LEESBURG—It may have looked like they were ready for war or some deranged person looking for his late Social Security benefits.
But it was only Federal Protective Service officers with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who were conducting a random training operation early Tuesday morning when they surprisingly showed up at the Social Security Administration office in downtown Leesburg.
With their blue and white SUVs circled around the Main Street office, at least one official was posted on the door with a semiautomatic rifle, randomly checking identifications. And other officers, some with K-9s, sifted through the building.
The filming of government officials while on duty is protected by the First Amendment, said the Court
The First Circuit Court of Appeals reached a crucial decision last Friday allowing the public to videotape police officers while they’re on the clock.
The decision comes after a string of incidents where individuals have videotaped police officers and were arrested. Police officers across the United States believed citizens didn’t have the right to videotape them as they conducted official duties, but issues like police brutality put the issue up for debate.
One instance where a citizen was arrested for videotaping an officer was when Khaliah Fitchette, a law-abiding teenager from New Jersey, boarded a bus in Newark. Two police officers boarded the bus as well to remove a drunken man. Fitchette began taping the police officers because of how they were handling the man, and a police officer instructed her to stop recording them. When Fitchette refused, she was arrested and placed in the back of a cop car for two hours while the officers took her phone to delete the video. Fitchette was then released, but she and her mother then filed suit against the Newark Police Department with the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Another example involves Simon Glik, a passerby on the Boston Common. He used his cell phone to tape police officers when the Boston police were punching a man. Citizens surrounding the scene were saying, “You’re hurting him.” Glik never interfered with the police officers’ actions, but recorded the entire incident. The police officers ended up charging Glik with violating a wiretap statute that prohibits secret recording, even though the police officers admitted that they knew Glik was recording them. He was also charged with disturbing the peace and aiding the escape of a prisoner.
QUARTZSITE, AZ—Saturday’s Quartzsite Liberty Festival made its mark on Quartzsite Saturday as planned, despite temperatures of 114 to 117 degrees.
The rally was arranged to protest the actions of the town’s council and police chief, most conspicuously the treatment of Quartzsite police officers who were suspended or fired in what the protestors say was retaliation for bringing formal allegations against Chief Jeff Gilbert.
Marchers chanted “Quartzsite Ten, oath-keeping men” as they walked over 2.5 miles from an RV park south of I-10, over the freeway bridge and along the streets of Quartzsite to Town Hall.
Several politically active groups were in attendance, including Oath Keepers, the Tea Party Patriots, the Sons of Liberty Riders and campaigners for Ron Paul for President 2012.
Many attendees carried flags, banners and signs. Some were armed with pistols or rifles, and cameras of all sorts. Law enforcement and other authorities were largely absent from the demonstration.
CORALVILLE, Iowa — Police closed down a lemonade stand in Coralville, telling its 4-year-old operator and her dad that she didn’t have a permit.
Cedar Rapids television station KGAN reports that an officer told Abigail Krutsinger’s dad on Friday that she couldn’t run the stand as RAGBRAI bicyclers poured into Coralville. RAGBRAI is The Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, which ended Saturday.
The city ordinance says food vendors have to apply for a permit and get a health inspection.
Abigail’s dad, Dustin Krutsinger, says the ordinance and its enforcers are going too far if they force a 4-year-old to abandon her lemonade stand.
The city said it was enforcing the ordinance for health reasons, because people have gotten sick from food and drink they got during RAGBRAI.
Intelligence obtained by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that it deemed “reliable” was distributed in March to a number of states’ fusion centers alerting them that “the Gulf Cartel had directed [that] no more ‘drug loads’ in the US will be lost (to law enforcement),” according to a bulletin that was issued by a state fusion center obtained by Homeland Security Today.
For a moment, imagine that you are awakened one night by a heavily-armed team of federal agents dressed in all black breaking into your home. As you confront them, they hand you a piece of paper that says that your son has been identified as a “terrorist” and that they are there to take him away. They pull your son out of bed, they throw him on the floor and the use a taser on him repeatedly. Then they handcuff him and haul him away without telling you a thing about where they are taking him. Your son suddenly has no rights because the Patriot Act supersedes the U.S. Constitution. That’s right – because your son has been identified as a “terrorist” because of something that he has said on the Internet he no longer has any constitutional rights. Your underage son is held indefinitely and is subjected to “enhanced interrogation” because he has been identified as a “threat”. You are not able to get your son back for years even though it turns out that he is completely and totally innocent. If you think that such a thing cannot happen to you then you are a fool, because this kind of thing is happening over and over across the United States and it is all legal because of the Patriot Act.
America is rapidly turning into a horrible Big Brother police state and most of our politicians are fully supporting this transformation. In fact, the U.S. House of Representatives gave us quite a Valentine’s Day gift the other day when it voted to once again extend provisions of the Patriot Act that allow for domestic surveillance of American citizens, wire tapping of American citizens and warrantless searches of the homes of American citizens.
What was perhaps most disappointing was that a large number of “Tea Party politicians” cast votes in favor of renewing the Patriot Act provisions.
INDIANAPOLIS—Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.
“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”
David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.
The state of Montana, which came up with the idea that the guns made, sold and kept inside its borders simply are exempt from federal regulations and made that its law, now is considering a new weapon that could be used to cancel much of the authority of federal agents over its residents.
A new legislative proposal would declare that the state’s local county sheriffs are the pre-eminent law enforcement authority in their jurisdictions, and federal agents such as those working for the Internal Revenue Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and others, would be required to get permission from them before they could take any action.
The proposal, Senate Bill 114, is called “An act regulating arrests, searches, and seizures by federal employees; providing that federal employees must obtain the county sheriff’s permission to arrest, search, and seize; providing exceptions; providing for prosecution of federal employees violating this act; rejecting federal laws purporting to give federal employees the authority of a county sheriff in this state; and providing an immediate effective date.”
Police came to Maria Huff’s Burbank home in 2007 after hearing that her son had written a letter threatening to shoot up his high school. They asked Huff if they could come in and she said no, not without a warrant. When they asked if there were any guns in the house, Huff said she would get her husband, then headed inside, followed by her son, who was also at the doorway, and four officers.
After remaining for five to 10 minutes and finding no evidence of a crime, the officers left. In short order they were hit with a civil suit by Huff, her husband and son — who had written no such threatening letter — for entering the home without any legal justification.
A federal judge dismissed the suit, saying the officers had reason to believe there might be guns in the home and that the family could be in danger. But a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled this week that “mere speculation” doesn’t justify entering a home without consent from the residents, a warrant or actual evidence of a crime.
The officers “were not pursuing a fleeing felon,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that reinstated the suit. “No crime had been committed. No crime was in progress. … The officers were investigating rumors of threats.”
The officers said they faced unusual circumstances: Huff didn’t answer the door when they first knocked, hung up the phone on the first officer who called, and wouldn’t tell them whether there were any guns in the home. In addition, her son, a victim of bullying at his school, had been absent for two days.
But the court said none of that added up to evidence of a crime that justified entering without a warrant or the owner’s consent. That is the law that “continues to protect the privacy and sanctity of the home today,” the majority said.
What started as an attempt to be “funny” has led to an investigation and suspension without pay for a Florida sheriff’s deputy who labeled a passage of Scripture as “the Obama prayer.”
Sgt. Matthew Neu of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office had left a Bible behind on a co-worker’s desk with a note designating Psalm 109 as “the Obama prayer,” according to an internal-affairs investigation reported by the Bradenton Herald.
Psalms 109:8 reads, “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.”
The co-worker, a sergeant who discovered the note, took offense when she learned the passage was not supportive of the president, fearing instead the prayer constituted a threat against Obama’s life.
Four people have been arrested in connection with the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent who died this morning after a late-night shootout close to the Mexican border, officials said. At least one other suspect was still on the loose.
The agent, 40-year-old Brian Terry, died this morning in a Tucson hospital after being shot last night. According to various reports, he was trying to catch “bandits” who target illegal immigrants crossing the border. Terry is reportedly the 111th Border Patrol agent to be killed in the line of duty since 1919.
Shortly after the agent was pronounced dead, his union, Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council, released a stinging statement on its website condemning the U.S government.
“This is one more example of the sacrifices made by front-line agents, and it’s a major reason we are continually outraged by activists and self-serving politicians in Washington DC who sell us out with incessant talk about ‘amnesty’ for illegal aliens,” the union said. “While they play games, our country continues to be invaded and Border Patrol agents continue to pay the price. Please don’t let Agent Terry’s death be in vain.” The union urged supporters to contact their elected officials.
BERLIN (AFP) – A two-metre (six-foot) marijuana plant decorated as a Christmas tree was confiscated from the home of “an old hippie”, who is now facing a drug possession charge, German police said Wednesday.
In a tongue-in-cheek press release titled “All you need is love or how a hippie celebrates Christmas,” police in the western city of Koblenz said they discovered the giant plant in the living room of the suspect.
“The two-metre-tall marijuana plant had been put in a Christmas tree stand and decorated with a string of lights,” the police said.
Reports abound that the Transportation Security Administration deactivated a number of its controversial Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines throughout the country on Wednesday. Passengers from California’s LAX reported that the backscatter X-ray machines were “all roped off.” The phenomenon coincided with National Opt-Out Day, a grassroots-driven protest against naked body scanners and intrusive pat downs at airport security checkpoints.
While it cannot be confirmed how many body scanners were turned off at the California airport, it is clear that wherever the news cameras went, hungrily awaiting a protest scene, the scanners were simply deactivated. This begs the rather serious question: Is the TSA more concerned with its PR image than its duties? What’s most perplexing is how government officials can claim that the body scanners are critical to airline safety if on the busiest travel day of the year so many can go unused without incident.
“Shutting down the ‘National Opt-Out Day’ by turning off the machines is the only logical move for the TSA,” writes Mike Adams of Natural News.
Point of Law adds: You’ll see a lot of press about how noone opted out; the TSA Twitter account is retweeting like mad all the people happy about how quickly the lines went Wednesday. A closer review reveals that the the TSA turned off many backscatter machines—there was no need to opt out, so no one opted out. It goes very far to demonstrate how unnecessary these machines are: if the machines were really critical for safety, rather than for public relations, then one hopes TSA wouldn’t play with our safety so. But when push came to shove, the TSA was more concerned about the threat to its illusion of security theater than it was about the threat of an attack by terrorists. If every day were Opt-Out Day, the TSA would turn the machines off permanently. More at the TSA Abuse Blog.
While Phoenix and Tucson were growing up and becoming “civilized,” the lack of good roads kept most of the territory isolated. Large gangs of rustlers were still operating in the remote mountains of eastern Arizona, having been driven into the Blue River country by lawmen from New Mexico. Cochise County was still pretty wild and wooly. The close proximity to the Mexican border made that area a fairly safe haven for obstreperous border riff-raff. Continue reading “ARIZONA RANGERS” »
February 5, 2012 1906 John Carradine 1920 Frank Muir CBE 1946 Charlotte Rampling 1948 Barbara Hershey 1948 Lord Haden Guest 1948 Sven-Goran Eriksson 1952 Russell Grant 1962 Jennifer Jason Leigh 1966 Jose Maria Olazabal
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