passed the House Judiciary Committee today.

House Bill 2673, sponsored by Assistant House Democratic Leader Kyrsten Sinema, eliminates a clause in Arizona law that requires police to prove that the trafficked individual be obtained “for transport” to qualify as being trafficked for sex or labor. The bill also aids prosecutors to convict traffickers.

“This bill gives law enforcement a greater ability to fight heinous crimes like human trafficking for sex or slave labor,” Sinema said. “It’s a simple fix that makes a huge difference for public safety in our neighborhoods.”

HB 2673 eliminates the requirement that a person be enticed, recruited, harbored, provided or otherwise obtained for transport for an offense to qualify as sex trafficking or trafficking of persons for forced labor or services.

The bill passed committee unanimously with bipartisan support.

Kyrsten Sinema picks up AFL-CIO police union support

Mar 22, 2012, 10:58am MST

Kyrsten Sinema picks up AFL-CIO support in 9th District race

Mike Sunnucks

Kyrsten Sinema has picked up a big organized labor endorsement in the crowed race for Arizona's new 9th Congressional District.

The Arizona AFL-CIO is backing Sinema in the Democratic primary against Arizona Senate Minority Leader David Schapria and former state party Chairman Andrei Cherny.

Cherny has the backing the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), real estate developer and Democratic Party financier Jim Pederson and former state Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Police unions and some other labor groups are also backing Sinema, who is an attorney and former state lawmaker.

The 9th District is new for this year’s elections. It include South Scottsdale, Tempe, Ahwatukee, Paradise Valley and western edges of the East Valley.

There are a number of Republicans also running in the GOP primary for the new open seat.

Mike Sunnucks writes about politics, law, airlines, sports business and the economy.

Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Sinema

The Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Kyrsten Sinema

March 29th, 2012

PHOENIX, ARIZ. – Saturday, the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS) endorsed Kyrsten Sinema for Congress. AZCOPS represents over 4,800 uniformed deputy sheriffs, police, juvenile corrections and probation officers around Arizona. AZCOPS joins the Arizona Highway Patrol Association, Arizona Police Association and Phoenix Law Enforcement Association representing the most law enforcement endorsements for any of the Congressional District 9 candidates in the race, showing Sinema as the strongest candidate on law enforcement issues.

“Kyrsten Sinema has stood up for law enforcement and we are proud to stand with her,” said Ed Neidkowski, President of AZCOPS. “Her record in the Arizona legislature shows she knows what law enforcement officers and their families need and that’s why we want to send her to Congress.”

“Our law enforcement officers stand for us every day,” Sinema said. “I’m proud to stand up for them.”

Kyrsten Sinema is running for Congress in Arizona’s new Congressional District 9, based in Phoenix, Tempe and the East Valley. In 2011, Kyrsten was lauded by the Arizona Republic for her “remarkable” ability to “partner with Republicans in both the House and Senate” to pass legislation while remaining “a staunch defender of key Democratic priorities.”

Police unions that support Kyrsten Sinema

Source

Endorsements

• AFL-CIO (i.e. police unions)
• American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
• Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS)
• Arizona Fraternal Order of Police
• Arizona Highway Patrol Association
• Arizona Police Association
• Arizona Probation Officers Association (AZPOA)
• National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO)
• Phoenix Law Enforcement Association
• Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association (PPSLA)

Arizona Fraternal Order of Police endorses Sinema

Sinema wins endorsements, raises $626,187

July 20, 2012 by ADI News Services

The Arizona Fraternal Order of Police has announced their endorsement of Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District. The F.O.P. is one of Arizona’s largest organizations of sworn law enforcement officers.

“Sinema will be the right kind of leader in Congress,” said John Ortolano, President of the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police.

Sinema reported that her campaign raised $367,453 in April, May and June. Overall, her campaign has raised $626,187 this year, with donations coming from 3,882 individuals. The average donation to Sinema’s campaign in the second quarter report was $125.15. The campaign reported having over $358,000 on hand going into the summer primary season.

The fundraising report comes on the heels of Sinema’s endorsements from labor unions, elected officials including: AFL-CIO, Building Trades Council, and unions representing Teamsters, Firefighters, Painters, Electricians, Transportation Workers, Sheet Metal Workers, Police Officers, Sheriffs, Steel workers, Machinists, and Food Service workers.

Check out Zander Welton's webpage

Source

Zander Welton is a 5 year old child who suffers from cortical dysplasia. This illnesses causes him to have seizures.

Zander Welton is one of the youngest, if not youngest holder of a medical marijuana card in Arizona. The CBD in marijuana helps prevent these seizures.

Zander Welton's medical marijuana is hash oil, or hashish oil which is placed under his tongue so his body can absorb the CBD.

But that cold, cruel, uncaring bastard Will Humble who is the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services says hash oil is a crime, not a medicine and is doing the best he can to prevent Zander Welton from getting his medical marijuana.

Currently the medical marijuana dispensary Harvest of Tempe is donating the $300 a week in medical marijuana Zander needs, because his parents can't afford it.

Of course if Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema had her way she would have slapped a 300 percent, yes, that's a three hundred percent tax on medical marijuana which would bring the cost of Zanders treatment up to $1,200 a week with the state of Arizona keeping $900 of that in taxes.

Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema want's you to think that she will help you get low cost medical care. But the when you see the bills that she introduces and the taxes she proposes it is pretty obvious that Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema isn't going to help you get low cost medical care.

Will Humble shovels the BS on why hashish isn't marijuana

Here's Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble's convoluted cockamamie definition on why hashish and hash oil are not medical marijuana.

I think it is 100 percent BS!!!!

Please don't shoot me for Will Humble being a jerk. I am just the messenger and giving you the nonsense Will Humble produces.

Let's face it Will Humble and his boss Arizona Governor Jan Brewer are just tyrants who don't want Arizona's medical marijuana laws to get in the way of their "War on Drugs" which is just a jobs program for cops, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, judges and prison guards along with being a government welfare program for prison construction companies.

Now if you ask me I think that "medical marijuana" was in Prop 203 includes any part of the marijuana plant which helps a patient. That should include concentrated forms for marijuana like hashish and hash oil.

Source

AZ Dept. of Health Services Director's Blog

Will Humble
ADHS Director

Marijuana v. Cannabis

August 30th, 2013 by Will Humble

Are Marijuana and Cannabis the same thing when it comes to Arizona Law? The short answer is no- and the distinction may be an important one for Qualified Patients.

The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act provides registry identification card holders and dispensaries a number of legal protections for their medical use of Marijuana pursuant to the Act. Interestingly, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act definition of “Marijuana” in A.R.S. § 36-2801(8) differs from the Arizona Criminal Code’s (“Criminal Code”) definition of “Marijuana” in A.R.S. § 13-3401(19). In addition, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act makes a distinction between “Marijuana” and “Usable Marijuana.” A.R.S. § 36-2801(8) and (15).

The definition of “Marijuana” in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act is “… all parts of any plant of the genus cannabis whether growing or not, and the seeds of such plant.” The definition of “Usable Marijuana” is “… the dried flowers of the marijuana plant, and any mixture or preparation thereof, but does not include the seeds, stalks and roots of the plant and does not include the weight of any non-marijuana ingredients combined with marijuana and prepared for consumption as food or drink.” The “allowable amount of marijuana” for a qualifying patient and a designated caregiver includes “two-and-one half ounces of usable marijuana.” A.R.S. § 36-2801(1).

The definition of “Marijuana” in the Criminal Code is “… all parts of any plant of the genus cannabis, from which the resin has not been extracted, whether growing or not, and the seeds of such plant.” “Cannabis” (a narcotic drug under the Criminal Code) is defined as: “… the following substances under whatever names they may be designated: (a) The resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus cannabis, and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of such plant, its seeds or its resin. Cannabis does not include oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any fiber, compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the mature stalks of such plant except the resin extracted from the stalks or any fiber, oil or cake or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination; and (b) Every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of such resin or tetrahydrocannabinol.” A.R.S. § 13-3401(4) and (20)(w).

An issue the Department has been wrestling with for some time is how the definition of “Marijuana” and “Usable Marijuana” in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and the definition of “Cannabis” and “Marijuana” in the Criminal Code fit together. This confusion, which appears to be shared by dispensaries and registered identification card holders alike, is not easy to clear up and has resulted in the Department receiving numerous questions regarding the interplay between the protections in A.R.S. § 36-2811 and the Criminal Code. While we can’t provide legal advice as to whether a certain conduct is punishable under the Criminal Code (only an individual’s or entity’s legal counsel can do this), “Cannabis” is defined as the “resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus cannabis” and “Cannabis” is listed as a narcotic drug according to the Criminal Code in A.R.S. § 13-3401(4) and (20)(w).

In other words, registered identification card holders and dispensaries may be exposed to criminal prosecution under the Criminal Code for possessing a narcotic drug if the card holder or dispensary possesses resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus Cannabis or an edible containing resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus Cannabis. If you’re concerned that your conduct may expose you to criminal prosecution, you may wish to consult an attorney. We’ll be providing some specific guidance for dispensaries licensed by the ADHS next week.

Authorities looking for woman who kicked 3 dogs

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San Jose: Authorities looking for woman who allegedly kicked three dogs while walking them

Posted: 09/11/2013 08:44:45 AM PDT

SAN JOSE - Animal control officers in San Jose are investigating a report of a woman seen kicking her three dogs as she walked them on leashes Monday in a neighborhood in South San Jose.

An officer from San Jose Animal Care and Services responded to a call at about 10:30 a.m. from a man who reported seeing the woman kicking the dogs on Loupe Avenue near Breen Court, animal care Capt. Jay Terrado said.

The officer was not able to locate the woman, but the man who reported the incident to animal control turned over a video he took on his smart phone of the alleged assault on the dogs, Terrado said.

Dog owners may use safe methods such as leashes and collars to correct their pets' behaviors, but what the woman appeared to be doing the video went beyond correction, Terrado said.

"It wasn't just punishment, it was more frustration," Terrado said. "The goal is not to injure the animal."

From the video, it did not look like the dogs did anything wrong, Terrado said.

"I couldn't see anything on the video that would prompt any correction," Terrado said.

In addition to trying to locate the woman for questioning, animal control officers want to check the dogs to make sure they are unhurt, Terrado said.

The woman could face a citation with a $1,000 fine to misdemeanor or felony criminal charges, Terrado said.

Joey McGlinchy, a private investigator from Pleasanton, said he witnessed the alleged assault while in the neighborhood for an unrelated reason and decided to record a video on his phone while using it to call animal control.

The woman was about a half a block away from him but he saw her kicking the dogs in the ribs and head and yanking the leashes violently, McGlinchy said.

"She wound up and kicked them," McGlinchy said. "It wasn't a nudge or anything like that."

"She focused on one dog in particular, a brown dog," McGlinchy said. At one point, the dog sat down, while in pain or from exhaustion."

"It made no sense whatsoever," he said. "It was unprovoked."

The woman, whom he described as Caucasian, in her 30s, about 5 feet 8 and 125 pounds, probably did not live in the neighborhood, based on what some neighbors told him, McGlinchy said.

"They were feeling that maybe she was a transient type of person," McGlinchy said.

Peru becomes top source of counterfeit US cash

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More profitable than cocaine': Peru becomes top source of counterfeit US cash

By Carla Salazar, The Associated Press

LIMA, Peru -- The police colonel was stunned by the skill of the 13-year-old arrested during a raid on counterfeiters in Lima's gritty outskirts, how he deftly slid the shiny plastic security strip through a bogus $100 banknote emblazoned with Benjamin Franklin's face.

The boy demonstrated his technique for police after they arrested him on the street with a sack of $700,000 in false U.S. dollars and euros that he'd received from a co-conspirator and he led them to a squat house where he and others did detail work.

With its meticulous criminal craftsmen, cheap labor and, by some accounts, less effective law enforcement, Peru has in the past two years overtaken Colombia as the No. 1 source of counterfeit U.S. dollars, says the U.S. Secret Service, protector of the world's most widely traded currency.

In response, the service opened a permanent office in Lima last year, only its fourth in Latin America, and has since helped Peru's police arrest 50 people on counterfeiting charges.

Over the past decade, $103 million in fake U.S. dollars "made in Peru" have been seized — nearly half since 2010, Peruvian and U.S. officials say. Unlike most other counterfeiters, who rely on sophisticated late-model inkjet printers, the Peruvians generally go a step further — finishing each bill by hand.

"It's a very good note," said a Secret Service officer at the U.S. Embassy. "They use offset, huge machines that are used for regular printing of newspapers, or flyers."

"Once a note is printed they will throw five people (on it) and do little things, little touches that add to the quality," he said, speaking on condition he not be further identified for security reasons.

The phony money heads mostly to the United States but is also goes smuggled to nearby countries including Argentina, Venezuela and Ecuador, said Col. Segundo Portocarrero, chief of the Peruvian police's fraud division.

Peru became more attractive to counterfeiters as Washington's decade-long Plan Colombia program tightened the screws not just on drug traffickers in that neighboring Andean nation but other criminals as well, he speculated.

Counterfeiting in Peru, meanwhile, got better.

"It's much more profitable than cocaine," said a top investigator on Portocarrero's team, noting another of Peru's illegal exports.

U.N. crop estimates suggest Peru has also overtaken Colombia as the world's leading cocaine producer. But the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said counterfeiting is a better business since cocaine production has much higher overhead and transport and processing are far more complicated. Criminal penalties tend to be much higher as well.

Counterfeiters earn up to $20,000 in real currency for every $100,000 in false bills they produce after expenses, the investigator said.

He described the process:

First, design: Software such as Corel Draw or Microsoft Office is used. Then comes photolithography, the etching of metal plates, offset printing and finishing.

Finishing is next: A sheet of bills is lightly coated with varnish. Individual bills, typically 12, are then cut from the sheet.

Security strips are inserted with needles and affixed with glue applied with medical syringes. (Hold a $20 bill up to the light and you can see a strip with "USA TWENTY" printed repeatedly across it).

The bills now pass through what counterfeiters call an "enmalladora," or netting machine: Two rollers covered with coarse fabric to give them a rough texture.

The last step: Sand down the bills with fine sandpaper.

"It takes four or five days to make $300,000" in counterfeit notes, the investigator said.

Well-crafted bills are easily introduced into circulation in the United States in retail stores, where clerks are less vigilant, the Secret Service agent said.

Only $100 bills get shipped by counterfeiters to the United States, while $10s and $20s are sent to Peru's neighbors, Portocarrero said. Demand is particularly great in Argentina and Venezuela because currency controls make the dollar so coveted and they mostly circulate on the black market.

Counterfeiters employ the methods of cocaine traffickers to get their product abroad: Couriers carry notes in false-bottom suitcases, hide them in handcrafts, books, food products. People have even swallowed bills rolled up in latex for intestinal journeys.

As far as Peru's police can tell, their nation's counterfeiting business is run by domestic syndicates.

Top bands include "Los Nique," for whom the 13-year-old was working when he was arrested in 2012. Its boss, Joel Nique Quispe, was also arrested last year and sentenced to 12 years in prison. With good behavior, he could be out in four years. The 13-year-old, who cannot by law be identified because he is a minor, was released. He was not charged because of his age.

Another band is headed by Wilfredo Cobo, who is also in prison. First arrested in 2008, he was released two years later and arrested again last year. Portocarrero said Cobo used brothers in Italy, Spain and France to introduce counterfeit euros into Europe, routing them through Chile and South Africa.

For all their skill, says Portocarrero, Peruvian counterfeiters' handiwork will always get tripped up by the infrared scanner banks used to authenticate currency. That, he says, owes to their continued reliance on standard "bond" paper, the variety used by consumers that is available in stores and that easily disintegrates when wet.

If they were able to obtain "rag" paper, the cloth type used for banknotes, all bets would be off, Portocarrero said.

"The day they get it and perfect the finish a bit more, (their bills) will go undetected."

Your cellphone: private or not?

Your cellphone: private or not?

Sep. 9, 2013

by Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

Police uncovered Brima Wurie's drug dealing during a routine arrest in Boston six years ago, thanks in part to the frequent calls from "my house" arriving on his flip-top cellphone.

David Riley's participation in a San Diego gang shooting in 2009 was revealed after police stopped his Lexus for having expired tags, found weapons and eventually located incriminating photos and video on his smartphone.

Cellphones - owned by more than nine in 10 American adults - are at the center of a growing legal debate over privacy rights and technology, one that's probably headed to the Supreme Court in the coming months.

As the Wurie and Riley cases illustrate, your cellphone and the intimate information it contains can be used against you. At issue is whether police can search mobile devices upon arrest without first obtaining a warrant - and whether the data inside, from e-mail to the Internet, are fair game.

For the court, it's the latest in a string of Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases involving society's innovations - from the automobile in the past century to the current alphabet soup of DNA, GPS and mobile apps.

"Every generation has its new technologies that raise novel Fourth Amendment questions," says Orin Kerr, an expert on computer crime law at George Washington University Law School. "Technology changes the facts."

The facts about what police can do when making an arrest have been clear for 40 years: They can search the person being arrested and what's within reach, with an eye toward weapons or evidence that could be destroyed.

"It is settled law that a custodial arrest based on probable cause justifies a full search of an arrestee and any items found on him - including items such as wallets, calendars, address books, pagers and pocket diaries," the Obama administration argues in its petition asking the court to hear United States v. Wurie.

Cellphones and, increasingly, smartphones that mimic computers have clouded those facts. At least six federal or state appellate courts have ruled that they are fair game; at least three others have said search warrants are required.

In the past few weeks, the Supreme Court has been asked to hear both the California and Massachusetts cases, which could help restore clarity in Fourth Amendment search and seizure law. The justices probably will decide this fall whether to hear one or both, and a decision is possible next spring.

'THE REAL CHALLENGE' FOR DECADES

In the Wurie case, the Obama administration urges the court to reverse a 1st Circuit appeals court decision against the police search.

"Over the last decade, cellphones have become ubiquitous in the United States," the Justice Department's petition says. "Inexpensive, disposable phones that are difficult to trace are particularly common in drug-trafficking conspiracies."

In Riley v. California, lawyers for the appealing defendant argue that cellphone searches without a warrant are unreasonable.

"A cellphone nowadays is a portal into our most sensitive information and the most private aspects of our lives," says Jeffrey Fisher, lead attorney for David Riley and co-director of Stanford University's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. "It's also a device that is the gateway to your office, health records, bank records."

Given the volume of lower court cases and split decisions, it's unlikely the Supreme Court can duck the issue, as several justices publicly wished they could do this year on same-sex marriage - an institution that Justice Samuel Alito noted was "newer than cellphones or the Internet."

In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts and some of his colleagues have said the clash between modern technology and privacy rights is likely to become a dominant legal issue in the future.

"I think that is going to be the real challenge for the next 50 years â?? how we do adopt old, established rules to new technology," Roberts said during an appearance at Rice University last year. "What does the Fourth Amendment mean when you can, through technology, literally see through walls with heat imaging? I mean, is that a search and a seizure?"

Such cases, Roberts said, "are difficult for us, frankly, because we're not all technologically expert."

CASE LAW IS 'CONFUSING'

The cases coming before the court for possible consideration have little in common beyond cellphones and criminal behavior.

In the Massachusetts case, police opened Wurie's flip-phone to get the number for the repeated incoming calls. The limited search led them to get a search warrant for his apartment, where they seized crack cocaine, marijuana, cash, a firearm and ammunition. Wurie was convicted and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

An appeals court panel reversed on two counts, ruling that the cellphone search violated Wurie's constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to take the case, contending that "police have full authority not only to seize any object they find on an arrestee, but also to search its contents."

In the California case, a routine traffic stop led police to discover Riley's suspended license. They impounded his car, found two guns under the hood and arrested him for concealing weapons. Upon his arrest and again at the police station, they searched his Samsung smartphone, including text messages, photos and video.

Based on that evidence, Riley was convicted and sentenced to at least 15 years in prison; the conviction was upheld at the state appeals court, and the state Supreme Court refused to reconsider it.

Several experts agree with Fisher that the Riley appeal is more pertinent, both because of today's smartphone technology and the broader police searches that could reveal unrelated data. The Pew Research Center estimates that 56% of Americans have a smartphone, 31% seek medical information on their cellphones, and 29% use them for online banking.

"The Fourth Amendment must be sensitive to new technologies enabling police to easily obtain massive amounts of personal information that, at least as a practical matter, would previously have been inaccessible," Fisher argues in his petition.

What both sides agree on is that the high court should tackle the issue. In the Wurie case, judges on both sides of the ruling appealed for Supreme Court intervention.

"The differing standards which the courts have developed provide confusing and often contradictory guidance to law enforcement," said 1st Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Sandra Lynch in her ruling.

FROM QUILL PENS TO E-MAIL

The history of Supreme Court cases on phone technology has been similarly confusing. In 1928, the court said wiretapping didn't require a warrant. By 1967, it said bugging a phone booth certainly did.

Decisions on Fourth Amendment cases also have gone back and forth. The 1969 case Chimel v. California and 1973's U.S. v. Robinson set the standard for what police could search upon an arrest. But in the past few years, courts from California to Texas to Florida have split over the issue of cellphones and digital content.

"The new frontier of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence continues to expand as technology advances," Matthew Orso, a North Carolina attorney, wrote in a 2010 paper on the subject. "This constant expansion creates difficulty for courts in applying decades-old case law to factual scenarios never before considered."

Not far behind the issue of cellphone searches is another legal conundrum: whether police can get the location of cellphone users from service providers without a warrant. Lower courts have split on that issue as well, making a Supreme Court showdown likely in the future.

Increasingly in recent years, the high court has been asked to take on issues so complex or newfangled as to stump the justices, who live in a marble palace of ivory paper and quill pens.

When the justices ruled unanimously this year that human genes cannot be patented, the depth of knowledge required about genetics prompted Justice Antonin Scalia to disassociate himself from parts of the opinion "going into fine details of molecular biology."

"I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief," Scalia said.

Computer technology poses other problems for the court. "E-mail is already old-fashioned," Justice Elena Kagan quipped last month, "and the court hasn't gotten to that yet."

A DIGITAL HARE, A LEGAL TORTOISE

Time doesn't stop for the courts to catch up with modern medicine or technological innovation.

"At every turn, as the digital age hare leaps forward, the constitutional jurisprudence lags, like a tortoise, far behind," says Charles MacLean, an assistant professor at Indiana Tech Law School who has written extensively on the issue. "Perhaps the most unfortunate flaw in the tortoise-hare analogy is that constitutional jurisprudence, unlike Aesop's tortoise, never quite seems to catch up."

MacLean has concluded that legislatures, not courts, should address issues of rapidly changing technology - or else, "the risk is that we defer our privacy limits to programmers and marketers."

When it comes to criminal law involving search and seizure, the court since 2001 has been asked to rule on cases involving thermal imaging, global positional systems (GPS) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA):

- In Kyllo v. United States, the court ruled 5-4 that police needed a search warrant to use a thermal imaging device that detected heat used to grow marijuana inside a home.

- In U.S. v. Jones, the court ruled unanimously that police could not attach a GPS device to a car without a warrant in order to monitor its movements. Perhaps the die was cast during oral arguments when Roberts confirmed that otherwise, even the justices' cars could be followed.

- In Maryland v. King, the court ruled 5-4 last year that police can swab the cheek of someone arrested for a serious offense to obtain DNA - which then can be matched against databases of unsolved crimes.

Scalia, who wrote the Kyllo and Jones decisions and frequently sides with defendants in Fourth Amendment cases, wrote a scathing dissent in the King case. He warned that in the future, "your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason."

Some experts warn that if cellphones go the way of cheek swabs, the arrests that follow could lead to embarrassment or legal complications for otherwise law-abiding citizens.

If that happens, "any offense they can arrest you for, they can search the full contents of the phone," says Adam Gershowitz, a professor at William & Mary Law School and an expert on the subject. "I probably do six things that are illegal on my drive to work every day."

7 years in prison for consensual sex????

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Ex-snowboard instructor Alexander Peth gets prison for teen sex

Posted: 8:03 PM

TUCSON, AZ - A former snowboard instructor has been sentenced to seven years in prison for having sex with a 13-year old Tucson girl.

Pima County prosecutors say 23-year-old Alexander Peth was sentenced Monday following a guilty plea to two counts of sexual conduct with a minor.

After his release from prison, Peth will serve 10 years of probation.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that Peth met the girl and her family in February while working as a snowboard instructor at Sunrise Ski Resort in the White Mountains.

The family hired Peth to teach their daughter to snowboard.

Prosecutors say Peth and girl continued their relationship in Tucson, where they each live.

The girl's parents found out about their relationship and notified police.

Marijuana fans cheer historic Senate hearing

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Marijuana fans cheer historic Senate hearing

USA Today Tue Sep 10, 2013 3:12 PM

Federal laws pose "significant obstacles" to regulation of marijuana in states where it is legal and need to be addressed, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Tuesday in a first-ever hearing aimed at reconciling rapidly changing state marijuana laws with a federal prohibition on the drug.

"We must have a smarter approach to marijuana policy," Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said. "Marijuana use in this country is nothing new, but the way that individual states are dealing with marijuana continues to evolve."

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee follows a Justice Department memo outlining how it will enforce federal marijuana prohibitions in two states, Colorado and Washington, that have legalized its use, and 20 states that allow marijuana for medical use.

"The absolute criminalization of personal marijuana use has contributed to our nation's soaring prison population and has disproportionately affected people of color," Leahy said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Colorado has done a poor job so far of preventing marijuana exports to other states where marijuana remains illegal.

"Why has the Justice Department decided to trust Colorado?" Grassley said. "Colorado has become a significant exporter of marijuana."

The Justice Department reserved its right to challenge state laws if public health or safety problems emerge or if the states fail to enact strict regulations to control marijuana use and sale, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, author of the memo, told the Senate panel.

The states' regulations must be "tough in practice, not just on paper," Cole said. "It must include strong enforcement efforts, backed by adequate funding."

The Justice Department said in its Aug. 29 memo to U.S. attorneys nationwide that it would seek only to prosecute people who sell marijuana to minors, use state laws as a cover for drug trafficking or who attempt to distribute marijuana in states where it is not legal.

King County, Wash., Sheriff John Urquhart said he sees little conflict between his state's marijuana laws and federal law enforcement.

"The reality is we do have complimentary goals and values," Urquhart said. "We all agree we don't want our children using marijuana. We all agree we don't want impaired drivers. We all agree we don't want to continue enriching criminals."

The federal government needs to take some steps to help the state meet those goals, particularly easing banking laws to allow them to do business with licensed marijuana business, Urquhart said.

Because it's illegal under federal law for banks to open checking, savings or credit card accounts for marijuana businesses, marijuana stores are cash-only, he said. That makes them prime targets for armed robberies and makes them difficult to audit for tax evasion and wage theft, he said.

"I am simply asking that the federal government allow banks to work with legitimate marijuana businesses who are licensed under this new state law," Urquhart said.

"What we have in Washington is not the wild, wild West," he said. "The message to my deputies has been very clear: You will enforce our new marijuana laws. You will write someone a ticket for smoking in public. You will enforce age limits. You will put unlicensed stores out of business."

Legalizing marijuana without strict controls will create an enormous public health problem similar to what the United States faced with tobacco use, said Kevin Sabet, founder of Project SAM, which advocates for a marijuana policy that focuses on public health, prevention and treatment.

After years of fighting "Big Tobacco," Sabet said, "we are now on the brink of creating 'Big Marijuana.' "

"Authorizing the large-scale, commercial production of marijuana will undoubtedly expand its access and availability," Sabet said. "When we can prevent negative consequences of the commercial sale and production of marijuana now, why would be open the floodgates, hope for the best, and try with limited resources to patch everything up when things go wrong?"

The hearing suggests that "the Senate at last is acknowledging the remarkable shift in public opinion and state laws involving marijuana," Drug Police Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann said.

Officials misused U.S. surveillance program

Docs: Officials misused U.S. surveillance program

Associated Press Tue Sep 10, 2013 5:46 PM

SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. government officials for nearly three years accessed data on thousands of domestic phone numbers they shouldn’t have and then misrepresented their actions to a secret spy court to reauthorize the government’s surveillance program, documents released Tuesday show.

The government’s explanation points to an enormous surveillance infrastructure with such incredible power that even the National Security Agency doesn’t fully know how to properly use it: Officials told a judge in 2009 that the system is so large and complicated that “there was no single person who had a complete technical understanding” of it.

The documents, which the Obama administration was compelled to release as part of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group, show that National Security Agency analysts routinely exceeded their mission to track only phone numbers with reasonable connections to terrorism.

Officials said that the complexity of the computer system — and a misunderstanding of the laws, court orders and internal policies controlling analysts’ actions — contributed to the abuses. There’s no evidence that the NSA intentionally used its surveillance powers to spy on Americans for political purposes, a fear of many critics who recall the FBI’s intrusive surveillance of civil rights leaders and protesters in the 1960s.

“The documents released today are a testament to the government’s strong commitment to detecting, correcting and reporting mistakes that occur in implementing technologically complex intelligence collection activities, and to continually improving its oversight and compliance processes,” said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. “As demonstrated in these documents, once compliance incidents were discovered in the telephony metadata collection program, additional checks, balances and safeguards were developed to help prevent future instances of noncompliance.”

The Obama administration had earlier conceded that its surveillance program scooped up more domestic phone calls and emails than Congress or a court authorized. But many details of the program’s abuse were not known until Tuesday.

In a sweeping violation of court-imposed surveillance rules that went on daily between 2006 and 2009, the documents show the NSA tapped the bulk telephone records and compared them with thousands of others without “reasonable, articulable suspicion,” the required legal standard.

The NSA told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court it misunderstood restrictions on accessing data once it was archived, but Judge Reggie B. Walton wrote in a March 2009 order that such an interpretation of the court’s orders “strains credulity.” He was so fed up with the government’s overreaching that he threatened to shutter the surveillance program.

After discovering government officials had been accessing domestic phone records for nearly three years without “reasonable, articulate suspicion” that they were connected to terrorism, the judge said in a blistering opinion that he had “lost confidence” in officials’ ability to legally operate the program.

Walton noted, for instance, that just 1,935 phone numbers out of 17,835 on a list investigators were working with in early 2009 met the legal standard.

The judge ordered the NSA to conduct an “end-to-end” review of its processes and policies while also ordering closer monitoring of its activities.

Later in 2009, a Justice Department lawyer reported to the spy court a “likely violation” of NSA surveillance rules. The lawyer said that in some cases, it appeared the NSA was distributing the sensitive phone records by email to as many as 189 analysts, but only 53 were approved by the spy court to see them.

Walton wrote that he was “deeply troubled by the incidents,” which he said occurred just weeks after the NSA had performed a major review of its internal practices because of the initial problems reported earlier in the year.

The hundreds of previously classified documents federal officials released Tuesday came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Obama administration has been facing mounting pressure to reveal more details about the government’s domestic surveillance program since a former intelligence contractor released documents showing massive trawling of domestic data by the NSA.

The data included domestic telephone numbers, calling patterns and the agency’s collection of Americans’ Internet user names, IP addresses and other metadata swept up in surveillance of foreign terror suspects.

The Obama administration’s decision to release the documents comes just two weeks after it declassified three secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions — including one in response to a separate EFF lawsuit in the federal court in Washington. In that October 2011 opinion, Judge John D. Bates said he was troubled by at least three incidents over three years where government officials admitted to mistaken collection of domestic data.

The NSA’s huge surveillance machine proved unwieldy even for the experts inside the agency. In a long report to the surveillance court in August 2009, the Obama administration blamed its mistakes on the complexity of the system and “a lack of shared understanding among the key stakeholders” about the scope of the surveillance.

Kyrsten Sinema still undecided about bombing Syria???

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Speech gets tepid response from Ariz.’s D.C. delegates

By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Sep 10, 2013 10:33 PM

President Barack Obama’s high-stakes speech on Syria received a lukewarm response Tuesday from Arizona’s Washington delegation.

Supporters of his call for military intervention said Obama’s argument wasn’t forceful enough, and those skeptical of his plan said he failed to change their minds.

Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake agree with Obama on the need to use military force against Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons, but they were underwhelmed by the president’s argument for strikes.

The two Arizona Republicans are skeptical of a proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin that would allow Syrian President Bashar Assad to avoid a U.S. attack by surrendering his regime’s stockpile of chemical weapons to international authorities, but both said the president is right to pursue that option. Obama announced Tuesday that he had asked House and Senate leaders to postpone voting on a resolution to authorize military action until the Russian plan is explored.

“We appreciate the president speaking directly to the American people about the conflict in Syria,” McCain said in a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a fellow member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We regret, however, that he did not speak more forcefully about the need to increase our military assistance to moderate opposition forces in Syria, such as the Free Syrian Army. We also regret that he did not lay out a clearer plan to test the seriousness of the Russian and Syrian proposal to transfer the Assad regime’s chemical weapons to international custody.”

McCain and Graham called for the United States and its allies to introduce “a tough U.N. Security Council resolution that lays out what steps Syria would have to take to give up its chemical weapons, including making a full and accurate declaration of all of its chemical weapons and granting international monitors unfettered access to all sites in Syria that possess these weapons.” Serious consequences for Syria’s failure to comply also would have to be part of the deal, they said.

Flake, in an interview with The Arizona Republic, called the president’s speech anticlimactic given the fast-moving events of the past 48 hours. He agreed that evidence against Assad is compelling, but Flake said Obama’s separate appeals to the political right and left in his speech weren’t effective because the issue doesn’t clearly split along party lines.

Obama would have been better off launching a targeted strike against Syria in response to the alleged Aug. 21 chemical-weapons incident, which killed more than 1,000 men, women and children, and reporting to Congress later, Flake added. That way, Obama would not have had to convince war-weary Americans and lawmakers that the engagement would be limited.

“I think that a lot of people have made up their minds, and they’re skeptical that this would be a limited strike,” Flake said. “I think there’s a lot of skepticism, and the president correctly said that people view it through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s a tough thing to break out of.”

McCain and Flake both sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and on Sept. 4 voted in favor of a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Assad. However, public and congressional opinion has leaned strongly against U.S. action.

On Monday, the situation shifted again after Putin proposed that Syria relinquish its chemical-weapons stockpile, which Assad previously had refused to even publicly confirm possessing.

“It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments,” Obama said during the 16-minute address he delivered to the nation from the East Room of the White House. “But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.”

Meanwhile, McCain is working with a group of senators on an amendment to the resolution that cleared the Foreign Relations Committee to ensure the latest development is not just a stalling tactic. In a Tuesday appearance on “CBS This Morning,” McCain said the revisions “would require strict timelines and strict guidelines that would have to be met as part of the authorization for the president.”

Obama’s speech did little to sway members of Arizona’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives to support his call for intervention in Syria.

Republican Rep. Matt Salmon said he remained opposed to military action. “I do not believe (Obama’s) speech won over the Congress or the American people,” Salmon said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C., following the president’s prime-time speech to the nation.

The president failed to explain why Syria poses an immediate threat to the U.S. and didn’t lay out a credible strategy, according to the Mesa congressman.

Salmon supports the diplomatic alternative that Obama has agreed to pursue, of negotiating for Syria to hand control of its chemical weapons to the United Nations. But Salmon said Obama is taking credit for an option that he “stumbled into” when Secretary of State John Kerry floated it hypothetically Monday.

Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Prescott said the speech showed Obama “just got bested at geopolitical chess.” The president asked to delay congressional votes to authorize military action, in Gosar’s estimation, because he saw he did not have enough support.

“(The president) has not changed my opposition to military action. He made no convincing argument that a military strike is in our nation's interest,” Gosar said.

The president has lost credibility on Syria, he said, and overall on foreign policy.

Republican Rep. David Schweikert has been skeptical of the president’s call for military strikes, as has Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who has called for international cooperation. Neither answered The Republic’s request for reaction to the speech.

Nor did Arizona’s members who have said they haven’t made up their minds on the president’s plan: Republican Rep. Trent Franks and Democrats Kyrsten Sinema, Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatick and Ed Pastor.

Republic reporters Rebekah L. Sanders and Erin Kelly contributed to this article.

Volunteers Cops - Know your enemy!!!!

Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa volunteers help police departments save time, money

More time allotted to officers; volunteers handle non-emergency, non-crime tasks

Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 6:35 pm

By Corey Malecka, Special to Tribune

In an effort to assist officers with the daily grind of safeguarding the communities they serve, East Valley police departments are home to various volunteer programs that provide much-needed leverage to the departments’ time and budgets.

The existence of police volunteer programs often helps shore up more time for sworn, or employed, police officers to spend on the literal public safety component of their jobs; tasking volunteers with non-emergency and non-crime issues offers the potential for departments to be “proactive in terms of addressing crime problems,” said Mike White, associate professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The national program, called the Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS), is utilized by police departments like those serving Gilbert, Chandler and Mesa. It is a program under the United States Citizen Corps, an organization that began in 2002 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to enhance community involvement through volunteerism.

“One of the myths about policing is that all police officers do is fight crime and catch bad guys, and that’s simply not true,” [but hey, isn't that the myth the police unions try to sell us to get their members more money??? That a police officer is an super dangerous job and their lives are in danger 24/7, when in fact a police officers job is no more dangerous then a person that drives a car at work???] said White, who has conducted research for and with police agencies for about 15 years. “There’ve been studies that look at the nature of what patrol officers do and patrol officers make up the majority of a police department.”

About 25 percent of an officer’s time is actually tied to fighting crime, while about 75 percent of the workload is basic police services, information gathering, taking reports and order maintenance, White noted. [Which is quite different then what the police unions are constantly telling us. They want us to believe that cops have a super dangerous job and their lives are in danger 24/7, when in reality a cops job isn't any more dangerous then that of a person who drives a delivery truck]

VIPS standards are fairly uniform in hiring volunteers, but the number of fields, minimum work hours and the type of training offered in East Valley departments, like those in Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert vary.

Interviews and background checks

The Town of Gilbert Police Department’s 60 volunteers had to pass a rigorous interview process and “background investigation,” said Sherry Nielsen, a police volunteer programs specialist for the last seven years. It consists of fingerprinting, a records check, a polygraph test and a drug screening.

Conducting a background investigation, testing, training and signing a confidentiality agreement helps ensure volunteers will not violate the privacy of the 227 sworn officers, 122 civilian employees, and even alleged criminals being processed at the Gilbert PD, she said, [sounds like the cops only want volunteers who will cover the *sses of crooked cops] considering volunteers have access to police data and building clearance.

“If they hear something or see something while they are here, they cannot take that outside,” Nielsen said, stressing the importance of confidentiality at each department.

The stringent interview process is by no means intended to scare people, said Melanie Slate, the City of Chandler Police Department’s VIPS community outreach coordinator. It ensures the department does not hire a resident who could damage its integrity. [Of course I think they should do a lot more to keep crooked cops off the force, but that ain't going to happen]

Police volunteers have been utilized in Chandler for about two decades and have logged a total of nearly 36,500 hours over the past two years, said Slate, Chandler’s coordinator for six years.

Training and volunteer fields

Gilbert’s VIPS are able to choose the field they find interesting, Nielsen said. Training instructs volunteers on what they can and cannot do and how to communicate with others.

“Their goal is not to aggravate any citizens. Their goal is to help and support the police department by helping the citizens and supporting the citizens with the goal of keeping everyone safe,” she said.

Each field has different training specifications, whether alleviating officers of basic administrative duties or allowing an officer to resume patrol, Nielsen said.

The town’s volunteers had a total of 28,921 logged hours from July 2011-June 2013.

Chandler’s 62 volunteers, who support around 320 sworn officers, do not undergo peace officer certification as full-fledged officers do, Slate said.

They don’t have the authority to make an arrest as a sworn police officer would, although they can conduct a citizen’s arrest, which any private citizen can do.

Slate explained her volunteers must attend a 2-3 hour orientation and basic field training. They get to select from 18 fields such as an alarm unit, chaplain, [with the both the Federal and Arizona Constitutions forbidding mixing government and religion why are the police hiring volunteer chaplains????] dispatch aid, DUI task force, fingerprint technician, lab assistant or motorist assist.

Motorist assist volunteers drive vehicles, such as a Ford Escape of Ford Taurus, with volunteer decals on the side and a blue light bar, she said.

“They provide assistance to motorists who have encountered vehicle problems. [Why are the police driving private companies out of business that offer roadside motorist services??? If you need a tow truck you should call AAA and pay for it] They do utilize the same radios and in-car computers that are police officers use for communications and dispatching,” Slate said.

Chandler’s VIPS program is similar to Gilbert’s and Mesa’s with a one-year commitment and 16 hours of volunteering a month, “but several do more” than is required, she said.

Mesa’s program is slightly different because it has about 30 fields to choose from. Mesa has about 135 volunteers and 129-square miles of police jurisdiction, said Hall, a former Mesa Crime Scene Unit supervisor and forensics specialist.

The amount of training depends on the field they are placed into.

In Mesa’s Crime Scene Unit, volunteers will have eight weeks of class training and eight weeks of field training before they can assist officers with property cases, said Hall, who helped develop the volunteer unit. From 2010-2012, Mesa’s volunteers logged an approximate total of 86,267 hours.

‘Added value’ and community relations

By utilizing volunteers, Mesa saved approximately $500,090 — also known as “added value” — during the 2012 budget year. Mesa’s volunteer program began in 1990.

Hall explained one benefit of having volunteers is “you’re bringing the community” to the police department for a closer engagement and to receive tips about the community directly from citizens.

Expenses for the volunteers, such as the background process, interview, training, polo shirts, pepper spray, and Mesa’s annual volunteer banquet are paid out from the department’s budget, she said.

Slate said Chandler’s program has received weekly emails, letters and even phone calls commending volunteers assisting police officers.

“The VIPS program has also improved the overall quality of life for those who live and visit Chandler,” Slate said in an email.

The department’s jurisdiction is 71-square miles, she said, with a combined added value of $796,550 from budget years 2011-2013.

“The volunteers enhance what we are able to do rather than save money,” Slate said about the real benefit of Chandler’s program.

It has no definitive budget for VIPS, she said, because money is channeled to each field within each police unit making it difficult to tally.

The Gilbert Police Department polices 76-square miles and has received about 700 police commendations from people mentioning volunteers assisting police in the past five years, Nielsen said. The total added value was $634,362 from budget years 2011-2013.

“I think using volunteers is a good way to connect with the community and improve community relations,” said White, ASU’s professor of criminology and criminal justice, in an email. “It is a way for the department to show it is transparent and open to ‘outsider’s’ views.” [At the beginning of this article they seem to state the opposite]

Corey Malecka, a junior studying journalism at Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, was an intern for the East Valley Tribune this past summer. 2) put in drugs, government and sinema

Colorado recalls dealt a serious blow to gun-control advocates

Source

The Colorado recalls dealt a serious blow to gun-control advocates. Here’s why.

By Sean Sullivan, Published: September 11 at 6:30 am

Something pretty remarkable happened in Colorado on Tuesday night. John Morse, the Democratic president of the state Senate, was recalled from office. So was Democratic state Sen. Angela Giron.

Taken together, the losses arguably represent the biggest defeat for gun-control advocates since the push for expanded background checks failed in the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

Morse and Giron appeared on ballots Tuesday in the culmination of a recall campaign that largely shaped up as a referendum on the state’s recently passed gun-control laws, for which both Morse and Giron voted. Out of state money poured in on both sides. On one end, the National Rifle Association dished out six figures. On the other, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did too.

It’s not every day that you see an incumbent recalled from office, let alone someone as high-profile as a state Senate president. The message the defeat of Morse and Giron sends to legislators all across the country is unmistakable: If you are thinking about pushing for new gun-control laws, you could face swift consequences.

“You could almost call it the bellwether state as far as what’s going to happen down the road as far as gun-control and Second Amendment rights,” Republican George Rivera, who will fill Giron’s seat, told The Fix late last month.

The particulars of Tuesday’s elections prompted some gun-control advocates to argue that the results shouldn’t be over-read. For one thing, voters didn’t receive mail ballots automatically, a substantial change of protocol in a state where the majority of voters cast their votes via mail. For another, the losses don’t mean Republicans will control the Senate; nor do they mean the gun laws that Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) signed into law will be repealed.

“This election does not reflect the will of Coloradans, a majority of whom strongly support background checks and opposed these recalls,” said Bloomberg in a statement distributed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group he co-founded. “It was a reflection of a very small, carefully selected population of voters’ views on the legislature’s overall agenda this session.”

But it shouldn’t go overlooked that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the two districts where voters cast ballots (though Morse’s district is more of a swing district than Giron’s more Democratic-leaning territory). And the anti-recall side easily outraised the pro-recall interests. The Democratic losses are a reflection of the fact that enthusiasm was squarely on the opposite side of Morse and Giron.

“The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale,” the NRA’s political arm said in a statement.

While the long-term significance of the election will assuredly be be debated, it’s hard to argue against the proposition that lawmakers in other states will have Colorado somewhere in their minds the next time a push to tighten gun laws begins ramping up.

In the larger debate over gun laws, Tuesday was another victory for the NRA and its allies, who earlier this year demonstrated the power they wield in the campaign to prevent the passage of tighter gun restrictions in Congress.

Two Colorado state legislators lost on Tuesday and two Republicans won the chance to replace them. But make no mistake, the effects could be felt well beyond the borders of the Centennial State.

Release of wrongly jailed men fails to silence critics

Release of wrongly jailed men fails to silence critics

By Steve Mills and Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune reporters

7:00 a.m. CDT, September 11, 2013

The decision by Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to set aside the convictions of two men Tuesday, leading to their release from prison and into the arms of family members and lawyers, underscored the fact that Illinois' problems with wrongful convictions are far from over.

But Alvarez's handling of the cases of Carl Chatman and Lathierial Boyd also may signal a shift in her approach to wrongful conviction cases, one that has given her a reputation as a prosecutor who slow-walks innocence claims and dismisses convictions only when she has no choice.

In some cases, even when DNA evidence has pointed to another potential suspect or when other compelling evidence has suggested a prisoner's innocence, Alvarez has shown resistance to vacating convictions.

"Above all else, our work as prosecutors is about seeking justice, even if that measure of justice means we must acknowledge failures of the past," Alvarez said Tuesday. "Justice was certainly delayed for Mr. Boyd and for Mr. Chatman, but we're hopeful that, with today's action, it will not be denied."

Since Alvarez launched her Conviction Integrity Unit in February 2012 to root out wrongful convictions, she has gone to court to set aside convictions in five cases. Chatman's is, in a way, a watershed; it essentially involves prosecutors saying an alleged rape victim was not credible.

Attorney Kathleen Zellner, who represented Boyd in his effort to overturn his conviction for a 1990 murder, praised Alvarez for her "courage and dedication to doing the right thing" rather than fighting Zellner's efforts to help Boyd win his freedom.

Zellner said the Conviction Integrity Unit conducted an exhaustive case review, interviewing witnesses and evaluating all the evidence, and came to the conclusion that Boyd was innocent.

Alvarez's critics, while cheered by the releases of Chatman and Boyd, were less charitable. They said Alvarez has devoted too few prosecutors to the Conviction Integrity Unit and dismisses convictions only when she faces certain defeat, and does so mainly to avoid negative publicity.

Four prosecutors and two investigators are assigned to the unit, but those prosecutors also must handle other criminal cases.

"We're hopeful that it represents a real change in the way they analyze wrongful convictions," said attorney Jon Loevy, whose firm has won the freedom of several state prisoners. "But there are too many cases where the innocence is obvious and they refuse to acknowledge it."

David Erickson, a former top aide to Alvarez's predecessor, Dick Devine, and a retired Illinois Appellate Court justice, said Alvarez and her office, like other big city prosecutors' offices, are undergoing an evolution in how they handle innocence claims.

He said it is unrealistic for defense attorneys to expect a prosecutor to dismiss a case simply because they claim they have evidence of innocence. [UNREALISTIC!!!!! Now that's why people don't get fair trials. The system assumes you are guilty till proven innocent!!!!! It should be exactly the opposite!!!!] Reinvestigating cases that are often decades old is time-consuming and difficult, he said.

"It's not a matter of moving fast or slow. It's a matter of getting these cases right," said Erickson, who teaches at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology. "I can guarantee you this: The first time that it's a mistake and the person she releases reoffends, she'll catch hell."

Said Hugh Mundy, an associate professor at John Marshall Law School and a former federal public defender: "History has taught us that prosecutors are extraordinarily reluctant to revisit cases in this manner, and that's why I think what the state's attorney's office is doing is a good start."

Chatman, 58, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the May 2002 rape of a county employee at the Daley Center. Although he confessed and the alleged victim identified him as her attacker, the case had long been clouded by doubts. Chatman's attorneys had alleged that the woman fabricated the attack to get money from the county through a lawsuit.

She also had claimed she was raped in October 1979 while working at an office on North Michigan Avenue, and sued then, too. Alvarez said prosecutors concluded that the purported victim "lacks credibility." Officials said prosecutors would look at withdrawing the warrant for the man charged in the 1979 attack. Edward Szymczak fled to his native Poland before trial but, in a letter to the judge, claimed he was innocent.

Boyd, 47, was sentenced to 82 years in prison for a February 1990 shooting outside a Wrigleyville bar that killed Michael Fleming and wounded Ricky Warner. Although nine witnesses said they could not identify the shooter, Chicago police said Warner identified Boyd, even though he initially said he could not identify his assailant. Police also did not disclose that one witness who looked at a lineup that included Boyd told police she was certain he was not the shooter. [Lying corrupt cops are another reason you WON'T get a fair trial]

Boyd offered an alibi, saying he was at his sister's house about 20 miles away eating pizza and watching a Chicago Bulls game. A veteran Cook County sheriff's deputy was at Boyd's sister's home at the time of the shooting and testified in Boyd's defense, court documents show.

"It's pretty clear from what we've seen," said Alvarez, "that there wasn't enough to bring charges against this man."

Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school, has long said that Alvarez's office takes too long to come to the realization that an inmate has been wrongly convicted, even when it is presented with persuasive evidence. [That's not unique to Chicago, it happens here in Arizona!!!]

"We're delighted, of course, to see people exonerated, and she certainly makes it happen faster than it might. But she's also not nearly as fast as she could be," Warden said. "Often these cases aren't that hard to figure out. Once you figure them out, you can move far more expeditiously than she does."

Lawyers at the Northwestern University center had been arguing for years for the release of Daniel Taylor, who spent about two decades behind bars for a 1992 double murder though records showed he was in a Chicago police lockup when the crime occurred. Alvarez dropped the case in late June.

Alvarez's office also fought claims from two groups of men who were teens when they were arrested for separate murders even though DNA evidence pointed to other suspects. Those men eventually were exonerated. [Let's not let a little DNA that proves a person's innocent get in the way of a prosecutor carving another guilty notch on his gun!!! Hey, prosecutors get re-elected by claiming to be "tough on crime", why let a few innocent people falsely convicted of crimes get in the way!!!]

Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office, said the Conviction Integrity Unit represented a "shift in philosophy" at the office. She said Alvarez has made good on her commitment to the public to more aggressively investigate possible wrongful convictions. That is especially true when the case involved an inmate who has mental health issues, as does Chatman, or when the case is constructed on testimony from a single eyewitness, as was Boyd's, Daly said.

She said finding witnesses in the Boyd case was difficult because many had moved and some had died. Prosecutors interviewed Boyd at least three times, she said, and had pored over the trial transcripts repeatedly trying to find flaws in the case. She said the Chatman case required a similar effort.

"It's extremely labor-intensive and, unfortunately, we don't have an immense amount of resources to invest in these cases. Certainly not as much as she would like," Daly said. "We're doing something this office has never ventured into in such a proactive manner."

smmills@tribune.com

sschmadeke@tribune.com

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