No Justice For Victor Steen

UPDATE III:  Republi-con "illustrates just how much the Garner case really is about race. Had Eric Garner been a rural white man with a cowboy hat killed by federal agents, instead of a large black man choked to death by the NYPD, his face would be on a Ted Cruz for President poster by now."

Read The Atlantic, If Eric Garner Were White.

UPDATE II:  Note also, Wilson's testimony is tainted by racism.

Read Slate, Michael Brown Wasn’t a Superhuman Demon.  

UPDATE:  Note, the link below is the sequence of events laid out by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch, who has "a long record of protecting police in such cases." 

Read also VOX, Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally. and Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.

I am not surprised that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted, considering what happened in that case. 

Heck, in NW Florida, police can shoot an unarmed black man in his own driveway, or kill a young black man for riding a bicycle.

Does anyone remember Victor Steen, a 17 year old young black male, chased, then crushed under a Pensacola Police cruiser on October 3, 2009.

Why you might ask?  Because Pensacola Police Officer Jerald Ard saw Steen ride a bicycle through an empty construction site.

Ard pursued Steen in his police cruiser, attempted to fire a Taser weapon from the window of the moving cruiser, and drove the cruiser on the side walk, and against traffic, trying to knock Steen off the bicycle.

Don't take my word for it, watch the video:



For more on this case, read Do Anyone Really Care?

The Price of Fear, Anger and Hatred

UPDATE II:  Says the "first commander of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay . . . 'many of the detainees should never have been sent in the first place. They had little intelligence value, and there was insufficient evidence linking them to war crimes. . . the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong. We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantánamo, both in terms of detention and torture. Our decision to keep Guantánamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States.'"

Read Slate,"A Prison That Should Never Have Been Opened".

Read also Does the Star-Spangled Banner Wave Over the Land of the Torturers?

 

UPDATE:  Who needs due process?  You do.

"For years now, War on Terrorism hawks have been arguing that terrorists -- by which they mean people accused of terrorism -- don't identify themselves like traditional enemies; and that it's foolish to read them their rights, to bring them before a judge, to require that evidence be presented to justify holding them, or to interfere with the judgment calls the executive branch makes in war time. . .

[The case of 'Elvis impersonator Paul Kevin Curtis, who was jailed for a week, interrogated while chained to a chair as the FBI turned his house upside down, with no confession or physical evidence tying him to the ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and other public officials'] is a reminder that being accused of a heinous act, like sending a poison-laced letter to the president, does not mean that the accused is guilty. It is an eye-opening look at an FBI apparently willing to continue holding a man it had good reason to believe innocent. And it is a demonstration of why our system requires appearing before a judge, with evidence, to hold a suspect: to protect innocents from being imprisoned, and to ensure that the real bad guys are found."

Read The Atlantic, What the Framing of a Terror Suspect Says About GOP Attacks on Due Process. 

"[S]even and a half years at Guantánamo, without explanation" and a stain on the U.S. Constitution.

Read The New York Times, My Guantánamo Nightmare.

Republi-CON 'It's Not Judicial Activism, It's Judicial Engagement' Hypocrisy

UPDATE:  Recent Supreme Court give full display to judicial activism philosophy-hypocrisy. 

"So [on June 25, 2013], according to the court's conservatives, Congress had no business approving a law meant to keep states and localities from disenfranchising voters. [On June 26, 2013], though, all due deference should be given to Congress' awful attempt to render gay marriages nonexistent under federal law. Evidently, to those four justices, Congress' wishes only matter when they line up with the conservative worldview. "

Read U.S. News & World Report, A Congress of Convenience for Supreme Court Conservatives.

When the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declared unconstitutional the individual insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act, the Court "used the phrase [judicial engagement] on page 104 of the majority opinion, evidently for the first time in any judicial opinion. When Congress oversteps its limits, the appeals court said, 'the Constitution requires judicial engagement, not judicial abdication.'" Read The New York Time, Actively Engaged, which noted that:

"During the Kagan confirmation hearings in 2010, Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee, having denounced judicial activism days or even hours earlier in their press releases, worked hard to impress its virtues on the nominee when she appeared before them in person. 'The American people are concerned about their courts,' Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama lectured Ms. Kagan. 'They’re concerned about a growing expansive government that seems to be beyond anything they’ve ever seen before. And they’d like to know what their judges might like to do about it.'

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma spent nearly an entire question period trying to get the nominee to agree with him that if Congress passed a law requiring Americans to 'eat three vegetables and three fruits every day,' the court should strike it down.

'Sounds like a dumb law,' said Ms. Kagan, who understood precisely what game was afoot. 'But I think that the question of whether it’s a dumb law is different from the question of whether it’s constitutional, and I think that courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they’re senseless.'"

Sounds like what I said during the debate with Mike on the health care law.

This Isn't Funny, It Is Scary

"Guantanamo Bay hosts a one-of-a-kind military tribunal, which is being spied on and controlled by unidentified forces."  Watch the Colbert Report,Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Trial at Gitmo as he takes a critical look at our "endless borderless war against an emotional state," and its constitutional travesty, the military tribunals "designed by President Bush, implemented by President Obama and inspired by President Kafka":

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Also watch the former Acting Solicitor General talk  about the U.S. justice system, courtroom bugging and the future of Guantanamo Bay, where he condemns the torture testimony and secret proceedings while Colbert notes that the U.S. is "nothing like the old Soviet Union, we do not have gulags in Siberia, we have gulags in Estonia."

Republi-CON Civil Rights Hypocrisy

Republi-cons may love one civil right, but disdain most others.

Locally, our Santa Rosa County Sheriff Wendell Hall supports the 2nd Amendment and endorses the right to bear arms to protect our freedoms. Read the Pensacola New Journal, Milton rally supports right to bear arms, Local leaders gather to show support for gun ownership in Saturday’s paper.

Coincidentally, several weeks ago a local law firm sent out an email highlighting a settlement on a high profile lawsuit against the Sheriff regarding another civil rights. The email noted:

“The case arose out of a nighttime confrontation between the Sheriffs' deputies and homeowners, shortly after Hurricane Ivan made landfall, in 2004. A private home, damaged by the storm and temporally abandoned by its owners, was apparently being broken into. Neighbors saw flashlights inside the upstairs of the house. The side door of the house was kicked in, and muddy boot prints were discovered on the door and leading up the stairway.

Neighbors confronted the two intruders with flashlights by asking them to get out of the house. The light-wielding individuals responded by yelling back inappropriate and threatening expletives. Convinced that the home was being looted, one of the neighbors fired a warning shot into the ground, a few feet in front of him, to alert others around, and to defend his neighborhood.

The prowlers brandishing flashlights turned out to be two sheriff's deputies-one from Santa Rosa County, and the other from Pinellas County. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff's office gave conflicting accounts as to why they were inside the house, or even if they were in the house at all. The two deputies abandoned the house and flanked some of the neighbors outside their homes.

The deputies ran at the neighbors in the street, and began to swear, yell and threaten them with their weapons drawn. The deputies did not identify themselves until just a few feet before they reached the homeowners. Once the deputies identified themselves, the homeowners quickly surrendered.

After the two homeowners surrendered by lying flat on the ground with their hands out, the officer from Pinellas County then brutally attacked one of them-a retired New York City Police Captain. The captain's wife reacted to the brutal attacks, and was herself fiercely tackled and permanently injured.

The responding police officers called to the scene attempted to cover up the misconduct and went as far as threatening the witnesses. When the homeowners refused to cooperate with the coverup, the Police Captain and the neighbor who fired the warning shot, a retired Air Force Colonel, were arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Despite formal protests from the Sheriff, all charges were quickly dropped by the State's Attorney's office. The Santa Rosa County Sheriff doggedly refused to even look into whether his deputies had engaged in misconduct that evening. When the two involved homeowners insisted, the Santa Rosa Sheriff retaliated by trying to bring new criminal charges against them.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations opened a case after the homeowners complained that the Sheriff was retaliating against them for filing a legitimate grievance. One Santa Rosa deputy resigned and the Pinellas County deputy went to federal prison for a year for violating the civil rights of the retired NYPD Police Captain.”

The citizens of Santa Rosa County might need those guns to protect themselves from assault, battery, threats, false arrest, fabricated charges, and retaliation by the Sheriff, who apparently has less regard for the 4th Amendment and little respect for the right to be free from unreasonable searches and unlawful arrests.

Republi-CON Judcial Activism Hypocrisy

 “THIS IS NOT the kind of a question you can leave to Congress,” Justice Antonin Scalia pronounced during a Supreme Court argument Wednesday.

The subject was the Voting Rights Act, one of the most successful pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, and in particular its Section 5. That provision requires nine states and assorted jurisdictions in seven others to win Justice Department approval before changing their voting laws. The burden is on these 'covered' jurisdictions, unlike the rest of the country, to prove that such changes won’t adversely affect the right of African Americans and other minorities to vote. Shelby County, Ala., was in court Wednesday arguing that this pre-clearance requirement is an unfair infringement on Alabama’s sovereignty.

Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and has reauthorized it four times since, most recently in 2006. Each time it has extended Section 5 on the grounds that some jurisdictions, mostly but not only in the South, have particularly egregious records of interfering with blacks voting. Originally such interference took the form of 'literacy tests' and other blatant blocks to voter registration; these days it can involve more subtle ways of limiting minority turnout, such as moving polling stations. The reauthorization in 2006 was based on a voluminous record — thousands of pages of evidence — showing that the covered jurisdictions have a propensity toward discriminatory rules. The Senate agreed by a vote of 98 to 0; the House, 390 to 33."

Read the Washington Post, Justice Scalia’s contempt of Congress.

Which proves the point that it's only so-called judicial activism and judicial legislation when the other side does it.

CSI Dog Poop

UPDATE II: "A Fairfax County woman has been found not guilty of violating the pooper scooper law" Read the Washington Post, Dogwalker not guilty in unscooped dog poop trial, where you follow the trial via tweets.

Can't wait to see the movie.

Here is a picture of Baxter the dog:



Do you think that cute face swayed the jury?


UPDATE: "A dispute between neighbors in Fairfax County over that perennial suburban pet peeve — unscooped dog poop — has grown so big that the case is set to go to a jury Tuesday." Read the Washington Post, Fairfax neighbors head to court over unscooped dog poop.

"Some apartment complexes are using advances in DNA identification to deter dog owners who don’t pick up after their pets." Read The New York Times, Tracing Unscooped Dog Waste to the Culprit.

Am I a Felon?

UPDATE: What if I was lying, not about my age or weight on an Internet dating site, but about receiving the Medal of Honor? Read the Washington Post, Supreme Court to review free speech issue on lying about military honors.

"Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site. Or you could be sent to federal prison if your boss told you to work but you used the company's computer to check sports scores online. Imagine that Eric Holder's Justice Department urged Congress to raise penalties for violations, making them felonies allowing three years in jail for each broken promise. Fanciful, right?

Think again. Congress is now poised to grant the Obama administration's wishes in the name of 'cybersecurity.'"

Read the Wall Street Journal, Should Faking a Name on Facebook Be a Felony?

Big Brother is Watching You

UPDATE III: As I've said for years, big brother is watching you. Read MSNBC, German officials admit using spyware on citizens, as Big Brother scandal grows.


UPDATE II: The government doesn't even need location data from cellphone towers if it uses 'a little known cellphone-tracking device.' Read the Wall Street Journal, 'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash.


UPDATE: "In a series of rulings on the use of satellites and cellphones to track criminal suspects, judges around the country have been citing George Orwell’s '1984' to sound an alarm. They say the Fourth Amendment’s promise of protection from government invasion of privacy is in danger of being replaced by the futuristic surveillance state Orwell described. . .

Last month, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn turned down a government request for 113 days of location data from cellphone towers, citing 'Orwellian intrusion' and saying the courts must 'begin to address whether revolutionary changes in technology require changes to existing Fourth Amendment doctrine.'

The Supreme Court is about to do just that. In November, it will hear arguments in United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259, the most important Fourth Amendment case in a decade. The justices will address a question that has divided the lower courts: Do the police need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect's car and track its movements for weeks at a time?"

Read The New York Times, Court Case Asks if 'Big Brother' Is Spelled GPS.

Should a warrant be required before the government can monitor your movement? Read DailyTech.com, Obama Administration Fights to Allow Warrantless GPS Tracking.

School District Lawsuit Update

UPDATE IV: "Superintendent Tim Wyrosdick told WUWF radio, 'Nothing in the revised consent decree changes what employees could or couldn't do.' (See the differences yourself at: http://bit.ly/pJuOA2)." Read the Pensacola News Journal, Liberty Counsel 'win' in the bank.


UPDATE III: Ransom paid, lawsuits dismissed. Read the Pensacola News Journal, 3-year Santa Rosa school prayer battle is over.

Read the competing press releases from the ACLU and Liberty Counsel.

And to read the court documents, click here.


UPDATE II: The court has ruled on Liberty Counsel's motion for a preliminary injunction and the School District's motion to dismiss. To read the order and some of the other court documents, click here.


UPDATE: If you suffer from insomnia, the local school district lawsuit court documents have been updated.

Don't forget about that other lawsuit, Contempt of Court or Contempt For God: Now The Teachers Sue.

Liberty Counsel has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction.

To read the motion and some of the other court documents, click here.

Believe It or Not: DUI/DWI at the Demolition Derby

"After David L. Warner Jr. won the Jessamine County Fair demolition derby on Wednesday night, police arrested him on a charge of driving under the influence and took him to jail.

According to a release from Nicholasville police, witnesses at the fair told police that 'Warner had consumed several Bud Light beers while he was preparing to drive in the derby.'"

Read the Kentucky.com, Nicholasville police arrest victorious demolition derby driver on DUI charge.

One commernter asked: "Did they pile on charges of not using his turn signal, no tail lights and illegal lane changes?"

In America, Make War, Not Love

"[W]hat sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively but virtually binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" Read The New York Times, Sex and the Supremes.

You Can Kill a Rat, But Not a Hamster

"Why do we protect pets more than farm animals?" Read The New York Times, Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.

Don't Read Your Spouse's Email

UPDATE: Also, be careful when you 'wiretap' (record) your spouse in Nebraska, or probably anywhere else in the U.S. Read arstechnica.com, Modern divorce: Wiretapped teddy bears, $120,000 in fines.

And read the federal court order to understand why.

Don't read your spouse's email, especially in Michigan. Read the Washington Post, Michigan man to could go to jail for reading his wife's e-mail.

Free Speech, Is It All or Nothing?

UPDATE II: Chief Justice "Roberts called 'startling and dangerous' the government's argument that the value of certain categories of speech should be weighed against their societal costs when protecting free speech." Justice Alito would disagree. Read the Washington Post, Alito stands alone on Supreme Court's First Amendment cases.


UPDATE: Free speech means all of it, at least so long as the speech is on matters of public concern, the relationship between speaker and subject was not a private grudge, and speech is said from a place where the speaker has the right to be. Read the New York Times, Justices Rule for Protesters at Military Funerals, or read the Supreme Court opinion.

Antichrist Obama, God Hates Adultery, You're Going to Hell!

Any problems with those statements?

Then what is the objection to God Hates the USA, Thank God for 9/11, Thank God for Dead Soldiers, Semper Fi Fags, Priests Rape Boys, or God Hates Your Tears?

Read the Washington Post, High court struggles with funeral protest case.

Who Controls End-of-Life Decisions?

The State or you? Read The New York Times, Unflinching End-of-Life Moments, which reviews an HBO documentary about assisted suicide, "How to Die in Oregon."

Golfers Beware

"An errant shot that left a man blind in one eye has produced a reassuring message for golfers: you are not responsible for all of your bad shots." Read The New York Times, For Golfers, Fore Isn’t Last Word on Ducking.

Prosecutorial Payback, Shrouded in Secrets

Halloween is over, but this is scary:

After a failed effort to stop a woman from talking about a case, an activist was served with a 'sprawling' federal subpoena.

"It had almost 100 subparts and sought documents, e-mails, phone records, checks, bank records, credit card receipts, photographs, videos and 'Facebook communications (including messages and wall posts)' concerning contacts with dozens of people, including doctors and lawyers, along with information about a billboard supporting the [a doctor and his wife being prosecuted] and a documentary film called, perhaps presciently, 'The Chilling Effect.'"

When the woman refused to comply with the court’s order, a federal judge imposed fines of $200 each a day."

Read The New York Times, A First Amendment Case, Shrouded in Secrets.

Government secrecy is antithetical to democracy. See OpenTheGovernment.org.

Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes

Or as Socrates said "Who will protect us against the protectors?"

A staff sergeant in the Maryland Air National Guard and a computer systems engineer thought his helmet video camera would. But after "he taped a Maryland state trooper who stopped him for speeding on I-95 using a camera mounted on his helmet [and then] posted the video on YouTube" he was arrested, charged with violating the state's wiretapping law, and jailed for 26 hours.

Many states have laws against 'wiretapping. In Florida, it a crime to intercept or record a "wire, oral, or electronic communication" unless all parties to the communication consent. But it is not a crime where "the parties do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the conversation."

In the Maryland case, the judge ruled "that police have no expectation of privacy in their public, on-the-job communications." He wrote "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes' ('Who watches the watchmen?')." Read the Washington Post, Charges dropped in cyclist, trooper taping.

It's open season on recording elected officials, at least in Maryland.

Rich Men Beware

UPDATE: "A Texas pipeline tycoon who died two months ago may become the first American billionaire allowed to pass his fortune to his children and grandchildren tax-free." Read The New York Times, Legacy for One Billionaire: Death, but No Taxes.

The estate tax was repealed for 2010, but returns next year. In other words, you are worth more dead this year than alive next year, thanks to those waskly Wepubli-cons.

Of course, we are all going to die in the next 2.5 billion years, give or take a few million.