Posted by spooneybarger
Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:51:00 GMT
( and gi joe was wrong ) then the NYPD wants me to lose.
Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here’s another rotten thing you’ve done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn’t work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.
OK, none of that has actually happened. But Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, knows that it’s just a matter of time. That’s why he and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. And it’s not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So you “will not lead to excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety,” the first draft of the law states.
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Posted in Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:17:00 GMT
we forgot to pay the bill. d’oh!
Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations.
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Posted in Weird Ass Shit, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:56:00 GMT
it makes it much easier to fuck them. o wait, that is south african politicians not american ones, my bad….
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”
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Posted in Politics, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Sat, 22 Dec 2007 18:52:00 GMT
A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.
Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.
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Posted in Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:22:00 GMT
What do Islamofacism, methamphetamine production, tort lawyers, and homemade fireworks have in common? The answer is that they are all part of the seemingly inevitable process of destroying the childhood Chemistry Set. A.C. Gilbert, in 1918 was titled the “Man who Saved Christmas” with his innovative ideas of packaging a few glass tubes and some common chemicals into starter kits that enabled a generation to learn the joy of experimentation, and the basis for the scientific method of thought.
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Posted in Science, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:55:00 GMT
The government’s terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list’s effectiveness.
The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.
“It undermines the authority of the list,” says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. “There’s just no rational, reasonable estimate that there’s anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists.”
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Posted in Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:59:00 GMT
back in the bygone days of college and drugs and spooney giving away free acid, i had a general policy… some people shouldn’t be given much less do psychedelics. they didn’t have the psyche for it. spend some time with certain people and you knew they would lose their shit and faster than you can say fucked then cops would be at my door… well apparently, all those ass monkeys went to the netherlands to get what i wouldn’t give em…
The Dutch government is banning the sale of all magic mushrooms after a series of high-profile incidents involving tourists who had taken them.
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Posted in Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:06:00 GMT
Police in China’s capital said Tuesday they will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content.
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Posted in Weird Ass Shit, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:01:00 GMT
China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”
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Posted in Weird Ass Shit, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:22:33 GMT
Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year.
Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly “refuses” to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.
The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C., which have argued that nationalized ID cards for all Americans would help in the fight against terrorists.
“I have faith that the Democrats in Congress will hear this from many states and will find a way to repeal or amend this in the coming months,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview after the vote. “It’s not only a huge federal mandate, but it’s a huge mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don’t have any interest in doing.”
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Posted in Politics, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:52:03 GMT
In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.
Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.
“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.
“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”
Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.”
“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.
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Posted in Politics, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:10:03 GMT
do you ever feel like current white house is collectively like the crazed gunman in The Jerk and the cans are our constitution? He hates these civil liberties! Stay away from those civil liberties!
President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.
Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.
A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.
Still, the move, one year after The New York Times’ disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.
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Posted by spooneybarger
Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:34:21 GMT
Slow. Relentless. Known for eating people’s brains and leaving a trail of devastation and misery in their wake. Yes, zombies have always had a lot in common with the American legal system – and now, seven of the undead have filed a lawsuit against the Minneapolis police.
The plaintiffs were dancing at a party in July when the seven of them – six adults and one juvenile in heavy zombie makeup – were arrested by the police, and held for two days. They claim they were abused and treated badly during that time.
The reason given by the police for their arrest was that the living dead were ‘simulating weapons of mass destruction.’ This might have been partly due to the police’s ongoing efforts in the War on Zombies, and partly due to the fact that the police couldn’t tell the difference between a radio in a backpack and a dirty bomb.
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Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war.
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said they trained honeybees to stick out their proboscis - the tube they use to feed on nectar - when they smell explosives in anything from cars and roadside bombs to belts similar to those used by suicide bombers.
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Posted in Weird Science, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Sun, 29 Oct 2006 10:15:53 GMT
In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.
Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007” (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”
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Posted in Politics, Civil Liberties | no comments
Posted by spooneybarger
Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:27:06 GMT
So I have slammed Google many times for censoring content and now I must turn around and commend them….
Racist blogs targeting minority groups in Australia are springing up on the web, but Google’s Blogger, the service some are hosted on, refuses to take them offline, says an anti racism lobby group.
“Blogger is absolutely insensitive to complaints about racist and neo-Nazi content,” said Brian Stokes, co-founder of FightDemBack!, a group that monitors the activities of racists, fascists and other such offenders operating in Australia and New Zealand.
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Free speech is free speech. The fact that the UK and Australia don’t recognize as we ( supposedly ) do, doesn’t enter into the equation for me.
Btw, I find this line from the article rather disturbing…
The blog posts photographs and full names of anti-racism activists from Australia and New Zealand, in effect making this information available to those who wish to do these activists physical harm.
So, question. Did ever newspaper that published David Duke’s name and photo do so that anyone who meant him harm could nore easily identify him? How about stories about Fred Phelps?
Let me break down my feelings:
Racist speech bad; Can be countered with non racist speech.
Censorship bad; No equivalent to the above.
Posted in Civil Liberties | 2 comments
