Homeless in Arizona

Pinal county creates new bail program to rip off inmates???

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Review sought for new Pinal County bail program

By Robert Anglen The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Mar 4, 2013 11:28 PM

A new bail-payment system at the Pinal County jail forces people to pay up to 12 percent or more in fees for immediate release or to remain locked up for as many as seven additional days while bail payments are processed.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said it installed the electronic pay system in July to reduce fraud and eliminate liabilities that come with allowing jail staff to handle cash. The Sheriff’s Office also said its system is similar to one used throughout Arizona and in 29 other states.

But a Call 12 for Action investigation found that the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is using the electronic system in a way that the biggest county detention centers in Arizona do not: It closed its payment window and stopped taking direct payments from the public.

Jails in Maricopa and Pima counties, among others, have employees who accept payments for the exact amount directly from those who arrive to bail out friends and family.

At the Pinal County Adult Detention Center in February, no signs informed visitors that they could make bail payments with no fees at the courthouse just across the parking lot or that they could use a bail- bond service.

The lack of information could leave many with the impression that the only way to post bond is through the kiosk in the jail lobby.

“All parties, including the county treasurer, were all for us taking the cash out of the hands of the jail staff. That’s why 200 jails in 30 states across the county do it,” Pinal County sheriff’s spokesman Tim Gaffney said via e-mail. “It creates a risk for any organization to allow employees to accept money, not to mention the potential for human error in posting it.”

Gaffney declined in-person and phone interviews, responding to questions only via e-mail. He contended that TouchPay’s fees are far less than those charged by private bail-bond companies for the same service. Fees for using the system can range from 5.4percent to more than 12percent.

The Sheriff’s Office established the electronic bail system under a county contract that also called for installing a new inmate phone service at the jail. The bail-payment system was an option offered by the company hired to manage the phone service.

Pinal County Supervisor Pete Rios said he had no idea the Sheriff’s Office used the phone contract to introduce a new bail-payment system. Rios said he will call for a review to ensure the public is not being made to pay unnecessary fees on top of the bail amount set by the court.

“This (bail) was never addressed. ... We were approving an inmate phone system,” Rios said. “I wasn’t aware that (the Sheriff’s Office) was denying inmates and their families the information that they could post bail the old-fashioned way.”

The Arizona Bail Bondsmen Association also criticized the electronic bail system and is backing legislation to block other sheriff’s offices in the state from adopting Pinal County’s model.

Association President John Burns said the fees are onerous.

“It is one of the biggest rip-offs for consumers,” Burns said. “This was snuck in through the phone system. ... It was in the back pages of the contract.”

Frustrated father

Randy Embry of Las Cruces, N.M., said he was shocked when Pinal County detention officers refused to accept a cash payment for his son’s bail last year and directed him to an electronic fee-for-service terminal.

Although the charges against Embry’s son were dropped days after his December arrest, Embry said the experience of bailing out his son left him feeling victimized.

“If they are going to rob you, the least they could do is put on a mask first,” Embry, 64, said in a phone interview from Las Cruces. “They’ve got you over a barrel. ... They are going to make you pay.”

Embry said his son, Lee, was driving from Flagstaff to Las Cruces when he was arrested in Pinal County on suspicion of aggravated DUI.

Embry said his son, who was filling up his car at a gas station when confronted by an officer, denied drinking. The officer arrested Lee, impounded his car and put his dog in a shelter. He then asked Lee to submit himself to a blood test, which later came back negative.

Lee was booked into the Pinal County jail, and a judge set bail at $7,500. Embry said that as soon as he got the call from Lee, he went to his bank and withdrew cash. En route to Florence, Embry said, he called the jail about what he should do to get his son out.

“The officer said the jail could not take cash,” Embry said. “I said, ‘I’ll bring you cash right now.’ They said even if I bring 75 $100 bills, we can’t accept it.”

Instead, the detention officer advised Embry that he could use a terminal at the jail to put the money into his son’s account. That would enable his son to access the money and use it for what is called “self-bail.”

Embry said the officer told him that the machine has a $2,300 cash limit but that he could use a credit card to deposit the $7,500. There is a 7.5percent fee for bail deposits made via credit card. In addition, his credit-card company would have added its own fee, likely 5percent, Embry said.

Faced with at least a 12percent charge at the jail, Embry turned to a bail- bond company.

Embry said at no time did the Pinal County detention office or the bail-bond representative tell him he could pay bail without any fee at Superior Court or one of the county’s Justice Courts.

“Of course, they didn’t tell me that,” he said. “I could have saved $750.”

Embry said neither he nor his son had run afoul of the justice system before. He said the bail situation added injury to the insult of the arrest.

“This is not about public safety,” Embry said. “It’s about generating revenue.”

Supervisors unaware

Pinal County’s self-bail payments are part of an electronic kiosk system similar to an ATM for inmate accounts. Through the kiosks, relatives and friends can deposit funds for inmate debit cards, commissary accounts and phone payments.

Nothing in the contract with Texas-based TouchPay required Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who oversees county jail operations, to stop taking payments directly from the public.

The contract states that Pinal County “shall not be obligated to use TouchPay as the exclusive means for placement of funds into (inmate) accounts.” And it describes the self-bail component only as an optional part of the kiosk system, not a requirement.

Gaffney said the sheriff has sought to eliminate the collection of cash by jail staff since 2010, when a county audit detailed a “lack of control” of cash handled by employees. In addition to cash, he said, the jail had problems with forged money orders and cashier’s checks canceled after inmates were released.

“It was strongly suggested that the Adult Detention Center take cash out of the facility,” Gaffney said in e-mails. “The kiosk not only fraud-checks (cash) bills, but it also ensures payments are posted to the correct account more timely and accurately by avoiding human error.”

He said the kiosk system was installed under a contract for a new inmate phone system when the winning bidder, Securus Technologies Inc., offered additional services at no cost to the county.

“TouchPay provides the transfer of funds from friends and family into the inmate trust account via the kiosk, Web and ... telephone,” Securus Technologies Account Manager Darrin Hays wrote in an e-mail to the county last week. “The inmate can then use the trust-fund account to purchase goods or use for cash bail.”

Gaffney maintained that the county Board of Supervisors, not the Sheriff’s Office, was responsible for the contract. He said no objections were raised over the contract when supervisors voted to approve it in April.

Rios said no concerns were raised because the Board of Supervisors believed it was voting only on a new phone system. There was no information presented to the board to suggest the Sheriff’s Office intended using the contract to change other jail operations, he said.

Rios, who is the only supervisor still in office who was on the board when the Securus contract was approved, said he was unaware of the new jail policies until being contacted by Call 12 for Action.

Minutes from the April11 board meeting show that there was no discussion of the 232-page contract or the telephone system, which was listed on agendas only as “Inmate Telephone Services.”

Rios said neither Babeu nor his staff notified the board that the Sheriff’s Office would use the contract to cease accepting payments from the public.

“This is a concern. It should be a concern for every citizen in Pinal County,” Rios said, adding that people are innocent until proven guilty. “Citizens should be able to bail out their family and friends without having to pay all these additional fees.”

Counties’ policies differ

Other counties in Arizona have adopted electronic systems for funding inmate accounts. But none refuses to take bail payments at the jails.

Maricopa, Coconino, Pima and Yuma counties maintain service windows where friends and relatives of inmates can make bail payments with no fees.

In Maricopa County, officials operate a “bonds and fines window” at the Fourth Avenue Jail that accepts money orders and cashier’s checks for bail until 1a.m. The county does not accept cash.

Gaffney said no one is forced to use Pinal County’s kiosk. He said the Sheriff’s Office still accepts cashier’s checks and money orders for bail payments by mail with no additional fees.

But release is not immediate and could be delayed up to a week while checks are processed.

“They can mail in their payment and we will post it with no fee after it’s been on hold for up to seven days to ensure it clears the bank,” Gaffney said in an e-mail. “Otherwise they can turn to a bail bond company and pay their fee.”

Gaffney said TouchPay’s fees are far less than what private bail- bond companies charge for the same service.

“If we didn’t have this option in place, they’d (relatives and friends of inmates) be going back to the bail-bond companies who will force them to pay their fees to get their inmate out of jail,” Gaffney said. “Fees for bail-bond companies can be in the neighborhood of 15percent or more.”

Not so, according to the Arizona Bail Bondsmen Association: It says the fee for bail in Arizona has been 10percent for more than 40years.

Bail in many ways resembles an insurance premium. People who are arrested often can’t afford to pay the entire bail set by the court. They turn to bail agents, who charge a percentage of the bail in return for posting a surety bond with the court. If the accused fails to appear for trial, the entire amount of the bail is due and the bond is forfeited.

Aboutbail.com lists Arizona as one of 18 states with a mandated bond- premium limit of 10percent or less.

TouchPay is not a bail agent and requires anyone wanting to use its self-bail system to pay the full amount of the bail. TouchPay charges a flat $10 fee for cash bail payments and an additional $5 for every $100 deposited. For example, a $1,000 payment would cost $60 in fees, or 6percent.

For credit-card bail payments, it charges 7.5percent fees in addition to the charges imposed by the user’s credit-card company.

TouchPay officials last week confirmed that the company imposes a cash limit of $2,300 on bail payments in Pinal County.

The TouchPay system might be cheaper than using a bail bond for a cash bail payment that is less than the machine’s limit.

Bondsmen association President Burns said the fees aren’t the only concern with the kiosks.

He said that when a family member deposits bail money into an inmate’s account, the family member has lost control of the money. Once the case goes to court or charges are dropped, the money is returned to the inmate, not the person who deposited it.

“You lose ownership,” Burns said. “You’re posting money on a defendant’s books. You’re giving that defendant a check.”

Burns said the association is sponsoring legislation this year that would prevent sheriff’s offices from using electronic machines for bail. A bill is currently in front of a legislative committee.

Burns said the machines generate revenue streams for departments.

However, the contract shows that Pinal County derives no revenue from TouchPay’s kiosk system, including the bail system.

However, the Sheriff’s Office receives substantial commission from the phone contract with Securus, which subcontracts with TouchPay.

According to the contract, the Sheriff’s Office receives 72percent commission on all phone calls made through the Securus call-management system, an estimated $400,000 annually. The money goes to the Inmate Welfare Fund and is used only for the benefit of inmates.

About 100yards from the kiosk inside the Adult Detention Center is the Pinal County Superior Court House. There, anyone charged in a Superior Court case can post bail payments with no additional fees. County Justice Courts also accept bail payments for cases in their courts.

The problem, according to relatives and friends of inmates, is that the Sheriff’s Office does not provide information about the alternatives.

The only information available at the kiosk is fliers advertising the TouchPay system.

“In the past, all you had to do is come up with the money order or cash and pay the jail. Now, it’s all done by the machine,” said Bobby Davis of Casa Grande, whose husband is in jail on assault charges. “It was a lot easier.”

Davis, who was using the kiosk to put money into her husband’s commissary last month, said she had no idea that the courthouse would accept bond payments.

Neither did Heather Houston, 27, of Tempe, who regularly goes to the jail to visit her boyfriend, awaiting trial on pornography charges.

She said detention officers provide little information about payments and typically just direct people to the kiosk.

“I’ve seen people try to post bail, to try and get their loved ones out. And then, after they put all of their cash and everything in there, they end up being short because of all of the fees they charge,” Houston said.

“If you can’t post bail, then you’re stuck. You can’t get out.”

Reach the reporter at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com.

Secret Police in Phoenix????

Phoenix Police to encrypt radio transmissions making them secret

Of course the cops will use any lame excuse to justify their actions, and that excuse is always that it making it safer for the children or some other lame excuse along those lines.

I suspect the reals reason for this is to make the police less accountable for their actions and prevent the public from knowing bad things the police do.

As the cops say when they question us, we must have something to hide if we exercise our constitutional rights take the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer police questions.

So I suspect the police have something to hide from the public if they want to make their radio transmissions secret.

Source

Phoenix to shield police radio traffic

Officials: Rise in listeners jeopardizing crime scenes

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Mar 7, 2013 11:25 PM

When Mike Ormandy was growing up in Indiana in the 1970s, it was not uncommon for the adults to gather at a home on a weekend evening to play cards and have a few drinks with an odd soundtrack in the background: police-scanner traffic.

The sounds of static and police-radio transmissions infected Ormandy with the scanner bug, and he brought it with him to Arizona, where he invested in high-powered antennas and radios to capture the sounds of emergency responders communicating in the field.

The proliferation of websites and smartphone applications that stream police-radio traffic to hundreds of thousands of users, and a handful of recent instances in which scanner listeners have beaten police to crime scenes, are threatening what Ormandy and others view as a hobby — one that is as much about public safety as it is about infotainment.

“It’s kind of nice for safety reasons to know when there’s something major going on. ... I think it keeps officers honest, and I really think the public listening allows them to have a respect for the kind of danger these guys face every day,” Ormandy said.

“Police want you to share what you see and not get involved. That’s where the smartphone users get it wrong. From what I’ve found, the biggest culprit is people listening on smartphones and hearing something big going on and running out to the scene.”

Phoenix police last month decided to encrypt emergency police-radio traffic related to crimes in progress, a move that will reduce by about 18 percent the agency’s scanner traffic audible to the public, said Sgt. Trent Crump, a department spokesman.

The decision for Phoenix to encrypt more dispatch calls and conversations between officers comes after recent incidents:

About an hour after a Jan. 30 office shooting in central Phoenix, police broadcast over their radios the address of a possible suspect’s home.

The information was picked up by media outlets and others monitoring scanners, and some posted the address on social-media sites. Media crews and others arrived at the home before police tactical teams could get there, Crump said, setting up to wait for the shooter, Arthur Harmon.

Police believe media coverage of his home may have caused Harmon to flee as he was on his way there, spurring a manhunt that ended the following morning when he was discovered dead in a Mesa parking lot. However, evidence found in Harmon’s rental car, including cash, hygiene products and clothes, could indicate that he had intended to go on the run after his carefully planned murders.

On Feb. 8, police responded to a home-invasion call in west Phoenix where the suspects turned out to be juveniles, including a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot by the homeowner. Police broadcast information about the suspects, including the school they attended, over their radios, prompting some media members to go to the school and attempt to interview students and staff even before investigators had arrived, Crump said.

On Feb. 11, police broadcast information about tactical positions and response plans as they closed in on a man suspected of robbing more than a dozen pharmacies and grocery stores, potentially jeopardizing their ability to capture the “Calligraphy Bandit,” Crump said. Tomas Garcia-Mancinas was arrested without incident. That day, police administrators made the decision to move more calls to encrypted channels, Crump said.

The California manhunt for fugitive ex-police officer Christopher Dorner brought the issue into sharp focus nationally on Feb. 12, after police were reportedly heard on radios discussing plans to burn the cabin Dorner was hiding in. A California sheriff later denied that the fire was intentionally set and said police used pyrotechnic tear gas called “burners” in an attempt to flush Dorner from the cabin.

“I think a lot of police agencies looked at that in horror realizing that this website Radio Reference had their agency on a worldwide Internet feed,” Ormandy said. “The natural response is to go ahead and encrypt it and keep it all secret.”

Crump said the Phoenix police decision was simply about safety for officers and the public.

“There are several large agencies across the nation that have gone completely encrypted, and more agencies are going in this direction because of the low cost and the ease for suspects to (otherwise) have this access,” he said.

The digital system that opened up a host of new radio channels for Phoenix police and fire agencies and allowed for easy encryption was part of a $120 million upgrade in 2004.

Other Valley cities acquired similar systems at the same time, and many took advantage of the new technology to begin securing calls on crimes in progress, conversations between detectives and tactical calls on private frequencies.

It was a sign of things to come.

“Back when they had the old system and you could put an antenna up and hear basically everything that happened — detectives doing surveillance, car-to-car stuff — I’m sure they longed for the day when they had more security,” Ormandy said.

Phoenix initially followed the lead of other agencies and encrypted those same calls at the time, Crump said, but it opened up some calls shortly after. Still, a lot has changed in the past nine years, he said.

“A scanner used to sit on a desktop and have an antenna on the roof. Now, everyone is on the move with us with their smartphone,” Crump said. “Those that we’re fighting against have the same access.”

Lindsay Blanton, founder and president of a company that broadcasts police-radio traffic over the Internet, wrote on his website that police arguments about emerging technology interfering with their work have been around for decades.

“In the ’90s, when an agency did go encrypted and members of the media and public complained, the standard response from the agencies was, ‘Hey, any criminal can go down to Radio Shack and purchase a scanner to listen to all our comms,’” Blanton wrote. “Now, that argument has just shifted to ‘Anyone with a smartphone can.’”

But as emerging technology threatens to close one door that allowed public access to what police are doing on a day-to-day basis, it will likely open others, though the access won’t be as instant as scanners.

Police departments in Phoenix, Mesa, Surprise and Peoria are among the agencies testing or implementing digital cameras that officers wear to record virtually everything an officer does during a shift.

And police-scanner traffic will still be available several weeks or months after most incidents through Arizona’s Public Records Law.

“Everything techwise has gotten more and more efficient for the user. But by the same token, we can’t have it jeopardizing our work,” Crump said. “This doesn’t eliminate transparency. You can still ask for any radio tape you want.”

Politicians making it harder for us to recall them?

Politicians passing a retroactive law making it harder to recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio?

But when you look at how our government masters actually operate, it looks more like they consider themselves royal rulers who have a God given right to micromanage our lives and steal our money.

In this article it sounds like these royal rulers are attempt to change the recall process making it more difficult for us serfs to recall them.

This law also seems to be an attempt by our royal rulers to prevent us from recalling Sheriff Joe, or to help Sheriff Joe get reelected if he is recalled.

Source

Arizona recall bill could aid targeted politicians

By Mary Jo Pitzl The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Mar 8, 2013 12:44 AM

Arizona’s recall elections would take on a partisan cast that could help the targeted politician survive under a bill approved by the state House of Representatives on Thursday.

According to its critics, House Bill 2282 also could cut a break to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is the target of an ongoing recall drive. A last-minute amendment would make the changes retroactive to Jan.1, which would cover the period within which the Arpaio recall was launched.

The bill would carve out a primary and general election from the recall process, which currently consists of a single election in which all candidates compete and all voters cast ballots.

Most political observers believe the two-step process would help the recalled official, since a primary election could clear out the challenger most likely to appeal to voters from all parties. For example, former Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, lost in a 2011 recall election to a more moderate Republican who had Republican and Democratic support. It was widely believed a Democrat could not defeat him, given the political makeup of his legislative district.

Republican lawmakers argued the bill simply makes recall elections mirror the same process by which other candidate elections are conducted.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who added the retroactive clause, said the failure last fall of the single-primary ballot measure only reinforces the argument for the bill. Proposition 121 would have scrapped partisan primaries and made all candidates compete in the same election, regardless of party. Voters rejected it by a ratio of 2 to 1.

“This is just an extension of that mandate,” Kavanagh said.

But Democrats argued the framers of Arizona’s Constitution carefully considered the issue and decided a single recall election was needed.

That’s because in a recall election, voters are deliberating whether to retain a given politician, and not doing a rerun of a candidate vs. candidate competition, said Rep. Andrew Sherwood, D-Tempe.

“It is sufficiently difficult to recall an official,” he said, noting only one lawmaker — former Senate President Pearce — has been recalled in the state’s 101 years. There’s no need to change the process, he said.

Besides, the bill doesn’t address what would happen if the recalled official loses in a primary, Sherwood said. Would that person’s name advance to the general election ballot, so all voters could decide? If so, isn’t that what the recall system does already? he asked.

Rep. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, introduced the bill this year after seeing it fail to become law last year. In 2012, the bill passed both the House and Senate, but foundered in a conference committee, where lawmakers tried to reconcile differences in their respective versions of the bill.

This year’s version passed the House on a 36-23 party-line vote, with Republicans in support and Democrats opposed. It now moves to the Senate for consideration.

Reach the reporter at 602-444-8963.

Richard Nixon wished for total handgun ban

Of course the reason the Founder created the Second Amendment was to protect us from tyrants like Nixon, Bush and Obama.

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Richard Nixon wished for total handgun ban

Associated Press Sat Mar 9, 2013 11:24 AM

WASHINGTON — Few presidents in modern times have been as interested in gun control as Richard Nixon, of all people. He proposed ridding the market of Saturday night specials, contemplated banning handguns altogether and refused to pander to gun owners by feigning interest in their weapons.

Several previously unreported Oval Office recordings and White House memos from the Nixon years show a conservative president who at times appeared willing to take on the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby then as now, even as his aides worried about the political ramifications.

“I don’t know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house,” Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. “The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth.” He asked why “can’t we go after handguns, period?”

Nixon went on: “I know the rifle association will be against it, the gun makers will be against it.” But “people should not have handguns.” He laced his comments with obscenities, as was typical.

Nixon made his remarks in the Oval Office on May 16, 1972, the day after a would-be assassin shot and paralyzed segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace. As president, Nixon never publicly called for a ban on all handguns. Instead, he urged Congress to pass more modest legislation banning Saturday night specials, which were cheaply made, easily concealed and often used by criminals.

Not all of the president’s men appeared to share his passion on the issue. The recordings and memos show that Nixon administration officials saw gun control as a political loser.

Nixon, a Republican, did say publicly that if Congress passed a ban on Saturday night specials, he would sign it. But in a sign of how potent the NRA was even 40 years ago, this narrow piece of legislation never made it to his desk, and there is no sign that he ever sent a draft bill to Capitol Hill.

Today, President Barack Obama faces similar hurdles in trying to ban assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines. Gun control advocates say no one needs such powerful weapons to kill an intruder or take down an animal. In Nixon’s time, the argument of such advocates was that Saturday night specials were too poorly made to be relied on for self-defense or hunting.

“Let me ask you,” Nixon said to Attorney General John Mitchell in June 1971, “there is only one thing you are checking on, that’s the manufacture of those $20 guns? We should probably stop that.” Saturday night specials sold for $10 to $30 at the time. Mitchell responded that banning those guns would be “pretty difficult, actually,” because of the gun lobby.

“No hunters are going to use $20 guns,” Nixon countered.

“No, but the gun lobby’s against any incursion into the elimination of firearms,” said Mitchell.

The term Saturday night special originated in Detroit, where police observed the frequency with which the guns were used to commit weekend mayhem. Lynyrd Skynyrd memorialized the weapon in its 1975 song, “Saturday Night Special,” in which the Southern rock band sang: “Ain’t good for nothin’/But put a man six feet in a hole.”

Nixon’s private comments were not always supportive of gun control, particularly measures that would go beyond handguns. For example, in a taped conversation just a few days after saying that people shouldn’t have handguns, the president asked rhetorically, “What do they want to do, just disarm the populace? Disarm the good folks and leave the arms in the hands of criminals?”

But most of his comments on the tapes, available at the websites of the National Archives and of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, were in favor of stronger gun control.

At a June 29, 1972, news conference, about six weeks after Wallace’s shooting, Nixon said he’d sign legislation banning Saturday night specials. Later that year, the Senate did pass such a bill, but the House never acted on the legislation.

The bill’s sponsor, Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh, said in a recent interview that the NRA helped prevent his bill from getting through Congress. The Nixon administration supported an unsuccessful Republican alternative Senate bill on Saturday night specials that had a definition the NRA preferred.

The shooting of another politician put gun control back on the radar the following year. On Jan. 30, 1973, two robbers shot Sen. John Stennis, D-Miss., and surgeons initially thought he would die. Stennis survived and lived until 1995.

The day of the shooting, Nixon told White House special counsel Charles Colson, “At least I hope that Saturday night special legislation, at least we’re supporting that, you know. We’re not for gun control generally, but we are for that. God damn it that ought to be passed. Or was it passed?”

When Colson told him it hadn’t, Nixon instructed his counsel, “We better damn well be for it now, huh?”

At a news conference the next day, the president repeated his call to ban Saturday night specials. He also volunteered a comment that few national politicians would make today: “Let me say, personally, I have never hunted in my life. I have no interest in guns and so forth.”

By March 1973, aide John Ehrlichman was telling Nixon that gun control was a “loser issue for us.”

“You’ve got a highly mobilized lobby,” he told the president. “I think what we have to do is carve out a little piece of it, and Saturday night specials, of course, has been our tactic.”

Other White House officials also argued against doing much, including Tom C. Korologos, a White House deputy assistant for legislative affairs who later was an outside lobbyist for the NRA and ambassador to Belgium under President George W. Bush.

“The thing that worries me is that the president’s hard-core support comes from the gun-folk and obviously we need support these days,” Korologos wrote in an Aug. 31, 1973 memo, referring to the Watergate scandal that would undo Nixon’s presidency.

“Lurking in the background is the president’s personal statement: ‘I’m a liberal on gun control,’” Korologos said. Nixon might have made this statement privately; there is no record of him saying it publicly.

Korologos’ conclusion: “I vote for a ‘talk’ meeting and then ‘tough it out’ by doing nothing and hope nobody gets shot in the next three years.”

The effort to ban Saturday night specials receded in recent decades as the focus of gun control advocates shifted to rein in more powerful weapons.

Nixon’s focus soon shifted, too.

In June 1972, a little over a month after his chat about banning handguns, Nixon had a recorded conversation that showed him trying to get the FBI to stop investigating the break-in at Democratic offices at the Watergate office building by burglars tied to his re-election committee.

Few remember the tapes about handguns. History forever remembers the tape that gave Nixon’s Watergate pursuers their “smoking gun.”

———

Follow Fred Frommer on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ffrommer

Google says the FBI is spying on some of you

Google says the FBI is spying on some of you

By Chris Gayomali | The Week

For millions of Americans, Google is the fabric that weaves the various threads of our digital lives together: Gmail, Gchat, Google Voice, search queries, YouTube, Maps, Chrome — you name it. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has repeatedly tapped the tech company for otherwise-private information concerning a small percentage of Google's users.

But let's put it more plainly: The FBI has been spying on some of you.

In a new Transparency Report announced in an official blog post, Google has released previously unseen information about the number of National Security Letters (NSLs) it has received from the FBI in the past couple of years. According to Wired, these letters "allow the government to get detailed information on Americans' finances and communications without oversight from a judge." Needless to say, the FBI sends NSLs out all the time — hundreds of thousands of them, in fact — to internet service providers, banks, credit companies, and other businesses. Unsurprisingly, organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union have accused the FBI of abusing the letters' power post-9/11.

Until recently, it's been unlawful for a company to disclose when it has received an NSL. Now, thanks to a new deal with the Obama administration, Google is able to publish a broad range of instances in which it has received such FBI requests.

The table below provides a range of how many National Security Letters (NSLs) we've received and a range of how many of the uers/accounts were specified each year since 2009. For more information about NSLs, please refer to our FAQ. These ranges are not included in the total sum of user data requests that we report biannually

As you can see, Google says it receives between 0 and 999 NSLs from the government each year. In 2009, those letters contained requests asking for information concerning between 1,000 and 1,999 users/accounts. In 2010, the FBI was slightly busier — 2,000 to 2,999 different users/accounts were requested. Then in 2011 and 2012, that range dipped back down.

The search giant doesn't comply with every NSL it receives, and claims to carefully vet each request. "We review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request," writes Google. "We may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request in some cases." Google also says that the standard practice is to notify users when an NSL has been received concerning them, although the FBI has the power to nullify the disclosure if it may result in "a danger to the national security of the United States, interference with a criminal, counterterrorism, or counterintelligence investigation, interference with diplomatic relations, or danger to the life or physical safety of any person."

You can read Google's Transparency Report for yourself here.

And it's worth remembering: The FBI and other government agencies can still access your email without a warrant as long as the information been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more (per a convoluted and terribly antiquated 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act). A new email and phone tracking bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday seeks to make it harder for authorities to snoop around without a judge's order.

AG Holder - Obama OK to murder Americans with drones!!!!!

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Holder letter ignites new debate on drones

By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

March 6, 2013, 7:07 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Can the president legally order a drone strike to kill an American on U.S. soil?

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote this week in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that he could envision "an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate" to use such lethal force.

Those words touched off a heated debate Wednesday in the Senate over when and where the president can order the killing of U.S. citizens designated as "enemy combatants."

President Obama and his aides have said that targeted killings of Americans must be governed by some due process. But they have resisted public disclosure of their rules. Until this week, the administration had refused to allow even members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to read most of the legal opinions that justified the one known drone killing of an American, the attack on Anwar Awlaki in 2011 in Yemen.

The debate burst into public view on Capitol Hill. On the Senate floor, Paul filibustered the nomination of John Brennan to be the new director of the CIA, imploring colleagues to join him in criticizing Obama for refusing to rule out the use of lethal force against terrorism suspects in this country. Brennan has been a chief architect and defender of the administration's drone program.

"Are we so complacent with our rights that we would allow a president to say he might kill Americans?" Paul asked. "No one person, no one politician should be allowed … to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything we fundamentally believe in our country."

Paul showed no sign of giving up, holding the floor for more than eight hours and continuing to talk into the night. He demanded a public promise from the White House to never target drones against Americans in the United States. Paul said that he was not objecting to the use of lethal force to repel an attack, but that the administration was claiming a far broader power.

"Do we want martial law in this country?" Paul asked, mocking the claim that the entire world could be considered a battlefield in the war against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. "The hell this is a battlefield! This is our country."

"If there was an ounce of courage in this body, I would be joined by others in telling the president that no president has the authority to kill Americans without trial," Paul declared to a near-empty chamber. As the afternoon wore on, his words appeared to have had an effect, as several Republican colleagues and Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon joined the filibuster, delaying a final vote on Brennan's nomination at least until Thursday.

Simultaneously, Holder was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where senators tried to pin him down about the limits of the power the government was claiming.

In his letter, Holder had said he hoped "no president will ever have to confront" the need to order the killing of an American on U.S. soil.

But, he added, "it is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States." He mentioned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, as a possible example.

That explanation did not satisfy several members of the committee. The letter "raises many questions for citizens on when the government can kill them," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) demanded to know what in the Constitution gives the president or anyone else the power to kill an American terrorist suspect "sitting quietly in a cafe in the U.S." who at that time is not posing an immediate threat.

After initially saying only that killing a suspect in that sort of circumstance would not be "appropriate," Holder eventually told Cruz that such an attack would not be constitutional. He also said that he expected Obama to speak more publicly about the issue soon. "I think there is a greater need for transparency —a greater need for appropriately sharing information — and we are struggling with how to do that, but it is something that the president feels strongly about," he said.

Although Republicans asked most of the questions, the issue did not break down cleanly on partisan lines.

Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) applauded the administration's drones policy. "In every war we've had, unfortunately, American citizens have sided with the enemy. They've been few in number, but that does happen," he said.

A battery of Patriot missiles now guards the U.S. Capitol against attack, he noted. "Let's go back in time," he said. "What would we all give to have those Patriot missile batteries available" on Sept. 11?

Using them to blow up one of the airliners aimed at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon "would have meant that we would have lost a planeload of American citizens, but we'd save thousands more. That's the world in which we live in," Graham said.

"I want to stand by you and the president to make sure that we don't criminalize the war and that the commander in chief continues to have the authority to protect us all," he told Holder. "And I've got a lot of my colleagues who are well-meaning, but there is only one commander in chief in our Constitution."

Holder, appearing uncomfortable before the committee, repeatedly told its members that his letter merely dealt with the unlikely possibility of an extreme event. He emphasized that there was no plan to broaden the administration's drone program to aim at targets inside the U.S.

"It's hard for me to imagine a situation where that would occur," he said.

Finding and isolating terrorists abroad is much harder than in the U.S., often making capturing a suspect impractical, he said. In the U.S. many law enforcement tools exist that allow officials to capture suspects without killing them.

"Thus the use of drones is entirely, entirely hypothetical" for this country, he said.

Holder added, "The government has no intention to carry out any drone strikes in the United States."

richard.serrano@latimes.com

Michael A. Memoli of the Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

Dr. Patterson - It's time to legalize marijuana!!!

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Patterson: GOP should lead movement on marijuana

East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.

Posted: Monday, March 11, 2013 10:15 am

Guest Commentary by Tom Patterson

Republicans should get out front for once and lead the movement to legalize marijuana. It makes sense any way you look at it.

“Medical marijuana” has turned out to be the farce that many of us suspected. Patients with glaucoma, AIDS and cancer were shamelessly paraded as the poster children for the initiative, yet they make up less than 10 percent of the patients at the marijuana dispensaries. The bulk of the clientele is 18- to 30-year-old males with “pain” and “mood disorder” problems that can’t be proved or disproved.

One naturopath alone has written thousands of prescriptions. High school students are ending up with a lot of the pot. The feds won’t promise not to prosecute and when state legislators discuss doing something about this mess, the howl of “defying the will of the people” starts up.

So what could be a better time to take a different tack and do what a growing number of Americans want anyway: legalize, regulate and tax it. Policymakers seem still influenced by “Reefer Madness”, the movie that ludicrously exaggerated claims of marijuana’s supposed tendencies to turn users into crazed maniacs.

In fact, marijuana is safer and has fewer bad consequences than alcohol. Alcohol claims an estimated 76,000 lives per year while marijuana advocates claim that pot has “never killed anyone”.

I doubt that’s strictly true, but in my emergency physician days, dealing with alcohol problems – auto accidents, domestic abuse, end-stage liver disease – was part of the daily grind. Hard drugs also commonly caused sickness and death but marijuana just never came up.

Every substance on earth can cause harm if abused or taken in excess. But, unlike alcohol, marijuana doesn’t stimulate aggressive behavior or cause “mean drunks”. And while chronic, heavy use may induce apathy, medically speaking there is no such thing as marijuana addiction or fatal overdoses. When we try to scare teens by claiming that marijuana is worse than it is, we look foolish and untrustworthy.

Many understandably worry about the effect of legalization on teenagers. But our current drug laws don’t work now to protect teens, who report that pot is easier to get than beer. In fact, drinking and cigarette smoking have dropped by 10 percent among high school seniors over the last five years, while pot smoking has risen by 23 percent. More teenagers smoke pot here than the Netherlands, where it is legal for adults.

Others worry about marijuana being a “gateway drug” to the hard stuff. But there’s no medical reason why pot should lead to hard drugs. In fact, it’s likely that if marijuana were purchased from a pharmacy rather than an illegal drug seller, the probability of being graduated to addictive drugs would be reduced.

More importantly, marijuana is a freedom issue. In a free society (that’s still us, isn’t it?), we have a natural right to do what we want with their own bodies. We don’t have to prove to government that is healthy or safe. In fact, it’s government that has the heavy burden of proof to show that our behavior is harmful to others to justify criminalizing it. That’s mighty hard to do.

But here’s the clincher. Even for those who believe on balance that there is some to benefit of criminalizing marijuana, we can’t afford it. At a time when government is flat broke, the War on Pot is estimated to cost $42 billion annually in direct expenses of enforcement, adjudication and incarceration. That doesn’t even include the massive human costs to the 700,000 arrested each year for marijuana offenses, much less the horrible toll of financially supporting the murderous drug cartels who control marijuana distribution.

We could end all this and use the money instead to reduce public debt or lower taxes while controlling marijuana use and abuse. It wouldn’t have to work perfectly to be far better than what we have today.

Republicans can get on the right side of a freedom and finance issue that is massively popular with the youth demographic. What are they waiting for?

East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.

Gabrielle Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly buys AR-15

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

Our royal government rulers and bureaucrats like former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and astronaut Mark Kelly seem to think it's OK for them to have guns, but want to prevent the rest of us serfs from having guns.

Sorry guys, but I am sure the reason the Founders created the Second Amendment was to allow us serfs to protect ourselves from royal government rulers.

Source

Giffords' husband buys assault weapon to make point

By Catalina Camia USA Today Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:54 PM

Retired astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, recently purchased an assault weapon to make a point about the ease of background checks for gun owners.

Kelly posted on his Facebook page on Friday that he bought an AR-15, one of the 157 military-style weapons that would be banned under a bill pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel is set to consider three gun bills Tuesday, including the proposed assault weapons ban authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

"Even to buy an assault weapon, the background check only takes a few minutes," Kelly said. "Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet. We really need to close the gun show and private seller loophole."

Kelly, who is also a retired Navy captain, and Giffords are both gun owners who have been outspoken about the need for new gun-control measures. Americans for Responsible Solutions, their super PAC, has been running ads featuring Giffords that tout the proposed assault weapons ban and universal background checks.

Kelly said on his Facebook page that he plans to give the AR-15 to the Tucson Police Department when he receives the weapon.

Giffords was shot in the head January 2011 in a Tucson rampage that left six people dead. President Obama and others have been pushing for new gun legislation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December that left 20 students and six of their educators dead.

'Truth serum' may be used to assess Holmes' sanity

Like lie detector tests I suspect getting a doped up person to talk MIGHT uncover some truths, but I also suspect that like a lie detector test the results are pretty unreliable.

Source

'Truth serum' may be used to assess Holmes' sanity, court says

By Dan Elliott and P. Solomon Banda, The Associated Press

Posted: 03/12/2013 09:29:49 AM PDT

DENVER -- The defendant in the deadly Colorado theater shooting could be given "truth serum" under a court order issued Monday to help determine whether he is insane if he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.

Suspect James Holmes could be required to submit to a "narcoanalytic interview" as part of an evaluation to determine if he was legally insane at the time of the July 20 shootings, Arpahoe County District Judge William Sylvester said.

A narcoanalylitic interview is a decades-old process in which patients are given drugs to lower their inhibition. Academic studies have shown that the technique has involved the use of sodium amytal and pentothal, sometimes called truth serum.

The prospect of such interviews that may ensue under such a plea alarmed defense attorneys, who filed documents opposing the technique.

Holmes, 25, is scheduled to enter a plea Tuesday to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. He is charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

If Holmes pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, he would be examined by doctors at the state mental hospital.

In an advisory that Holmes would have to sign if he enters an insanity plea, Sylvester didn't specify what type of drugs would be used but said the examination could include "medically appropriate" ones.

Sylvester said Holmes also could be given a polygraph examination as part of the evaluation.

After reading a draft of the advisory, Holmes' lawyers objected, saying a narcoanalytic interview and a polygraph would violate their client's rights.

In the final version of the advisory, Sylvester said he had incorporated some suggestions from the defense and the prosecution, but he did not address the defense objections to a narcoanalytic interview and polygraph.

Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor who is a law professor at the University of Denver and a defense attorney, said she could not find any case law about use of the narcoanalytic interview.

"It comes up so rarely," she said, adding she knows nothing about it.

She noted the technique is clearly allowed by Colorado law.

------

Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist - Freedom fighter or criminal???

Last survivor of plot to kill Hitler dies at 90

By David Rising Associated Press Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:48 PM

BERLIN — As a 22-year-old German army lieutenant, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist volunteered to wear a suicide vest to a meeting with Adolf Hitler and to blow himself up along with the Nazi dictator.

The assassination didn’t come to pass, but von Kleist went on to play a key role in the most famous attempt on Hitler later that same year, and was the last surviving member of the group of German officers who tried and failed to kill the Fuehrer on July 20, 1944.

Von Kleist died Friday at age 90 at his home in Munich, his wife Gundula von Kleist told The Associated Press.

Von Kleist was born July 10, 1922, on his family estate Schmenzin in Pommerania in an area of northeastern Germany that is today Poland.

The von Kleist family was a long line of Prussian landowners, who had served the state for centuries in high-ranking military and administrative positions.

Von Kleist’s father, Ewald von Kleist, was an early opponent of Hitler even before he came to power, and was arrested many times after the Nazi dictator took control in 1933. The elder von Kleist famously traveled to England in 1938, the year before World War II broke out, to try and determine whether other Western nations would support a coup attempt against Hitler, but failed to get the British government to change its policy of appeasement.

Despite his family’s opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.

During his convalescence, he was approached in January 1944 by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, another officer from an aristocratic family, and presented with a plan to kill Hitler. Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator.

Years later von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: “Yes, you have to do this.”

“Fathers love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been quite sure he would say no,” von Kleist recalled. “But, as always, I had underestimated him.”

The suicide attack plan never came to fruition.

Months later, however, von Kleist was approached again by von Stauffenberg to take part in what would become known as the July 20 plot — for the day in 1944 that the assassination was attempted — which was brought to the big screen in 2008 in “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise as von Stauffenberg.

Von Kleist was supposed to play a key role as the person who was to carry a briefcase packed with explosives to a meeting with Hitler. In a change of plans, however, von Stauffenberg decided to plant the bomb himself.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers at his East Prussian headquarters. Hitler escaped the full force of the blast when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.

Von Kleist remained in Berlin, charged with overseeing the arrest of officers and officials loyal to Hitler in the city.

But when news spread that Hitler had survived, the plot crumbled and von Stauffenberg, von Kleist’s father, and scores of others were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings. Some were hanged by the neck with piano wire. Von Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad.

Von Kleist himself was arrested, questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably let go and returned to combat duty.

Following the war, von Kleist founded the Ewald von Kleist publishing house, and became involved in public education on security issues and trans-Atlantic relations. In 1952 he founded the independent defense affairs association known as the Society for Military Studies, and the European Military Studies magazine in 1954.

In 1963 he founded what would become the annual Munich Security Conference — a forum that still today brings together the world’s top diplomats and defense officials, in an informal setting for talks on global security policy, and has long been considered the preeminent conference on NATO issues.

Von Kleist served as the conference’s moderator until 1998, before handing it over to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s longtime foreign policy adviser Horst Teltschik, who has also since stepped down.

For his efforts leading the Munich Security Conference, von Kleist was awarded the U.S. Department of Defense’s Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1991, its highest award for a civilian.

His other decorations include Germany’s Federal Order of Merit and France’s Officier de la Legion d’Honneur.

His wife said funeral services would be private.

“My husband didn’t want anything big,” she said.

How do you spell hypocrite - Gun grabber Mark Kelly

Source

Mark Kelly’s purchase of rifle draws criticism

Associated Press Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:50 PM

The husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords generated nearly 4,000 comments on Facebook from people on both sides of the gun debate after he posted a photo of himself buying a military-style rifle — a purchase he made to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain the kind of firearms he’s lobbying Congress to ban.

A background check took only a matter of minutes to complete, Mark Kelly said in the Facebook post, adding that it’s scary to think people can buy similar guns without background checks at gun shows or on the Internet.

It didn’t take long for gun-rights supporters to accuse Kelly of being a hypocrite for buying an AR-15-style rifle and a 45.-caliber handgun. Many of the Facebook comments focused on his motivations and the rules for purchasing such guns.

Kelly and Giffords started a gun control advocacy group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, amid the wave of recent mass shootings. They have been touring the country in recent months in support of expanded background checks for gun purchases.

Kelly bought the guns at a Tucson shop the day before he appeared with his wife at the supermarket where she was wounded during a shooting rampage that left six dead and 12 others injured two years ago.

The public event last week was the first time the survivors had come together since the January 2011 shooting.

Giffords resigned from Congress last year as she continues to recover from her injuries.

The AR-15 is among 157 military-style weapons that would be banned under a bill pending before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Kelly, a former astronaut, said he intends to eventually hand in the rifle to Tucson police.

Doug MacKinlay is the owner of Diamondback Police Supply, the shop where Kelly bought the guns. He said Kelly bought the rifle on March 5 but couldn’t immediately take possession of it because the shop had bought it from a customer. As a result, the store is required by a Tucson ordinance to hold the gun for 20 days to give the city enough time to make sure the weapon wasn’t used in a crime, MacKinlay said.

MacKinlay said Kelly never revealed to the store’s staff why he was buying the guns and added that it would be wrong to refuse to sell a gun to someone because of their personal views.

“He is a U.S. citizen, an Arizona citizen and expressing his Second Amendment right to purchase and own a firearm,” MacKinlay said.

Todd Rathner, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association’s affiliate in Arizona and a national NRA board member, questioned the point that Kelly was trying to make in buying the guns, saying a model citizen such as Kelly should be able to buy a gun relatively quickly. He also noted that such a purchase could have been a good investment as the value of those types of weapon soars amid heightened demand from gun owners.

“If you believe him, it’s a cheap publicity stunt,” Rathner said. “If you don’t, then he was speculating on the value of the rifle because he knew the prices would be inflated.”

The advocacy group started by Giffords and Kelly had no immediate comment Tuesday on Kelly’s gun buys.

But the group released a statement from Kelly on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval Tuesday of a proposal to expand federal firearms background checks to nearly all gun purchases. Kelly said the 10-8 vote was a huge step in keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally ill people. Kelly’s statement didn’t address the controversy over his own gun buys.

Kelly, a former astronaut who plans to keep the handgun, told CNN on Monday that it was important for him to have firsthand information on the ease of buying guns such as the AR-15 and that he looks forward to buying a firearm at a gun show in the future. Kelly and Giffords have long been supporters of gun rights and owned handguns themselves.

No ethics for Phoenix City Council members???

Experts: Phoenix ethics rules for elected leaders lag

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:02 PM

Phoenix’s ethics rules for its elected leaders significantly lag the best practices of large U.S. cities, a task force of legal experts has found.

That’s the conclusion reached by a group of prominent attorneys and judges who spent four months reviewing the city’s ethics policies, also determining that Phoenix employees are often held to a “higher standard” than City Council members.

Topping the group’s list of concerns is Phoenix’s lack of a legal mechanism to investigate or sanction council members who potentially violate its conflict-of-interest or gift policies.

On Wednesday, former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who led the task force, gave the critique to a subcommittee of City Council members. He said that “most levels of government,” including the state, already have processes to sanction elected officials through a vote of their peers.

“The area of greatest weakness is with the elected officials,” Romley said of the city’s ethics safeguards. “We were quite surprised that there was nothing in place (to enforce rules) on elected officials.”

Phoenix’s Ethics Review Task Force, which Mayor Greg Stanton created last fall, has released 27 recommendations to improve overall policies for elected officials, board members, employees and volunteers.

Perhaps the most controversial measure calls for the creation of an independent ethics commission to oversee investigations of potential violations by elected officials. Residents would have to approve the move through a ballot measure because it requires an amendment to the City Charter.

Task-force members said other shortcomings they found were inconsistencies between the city’s rules for elected officials and general employees, who can be fired or disciplined for violations.

For example, state laws restrict council members from participating in deals in which a relative’s involvement could present a conflict of interest. But employees are restricted from directly doing business with anyone with whom their relationship “may create the appearance of a conflict.”

Council members so far haven’t been overtly enthusiastic about the task force’s recommendations. Wednesday’s subcommittee praised the group’s work but wanted more time to mull the issue before deciding whether to advance it to the full council for a vote.

“I know that from experience it sounds simple, but it’s not,” Councilwoman Thelda Williams said. “Ethics is kind of a personal perception for me and most people, I truly believe.”

Councilmen Daniel Valenzuela said he supports the aim of the task force but wants to ensure there’s no ambiguity in defining “unprofessional conduct” of elected officials, which could be investigated by the ethics panel. He said he does not want it to become an “overused tool” for tarnishing city leaders.

Romley said the task force hopes the council will approve the recommendations and convene another group to flesh out guidelines for elected officials.

“The City Council has the opportunity to walk the walk,” said Ernest Calderon, a task- force member and longtime Phoenix attorney. “I believe that the citizens of Phoenix don’t want a good council. They want a great council.”

Meanwhile, Stanton told The Arizona Republic that he will not take a stance on the specific recommendations until the subcommittee acts, though he supports the overall message.

Although the lack of a way to investigate council ethics violations was the task force’s main concern, it seeks other changes. Other key recommendations:

Require elected officials and board members to report within 48 hours gifts, including food, that exceed $50. Gifts that create an appearance of undue influence or conflict of interest would be banned entirely.

Create a uniform gift policy that applies to elected officials and employees, banning gifts that create an appearance of undue influence and gifts of entertainment, such as tickets to sporting or cultural events.

Establish ethics policies for the use of social media by elected officials and employees. These policies would likely vary for the two groups.

Conduct a city review and update of ethics policies at least every four years. The city’s policies haven’t been updated since 2005.

VA suppresses and manipulates health data???

Researcher alleges VA covered up adverse consequences to toxic exposures

Now if the US. Veterans Administration is going to do this don't you think that other government agencies like the DEA and FDA are also going to do it???

Source

Researcher alleges VA covered up adverse consequences to toxic exposures

Posted by Steve Vogel on March 13, 2013 at 3:04 pm

A senior epidemiologist for the Department of Veterans Affairs who resigned in December told a congressional committee Wednesday that the agency has covered up data showing adverse consequences for veterans who were exposed to toxic materials from burn pits and other environmental hazards in Iraq, Afghanistan and the first Gulf War.

Steven S. Coughlin testified that he resigned from the VA’s Office of Public Health in December “because of serious ethical concerns” about the agency’s conduct, which he said included not releasing study results that point to a connection between environmental exposures and illnesses.

“On the rare occasions when embarrassing study results are released, data are manipulated to make them unintelligible,” Coughlin said in his testimony to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs’ oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

Coughlin said during his work studying the relationship between exposure to burn pits and asthma and bronchitis among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, his supervisor told him not to look at data regarding hospitalizations and doctors’ visits.

“When I advised him I did not want to continue as a co-investigator under these circumstances, he threatened me,” Coughlin said.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki has directed the Office of Research Oversight to review the allegations, according to the VA.

“Research on the health of Gulf War Veterans has been and continues to be a priority for VA,” the agency said in a statement. “The Department depends on this research to inform our decisions and guide our efforts in caring for Gulf War Veterans. All allegations of malfeasance are taken seriously and are investigated fully.”

During the hearing, several speakers said the VA has been slow to clearly acknowledge research that has validated Gulf War illnesses as a serious medical condition.

“There are many examples large and small of the VA minimizing Gulf War illness,” said Lea Steele, a professor of biomedical studies and director of the Veterans Health Research Program at Baylor University.

Victoria Davey, chief officer for the VA’s Office of Public Health and Environmental Hazards, told the subcommittee that the department takes the ailment seriously.

“We do not believe it is psychological,” she said.

VA doctor: Health data suppressed, manipulated

VA doctor: Health data suppressed, manipulated

By Patricia Kime - Staff writer

Posted : Wednesday Mar 13, 2013 21:25:01 EDT

The Veterans Affairs Department has suppressed and manipulated data that would support claims from Iraq, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf veterans that they’ve contracted illnesses from environmental pollution while serving in theatre, a high-level whistleblower told a House Veterans Affairs panel on Wednesday.

Dr. Steven Coughlin, an epidemiologist formerly with the VA’s Office of Public Health, told the House Veterans Oversight Committee that when results of research he conducted didn’t gel with unwritten department policies on the health consequences of oil-well fires, burn pits, pesticides, nerve agents and other pollutants, the information disappeared.

“This applies to data regarding adverse health consequences of environmental exposures, such as burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, and toxic exposures in the Gulf War. On the rare occasions when embarrassing study results are released, data are manipulated to make them unintelligible,” Coughlin said.

Coughlin worked on two large population studies for VA, including a Gulf War study and the National Health Study of a New Generation before he resigned in protest last December over the handling of his work, he said.

Coughlin’s laundry list of charges against the Office of Public Health also included the loss of data from a congressionally-mandated study on Gulf War family members and the failure of VA to reach out to 2,000 participants of the New Generation survey who, in the course of the survey, said they’d experienced suicidal thoughts in the weeks preceding the survey.

“Some of those veterans are now homeless or deceased,” he charged.

Coughlin was not alone in testifying that VA is failing to serve Gulf War veterans and their successors.

Similar to the government’s long battle against acknowledging the health consequences of Vietnam veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange, VA still “ignores the science of research” into Gulf War Illness that it is a serious medical condition with neurological and physical components, said Lea Steele, a professor of biomedicine at Baylor University.

She said VA’s survey of 30,000 Gulf War veterans included scores of questions on psychological stress, substance abuse and alternative medicine but none on basic symptoms of the illness, which include memory and processing difficulties, pain, fatigue and digestive disorders.

“This pattern of chronic symptoms has been well documented. … We also know that Gulf War Illness is not a stress-induced or psychiatric disorder,” Steele said.

About a third of the nearly 700,000 U.S. troops who deployed to Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991 suffer from an array of symptoms of unknown origin. Once referred to as Gulf War Syndrome, it now commonly is known as Gulf War Illness, although the Institute of Medicine and Veterans Affairs call it Chronic Multisymptom Illness.

Coughlin told the panel that the VA’s obfuscation of data includes information on troops who deployed in the past decade. He said he was asked to include additional information when compiling tables to downplay the prevalence of respiratory illnesses like asthma and chronic bronchitis in those who served near open air burn pits.

“I urge you to initiate legislation to cure the epidemic of serious ethical problems in the VA’s Office of Public Health,” Coughlin told the congressional oversight committee.

VA officials did not respond directly to the explosive allegations. Victoria Davey, chief officer for public health at the Veterans Health Administration testified that the department has a 22-year history of treating Gulf War veterans and is committed to serving those with Gulf War Illness.

“Veterans with CMI, like all veterans enrolled in VA care, receive personalized, proactive patient-centered care,” she said.

She added that VA’s three War-Related Illness and Injury Study Centers provide specialized care tailored specifically to individual patients. More than 130,000 Gulf War veterans have received health exams under the department’s Gulf War registry program, Davey said.

Rep. Michael Coffman, R-Colo., subcommittee chair and retired a Marine who served in the Gulf War, promised further investigation.

“I find the conduct of the Veterans Administration embarrassing on this issue in terms of their treatment. If there were any Gulf War veterans in senior positions at VA, I don’t’ think we’d be here today,” he said.

Anthony Hardie, a Gulf War veteran who serves in an advisory capacity with the congressionally directed Gulf War Illness Research Medical Program, said new laws are needed to force VA to release findings, improve research and ensure that affected veterans receive the benefits and treatment they rate.

“Help right these ongoing wrongs, including comprehensive legislation and criminal sanctions for such behavior,” Hardie, who suffers from ongoing ailments related to service, said.

Researcher says officials covered up vets' health data

Researcher says officials covered up vets' health data

Kelly Kennedy, USA TODAY5:52p.m. EDT March 13, 2013

WASHINGTON — Department of Veterans Affairs officials purposely manipulate or hide data that would support the claims of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to prevent paying costly benefits, a former VA researcher told a House subcommittee Wednesday.

"If the studies produce results that do not support the office of public health's unwritten policy, they do not release them," said Steven Coughlin, a former epidemiologist in the VA's public health department.

"This applies to data regarding adverse health consequences of environmental exposures, such as burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, and toxic exposures in the Gulf War," Coughlin said. "On the rare occasions when embarrassing study results are released, data are manipulated to make them unintelligible."

Coughlin testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs that VA routinely minimizes research that would bolster the claims of veterans suffering from the series of symptoms associated with Gulf War illness, as well as health issues linked to exposure to large burn pits and dust in Iraq.

Victoria Davey, chief officer of VA's office of public health and environmental hazards, told the committee that veterans receive personalized, proactive care. She did not directly address critics' accusations, and instead talked about the VA's care for veterans and the "cutting-edge" research it has conducted.

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., and a Marine who served during 1991 war, called VA's handling of Gulf War illness "embarrassing." He asked VA why they changed Congress's charge to ask the IOM to do research on treatments, to which she said VA let the experts decide what should be looked at. He also asked why VA had spent money meant for Gulf War vets on other programs, but Davey said she was not prepared to respond to that question.

"If you had anyone on your panel who was a Gulf war vet, I don't think we'd be here today," Coffman said.

Lea Steele, a researcher at the Veterans Health Research Program at Baylor University, backed Coughlin's claims, saying, "In some sectors within VA, there appears to be backward movement."

Steele also charged that VA has used money meant for Gulf War illness to fund other programs. For example, $1 million went to a Lou Gehrig's disease post-mortem brain bank. The majority of samples are not from Gulf War vets, she said.

VA spent $120 million on Gulf War illness, but just five programs focused on treatments, and two of those were for psychiatric care.

"Studies consistently show Gulf War illness is not due to war trauma," she said. She told the committee that VA has not managed an effective program.

Coughlin's allegations echo previous cases in which the VA was slow to respond to health problems in veterans, ranging from exposure to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam, to Gulf War illness, to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2010, Coughlin participated in a study of recent veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan that linked exposure to burn pits to greater incidences of asthma or bronchitis. His request to see their medical records was denied, Coughlin said, and the results of the study were never published.

"I was very concerned they were withholding data or misleading people," he told USA TODAY. "I don't want to speculate about why."

Coughlin said a 2012 panel of outside experts hired to help the Institute of Medicine study neurological connections to Gulf War illness was stacked in favor of those who believed the disease is psychological.

"There was no one to present the opposing side — that it's neurological," Coughlin said. "Science is self-correcting, but if people don't publish data that doesn't support an opposing hypothesis, then it's a huge problem."

The IOM research included veterans from the past 20 years, rather than just Gulf War veterans, and "lumped" their symptoms together, according to Steele. Bernard Rosof, head of the IOM committee, said they found no one cause to what they called "chronic multisymptom illness," and that there was no one treatment for all of those veterans.

Steele agreed that VA excluded data from the research, and that it was "akin to medical malpractice."

It's doubly important because today's veterans are coming back with the same symptoms as the Gulf War veterans did, he said.

"Anything that supports the position that Gulf War illness is a neurological condition is unlikely to ever be published," Coughlin said.

Anthony Hardie, a Gulf War veteran and appointed member of the Congressionally Directed Gulf War Illness Research Medical Program, said Coughlin's testimony confirms what veterans have been saying for years.

"There are staff within VA who are working against Gulf War veterans," Hardie said. "It puts focus on the specifics and details on the generalities that were already clear."

Hardie said he knows and respects VA Chief of Staff John Gingrich, and he feels, based on Coughlin's testimony, that Gingrich was lied to by his staff. Those people should be "punished with criminal sanctions," he said.

"I hope there's a shake-up at VA," said Hardie, who has been completely disabled by Gulf War illness. "I hope the leadership takes this seriously."

Coughlin will also testify that after a study determined that more than 2,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans said they had considered suicide during the previous two weeks, no VA official had reached out to them.

"Some of them are now deceased or homeless," Coughlin said. "No one reached out to them to see how they could help them."

Coughlin said he complained about the veterans' treatment to his supervisor, who did nothing. He then took the matter to the VA's inspector general, who decided not to pursue the case.

After the 1991 Gulf War, a series of research reports raised concerns that the veterans' children were more likely to be born with defects, and that veterans' spouses were also becoming ill. Congress mandated that the VA maintain a registry of Gulf War veterans' family members. The data has never been released, and Coughlin said he has "been advised that these results have been permanently lost."

He said his supervisors told VA's chief of staff that restructuring a survey for Gulf War veterans so it did not focus on psychosomatic issues would cost more than $1 million and delay the study for a year — neither of which was true.

Coughlin said he was told to retract his claims and admit that he had made a mistake.

He refused, adding that he kept a document trail of e-mails and reports to support his claims. "I thought, 'I don't want to work for these people,' so I left."

Coughlin, who was a senior cancer epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the director of the public health ethics program at Tulane University, said continuing to work for the VA was "against my conscience."

Whistleblower: VA Hiding Veteran Health Data

Whistleblower: VA Hiding Veteran Health Data

Mar 14, 2013

Military.com

by Bryant Jordan

A former epidemiologist for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs told lawmakers on Wednesday that the agency’s Office of Public Health buries or obscures research findings on veterans exposed to environmental toxins and hazards going as far back as the Persian Gulf War.

Steven Coughlin, who had worked more than four years for the VA before quitting over “serious ethical concerns” in December, said in testimony that leadership in the agency’s public health office did not want to find or reveal evidence that Gulf War illness and other sicknesses were linked to troops’ military experience.

"On the rare occasions when embarrassing study results are released, data are manipulated to make them unintelligible,” he told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Coughlin said his former office never released findings of a $10 million study that produced data on 60,000 Iraq and Afghan war vets – of which up to 30 percent were Gulf War vets – that revealed exposures to pesticides, oil well fires and more.

He said the results of a congressionally mandated study on Gulf War veterans and their family members also was never released, and claims he was advised that “these results have been permanently lost.”

“Anything that supports the position that Gulf War illness is a neurological condition is unlikely to ever be published,” he said. One of Couglin’s former supervisors, Dr. Aaron Schneiderman, threatened retaliation against him after he balked at the idea of deliberately leaving out certain relevant data in a research project, Coughlin said.

Victoria Davey, chief of the VA’s public health and environmental hazards office, told lawmakers that the office follows strict guidelines in analyzing and publishing its work. However, but she never directly addressed Coughlin’s allegations.

In a statement released after the hearing on Wednesday, the VA said VA Secretary Erik Shinseki has ordered the VA’s Office of Research Oversight to review Coughlin’s claims, including the alleged threat.

Any retaliation against VA employees is against the law and is not tolerated, the statement said.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs has a decade’s long history of conducting world-class research studies that meet accepted and rigorous scientific standards,” the statement read. “All allegations of malfeasance are taken seriously and are investigated fully.

Coughlin said Schneiderman told him not to look at data regarding hospitalizations and doctors’ visits while he was working on research into the health effects of burn pits on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have reported serious respiratory problems that they believe are connected to inhaling smoke from the massive trash burn pits found in combat zones.

Coughlin told the House panel that when he said he did not want to continue in the project under those conditions, Schneiderman threatened him.

As with Vietnam veterans before them, large numbers of Gulf War veterans became ill in the years following the 1991 war. Those Gulf War veterans were told their problems were psychological.

The VA has said it does recognize there are health issues associated with Gulf War service, and notes that Shinseki formed a task force to conduct a comprehensive review of VA programs to help improve care and services for Gulf War vets.

The VA says in 2010 it recognized nine diseases linked to experience in the Gulf War.

According to Lea Steele, an epidemiologist with the Institute of Biomedical Studies at Baylor University, the VA still has serious problems in its approach – and funding – of Gulf War research.

She told Congress on Wednesday that scientific advances over the past 10 years have provided important insights into Gulf War illness. Steele has been studying Gulf War illness since 1998.

“After so many years of waiting, there is finally some hope for Gulf War veterans,” she said. “Hope that they will have answers that are long overdue and hope that treatments will be found that can meaningfully improve their health and their lives.”

“What is not acceptable is federal research that is poorly informed, based on notions developed in the early years after the Gulf War rather than on the scientific evidence now available,” she said.

VA has reportedly spent $120 million over the past decade on Gulf War illness research, but some of that money never went to Gulf War research, Steele said.

In one instance, $10 million was earmarked for something called a “Gulf War Biorepository Trust” that had nothing to do with Gulf War veterans. It was, instead, used to fund a brain bank for veterans who had ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

As of 2010, only one of the 60 brains in the brain bank had come from a Gulf War veteran, Steele said. The others were those of older veterans.

VA Covered Up Data on Mental Health

Whistleblower: Veterans Affairs Covered Up Data on Mental Health, Gulf War Syndrome

Mar 13, 2013 1:09 PM EDT

A former Veterans Affairs researcher turned whistleblower tells Congress the department repeatedly withheld data on Gulf War syndrome and neglected suicidal vets. Jamie Reno reports.

The Department of Veterans Affairs routinely disseminated false information about the health of America’s veterans, withheld research showing a link between nerve gas and Gulf War syndrome, rushed studies out the door without taking recommended fixes by an independent board, and failed to offer crucial care to veterans who came forward as suicidal.

These are the allegations of Steven Coughlin, an epidemiologist who worked at the VA’s Office of Public Health until he resigned last year, citing “serious ethical issues.” On Wednesday Coughlin will testify at a congressional hearing on the health of Gulf War veterans.

“What I saw [at VA] was both embarrassing and astonishing. I couldn’t stay any longer,” says Coughlin, who left the VA in December, just four and a half years into the job.

Coughlin was previously associate professor of epidemiology and director of the program in public-health ethics at Tulane University and is a former chair of the writing group that prepared the ethics guidelines for the American College of Epidemiology.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Coughlin said that whenever he spoke out about any alleged unethical activity, his bosses “intimidated and admonished” him. He says they first tried to silence him after he spoke out about a major health study of 60,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Coughlin believed that the nearly 2,000 subjects who self-identified as suicidal should have been checked up on afterward by mental-health clinicians. Instead, he says, the researchers interviewed them and moved on.

Coughlin says his supervisors also frequently “obscured the facts” about the impact of toxic exposures on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the causes of Gulf War illness.

“Many of those veterans are now homeless or deceased,” he says. “It’s very unfortunate. My supervisors did all they could to block my efforts.”

After getting nowhere with his superiors, Coughlin says, he contacted the chairman of the VA’s Institutional Review Board and the VA inspector-general to request that the study be put on hold until his supervisors could identify clinicians to call back suicidal veterans.

“That’s when all hell broke loose,” he says. “My supervisors tried to remove me from the study, and I received a written admonition. It was shocking. All I was trying to do was help ensure the safety of the veterans participating in our study.”

Coughlin says he was unsuccessful in getting OPH to address the problem in the study of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, but he managed to incorporate clinician callbacks in a separate Gulf War survey, and he says those calls “saved lives.”

The VA declined to comment specifically for this story, but in a statement released Wednesday, it said the department has a "decades long history of conducting world-class research studies that meet accepted and rigorous scientific standards." The statement, which noted that "all allegations of malfeasance are taken seriously and are investigated fully," also said that the Obama Administration in 2010 recognized nine new diseases as associated with Gulf War Illness.

"VA agrees with Gulf War veterans that there are health issues associated with service in the Gulf War," the statement read. "That is why Secretary (Eric) Shinseki formed a Task Force to conduct a comprehensive review of VA's programs to help improve the care and services we provide to Gulf War Veterans. We will continue to learn and examine ways to improve treatment, process claims, and better care for these veterans.”

Coughlin says his supervisors also frequently “obscured the facts” about the impact of toxic exposures on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the causes of Gulf War illness, which afflicted as many as 250,000 veterans, according to the Institute of Medicine.

While the cause of Gulf War illness has been debated for years, a number of peer-reviewed scientific studies have concluded that it is a neurological condition caused by exposure to nerve gas, pesticides, and other toxic elements.

However, says Coughlin, “the people I worked for refuse to release any information to the public that reaches that conclusion. They insist on holding on to the outdated theory that Gulf War illness is psychosomatic.”

He says there is VA data on adverse health consequences of toxic exposures in the Gulf War that “the public has never seen, and I’m sure will never see.”

He says his supervisors paid the Institute of Medicine $1 million to review the latest literature on Gulf War illness, but the first five outside experts they invited to the IOM committee all reported that it was psychiatric and not neurological. “This understandably outraged Gulf War advocates,” Coughlin says. “It was so obviously biased.”

Anthony Hardie, a Gulf War veteran and advocate who will also be testifying at the congressional hearing, tells The Daily Beast that Coughlin’s story “only confirms what Gulf War veterans have believed all along: this cabal of federal bureaucrats and contractors who continue to obfuscate, manipulate, and lie remain a serious obstacle to ill Gulf War veterans’ legitimate quest for treatments and justice.”

Coughlin says the OPH’s 2009–10 National Health Study of a New Generation of U.S. Veterans, which targeted 60,000 post-9/11 veterans, cost $10 million, plus the salaries of those who worked on it. He says 20 percent to 30 percent of these veterans were also Gulf War veterans, and the study produced data regarding their exposures to pesticides, oil-well fires, and pyridostigmine-bromide pills.

OPH never released any data from the study, or even the fact that it exists, Coughlin says. The VA’s official position on pyridostigmine-bromide pills, which the Department of Defense says Gulf War veterans took as protection against nerve gas, did not cause Gulf War illness. But a 2008 study by Beatrice Golomb at the University of California, San Diego, “thoroughly, conclusively shows that this class of chemicals actually are a cause of illness in Gulf War veterans.”

Coughlin also says the OHP released a major survey on Gulf War veterans without fixing it as recommended by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, which was mandated by Congress in 2002. Coughlin says his supervisors told the VA that implementing the fixes would cost the government $1 million and delay the study for a year or longer.

“None of this was true. It would not have cost nearly that much to restart the study,” Coughlin says. “But as a result of the false statements made by my supervisors, the chief of staff ordered the survey to proceed without the changes.”

Coughlin says he’ll ask Congress to initiate legislation to cure the “epidemic” of ethical problems at the OPH and urge the committee to direct the VA to identify procedures to ensure that veterans who participate in large-scale epidemiologic studies receive appropriate follow-up care to prevent possible suicides.

“The VA is the nation’s largest health-care provider, and these large studies cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and are so important to veterans’ health,” says Coughlin, who is currently looking for another job. “My only motivation for coming forward is to help veterans. That’s the only reason I paid for my own flight to come to Washington. I think the attention from the House committee and the media will lead to positive changes. It will hopefully help veterans.”

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

Jamie Reno, an award-winning correspondent for Newsweek for 17 years, has also written for The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, People, Men’s Journal, ESPN, Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, MSNBC, Newsmax, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today. Reno, who’s won more than 85 writing awards, was the lead reporter on a Newsweek series on the 9/11 terrorist attacks that earned him and his colleagues the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the highest award in magazine journalism. Reno, who’s also an acclaimed author, singer-songwriter, and 15-year cancer survivor, lives in San Diego with his wife, Gabriela, and their daughter, Mandy.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

Detective Saldate gets confessions from unconscious people on hospital gurneys???

Source

Convictions of woman on Ariz. death row overturned

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:39 PM

Debra Milke was a celebrated villain of 1989, a woman accused and convicted of dressing up her 4-year-old son to see Santa Claus and, instead, sending him off to be shot execution-style in a desert wash.

She is one of three women on Arizona’s death row.

But on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out her death sentence and murder conviction because the trial court refused to let her introduce evidence that might have discredited her supposed confession.

The Phoenix police detective who claimed Milke confessed to him had a history of lying to grand juries and extracting confessions even from unconscious suspects on hospital gurneys, according to the court opinion. There were no witnesses to the confession, and it was not recorded. Milke denied she ever confessed.

The 9th Circuit asked the U.S. District Court to send the case to the Arizona court system for a new trial and ordered that the detective’s personnel files be made available for Milke’s defense.

Assistant Arizona Attorney General Jeffrey Zick said his office will likely ask a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges to rehear the appeal before taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Milke was tried and convicted in Maricopa County Superior Court, but a spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office said it would defer to the Arizona attorney general pending the appeal.

According to Milke’s attorney, Lori Voepel, Milke’s response when she heard of the opinion was, “Are you kidding?”

Milke, 49, was charged with first-degree murder, accused of conspiring with two acquaintances to kill her son Christopher in 1989.

According to court records and media accounts, Milke found the child to be an inconvenience and asked James Styers, her roommate, to kill him. She dressed the child in his favorite clothes and cowboy boots and told him that he was going to Metrocenter mall to see Santa Claus, court records said.

Another man, Roger Scott, drove Christopher and Styers to a pizzeria, and then to the desert near 99th Avenue and Happy Valley Road, where Styers shot the boy three times in the back of the head, according to court records.

Milke, Styers and Scott were each sentenced to death — and all three cases have languished in the federal court system. Styers’ conviction and sentence are pending before the appellate court. Scott lost his case in the 9th Circuit and is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, but he is near the end of his appeals.

At issue in Milke’s case is the confession supposedly obtained by now-retired Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate. According to the 9th Circuit opinion, Saldate claimed Scott implicated Milke in the murder. Saldate then arrested Milke, and after a one-on-one interrogation that was not recorded, Saldate claimed he had extracted a confession. Milke always denied having confessed. Neither Scott nor Styers testified against Milke.

During her trial, Milke’s attorneys tried to subpoena Saldate’s personnel record, but the subpoena was quashed by the court. [So much for your right to a fair trial]

What the personnel record would have shown was that Saldate had a history of misconduct that could have been used to call into question his credibility.

According to the 9th Circuit ruling, he had falsified information to a grand jury, extracted confessions from people drifting in and out of consciousness in hospital rooms and continued to interrogate suspects even after they invoked their Miranda rights to an attorney. [That is a rather routine violation by the police of our Constitutional rights. Every time I am stop by the police I take the 5th and refuse to answer police questions. And every time the police respond by telling me I don't have any 5th Amendment rights. The police are corrupt to the core!!!!]

Once, he stopped a female motorist for a faulty taillight and then “took liberties” with her, letting her go without a citation after she promised to meet him later for sex. She didn’t show up for the arranged date and, instead, reported Saldate.

Saldate could not immediately be reached for comment.

The case was tried by now-retired Deputy County Attorney Noel Levy, the prosecutor who sent alleged “Snaggletooth Killer” Ray Krone to death row. Krone was exonerated after 10 years in prison. [Ray Krone was the 100th person in which DNA testing proved he was framed by the Phoenix Police for murder. Ray Krone did not take the 5th and talked to the Phoenix Police in an attempt to prove his innocence. I talked to Krone about this when he spoke at the ASU College of Law and Ray Krone told me the police twisted his words around claiming he was guilty. Ray told me he would never talk to the police again in an attemp to prove his innocence because the police are corrupt. He will always take the 5th now.]

In the 9th Circuit opinion handed down Thursday, written by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, the court ruled that Milke’s confession to Saldate was illegally extracted.

The court did not throw out the confession altogether but ordered that the potentially exculpatory material in Saldate’s file be provided so that the jury can weigh it against the supposed confession.

Strikers bills - how our elected officials prevent us from knowing what they are doing.

OK, I guess if you spend 20 hours a day monitoring these striker bills you could figure out what the crooks in the Arizona legislator are doing, but for most of us that takes too much time.

Source

It’s 'striker' season at the Capitol

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Mar 16, 2013 10:18 PM

Watch out, it’s striker season.

No, that’s not some obscure reference to spring training or a new term for haboobs, but a favorite subversive tactic of Arizona lawmakers at the Capitol this time of year.

About halfway through the legislative session, as proposed bills get bogged down in the politics or lawmakers come up with a bold new idea they neglected to introduce in January, they begin to file what are called strike-everything, or “striker,” amendments.

Lawmakers take a bill that offers only a technical change or that they don’t mind sacrificing and propose an amendment that strikes out all the existing language and replaces it with an entirely different proposal.

The motivation varies. Strikers can revive an idea that was voted down in its original bill form, introduce an entirely new idea or allow a controversial idea to skip parts of the public-hearing process.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, is critical of the tactic.

“One strike-everything is one too many,” he said. “I don’t think it’s an appropriate way to do business. It’s not a transparent process.” [Well then why haven't you introduced a bill to out law this practice??? Probably because you like this tactic because it keeps the people you pretend to represent from knowing what you are doing!!!!]

But Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, said the tool has value, such as in a situation where a particular committee chairman refuses to hear a bill that’s vital to a lawmaker’s constituents. [Well if that is the case then the system is NOT working and needs to be change!!!]

Striking that bill for another that’s been past the chairman can keep the bill alive.

“It’s kind of like attorneys. You don’t always like them until you need one,” she said. “In some cases, it’s not fair that one person can block an important bill. A striker allows you to get around that person and get a fair hearing.” [Again, if that is the case then the system is NOT working and needs to be change!!!]

Lawmakers introduce dozens of strikers each year.

This year, 75 have already been approved, covering topics that include boosting campaign contributions, establishing a Cowboy Day, creating tax incentives for employers and tax exclusions for religious institutions, and banning goldfish prizes at school fairs.

The Cowboy Day striker appears to be a case of timing as opposed to trying to avoid a public hearing or certain committee. [What rubbish!!! That is the whole purpose of these "striker bills", to keep the public from hearing about the bills] Senate Bill 1139 started out proposing technical changes to existing state law regulating the sending of unsolicited goods.

At some point after the session deadline for introducing new bills, Republican lawmakers decided they wanted legislation honoring cowboys as a symbol of Arizona’s culture.

Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, allowed a striker to SB 1139 declaring the fourth Saturday of July as Cowboy Day during a Senate Government and Environment Committee hearing.

The revised bill passed that committee, the full Senate and then the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee. It still needs a final vote of the full House before going to the governor.

If the trend follows prior sessions, hundreds more strikers will be introduced over the next month. All but two striker bills already approved belong to Republicans.

So far, nothing enormously controversial has emerged. But that’s not always the case.

Last year, Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, then a state representative, and Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, replaced a House bill addressing attorney fees with a striker making numerous changes to state abortion laws.

They added the striker after the more mundane bill had already passed the House Government Committee and the full House, meaning the more controversial abortion bill only had a public hearing in the Senate instead of both chambers.

Strike-everything amendments

Arizona lawmakers each session propose dozens of strike-everything, or "striker," amendments. The amendments propose to replace all of the wording in an unrelated bill with an entirely different proposal. This year, lawmakers have already approved 75 strikers. Here are some of them:

Tax credits: Converted House Bill 2037 from making technical corrections to malpractice law to a proposal to allow school tax-credit money be spent on certain sports programs.

Animal prizes: Converted HB 2121 from funding security barriers at the Capitol to banning live-animal prizes.

Tax incentives: Converted HB 2264 from making technical corrections to mobile-home-park law to creating tax benefits for businesses that create new jobs and for the self-employed.

Drones: Converted HB 2269 from a technical correction on liquor-supplier law to a proposal creating a study committee on the use of drones.

HOAs: Converted HB 2371 from a technical correction on construction materials to proposing numerous changes to homeowners-association regulations, including limiting local government ability to require planned communities, allowing HOAs to vote by e-mail and prohibiting HOAs from charging extra fees to renters.

Special education: Converted HB 2395 from a technical correction on medical-malpractice laws to proposing limits on civil lawsuits based on negligence by private schools that provide special-education services.

Religious exemption: Converted HB 2446 from a technical correction on limited partnership laws to proposing property-tax exemptions for religious institutions.

Contribution limits: Converted HB 2593 from technical correction on veterans issues to proposing an increase on campaign-contribution limits.

Early ballots: Converted Senate Bill 1003 from a technical correction on agricultural regulations to proposing restrictions on who can return an early ballot for another person.

Cowboy Day: Converted SB 1139 from a technical correction on unsolicited merchandise to a proposal to make the fourth Saturday of July Cowboy Day.

Adoption subsidies: Converted SB 1062 from a technical correction on boating laws to proposing expanded behavioral-health services for adoptees.

Independent expenditures: Converted SB 1336 from regulating the election commission to a proposal to make it a felony to violate independent-expenditure regulations.

Police left prison door ajar in Debra Milke case

In the last couple months DNA testing caused the 300th person framed for murder by the police to be released from death row.

The Phoenix Police also framed Ray Krone for murder. Ray Krone's claim to fame was that he was the 100th person released from death row when DNA testing proved he was framed for murder.

The 4 kids from Tucson, Mike McGraw, Leo Bruce, Mark Nunez and Dante Parker, where also framed by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist temple murders on August 10, 1991 by Sheriff Tom Agnos who was replaced by Sheriff Joe.

Johnathan Doody who was probably one of the "real" murders in the Promkunaram Buddhist temple even had his conviction thrown out because the cops coerced a confession out of him after he took the 5th.

Last but not least "The 9 Step Reid Method" is responsible for most of these false confessions.

When it because socially unacceptable for cops to beat people the sh*t out of people with rubber hoses to get confessions "The 9 Step Reid Method" became popular.

"The 9 Step Reid Method" pretty much replaced beating people with "real" rubber hoses to beating them with "psychological" rubber hoses.

"The 9 Step Reid Method" is very effective at getting confessions. So effective it routinely gets innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit.

Source

Police left prison door ajar

The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Mar 20, 2013 7:11 PM

Debra Milke can see daylight. After two decades on death row, she’s likely to get a new trial. For this, thank the police.

Milke was convicted of arranging the 1989 execution-style murder of her 3-year-old son. A jury convicted her, in part, on the strength of a verbal confession that now-retired Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate said he had obtained from her.

The confession wasn’t taped. No one else witnessed it. That alone raises questions.

But the jury in 1989 wasn’t allowed to hear even more troubling facts: Saldate had a history of lying and obtaining the most unlikely confessions, including from a man drifting in and out of consciousness in a hospital room.

In four court cases, confessions or indictments were tossed because Saldate misled juries and judges. In another four cases, confessions were suppressed or convictions tossed because Saldate violated suspects’ constitutional rights.

And now, there is Milke, granted a new trial by a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel because the jury didn’t hear about Saldate’s record.

Saldate’s superiors knew his history. They recorded it in his personnel file. But it appears they did little to correct his behavior, to guard against further abuses, to protect justice. If they had, he would not have been in an interrogation room alone with Milke or any other suspect.

Police must police themselves as vigorously as they do all other citizens. When they fail in that duty, justice suffers.

Activist files lawsuit to halt Arpaio recall

Source

Activist files lawsuit to halt Arpaio recall

By Ronald J. Hansen The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Mar 21, 2013 10:09 PM

A nationally known conservative legal activist filed suit Thursday to end the recall petition against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, saying it violates the state’s constitution.

Larry Klayman, a lawyer who helped bedevil the Clinton administration in the 1990s through his group Judicial Watch, called the current recall effort against Arpaio an ongoing criminal activity. Klayman’s suit seeks court orders to shut the recall down and return the money donors raised to support it.

Chiefly, the suit takes aim at how quickly the recall started: only days after Arpaio began his sixth term. Klayman said the Arizona Constitution requires recalls to wait at least six months into a new term, and a state law that suggests otherwise is legally invalid.

“It’s not only unconstitutional,” Klayman said. “It’s an abuse of process.”

The recall is led by a group called Respect Arizona, which maintains that few voters knew how much Arpaio spent on his re-election or that he refused to debate his opponent.

Respect Arizona has ties to a group led by political organizer Randy Parraz, who helped lead the successful 2011 recall of former state Sen. Russell Pearce, then president of the Arizona Senate. Parraz also helped lead the failed effort to defeat Arpaio in the 2012 election.

Klayman’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of a group called Citizens to Protect Fair Election Results, does not involve Respect Arizona and instead seeks steps by state and county election officials to end a recall that he said could cost as much as $5 million.

Lilia Alvarez, campaign manager for Respect Arizona, said the suit is an unsuccessful and premature attempt to intimidate her organization.

“We won’t back down,” she said.

Alvarez declined to say how many signatures Respect Arizona has obtained, but she did say it has taken in more than $300,000 in support of the effort.

Klayman said he had not discussed his case with Arpaio. A spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Bennett said they had not yet received a copy of the suit and could not comment.

We need answers in Border Patrol murders???

But Linda Valdez is very naive expecting the cops to arrest and jail one of their own buddies for murder. It ain't going to happen.

I have posted 100's of articles on other police crimes and the police routinely do get away with murder and they rarely get more then a slap on the wrist, if that much for their crimes.

The crime I vividly remember happened around November, 2004 when a News 12 helicopter caught some Phoenix Police beating up a Mexican they arrested for hijacking a car. They had the evidence they needed to nail those crooked Phoenix cops on tape, but I believe Rick Romney who was then Maricopa County attorney decided not to press charges. See News 12 video tapes Phoenix Police beating and Assault by police claimed

Yes, the Mexican who hijacked the car was a criminal. But so were the Phoenix Police officers who beat him up for his crime.

And of course we have Sheriff Joe's goons who routinely murder innocent people in his tent city gulag. Yes, Maricopa County has paid millions in out of court settlements for those murders, but I don't think the police criminals that committed the murders have received anything more then a slap on the wrist and a stern warning not to do it again [well except to criminals who deserve it, like the people they murdered - and that's from Sheriff Joe, not me]

Source

Linda Valdez

Posted on April 11, 2013 10:13 am by Linda Valdez

We need answers in Border Patrol killing

The Border Patrol is a fast growing national police force whose power and secrecy should worry civil libertarians.

After six months, the public that funds this national police force doesn’t even know the identity of the agent or agents involved in killing a youth in Nogales, Mexico, with a barrage of bullets fired across the border.

It smacks of cover-up. [Smacks??? It IS a COVER-UP!!!]

Can you imagine the outrage if Mexican police had gunned down an American youth with equal gusto?

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, was shot numerous times — and as many as 11 bullets hit him from behind.

The Border Patrol alleges he was throwing rocks at them – an activity that the distance and angle of the border fence would have made more futile than threatening.

A witness has come forward, according to reporting by the Republic’s Bob Ortega, to say Elena Rodriguez was not throwing rocks.

Does anybody know for sure?

After six months, does anybody believe the FBI investigation hasn’t found some answers? If that’s the case, somebody send the FBI some coffee. They need to get moving.

Or are they – and Homeland Security — just hoping the whole thing blows over?

Protests yesterday at the border show that this is not going to go away. Nor should it.

The Border Patrol has extraordinary power, and there have been other deadly encounters where rocks were met with bullets.

According to Ortega:

“There have been eight incidents in the past three years in which agents have shot and killed alleged rock-throwers, among 20 deaths caused by agents since the beginning of 2010. In all but three of those cases, the FBI investigations remain open and the Border Patrol and the DHS have declined to release any information, including the names of the agents involved.”

We need answers. We need them now. [I agree with you Linda, but it ain't going to happen]

Those who paint dystopian scenarios about an out-of-control national government threatening civil liberties are often the same people who demand tougher border security. They ought to be careful what they ask for.

The Border Patrol needs to be accountable. Not secretive. [Again it ain't going to happen. This is why we need the Second Amendment. When the government becomes tyrannical and the police and elected officials are above the law the only way to fix things is with armed citizens physically ousting the government tyrants]

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is a gun grabber???

Source

Phoenix Mayor Stanton outlines aggressive plan to fight gun violence

By Dustin Gardiner and Amy B Wang The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Mar 1, 2013 4:42 PM

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton on Thursday outlined an aggressive plan to combat violence in the city, vowing to stage what he called the largest gun buyback in Arizona history and double the number of police officers in schools citywide.

The mayor’s comments during his second State of the City speech stoked the debate over firearm safety a month after a string of deadly shootings killed four people and thrust Phoenix into the national news.

“Recently, we have felt pain and grief too often and too deeply,” Stanton said, naming several shooting victims, including a lawyer and businessman. “Violence has no place in our city.”

Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia said Phoenix will destroy the guns, an approach often criticized by gun-rights groups. A state law that took effect in August is designed to prohibit Arizona police agencies from destroying weapons they confiscate, but Garcia said the law does not apply to voluntary gun buybacks.

Jennifer Longdon, a gun-violence survivor who is paralyzed from a spinal cord injury, was sitting in the audience for Stanton’s speech. She wrote on Facebook that she began to sob “like a baby” when he made the announcement.

“Every gun we take off the streets is one gun that won’t rob a son like mine of his healthy, able-bodied mother,” wrote Longdon, who uses a wheelchair. “I wonder how different my life would be if I had been attacked by knives or bats or fists. (Guns) do damage that no other tool or weapon can ever hope to inflict.”

Stanton noted the politics surrounding such a hotly contested issue — his speech instantaneously sparked protests from gun-rights advocates on social media. He said the buyback effort would make the city safer without curtailing the Second Amendment rights of responsible gun owners.

“Why risk the controversy?” Stanton asked. “Because I respect Chief Garcia, who told me, ‘Every unwanted gun we take off the street is one less gun out there to harm our officers or hurt our residents.’”

Gun violence and school safety were just a piece of Stanton’s speech, which focused on Phoenix’s need to develop a modern, diverse economy that can weather the ups and downs of the real-estate market. He spoke about other familiar hurdles: building a vibrant downtown, larger transit system and skilled workforce.

But the emphasis on gun violence was the mayor’s boldest new policy initiative debuted for the year ahead. It will likely continue to draw jeers from some right-leaning leaders who view buybacks as an ineffective tool for reducing violence.

“These criminals are really going to be running down there to turn in their guns for a Safeway card,” joked Charles Heller, spokesman for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a non-profit that advocates for gun rights. “What the city of Phoenix is doing is interfering in the market.”

The buyback program, a partnership between Phoenix police and the non-profit Arizonans for Gun Safety, allows residents to drop off unwanted weapons with no questions asked. The effort is being funded with $100,000 from an anonymous donor, Stanton said.

Police officers will host the buybacks every Saturday during May, except Memorial Day weekend. The city will return stolen guns to their owners, and the police will keep those they suspect were used in a crime for investigation.

The program will compensate gun owners for their weapons, but officials have not yet determined the form and amount of payment. With past buybacks in Phoenix, Garcia said owners typically received about $100 per firearm.

Stanton also announced a new school-safety program that seeks to double the number of police officers in public, private and charter schools across the city.

“Education can only succeed if kids feels safe at school,” Stanton said, adding that he and Garcia had met with Phoenix-area superintendents and other education leaders earlier in the week. “We heard them loud and clear. The risk of school violence is one we cannot take.”

Under the program, each Phoenix police precinct commander would meet with superintendents in their district at least twice a year. The plan also proposes that districts hire off-duty police officers to patrol their schools as “school safety officers,” less expensive alternatives to traditional school-resource officers.

“We don’t need Steven Seagal to keep our kids safe,” said Stanton, a jab at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who recently announced that the action star would help train his volunteer posse to patrol schools.

According to the city, school-safety officers would cost less than half of what traditional resource officers would — about $42,000 per year to staff a high school and $35,000 a year to staff a middle or elementary school. These costs would include coverage for seven hours a day, five days a week. That sounds like an outright LIE!!!!! Most Phoenix area police officers start at about $50,000 a year, which is about $25/hr, before benefits. And of course many cops make $100,000 or more a year, before you add in the benefits.]

Like traditional school-resource officers, school-safety officers would be responsible for monitoring student activity, training staff on safety mandates and enforcing criminal laws on campus. [Do we really need a FULL TIME cop on every high school and elementary school campus who is making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year before benefits to enforce the law??? I doubt it. Even if we do need one we could certainly get by with a rent-a-cop that is being paid $10 an hour, instead of a full time Phoenix police officer who is being paid between $25 and $75 an hour]

“This is no-nonsense community policing — boots on the ground ... We need real cops doing real police work,” Stanton said. [And real police work is NOT handcuffing 10 year olds for chewing bubble gum or talking in class. Real police work is hunting down dangerous criminals, something these Phoenix police officers who are working at their cushy school resource officer job won't be doing]

Bill Montgomery wants to run all the Mexicans out of Arizona???

Is county attorney unfair to undocumented? (Would you care if he was?)

Last week the local Hispanic Bar Association sent a scathing 12-page letter to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery that began with this bold, aggressive and completely inaccurate proclamation: “The community will no longer tolerate the unequal treatment of undocumented Latino workers that are arrested, detained and prosecuted in Maricopa County.”

It’s a nice thought.

But from what I have seen over the past 30 years, our otherwise lovely community has absolutely NO problem with the unequal treatment of undocumented Latino workers. If anything, a majority of those living in the county where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been elected six times don’t believe undocumented Latino workers have any rights.

They do, of course.

And the attorneys from the Hispanic Bar Association, called Los Abogados, want to make sure they are protected. Not just for the workers, but for all of us.

“The law is for everyone,” said the group’s president, Gaetano “Guy” Testini.

The lawyers’ group says the county attorney unfairly prosecutes undocumented immigrants by making “plea offers that guarantee a non-citizen’s deportation from the United States and denies them their day in Immigration Court.”

They do so, the group believes, by charging undocumented immigrants with Class 4 felonies tied to forgery and identity theft statutes. They point out that defendants often are charged with multiple counts with presumptive sentences of 2½ years per count. This practically forces a defendant to accept a plea.

“Therefore,” the letter to Montgomery says, “as you are well award, plea agreements for one count of forgery amount to automatic deportation… “

Again, most people in Maricopa County, and in Arizona, would have no problem with this.

A politically ambitious guy like Montgomery understands that reality.

Still, the Hispanic lawyers are hoping to make their case.

“We think this is important,” Testini told me. “And we’re in a position to approach things a little differently than other groups with civil rights concerns. We speak about the legal aspects. We don’t believe this situation is fair.”

Why not?

One comparative example they cite is underage drinkers.

In their letter, the lawyers say, “Legally speaking, persons who provide fake identification for any unlawful purpose, including underage adults attempting to buy alcohol or enter a bar, have committed fraud.”

Since it is often a fraud charge facing undocumented immigrants they add, “Consider the harsh and unequal punishment that is being applies to different classes of individuals for the same underlying conduct.”

Testini added, “We don’t believe for a minute that an underage kid trying to by a drink should be charged with a felony. But we don’t believe that a lot of undocumented workers should be charged with felonies, either.”

The lawyers also question why employers are not being prosecuted.

And they say in their letter that Montgomery’s policy “exceeds its authority as a state law enforcement agency.”

Testini said that the county attorney has sent him an e-mail promising to address the group’s concerns. Montgomery’s spokesman told me the same thing, saying, “The County Attorney is in communication with Los Abogados on the issues raised in their letter. Nothing to share with media on this at the present time.”

Testini added, “To his (Montgomery’s) credit, he has an open door to us and allows us to speak with him about these issues. Andrew Thomas (the previous county attorney) wasn’t that way. But the problem is this: Is the open door just a rotating door where you go round and round but nothing changes? We’re hoping that he’ll really look at our concerns and do something.”

I wouldn’t count on it.

Testini admits that fairness is a tough sell when speaking about undocumented immigrants.

“Even with the kids who would be part of the Dream Act you don’t see a lot of support,” he said. “That’s just a shame. So it is even tougher with undocumented workers. But this is about the law, which is supposed to be applied equally to everyone.”

That’s true.

But we all know where we live.

In their letter, the lawyers suggest that Montgomery’s policy is political and meant to “cater to the overwhelming anti-immigrant sentiment in Arizona.”

Really? Ya think?

US citing security to censor more public records

US citing security to censor more public records, analysis finds

Published March 11, 2013

Associated Press

The U.S. government, led by the Pentagon and CIA, censored in the name of national security files that the public requested last year under the Freedom of Information Act more often than at any time since President Barack Obama took office, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press.

Overall, the Obama administration last year answered its highest number of requests so far for copies of government documents, emails, photographs and more, and it slightly reduced its backlog of requests from previous years. But it more often cited legal provisions allowing the government to keep records or parts of its records secret, especially a rule intended to protect national security.

The AP's analysis showed the government released all or portions of the information that citizens, journalists, businesses and others sought at about the same rate as the previous three years. It turned over all or parts of the records in about 65 percent of requests. It fully rejected more than one-third of requests, a slight increase over 2011, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper.

The government's responsiveness under the FOIA is widely viewed as a barometer of the federal offices' transparency. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

The AP's review comes at the start of the second term for Obama, who promised during his first week in office that the nation's signature open-records law would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." The review examined figures from the largest federal departments and agencies. Sunday was the start of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement that during the past year, the government "processed more requests, decreased the backlog, improved average processing times and disclosed more information pro-actively." Schultz said the improvements "represent the efforts of agencies across the government to meet the president's commitment to openness. While there is more work to be done, this past year demonstrates that agencies are responding to the president's call for greater transparency."

In a year of intense public interest over deadly U.S. drones, the raid that killed Usama bin Laden, terror threats and more, the government cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times — a jump over 4,243 such cases in 2011 and 3,805 cases in Obama's first year in office. The secretive CIA last year became even more secretive: Nearly 60 percent of 3,586 requests for files were withheld or censored for that reason last year, compared with 49 percent a year earlier.

Other federal agencies that invoked the national security exception included the Pentagon, Director of National Intelligence, NASA, Office of Management and Budget, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Communications Commission and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

U.S. courts are loath to overrule the administration whenever it cites national security. A federal judge, Colleen McMahon of New York, in January ruled against The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to see records about the government's legal justification for drone attacks and other methods it has used to kill terrorism suspects overseas, including American citizens. She cited an "Alice in Wonderland" predicament in which she was expected to determine what information should be revealed but unable to challenge the government's secrecy claim. Part of her ruling was sealed and made available only to the government's lawyers.

"I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22," the judge wrote. "I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."

The AP could not determine whether the administration was abusing the national security exemption or whether the public was asking for more documents about sensitive subjects. Nearly half the Pentagon's 2,390 denials last year under that clause came from the National Security Agency, which monitors Internet traffic and phone calls worldwide.

"FOIA is an imperfect law, and I don't think that's changed over the last four years since Obama took office," said Alexander Abdo, an ACLU staff attorney for its national security project. "We've seen a meteoric rise in the number of claims to protect secret law, the government's interpretations of laws or its understanding of its own authority. In some ways, the Obama administration is actually even more aggressive on secrecy than the Bush administration."

The Obama administration also more frequently invoked the law's "deliberative process" exception to withhold records describing decision-making behind the scenes. Obama had directed agencies to use it less often, but the number of such cases had surged after his first year in office to more than 71,000. After back-to-back years when figures steadily declined, the government cited that reason 66,353 times last year to keep records or parts of records secret.

Even as the Obama administration continued increasing its efforts answering FOIA requests, people submitted more than 590,000 requests for information in fiscal 2012 — an increase of less than 1 percent over the previous year. Including leftover requests from previous years, the government responded to more requests than ever in 2012 — more than 603,000 — a 5 percent increase for the second consecutive year.

The Homeland Security Department, which includes offices that deal with immigration files, received more than twice as many requests for records — 190,589 new requests last year — as any other agency, and it answered significantly more requests than it did in 2011. Other agencies, including the State Department, National Transportation Safety Board and Nuclear Regulatory Commission performed worse last year. The State Department, for example, answered only 57 percent of its requests, down from 75 percent a year earlier.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services drove a dramatic increase in the number of times DHS censored immigration records under exceptions to police files containing personal information and law enforcement techniques. The agency invoked those exemptions more than 136,000 times in 2012, compared with more than 75,000 a year earlier. Even though USCIS is not a law-enforcement agency, officials used the exceptions specifically reserved for law enforcement.

The AP's analysis also found that the government generally took longer to answer requests. Some agencies, such as the Health and Human Services Department, took less time than the previous year to turn over files. But at the State Department, for example, even urgent requests submitted under a fast-track system covering breaking news or events when a person's life was at stake took an average two years to wait for files.

Journalists and others who need information quickly to report breaking news, for example, fared worse last year. The rate at which the government granted so-called expedited processing, which moves an urgent request to the front of the line for a speedy answer, fell from 24 percent in 2011 to 17 percent last year. The CIA denied every such request last year.

Under increased budget pressure across the government, agencies more often insisted that people pay search and copying fees. It waived costs in 59 percent of requests, generally when the amount was negligible or the release of the information is in the public interest, a decline from 64 percent of cases a year earlier. At the Treasury Department, which faced questions about its role in auto bailouts and stimulus programs during Obama's first term, only one in five requests were processed at no charge. A year earlier, it granted more than 75 percent of fee waivers. The CIA denied every request last year to waive fees.

The 33 agencies that AP examined were: Agency for International Development, CIA, Agriculture Department, Commerce Department, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Defense Department, Education Department, Energy Department, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Interior Department, Justice Department, Labor Department, State Department, Transportation Department, Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Election Commission, Federal Trade Commission, NASA, National Science Foundation, National Transportation Safety Board, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Management and Budget, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Securities and Exchange Commission, Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Postal Service.

Four agencies that were included in AP's previous analysis of FOIA performance did not publicly release their 2012 reports. They included the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Personnel Management.

White House censors more public records, citing security concerns

Mar 11, 2013, 1:15pm EDT Updated: Mar 11, 2013, 1:30pm EDT

White House censors more public records, citing security concerns

Staff Washington Business Journal

The Obama administration is citing security concerns more often as a reason to keep the public in the dark, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press, Federal News Radio reports.

The Pentagon, intelligence community, NASA, Office of Management and Budget and several other agencies invoked the national security exemption last year in rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests.

The government is answering more open-records requests overall, having released two-thirds of the documents requested by the public last year. The other third included cases where agencies couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was improper.

Media blackout: Obama censors more documents, citing national security

Media blackout: Obama censors more documents, citing national security

By Susan Crabtree

The Washington Times

Monday, March 11, 2013

Amid intense public interest over drones, the Osama bin Laden raid and other terrorism-related news, the U.S. government cited national security as its reason for refusing to release documents requested by the public last year more often than in any year since President Obama took office, according to a study released Monday.

The Associated Press reviewed and analyzed the Obama administration’s level of responsiveness to Freedom of Information Act requests, giving the administration credit for answering its highest number of requests for copies of government files and slightly reducing the backlog of requests from previous years.

But the survey also faulted government agencies, led by the Pentagon and the CIA, for increasing the number of times they invoked legal reasons to keep records secret or redact them.

According to the AP analysis, the U.S. government last year turned over all or parts of the records requested in roughly 65 percent of requests, while rejecting more than one-third of requests, a slight increase over 2011. Over the last fiscal year, the government cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times — an increase over 4,243 such cases in 2011 and 3,805 cases in 2010.

Not surprisingly, the CIA was the most secretive agency. It denied 60 percent of 3,586 requests for information, compared to 49 percent a year earlier.

The stepped-up secrecy flies in the face of Mr. Obama’s pledge during his first week in office to run the “most transparent government in history.” He promised at the time that the nation’s open-records law would be “administered with a clear presumption — in the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

Watchdogs organizations and others who regularly make FOIA requests offered some praise for the Obama administration’s progress on open-government issues, but they say government agencies still have an abysmal record when it comes to responding to public requests for information.

Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University said Mr. Obama has declassified such items as the national intelligence budget, the so-called “torture memos” and information about the Justice Department’s warrantless wiretapping program. But the openness on big issues has not filtered down to the agencies dealing with FOIA requests.

“We have just not seen the agencies respond to the Obama and [Attorney General] Eric Holder presumption of disclosure. … You see a real hangover of regular bureaucratic behavior,” he said.

Others point to a growing trend among government agencies to refuse to waive the costs of responding to request, even for those applicants whose eligibility for a public-interest fee waiver seems clear.

The Obama administration “has been responsible for a growing trend in which agencies issue baseless denials of public-interest fee waiver requests,” said Julie Murray, an attorney at the watchdog group Public Citizen.

Melanie Ann Pustay, who heads the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy, on Monday defended the administration’s record on transparency.

Even though agencies received more requests than in previous years, Ms. Pustay said, government officials “rose to the challenge” and processed more requests than ever before. The government as a whole processed more than 665,000 request in fiscal year 2012, which is 34,000 more than they processed in fiscal year 2011 and 65,000 more than they processed two years ago.

As a result, the government reduced its backlog of pending requests by 14 percent over the last fiscal year and 45 percent since Mr. Obama took office, she said.

The military's Chicken Littles want you to think the sky is falling

Source

Think Again: The Pentagon

The military's Chicken Littles want you to think the sky is falling. Don't believe them: America has never been safer.

BY THOMAS P.M. BARNETT | MARCH/APRIL 2013

"The Pentagon Is Always Fighting the Last War."

Just the opposite. The Pentagon, as former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates derisively pointed out, has a bad case of "next-war-itis." With Iraq now ancient history and Afghanistan winding down, all four of the major U.S. military services today prefer to imagine distant, future, high-tech shoot-'em-ups against China (er, well-equipped adversaries) over dealing with the world as we find it, which is still full of those nasty little wars. As Marine Corps general and outgoing Central Command boss James Mattis once told me, "I find it intellectually embarrassing that people want to hug the Chinese [and exclaim], 'Oh, thank God we have another peer competitor at last! Now we can go back to building the weapons that we always wanted to build.'"

Some of these efforts can verge on the ridiculous. I recently sat through an Air Force briefing during which super-empowered individuals were portrayed as thiiiiiis close to being able to wipe out humanity with a genetic weapon or to kill off -- get this -- more than half the U.S. population through electromagnetic-pulse attacks that send us collectively back to subsistence farming (think of the TV drama Revolution). Another scenario posited a "one-machine" future when, naturally, the "beast" starts thinking for itself and can turn on humanity (here, take your pick of Terminator's Skynet or the Matrix trilogy). That's the beautiful thing about Armageddon-like future wars: They could happen tomorrow, or they could never happen. The only thing we know for sure is that we're totally unprepared!

If you thought all these plotlines portray a Pentagon in search of the right justifying villain, then you'd be right. But remember, amid all this institutional angst, what's really being fought over are slices of a $530 billion budgetary pie that many experts think should be shrunk by one-fifth over the rest of this decade.

The first services to be infected were "Big War Blue" -- the Navy and Air Force -- as both felt slighted in the post-9/11 long war against radical terrorist networks, seeing in its unfolding an existential threat: a long-term emphasis on "Small Wars Green" involving mainly the Army, the Marine Corps, and special operators like SEAL Team 6. Now, however, even the Army and the Marine Corps are beginning to catch the fever. So while the Navy and Air Force have been fighting harder for longer because they've gotten the short end of the stick for the last decade, the Army and Marine Corps are now running hard from the long war too, looking to make sure they don't get discarded like Iraq and Afghanistan.

After years of acting like it was on top of everything, the U.S. military is back in Chicken Little mode and, man, is that sky ever fallin'. According to Andrew Krepinevich, a longtime advisor to the Pentagon, America either stands up militarily to the Chinese now or risks a "latter-day Chinese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of Influence." How does the Pentagon find those dollars? Krepinevich is blunt: "The big bill payer here is the ground forces."

All those gripes aside, next-war-itis is a good thing. After all, no American interests are served by having the U.S. military be the last to wake up to a genuine national security threat. And because these crystal-ball exercises are far more art than science, a certain number of bad bets will be placed. But those cost a great deal less than wars the military is ill-prepared to fight -- which is why the Pentagon is always fighting the wars yet to come, and the wars that will never be.

"The U.S. Military Still Needs to Be Able to Wage Two Wars at Once."

Not anymore. Or at least not for the foreseeable future. The two-wars concept, on some level, echoes World War II's European and Pacific theaters. During the Cold War, it became a matter of keeping the Soviets boxed in on both ends, lest the dominoes fall (as the United States feared in Southeast Asia). When the Reds went away, the Pentagon started calling them "major regional contingencies," but everyone soon realized that was just a bureaucratic euphemism for North Korea and Iraq (then later Iran) -- not exactly your daddy's world war.

So why has this Cold War artifact lasted so long inside the Pentagon? It created a force-sizing principle -- America needs X many troops/ships/aircraft/etc. -- that could be presented to Congress to justify a defense budget "floor" once the all-mighty Soviets were no more. Until the 9/11 attacks, it was just a theory. Now, after the United States just spent the better part of a decade waging two modest-sized wars and saw how they burned out the force, neither Congress nor the American people is in the mood to entertain the fantasy of simultaneously toppling Iran's mullahs in the Persian Gulf and duking it out with the Chinese in East Asia. So consider this one dead and buried until the United States reaches some semblance of fiscal order.

America's "pivot" from Southwest Asia (so long, Iraq and Afghanistan!) to East Asia (hello, China!) represents more than just Barack Obama's strategic rationale for tying off his predecessor's military adventures. In concluding two land wars that enlarged his two armies -- the Army and the Marine Corps -- the president can reduce their superexpensive manpower (keeping just one soldier in Afghanistan costs roughly $1 million a year) even as he shifts U.S. military and diplomatic efforts toward the Pacific.

All that "supplemental" spending on the Army and the far smaller Marine Corps to fund Iraq and Afghanistan depressed the Navy and Air Force shares of the procurement budget throughout the 2000s. For example, the Air Force's share of the defense budget across the 1990s averaged 31 to 32 percent. Now it stands just above 27 percent. Meanwhile, the Army picked up almost 2 percentage points that it's now sure to lose. For the services, the "pivot" has a wholly different meaning.

Plus, slotting in still-reddish Beijing for the old Red Menace is a stone that kills two birds: A Democratic administration avoids the "weak-on-defense" charge (see, we're standing up to those dastardly Chinese!) while sidestepping any serious military responsibility for what remains of, or is still to come from, the so-called Arab Spring (Syria, anyone?).

Obama's new secretaries of state and defense -- both Vietnam War veterans turned anti-war senators -- could not send a clearer signal in this regard: America doesn't do land wars (read: quagmires) anymore. Instead, the country returns to what scholars call "offshore balancing" and occasionally striking from a safe distance. "And how many troops/ships/aircraft/etc. does that take?" asks Congress. "Ah," says the Pentagon, "have we briefed you recently on Chinese military developments?"

Of course, the Pentagon will never admit exactly what is going on. No, that would be perceived as giving a green light to Antagonist B if America ever tussled with Antagonist A. Check out the recent tap dance by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, over the White House's 2013 budget submission:

There's been much made -- and I'm sure will be made -- about whether this strategy moves away from a force structure explicitly designed to fight and win two wars simultaneously. Fundamentally, our strategy has always been about our ability to respond to global contingencies wherever and whenever they occur. This won't change.… We can and will always be able to do more than one thing at a time. More importantly, wherever we are confronted and in whatever sequence, we will win.

Got that Beijing/Tehran/Pyongyang?

"The U.S. Navy Is Too Small."

Not necessarily. Yes, the U.S. Navy has dwindled greatly from the Reagan-era dream of a "600-ship navy," but its slow slide to today's approximately 290 "battle-force ships" is no cause for alarm -- even with all that talk about the future of American power being in the South China Sea. To paraphrase Obama's election-debate comeback, "This ain't your grandfather's 1917 navy." The combined agility, firepower, and operational reach of today's seaborne force dwarf anything America enjoyed in the last century. Military expert John Pike notes that current U.S. aircraft carriers are 10 times more powerful than they were just two decades ago, thanks to precision munitions.

So, yeah, when you can deliver that much force that accurately -- and from such incredible distances -- the notion of steaming into some rogue regime's inner harbor to teach it some manners is excruciatingly quaint. And if Beijing wants to stockpile budget-draining capital ships -- even aircraft carriers -- then Mao bless 'em, because the U.S. Navy is already evolving past last century's paradigm toward this century's version of the many, the cheap(er), and the unmanned.

The Navy's latest vision of war, concocted with the help of D.C. think tanks and the Air Force, is the Air-Sea Battle concept. It says, in so many words, that the Navy won't let China's military prevent it from accessing some future East Asian crisis or war. So when China starts fielding its first aircraft carrier (a Soviet retread built in the 1980s) and its superscary carrier-killing missiles, the U.S. Navy starts testing its first carrier-capable unmanned combat aircraft (what else to call it when it sports an F-16's engine?). And if China forces the Navy into a standoff posture, then guess what? America comes up with a technological breakthrough that turns every carrier-launched strike force into another Doolittle raid -- as in, No pilots? No return? No problem. We'll become the kamikazes, only there won't be any "we" inside our "suicide" drones.

As for the Navy's pitch in recent years about needing to police the "global commons," let's be honest and say that bad-actor behavior on the high seas doesn't amount to much. Heck, put two former special-ops snipers fore and aft of a cargo ship, and that's all the security you need to handle your average Somali pirate crew -- as in, bang, bang, you're dead.

So have no fears about the Navy. It'll remain "big" enough.

"So the Wars of the Future Will Be Unmanned."

I didn't say that. Yes, deep inside the Pentagon, some 50-pound brains are dreaming up the Terminator-style wars of tomorrowland (typically waged against the Chinese hoards … of robots and unmanned vehicles). And yes, drones increasingly rule the skies. But seriously, think about that for a minute. What exactly do such forces fight over -- decisively -- in this rock 'em, sock 'em manner? Other than just blowing up each other's high-tech toys? If, at the end of the day, there's something truly valuable to contest, a country's manned forces still need to occupy and control it; otherwise, nothing is achieved. Wake me up when drones can set up local government elections in Afghanistan or reconfigure Mali's judicial system.

So, yes, drones are spectacular for finding and targeting bad actors (and other drones, eventually), but if your robot war requires a no man's land to unfold (say, the tribal regions of Pakistan), then all you can "control" in this manner are no man's lands -- or patches of ocean. If you really want to get your hands on what lies below (hydrocarbons, minerals, arable land), you still have to send in some bodies -- eventually. That's why they call it blood and treasure.

That's not to say all these new aerial drones don't strike fear into the hearts of America's enemies, not to mention the U.S. Air Force. I mean, you couldn't even squeeze a pilot in many of the newest drones, some of which are so slight they can be launched with a flick of the wrist. And with the Army now proposing a 5-pound bullet of a drone (the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System) to shoot individual enemy soldiers from half a dozen miles away, the youngest of the four services correctly spots an existential threat amid all those toggling joysticks. Indeed, four years ago, the Air Force published a report that suggested the service could eventually get rid of two-thirds (or more) of its 13,250 pilots. No wonder the Air Force is talking so much about its indispensable role combating the hazards of space and cyberwar these days.

"America Doesn't Need the Marines Anymore."

Hold on there, soldier! The Marines go into survival mode just about every other decade, all the way back to when they lost their jobs as snipers lodged in the masts of ships after the Civil War. Troop numbers were decimated after World War I, and the Marine Corps was almost swallowed whole by the Army after World War II. Then came the post-Vietnam funk and the relegation to a mere amphibious feint in the Army's lightning-fast liberation of Kuwait in 1991's Operation Desert Storm. So no, the Marines' latest bout of angst is nothing new. Sure, there wasn't really any difference between how the United States deployed Marine Corps and Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan, the clearest evidence being their frequent relief of one another. And with the special-ops community stealing a good chunk of the Marines' thunder recently, it's only natural to wonder whether America's most iconic service has reached its own Zero Dark Something.

Still, it's never going to happen.

First of all, no other service can match the Marine Corps' outsized reputation (hell, mystique) or its connections on Capitol Hill. Americans simply expect that there will always be a Marine Corps. Logic doesn't enter into it.

Plus, an essential division of labor has settled in since 9/11: While the special operators handle the low end of the spectrum (killing bad guys discretely) and the Army stands ready for the Big One, the Marine Corps, which alone among the services is back up to its Cold War fighting strength (of 200,000), exists to respond to everything in between -- at the drop of a helmet. That's why it was the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit that swooped into Japan after the big 2011 earthquake and tsunami, not the 1st Armored Division. So, no, forget about furloughing America's global emergency-response force, because -- unlike in Armageddon -- bad things happen to good people(s) all the time.

If the Marine Corps is reaching for a new combat image, it's best captured in the emerging Navy concept of the Single Naval Battle -- a ship or two, a few good men, and something to fight over on the water, like an oil rig. Yes, that sounds like it's ripped from today's headlines (e.g., China and Japan's ongoing tussle over islets in the East China Sea), but toss in a future ice-free Arctic Ocean, where one-fifth of the world's known hydrocarbon reserves lie largely unexploited, and who knows? A British firm just announced that it's launching Britain's first private navy in two centuries to fight those nasty Somali pirates, so maybe the Marines' new survival strategy makes sense, even if -- again -- the overall market likely remains small.

"The U.S. Army Is Far Too Big."

Bingo. Today's Army declares that it exists to win land wars in a decisive fashion. The key word is "decisive": While Army generals don't advertise it anymore, that means occupying the defeated power and overseeing its stabilization and reconstruction for a significant period of time. But let's get real: Does anyone really think the American people will tolerate another Iraq or Afghanistan?

Compared with the past, today's wars are waged decidedly faster and thus are dramatically shorter. (Yes, by that I mean America should stop calling its subsequent military occupations and counterinsurgency campaigns "wars.") They're also far less lethal thanks to smarter bombs and better emergency care. Point being: America doesn't need today's Army if the next Iraq war is a Vietnam syndrome away from happening. The U.S. government is simply too broke.

At roughly 560,000 men and women, the Army is bigger than it has been since 1994, when it was still crashing from its Reagan-era Cold War heights of 780,000. Later in the 1990s, the Army bottomed out at 480,000, and there's no reason it can't go back to that level, given that none of the fabulously high-tech wars being dreamed up by Pentagon planners calls for multiyear occupations of distant California-size countries.

The Army's just-issued "Capstone Concept" -- its vision of how it sees the wars of the future and the Army's role in them -- tried its best to be coy on this subject. But come on: When the first serious scenario mentioned is the "implosion" of the North Korean regime, then, buddy, that is one bare cupboard. After the steep cuts of the 1970s and 1990s (and before that the demobilizations following World War I and World War II), the Army should be used to this budgetary sine wave by now. The republic will survive.

"Cyberwar Is the Next Big Thing."

You bet. That is, at least as far as D.C.'s Beltway bandits are concerned. There is only one great growth area in the U.S. defense budget today -- besides health care, which now eats up roughly 10 percent of the Pentagon's spending each year. Spending on cyberweapons and network defense has been skyrocketing for years. Over the next five years, the Pentagon alone is set to spend $18 billion on cyber (it requested $3.4 billion for fiscal year 2013), and the Obama administration's 2009 decision to set up U.S. Cyber Command sanctified that emerging "war-fighting domain" and its budgetary standing. Washington's small army of IT contractors couldn't be happier.

But is this a good use of taxpayer money? There's no question that the U.S. government and national security establishment in general are pretty bad at network security, and by that I mean both fall far below the standards of the world's best corporations and banks. Most Silicon Valley experts will tell you that, but you'll never hear it from D.C.'s many contractors or the national security cyber offices they serve in parasitic symbiosis. As far as they are concerned, it's the private sector that's light-years behind.

As for cyber serving as a stand-alone war-fighting domain, there you'll find the debates no less theological in their intensity. After serving as senior managing director for half a dozen years at a software firm that specializes in securing supply chains, I'm deeply skeptical. Given the uncontrollable nature of cyberweapons (see: Stuxnet's many permutations), I view them as the 21st century's version of chemical weapons -- nice to have, but hard to use. Another way to look at it is to simply call a spade a spade: Cyberwarfare is nothing more than espionage and sabotage updated for the digital era. Whatever cyberwar turns out to be in the national security realm, it will always be dwarfed by the industrial variants -- think cyberthieves, not cyberwarriors. But you wouldn't know it from the panicky warnings from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the generals about the imminent threat of a "cyber Pearl Harbor."

Please remember amid all this frenetic scaremongering that the Pentagon is never more frightened about our collective future than when it's desperately uncertain about its own. Given the rising health-care costs associated with America's aging population and the never-ending dysfunction in Washington, we should expect to be bombarded with frightening scenarios of planetary doom for the next decade or two. None of this bureaucratic chattering will bear any resemblance to global trends, which demonstrate that wars have grown increasingly infrequent, shorter in duration, and diminished in lethality. But you won't hear that from the next-warriors on the Potomac.

Volunteer to help recall Sheriff Joe!!!!!

Source

Joe Arpaio recall in trouble

Just 12 days after anti-Joe Arpaio forces announced that they had collected an impressive 120,000 signatures in the campaign to recall Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the campaign has taken a nosedive.

Lilia Alvarez, campaign manager of the Arpaio recall, confirmed the campaign is out of money and can no longer pay petition circulators. Instead, Respect Arizona will rely on volunteers to get to the promised land of 335,317 valid signatures by May 30.

Alvarez remains optimistic that it can be done.

“Money isn’t really the answer,” she said. “It’s whether people are hungry for change or not.”

Others, however, say the lack of cash is a major setback. One Democratic strategist says “recall fatique” has set in among donors and young Arizonans who campaigned against him last year and now have moved on to Phoenix City Council races.

“Joe Arpaio is passé and so is any effort to get him out of office,” said Democratic strategist Mario Diaz.

Randy Parraz, an Arpaio recall backer who launched the successful recall of ex-Senate President Russell Pearce, predicted the group can get there with volunteers. He said the Pearce recall got 5,700 signatures from paid circulators but 12,000 from volunteers.

The Arpaio recall campaign needs at least 450,000 signatures in order to ensure success. Assuming the campaign had 120,000 valid signatures 12 days ago, it needs about 26,000 more where they came from every week until the end of May.

Arpaio’s campaign manager, Chad Willems, wouldn’t speculate on what Monday’s announcement means for the recall effort, saying it could be “another one of Randy Parraz’s fundraising stunts.”

“If they are forced to go to an all-volunteer effort I’ll have to reserve judgment on that as well,” he said in an e-mail. “The recall crowd does have plenty of volunteers and plenty of funding sources outside the legal channels of ‘Respect Arizona’.”

My take: no money = no recall.

I’ve never heard of a petition campaign of this magnitude that didn’t rely heavily on paid circulators.

The interesting question, of course, is this: why haven’t the big-name Democrats, the unions and other Arpaio opponents backed this effort to oust the sheriff?

NY cops ordered to stop and frisk "the right people"???

I suspect that Sheriff Paul Babeu, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio orders his cops to stop all the "right people"!!!

Source

Recording Points to Race Factor in Stops by New York Police

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Published: March 21, 2013 49 Comments

For years, the debate over the New York Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics has centered on whether officers engage in racial profiling. Now, a recording suggests that, in at least one precinct, a person’s skin color can be a deciding factor in who is stopped.

The recording, played on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was of a conversation between a patrol officer and his commanding officer in the 40th Precinct in the South Bronx, a violent command that recorded the highest number of police stops in the Bronx in 2011.

The commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, urged the officer to be more active, emphasizing the need to conduct more street stops. “We go out there and we summons people,” Inspector McCormack said. The way to suppress violent crime, he said, was for officers to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk “the right people at the right time, the right location.”

The officer who surreptitiously recorded the conversation last month, Pedro Serrano, began pressing Inspector McCormack about who he meant by the “right people.” The conversation grew heated.

After an exchange about Mott Haven, a particularly crime-prone neighborhood, the inspector suggested that the police needed to conduct street stops of the people creating “the most problems” there.

“The problem was, what, male blacks,” Inspector McCormack said. “And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21.”

The conversation was played on the fourth day of a class-action lawsuit covering several million stop-and-frisk encounters in the city, a police tactic that the Bloomberg administration has embraced, citing its effectiveness in driving down gun violence. But the tactic has proved divisive in many parts of the city and has become a major issue in the mayoral race.

The authority of the police to use stop-and-frisk tactics is not at issue, but how the Police Department conducts these street interactions — and whether it stops blacks and Hispanics in violation of the Constitution — is the matter at hand before the judge in the case, Shira A. Scheindlin.

The question of what commanders mean by “the right people” is central to the trial.

Civil rights lawyers have long maintained that the term “right people” is police code for young black and Hispanic men, who make up an overwhelming share of those stopped. But the police, on the other hand, say that they use this phrase to describe habitual lawbreakers, and that by focusing on the “right people,” they are trying to avoid giving tickets to the construction worker drinking a beer on his way home or the couple strolling through a park that is closed for the night.

Officer Serrano, 43, testified on Thursday that he believed his supervisors used the expression to pressure officers to stop blacks and Hispanics without reasonable suspicion.

He testified that he once told a teenager he had been ordered to issue a ticket that “they should take my name down and if they sue, they could use me as a witness.”

Officer Serrano is the second Bronx police officer to take the witness stand in the trial and assert that police supervisors institute quotas that encourage officers to stop people unlawfully. He said he began taping interactions with supervisors in the station house because “they’re asking me to do something that’s illegal, I believe, and I was worried.”

Officer Serrano, who continues to work in the 40th Precinct, said that as a Hispanic man in the Bronx, he himself had been stopped many times. “It’s not a good feeling,” he testified.

When he went to Inspector McCormack’s office last month to complain about his work evaluation, he immediately came under criticism for having reported only a couple of street stops for all of 2012.

“It seems like you are purposely not doing anything to help prevent the shootings, the robberies and the grand larcenies,” Inspector McCormack said. To conduct so few stops in a year, amid so much crime, he said, was “not fair to the public.”

“I could see in Central Park maybe that would be fine, but this ain’t Central Park,” Inspector McCormack said.

Officer Serrano explained that his interactions with the public did not always rise to stops, as a matter of law, and so he rarely filled out the UF-250 form, which officers are supposed to fill out each time they conduct a stop.

At first, Inspector McCormack can be heard lecturing Officer Serrano about how “99 percent of these people in this community are great, hardworking people” who deserve to go about their days in peace. But the citizens, he said, were troubled by crime, and he went on to describe how a woman in her 60s was shot coming out of an elevator at 10 a.m.

The ambiguity in how the phrase “stopping the right people” is used by police commanders, and how it may be interpreted by patrol officers, was evident in the recordings played in court.

Pressed by the officer on what he meant, Inspector McCormack offered examples of people who should not be stopped, like an elderly person violating a parks rule by playing chess. He also cited the stop of a 48-year-old woman who was intercepted on her way to work as she took a shortcut through a park that was closed for the night.

“You think that’s the right people?” Inspector McCormack asked the officer skeptically.

But with Officer Serrano challenging him, the inspector never offered a clear answer.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Officer Serrano asked, after Inspector McCormack used that expression again. “Is it stop every black and Hispanic?”

The exchange continues until the inspector brings the conversation to a close, telling the officer, “You’re very close to having a problem here.”

The inspector continued, “The problem is that you don’t know who to stop and how to stop.”

In a later passage of the recording, which was not played in court, Inspector McCormack seemed to suggest to others there that Officer Serrano was trying to put words in his mouth. “He’s adding on that I wanted him to stop every black and Hispanic.”

Inspector McCormack is expected to be called as a witness in the coming weeks.

A jobs program for MCCCD cops - Sounds like it!!!

The $5-per-credit hour tuition hike will cost students taking a full time load of 18 hours $90 a semester.

Who needs to pay $90 more a semester to hire police thugs to micromanage your lives???

Source

MCCCD weighs tuition hike to bolster campus security

By Mary Beth Faller The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:43 PM

A tuition increase for students of Maricopa Community Colleges would pay for a fundamental change to the district’s security culture, from an uneven patchwork of guards and aides at the many campuses to a full staff of certified, armed officers.

The community-college district’s chief of police is seeking $2 million to hire 23 additional officers, a 50 percent increase in staffing for the district’s Department of Public Safety.

The governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District will vote on a $5-per-credit tuition increase on Tuesday. Students’ costs would increase from $76 per credit hour to $81 per credit hour for 2013-14. If approved, the tuition hike would generate an additional $12.5 million for the district.

Mikel Longman, the district’s chief of police, was hired last year to consolidate the 10 colleges’ public-safety units, which were independent, into one district department.

Staffing varies at the colleges, ranging from three to six officers on the main campuses. Some smaller satellite campuses have an officer, and some don’t. Longman’s plan would add one or two officers to each campus, and GateWay Community College in Phoenix would get four.

Currently, the ratio of certified police officers to students is 1 to 5,108, Longman said. The additional officers would reduce it to 1 to 3,405.

“It’s a basic assumption that when we’re open for business, we’ll have armed police officers,” he said.

Crime on the campuses is fairly low. According to the annual report for 2011, the most recent available, there were no murders, robberies or arsons at any of the colleges. Other districtwide statistics for 2011: four forcible sex assaults, five non-forcible sex assaults, 10 aggravated assaults, 19 burglaries, 21 motor-vehicle thefts, 17 drug arrests, six liquor arrests and two weapons violations.

There were 396 larcenies, which would be incidents such as phone and bike thefts, in 2011, an increase of about a third from two years before. No other crimes showed a notable increase from previous years.

Longman said his officers respond to about 90 percent of campus incidents, with the remainder handled by municipal police. The campuses and branches are in 12 police jurisdictions, and because there is no reporting system, the number, response time and type of incidents the municipal police respond to is unknown.

Earlier this month, the district awarded a $158,000 contract to establish a security records-management system that should be working by this summer.

Longman also wants to reduce reliance on the part-time security aides, who write parking tickets, monitor surveillance cameras and escort people after dark. He said the aides, who make about $9 or $10 an hour, are not reliable in showing up for shifts. There are also about 50 full-time security guards around the district.

“We give our keys to our kingdom to minimum-wage, minimally trained employees, and if something bad happens to our property, it hurts our ability to deliver education,” he told the governing board last month.

Besides requesting their second tuition increase in three years, the community colleges are seeking an increase in the property-tax levy, which would generate an additional $8.1 million. The vote on that will be in May.

The colleges want to add, in addition to police, 32 full-time professors. They also want to update technology and spend $5 million on two ongoing programs to improve efficiency in registration and financial aid and students’ graduation and transfer rates.

Andrew Kuhn, president of the Associated Students of Mesa Community College, said last week that his group is studying the tuition proposal and will likely draft a position before the vote Tuesday.

“The general consensus I’ve taken from most students is that they’re not in favor of it, partly because the last time, when the association was in favor of it, it was under the assumption that it wouldn’t happen for another five years,” he said.

Kuhn, 25, a business major, said the group acknowledges that funding from the state has decreased — from $45 million in 2010 to a projected $8 million for 2013-14.

Barry Vaughn, spokesman for the Maricopa Community Colleges Faculty Association, said his group also has not had time to take a position, but will meet Tuesday afternoon before the vote. He said that, beyond this tuition proposal, the faculty is worried about the spiraling costs of higher education in general.

“It’s going to undermine our ability to prepare the next generation of citizens in this country if we cannot get these rapid increases under control,” said Vaughn, who is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Mesa Community College.

“Having said that, we are still going to be by far one of the least expensive options for higher education in Arizona, so we are still a bargain, relatively speaking.”

The governing board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the district office, 2411 W. 14th St., Tempe.

Law-enforcement veterans join Arpaio recall

Law-enforcement veterans join Arpaio recall

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:14 AM

Several retired Valley law-enforcement officials have joined the recall effort against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, criticizing him for using what they consider scare tactics to raise money to fight the recall.

Respect Arizona is in the process of gathering signature petitions seeking to hold a recall election to oust Arpaio.

The group obtained a letter — signed by Arpaio and paid for by the Elect Sheriff Joe Arpaio campaign — that was e-mailed to conservative supporters urging financial donations to help fight the recall.

In the letter, Arpaio said the Valley’s public safety was at stake in the recall.

Without Arpaio, the letter said, those who would be in danger include single mothers whose children face “a rampant drug culture,” the hypothetical mother of a child killed by a drug dealer whom Arpaio is not able to keep in jail, and small-business owners whose livelihoods are threatened by illegal immigrants who have control over neighborhoods.

Respect Arizona released statements purported to have been provided by retired Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris and retired Phoenix Assistant Police Chief Bill Louis, accusing Arpaio of misleading supporters by taking sole credit for community safety. Former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton and former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard were also quoted in the group’s statements.

“Arizona law enforcement will continue to fight crime and ensure public safety long after Mr. Arpaio leaves office,” Harris said in his statement.

Two other retired law-enforcement officials and former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon echoed those sentiments in person. During a Wednesday news conference, they called Arpaio’s fundraising letter disingenuous.

“Elected officials come and go, and the state moves on,” Gordon said.

Arpaio’s camp defended the statements in his letter.

Chad Willems, manager for the Elect Sheriff Joe Arpaio campaign, said there “would most certainly be consequences negatively impacting law enforcement” if Arpaio were recalled: Fewer illegal immigrants would be apprehended or turned over for deportation, and citizens would be less safe because crimes associated with illegal immigration could increase.

“If it doesn’t matter who the elected official is, then why do they want to remove Arpaio from office? They want him out of office precisely because of the way he runs his office, specifically as it relates to enforcing illegal immigration laws,” Willems said in an e-mail to The Arizona Republic.

Willems took a swipe at Respect Arizona and its dwindling finances, which the group’s leaders recently confirmed. He blamed the group for misleading the public, the same accusation the group lodged against Arpaio.

“It is ironic that the Respect Arizona petitioners are criticizing the sheriff for seeking financial donations when he has been made to do so to defend himself against the very recall effort they started, an effort that is waning, if not entirely dead,” Willems said in a statement.

One local cop for every 270 people in Arizona???

So for about every 270 people in Arizona there is one city, county, or state cop or prison guard.

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board sets standards for training, recruitment and retention for more than 15,000 sworn peace officers and 9,000 correctional-service officers in the state.

Source

Phoenix police temporarily halt shooting practice, cite rising supply costs

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:26 PM

Phoenix police are temporarily halting discretionary shooting practice because of rising cost and limited supply of ammunition.

Officers will no longer get 100 rounds of .40-caliber and .45-caliber ammunition each month and shoot on their own at the academy’s range, said police spokesman Trent Crump. All other firearms training and certifications will remain.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, which represents 2,500 rank-and-file officers, said some officers struggle with shooting and need the extra practice and many go down to the range and take advantage of the monthly shooting.

“Any time you have a resource, a critical resource that is limited, reduced or taken away it does cause concern,” union Vice President Ken Crane said.

Crane said roughly 308 officers each month last year participated in the optional practice. Some officers participate because they enjoy shooting and others do it to keep up their required shooting skills, he said.

Every year officers must pass a firearms qualification, which includes earning a score of 84 percent with a duty handgun on an approved course.

Crane said some officers might have a hard time passing the certification and thus more might have to take department’s Skill Builder Program, which is mandated for officers who fail their firearms qualification.

“We want officers to maintain their level of efficiency when they are out on the street,” he said.

The department memo sent Monday cited budgetary issues, the increasing cost of ammunition, and the difficulty in getting ammunition in a timely basis for suspending the monthly practice. Crump said the ammunition cost was 20 percent higher.

Crump doesn’t know exactly when the department can resume the target shooting. He attributed the shortage on a back-order.

Crump said the department ordered a bulk shipment of practice rounds in May, which didn’t arrive in January as expected.

“It sounds like fall before we can expect it,” Crump said. “The firearms unit is trying to manage the ammunition we have to make sure we get through all the training, all the mandatory shooting required by AZ Post.”

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board sets standards for training, recruitment and retention for more than 15,000 sworn peace officers and 9,000 correctional-service officers in the state.

Crump was unable to say how much money the department spends on practice rounds but that last year it spent $850,000 for all ammunition.

Crump said 1 million to 2 million practice rounds are fired each year.

Practice ammunition is cheaper and of less quality than that used while on duty, Crump said.

“We are being more frugal with the rounds we have because of the shortage,” he said.

Are the DEA and FBI listening to your cell phone calls????

F*ck the 4th Amendment, I got a gun and a badge and can do anything I want!!!!

Source

Little-known surveillance tool raises concerns by judges, privacy activists

By Ellen Nakashima, Published: March 27

Federal investigators in Northern California routinely used a sophisticated surveillance system to scoop up data from cellphones and other wireless devices in an effort to track criminal suspects — but failed to detail the practice to judges authorizing the probes.

The practice was disclosed Wednesday in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California — in a glimpse into a technology that federal agents rarely discuss publicly.

The investigations used a device known as a StingRay, which simulates a cellphone tower and enables agents to collect the serial numbers of individual cellphones and then locate them. Although law enforcement officials can employ StingRays and similar devices to locate suspects, privacy groups and some judges have raised concerns that the technology is so invasive — in some cases effectively penetrating the walls of homes — that its use should require a warrant.

The issues, judges and activists say, are twofold: whether federal agents are informing courts when seeking permission to monitor suspects, and whether they are providing enough evidence to justify the use of a tool that sweeps up data not only from a suspect’s wireless device but also from those of bystanders in the vicinity.

In Northern California, according to the newly disclosed documents, judges expressed concerns about the invasive nature of the technology.

“It has recently come to my attention that many agents are still using [StingRay] technology in the field although the [surveillance] application does not make that explicit,” Miranda Kane, then chief of the criminal division of the Northern California U.S. attorney’s office, said in a May 2011 e-mail obtained by the ACLU.

As a result of that, she wrote, “effective immediately, all . . . applications and proposed orders must be reviewed by your line supervisor before they are submitted to a magistrate judge.” [I suspect a "line supervisor" will rubber stamp the request with no questions asked, just like judges usually rubber stamp them with no questions asked]

The Justice Department has generally maintained that a warrant based on probable cause is not needed to use a “cell-site simulator” because the government is not employing them to intercept conversations, former officials said. But some judges around the country have disagreed and have insisted investigators first obtain a warrant.

“It’s unsettled territory,” said one U.S. law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the record. [Unsettled territory my *ss, the Fourth Amendment has been around since the 1700's]

In a statement, Christopher Allen, a spokesman for the FBI, said the bureau advises field offices to “work closely with the relevant U.S. Attorney’s Office to adhere to the legal requirements” of their respective districts.

One of the problems is there is “scant law” addressing the issue of cell-site simulators, said Brian L. Owsley, a federal magistrate judge in the Southern District of Texas, who in June wrote a rare public ruling on the issue. He denied an application to use a StingRay, in large part because he felt the investigating agent failed to explain the technology or how it would be used to gather the target’s cellphone number.

Moreover, the government did not explain what it would do with the numbers and other data “concerning seemingly innocent cell phone users” that were also picked up.

“Neither the special agent nor the assistant United States attorney appeared to understand the technology very well,” Owsley wrote. “At a minimum, they seemed to have some discomfort in trying to explain it.” [I suspect they didn't WANT to explain it and risk the judge not issuing their search warrant]

At a recent conference on cellphone tracking issues at Yale University, Owsley said he thought that “there are magistrate judges around the country that are getting these requests and not realizing what these requests are,” in some cases perhaps because the agents are not clear about their intent to use the technology. [Again, I suspect the agents intentionally don't explain the technology, because they don't want to risk a just refusing to rubber stamp the search warrant]

“By withholding information about this technology from courts in applications for electronic surveillance orders, the federal government is essentially seeking to write its own search warrants,” said Linda Lye, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.

Judges “need the opportunity to require privacy safeguards, such as rules on how to handle the data of innocent people that may be captured by the devices as well,” she said.Lye will be arguing the issue on Thursday in a federal case in Arizona, in support of a defendant charged with tax fraud and identity theft. Daniel Rigmaiden, known as “the Hacker” to acquaintances and federal agents, was tracked in part with the use of a StingRay. He has alleged that investigators did not seek a court’s approval to use the technology.

“The main concern we have in Rigmaiden is the government was not being forthright with the magistrate when it was seeking to use this device,” said Lye, whose organization is one of several that have filed an amicus brief in the case.

The newly disclosed documents suggest that “Rigmaiden was not an isolated case,” she said.

The government said it obtained a warrant to track Rigmaiden, but the ACLU is arguing that the government did not present key information about the surveillance device to the magistrate, rendering the warrant invalid.

Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s principal technologist, said cell-site simulators are being used by local, state and federal authorities.

“No matter how the StingRay is used — to identify, locate or intercept — they always send signals through the walls of homes,” which should trigger a warrant requirement, Soghoian said. “The signals always penetrate a space protected by the Fourth Amendment.”

FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers

I suspect if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were alive today they would tell us that these FBI tyrants are far worse then King George and that it's people like them that they passed the Second Amendment for.

Can you imagine how people would complain if the FBI demanded the right to open and read our snail mail letters? Well this is far worse and I don't hear any public out cry against the FBI tyrants.

On the other hand I suspect the people in Nazi Germany were just as passive when Hitlers goons turned Nazi Germany into a police state.

Source

FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as “Top Priority” for 2013

By Ryan Gallagher

Posted Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 4:58 PM

For now, law enforcement has trouble monitoring Gmail communications in real time

Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.

Last week, during a talk for the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann discussed some of the pressing surveillance and national security issues facing the bureau. He gave a few updates on the FBI’s efforts to address what it calls the “going dark” problem—how the rise in popularity of email and social networks has stifled its ability to monitor communications as they are being transmitted. It’s no secret that under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the feds can easily obtain archive copies of emails. When it comes to spying on emails or Gchat in real time, however, it’s a different story.

That’s because a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,” he said.

While it is true that CALEA can only be used to compel Internet and phone providers to build in surveillance capabilities into their networks, the feds do have some existing powers to request surveillance of other services. Authorities can use a “Title III” order under the “Wiretap Act” to ask email and online chat providers furnish the government with “technical assistance necessary to accomplish the interception.” However, the FBI claims this is not sufficient because mandating that providers help with “technical assistance” is not the same thing as forcing them to “effectuate” a wiretap. In 2011, then-FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni—Weissmann’s predecessor—stated that Title III orders did not provide the bureau with an "effective lever" to "encourage providers" to set up live surveillance quickly and efficiently. In other words, the FBI believes it doesn’t have enough power under current legislation to strong-arm companies into providing real-time wiretaps of communications.

Because Gmail is sent between a user’s computer and Google’s servers using SSL encryption, for instance, the FBI can’t intercept it as it is flowing across networks and relies on the company to provide it with access. Google spokesman Chris Gaither hinted that it is already possible for the company to set up live surveillance under some circumstances. “CALEA doesn't apply to Gmail but an order under the Wiretap Act may,” Gaither told me in an email. “At some point we may expand our transparency report to cover this topic in more depth, but until then I'm not able to provide additional information.”

Either way, the FBI is not happy with the current arrangement and is on a crusade for more surveillance authority. According to Weissmann, the bureau is working with “members of intelligence community” to craft a proposal for new Internet spy powers as “a top priority this year.” Citing security concerns, he declined to reveal any specifics. “It's a very hard thing to talk about publicly,” he said, though acknowledged that “it's something that there should be a public debate about.”

Conn. governor signs sweeping new gun bill into law

And of course without their guns the people of Connecticut won't be able to do much about it.

Source

Conn. governor signs sweeping new gun bill into law

Tribune newspapers and wire reports

11:44 a.m. CDT, April 4, 2013

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy today signed a tough new gun law that, among several key provisions, restricts sales of the sort of high-capacity ammunition clips that a gunman used to massacre 26 people in minutes in a December attack on a school.

Lawmakers in the state's Democratic-controlled House approved the measure, which supporters described as one of the toughest such laws in the United States, early on Thursday morning. The Senate approved the measure hours earlier.

The House debate stretched past midnight, with opponents of the law arguing that it infringed on the rights to gun ownership protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that efforts to prevent attacks such as the Newtown, Conn., school shooting should focus on providing better mental-health services.

Connecticut's law passed hours after Maryland's House of Delegates on Wednesday approved their own gun law, which also limits magazine size and requires that gun buyers be fingerprinted.

The Connecticut law also requires background checks for private gun sales, expands the number of guns covered by the state's assault-weapons ban and establishes a $15 million fund to help schools improve security infrastructure.

It bans specifically the sale of ammunition clips that hold 10 bullets or more and requires owners of such clips to register them by January 1, 2014. After that date, owning an unregistered high-capacity clip will become a felony offense.

The legislation was proposed after the Dec. 14 slayings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which a gunman used clips that held 30 bullets to fire off 154 rounds in less than five minutes. "The content of this legislation speaks for itself as really the strongest gun control legislation in the country," House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, a 50-year-old Hamden Democrat, said in a statehouse interview. "The details of this package, when reviewed by other states, will be a terrific blueprint for how to do this in a comprehensive way."

Newtown school massacre

Passage came more than three months after gunman Adam Lanza, 20, stormed into the Newtown school and mowed down students and teachers, reviving debate over gun control. Connecticut joins New York and Colorado in tightening firearms limits in the wake of the tragedy. Maryland’s House of Delegates passed a similar measure yesterday.

In Washington, congressional action on the issue has been stymied by opposition from the National Rifle Association, the nation’s biggest gun-rights lobby. President Barack Obama went to Colorado yesterday to praise that state’s new restrictions, and plans to visit Connecticut next week to pressure Congress

"Colorado is proving a model of what's possible," Obama said in Denver. "It's now been just over 100 days since the murder of 20 innocent children and six brave educators in Newtown, Connecticut, an event that shocked this country."

Lanza carried 10 30-round magazines into Sandy Hook, court documents show. He reloaded six times and fired 154 bullets from his Bushmaster AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle in less than five minutes, according to the documents. The measure approved yesterday bans sales of the weapon and similar models.

Lanza's victims front and center in debate

This week, some parents of Lanza's victims handed out pictures of their children to lawmakers who met April 1 to review the limits proposed in an accord hammered out by legislative leaders. Family members sought an outright ban on possession of high-capacity magazines, rather than the registration requirement that’s part of the final measure.

During one of the most emotional moments of the six-hour Senate debate yesterday, John McKinney, the Republican leader who represents Newtown, explained why he pins a green ribbon and a guardian angel on his lapel.

"I try to put it on my jacket every day to remember those that we've lost because I stand here, I stand here as their voice," McKinney, 49, said. He then read the names of each of the Sandy Hook victims, his voice wavering a times. Six of the 14 Republicans in the chamber voted for the measure.

Before the voting began, activists on opposite sides of the issue sparred verbally in the Capitol’s hallways.

A poll released on Thursday found that 91 percent of U.S. voters support regulations requiring all gun buyers to undergo background checks. However, 48 percent of all respondents and 53 percent of those owning guns said those checks could lead to the government's confiscating legally owned weapons.

That Quinnipiac University poll of 1,711 registered voters was conducted from March 26 to April 1 and had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

Vote makes 'everyone in this room a criminal'

"I don’t want 30-round magazines that can wipe out our children," said Dan Garrett, 53, of Hamden, speaking to a group of men wearing Connecticut Citizens Defense League stickers. Greg Kozeman, 44, of New Britain said improving mental-health access is a better solution than tighter gun limits.

Earlier, gun-rights advocates filled statehouse lobbies.

"The vote on this bill will make everyone in this room a criminal," said Warren Stevens, 58, a Plantsville gun owner. He wouldn’t say what type of guns he owns or how many.

“It is no business of the state what I own,” he said. "Their authority does not extend into my house."

Connecticut, with a long history of weapons production, is still home to six gunmakers. The companies include Sturm Ruger & Co., Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Co., Colt Defense LLC, Stag Arms, Charter Arms, O.F. Mossberg & Sons Inc., and Ammunition Storage Components LLC, which makes 30-round magazines. Some have threatened to leave if the new limits pass.

The industry employs about 7,300 people in the state and contributed $119 million in tax revenue in 2011, according to the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group. Charter Arms calls the region “the cradle of the American firearms industry.”

Reuters and Bloomberg

Less Culpable, but With Longer Sentences

Source

Less Culpable, but With Longer Sentences

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: April 5, 2013

PHOENIX — Members of a white supremacy group descended on a home here 11 years ago to scare a man into paying back the $200 his roommate had accused him of stealing. The attack ended in the man’s death.

Jeremy Johnson. Mr. Johnson, Ms. Nelson and Mr. Gaines killed a man in Phoenix, but brokered plea deals and were able to avoid trials. They could all be out of prison by 2028.

Three of the four people who were eventually arrested brokered plea deals, avoiding a trial. The roommate, Jessica Nelson, 37, who instigated the beating, and a skinhead recruit named Jeremy Johnson, 30, who pummeled the man, Mark Mathes, with a baseball bat, could be out of prison in four years. Sean Gaines, who shot Mr. Mathes as he was thrown naked from a car onto a county road, is scheduled for release in 2028, at the age of 47.

Only one of the perpetrators, a young man who by all accounts was not directly involved in the killing, received the death penalty. Patrick Bearup, 36, who helped dispose of Mr. Mathes’s body and severed one of its fingers to retrieve a ring, was convicted of kidnapping and first-degree murder.

Such cases, in which a defendant with lesser culpability draws the harshest sentence, are not uncommon in Arizona, and elsewhere around the country. Of the six inmates executed in this state last year, four were equally or less culpable than co-defendants implicated in the same crimes, according to Dale A. Baich, the supervisor of the capital habeas unit in the federal public defender’s office, which handles appeals of capital cases in federal court. (Prison records show that three of those four co-defendants have been released.)

In many of the 32 other states that carry the death penalty, similar stories unfold as prosecutors, when deciding whom to charge, weigh the cost of mounting a capital trial, which can reach $1 million, against the likelihood of a conviction.

In 2011 in Ohio, Gov. John R. Kasich, using his clemency powers, commuted to life in prison the death sentence of a man convicted of killing two people. The governor, a Republican, said it was unclear if he had been the one to actually commit the murders. Another Ohio inmate, John Getsy, was executed in 2009 for killing the mother of his intended target in a murder-for-hire plot, despite a clemency recommendation by the state parole board, which said that other participants in the crime, including its architect, had not been sentenced to die. (The governor at the time, Ted Strickland, a Democrat, overruled the board.)

Mr. Bearup’s case was one of 135 pending capital cases in Maricopa County in 2006, more than the combined number of cases in the next three jurisdictions at the top of the list: Los Angeles County and Clark County, Nev., each with 36; and Harris County, Tex., with 17.

“In an ideal world, the prosecution would have ironclad proof against all the co-defendants to be able to pick the worst for the death penalty, but we have an inequitable system, a bargaining system,” said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, which tracks the number of executions across the country.

“If you give the prosecution some help,” Mr. Dieter said of defendants in such cases, “you’ll get something out of it.”

In 1972, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to invalidate all death penalty laws in the country because they had been too arbitrarily applied. One of the concurring justices, Potter Stewart, wrote that the Constitution could not “permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and freakishly imposed.” States moved to rewrite their statutes, narrowing their definition of first-degree murder or the number of aggravating factors used to define a capital crime. The idea was to make sure the death penalty would be reserved for the worst of the worst.

In an interview, the Maricopa County attorney, Bill Montgomery, who was elected in 2010, said his prosecutors, who handle most death penalty cases in the state, abide by a guiding principle: “Is this a case where the death penalty would be a just punishment in light of how we’ve handled similar cases,” based on the “brutality of the particular case in question?”

It is not a “side-by-side” comparison, he said, but a decision based on whether the evidence can prove a capital crime and whether the death penalty is supported. (His office currently has 68 pending capital cases.)

Defense lawyers have long argued that the state’s statute leaves too much of the decision in prosecutors’ hands.

In a motion filed before the state’s Superior Court last month, Susan L. Corey and Garrett Simpson, public defenders in Maricopa County, which accounts for 63 percent of the inmates on Arizona’s death row, said the problem was that the law was too broad.

They pored over more than 200 first-degree murder cases from 2010 and 2011 to check if the aggravating factors — the state has 14, up from 6 in 1973 — separated the most egregious from the rest. What they found was that virtually every one could have been tried as a capital murder.

“The point I’m trying to make is, it can’t be random,” Ms. Corey said.

Sometimes, money determines whether a defendant’s life is on the line. Last year, Greg McPhillips, the deputy attorney in Mohave County, in northwestern Arizona, said in a motion that because of a “budgetary crisis,” the county could not afford to try more than one death penalty case at a time. He gave up on seeking the death penalty against a man facing charges of first-degree murder, child abuse and sexual assault in the 2010 death of his infant son, choosing instead to pursue a capital case against a man accused of killing a teenage girl and injuring her mother.

“Do people who commit equally heinous crimes get the same results? The answer is unquestionably no,” said Christopher Dupont, a lawyer in Phoenix who has served as a consultant in death penalty cases in several states, including California and Nevada. “It’s a total mystery who is going to face the death penalty and who is not.”

Mr. Bearup’s case was dogged by challenges from the start: an inexperienced lawyer, an implausible defense of not being there for the attack and a decision to represent himself at sentencing and offer no mitigating evidence which jurors could weigh against the death penalty.

Last summer, he filed a motion to waive all legal challenges to his sentence. Judge Warren J. Granville, who had presided over Mr. Bearup’s trial, ordered a doctor to assess his competency. The doctor’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder was challenged by the prosecutor. A hearing is scheduled for May 10.

Judge Granville, as the statute requires, had reviewed the legality of Mr. Bearup’s sentence, which he affirmed, though not before rebuking Andrew Thomas, the former county prosecutor, for pursuing a capital case against a man who “even under the state’s theory, did not cause the physical death” of Mr. Mathes. (Mr. Thomas was disbarred last year, over malicious criminal and civil charges brought against political opponents.) “Justice,” Judge Granville wrote, “was not done for Mr. Bearup.”

From death row, Mr. Bearup has been studying to become a pastor, a course he is set to finish as a motion challenging his conviction is due, in June. It is his last chance at challenging his conviction in the state courts.

Bulletproof vests for elected officials???

Maybe that's why Republican Bob Thorpe said he wanted to provide Democratic and Republican members safety options.

Source

Arizona lawmaker cancels bulletproof vest demo

By Bob Christie Associated Press Mon Apr 8, 2013 1:38 PM

PHOENIX — An Arizona lawmaker invited a bulletproof vest retailer to do a demonstration at the state Capitol but canceled the event on Monday after a legislative lawyer advised him that making a sales pitch to lawmakers on state property was improper.

Freshman Republican Rep. Bob Thorpe called his idea a “rookie mistake” and said he instead plans to provide contact information for the retailer to fellow members of the Arizona House and Senate.

“In the future, before I set something like this up I’ll certainly go out and I’ll talk to some folks that have been around longer than me and just make sure that I’m not doing something that might look like it was inappropriate,” he said.

Thorpe said he wanted to provide Democratic and Republican members safety options in light of the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011 and the recent fatal shooting of a Texas prosecutor and his wife. He sent the email to all House and Senate members last Thursday inviting them to visit the Capitol basement on Wednesday to be fitted for a vest if they wanted to buy one.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their personal use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” the email said.

Thorpe was criticized by Democratic state Rep. Ruben Gallego, a former Marine who served in the Iraq war

“We’re here to be in the public, and it’s not our job to be paranoid all the time thinking that someone is out to get us,” Gallego told abc15.com. “I think the best defense is actually to have a good, well-trained police force and some good gun laws.”

Thorpe said he’s not suggesting that lawmakers come to work armed, as some have done in recent years. He just said he believed fellow legislators might feel safer in some situations with body armor.

Thorpe said he understands that some might criticize the move, especially since the Legislature has rejected every effort to tighten gun laws in Arizona in recent years. But he said his view is that mental health issues are behind most violent events, like Giffords’ shooting.

“I support people owning guns and doing that lawfully, but we’ve got some wackos out there,” he said.

Thorpe said he’s supporting a stalled effort in the state Legislature to appropriate $250,000 to expand a program to train teachers, first-responders and others to recognize people having a mental health crisis and intervene. Giffords’ attacker, Jared Lee Loughner, suffered from mental illness.

While rejecting gun control measures, he said he’s open to more action on keeping the mentally ill from obtaining guns.

“I’m very interested in trying to pass some piece of legislation which would cause our government officials, whether its teachers or law enforcement, to keep track of people where’s there’s red flags being raised,” he said. “And that certainly didn’t happen with Loughner.”

Bulletproof vests for elected officials???

Arizona Legislature invited to … a body armor party?

In the wake of Newtown, the state of Connecticut on Thursday enacted what some are calling the strongest gun laws in the nation, including limits on the size of magazines, a ban on armor piercing bullets and universal background checks.

“Democrats and Republicans were able to come to an agreement on a strong, comprehensive bill,” Senate President Don Williams, a Democrat, said as the bill awaited a final vote. “That is a message that should resound in 49 other states, and in Washington, D.C., and the message is we can get it done here and they should get it done in their respective states and nationally in Congress.”

Meanwhile, in the state of Arizona, a legislator on Thursday offered a response to our own massacre.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their person use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” Rep. Bob Thorpe wrote, in an e-mail to fellow legislators. “These vests have prices ranging from about $600-$800 and options that include their weight and comfort, bullet stopping ability and colors.”

You’ve heard of Tupperware parties? Thorpe, a Flagstaff Republican, has invited members of the Arizona Legislature to a body armor party. Next Wednesday, a representative of AZ Tactical will be on hand in basement of the Arizona House to extol the virtues of various vests and take orders.

“Mr. (Mike) Arthur is offering the same discounted prices to our members as he provides to members of law enforcement …,” Thorpe wrote.

“These vests are rated for a five year life but it is my opinion that legislators could wear them much longer because the five year life assumes almost daily law enforcement use. Prior to placing an order, you will be measured for the proper size vest.”

Next up: Uzi sales in the Senate. Which, by the way, earlier week strafed proposals to expand background checks, limit the size of magazines and bar those convicted of domestic violence from possessing guns.

The Senate also rejected a bid to require basic firearms-safety training in order to carry a concealed weapon.

Thus, the need, I suppose, for legislative body armor — to protect our leaders from the public.

If only there were a way to protect the public from our leaders…

Background checks on knife purchases????

And perhaps limit knife sales to knives with blades under 2 inches in length with dull blades. Society will be a safer place if people can only have dull butter knives, and only cops and government rulers are allowed to have sharp steak and other assault knives.

I'm just joking, but I wouldn't be surprised if some phoney baloney Arizona Libertarians I know try to say I actually believe that rubbish.

Source

Student charged in Texas college stabbing attack

Associated Press Wed Apr 10, 2013 7:54 AM

CYPRESS, Texas — A 20-year-old man from suburban Houston has been charged in a stabbing spree at a Texas community college that injured at least 14 people.

Sheriff’s officials say Dylan Quick is charged with three counts of aggravated assault in the Tuesday attack at Lone Star Community College in Cypress. The city is about 20 miles from Houston.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says in a statement that Quick used a “razor-type knife” to cut his victims, and pieces of the blade were found at the scene.

The sheriff’s office says Quick told investigators he’d had fantasies about stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school.

Investigators also say Quick indicated he’d been planning the attack for some time.

Rep. Bob Thorpe tries to protect his fellow crooks from us serfs???

The only good news about this article is that the crooks at the Arizona State Legislator seem to realize that they are crooks and need to protect themselves from the people they pretend to serve while they rob us blind.

Last if Rep. Bob Thorpe really is a "Tea Party" members who wants to protect us from the other government crooks, why is he trying to help protect his fellow crooks???

I suspect Rep. Bob Thorpe isn't really a "freedom fighter" and just ran on the "Tea Party" platform because it would help him get elected.

Source

Posted on April 9, 2013 3:30 pm by Laurie Roberts

Rep. Bob Thorpe looking for protection — and not just from bullets

In the wake of Sandy Hook, the state of Connecticut last Thursday enacted some of the strongest gun laws in the country, including limits on the size of magazines, a ban on armor piercing bullets and universal background checks.

Meanwhile, in the state of Arizona, a legislator on Thursday offered a response to our own massacre.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their personal use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” Rep. Bob Thorpe, wrote, in an e-mail to fellow legislators. “These vests have prices ranging from about $600-$800, and options that include their weight and comfort, bullet stopping ability and colors.”

You’ve heard of Tupperware parties? Thorpe invited the Arizona Legislature to a body armor party. On Wednesday, a salesman from Arizona Tactical was supposed to be on hand in the House basement to offer discounts and take orders on the latest in tactical fashion.

Alas, legislative lawyers put the kibosh on Thorpe’s sale-a-thon. It’s seems you’re not supposed to use the state Capitol to sell bulletproof vests. Or anything else.

Now Thorpe is apparently steamed that his “internal” e-mail invite – the one sent out on his public e-mail account — wound up in the hands of the media.

“I’d love to know who leaked my email to the press, because I want to present them with a ‘Members Only’ jacket, as a reminder that some things, like my internal e-mail invitation, are intended for members only,” the Flagstaff Republican wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday.

Like his first e-mail, this one made it to my inbox within 15 minutes of his sending it.

Thorpe is a freshman legislator who made headlines earlier this year for his bill to require students to sign a loyalty oath before they could graduate from school — a bill he withdrew once somebody explained to him that it was blatantly unconstitutional. He’s a Tea Party guy who ran on a platform of protecting the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

Including, presumably, the law that says the Arizona Legislature is a public body – not the Augusta National Golf Club. And the one that says e-mail sent out on a government account is government business.

Or put another way: the public’s business.

Thorpe didn’t return my call to discuss public records and body armor and such. Pity, as I would have liked to ask him if that Members Only jacket would be outfitted in Kevlar.

In his Tuesday e-mail, Thorpe takes a shot at Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego — whom he suspects of “leaking” his e-mail – and notes that he arranged to have the body armor salesman come to the Capitol after a Democratic legislator told him she’d requested a police presence at a recent town hall meeting.

“She was concerned about her personal safety,” he wrote. “By the way, I sent out my e-mail invitation to all the House and Senate legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, because of my concern for the safety of all our members.”

Given his concern for safety, Thorpe might want to take up the cause for banning the sort of ammunition that would blast right through those bulletproof vests he’s hawking.

Sadly, his Senate colleagues rejected a ban on armor piercing bullets last week, along with a ban on high-capacity magazines and a call for universal background checks.

The irony wasn’t lost on Democrats.

“There are just so many other things that we should be working on and not just focused on our own personal safety but the personal safety of the public and for the children in our schools,” said Gallego, D-Phoenix.

“It’s is sad to see that we are almost at the 100th day of our session and yet we have not had a comprehensive discussion on gun violence for our constituents of Arizona,” Sen. Anna Tovar, D-Tolleson, told me.

For his part, Thorpe has provided his fellow legislators with the name and number for his body armor salesman. “His store is about a 10-minute drive from the Capitol and he’d like to try and arrange a time where perhaps 5 (or more) legislators can come in at a time for a joint briefing in one of their classrooms,” he wrote.

No doubt, Thorpe’s pal will have plenty of takers.

In addition to strafing other gun bills last week, the state Senate also rejected a bid to require basic firearms-safety training before you can carry around a concealed weapon.

Thus, the need, I suppose, for legislative body armor — to protect our leaders from the public.

Now, if only there was a way to protect the public from our leaders…

Constitutional Safeguards??? Don't make me laugh!!!!!

And of course as long as the mayor and city council of New York allows this illegal activity there ain't jack sh*t we can do to stop it.

Of course that is why the Founders gave us the Second Amendment. So when our government masters refuse to obey the law, the people have a means to force them to obey the law.

Of course in New York State the people's right to own guns has pretty much been flushed down the toilet by these same tyrants who allow the police to terrorize us.

And of course this isn't limited to New York State or New York City, it is happens all over the USA.

Source

An Assurance of Constitutional Safeguards

Faiza Patel

April 9, 2013

New York City has become safer over the last decade. Yet relations between the police and minority communities have become ever more strained.

Much of the tension stems from the N.Y.P.D.’s stop and frisk policy, which disproportionately targets black and Latino men. Muslim communities are troubled by the NYPD’s intelligence operation, which collects information about their daily lives that often seems to have no link to terrorism or crime.

Oversight of N.Y.P.D. activities like stop and frisk and the surveillance of Muslims shouldn't require decades of litigation.

An inspector-general could help the police ease these concerns and hew closer to constitutional requirements in their efforts to keep the city safe.

Crucial constitutional protections — like the requirement of equal treatment and the need for reasonable suspicion before searching someone — have been codified into specific rules for the N.Y.P.D. But we have little assurance that they are followed.

As part of the 2003 settlement of the first stop and frisk lawsuit, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly issued an order forbidding the N.Y.P.D. from relying on race, color, ethnicity or national origin as the determinative factor in undertaking action. Yet since these rules were adopted, the stop and frisk program has grown 450 percent, with nearly five million people — 81 percent of whom are minorities — stopped, questioned and searched.

These numbers have led many to ask whether the police are following the racial profiling ban. An inspector general would be ideally situated to audit the records of stop and frisk encounters for compliance.

Similarly, the N.Y.P.D.’s surveillance of Muslim communities has raised questions about police fidelity to the prohibition on religion-based targeting and to a 1985 consent decree that restrains their monitoring of First Amendment activities. Documents recently filed in this case show that the N.Y.P.D. has informants or undercover officers in at least 30 area mosques. Interested citizens cannot delve into police files to evaluate whether the widespread use of informants was justified or a reflection of biases. But an inspector general can do just that.

The lawyers challenging these practices know the difficulty of ensuring that police comply with rules and have asked for court-appointed police monitors to do so. We should not have to wait for decades of litigation to obtain oversight of N.Y.P.D. activities.

On these and other police operations, an inspector general would serve as front-end protection against illegality. Periodic reports from the inspector general would increase much-needed, impartial public information about police practices, helping elected officials perform their own oversight duties.

And, while an inspector general’s recommendations are not binding, the experience of the F.B.I. and the Los Angeles police, among others, shows that they can be highly influential in shaping lawful and effective law enforcement practices.

As the nation’s premier police department, the N.Y.P.D. should embrace the best practices developed by its peers and commit to working unreservedly with an inspector general to create an even better police force.

BP murdered 16 year old Jose Rodriguez????

Source

New details in Mexico teenager's death by Border Patrol

By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:18 AM

A new witness and new evidence seem to bolster the case that a Mexican teen shot to death by the Border Patrol in October in Nogales, Sonora, was walking down the street at the time he was killed — not, as the Border Patrol has maintained, throwing rocks over the fence at agents.

The new information also suggests that more than one agent may have opened fire on Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16. That information arrived as the family of the youth held a march on Wednesday in Nogales to protest what they called the FBI and Border Patrol’s “veil of silence” about the killing.

Both the bureau and the patrol have declined to comment on the boy’s death, citing an ongoing FBI investigation. They have declined to identify the agent or agents involved and have declined to release a surveillance video of the incident, shot by cameras mounted above the border fence.

Agents, along with Nogales, Ariz., police, were chasing two men they believed were fleeing back to Mexico after climbing over the fence to the U.S. side with drugs. The agents said rocks began flying over the fence at them as they tried to arrest the men climbing back over the fence.

The new witness, Isidro Alvarado, a private security guard, said on the night of Oct. 10, he was walking about 20 feet behind Elena Rodriguez down Calle Internacional, which runs parallel to the border fence, when two other youths suddenly ran past them. Then, he said, he heard gunshots from two separate places by the fence and saw Elena Rodriguez fall.

Alvarado said his brother, a Nogales police officer, persuaded him to come forward and speak to the Sonora Attorney General’s Office. Alvarado’s statements were first reported by Nogales radio station XENY. He also spoke at a news conference Wednesday in Nogales, Sonora.

Luis Parra, a Nogales, Ariz., attorney representing the Elena Rodriguez family, said he recently interviewed Alvarado and then confirmed with an attorney from the Sonora Attorney General’s Office that the first call to Nogales police reporting the shooting, immediately after it happened, came from Alvarado’s cellphone.

“But what has made the family even more distraught,” he said, “are the indications that two agents were involved in the shooting and that he (Elena Rodriguez) had to have been lying on the ground when five bullets penetrated his back.”

In a forensic scene-analysis report, investigators for the Sonora Attorney General’s Office concluded that at least five shots into Elena Rodriguez’s back must have hit him while he was lying on the sidewalk. This jibes with findings in an autopsy, previously reported by The Arizona Republic, that all but one of the bullets that hit the boy entered from behind and most at an angle suggesting he was prone when hit.

In their forensic report, investigators also describe how they climbed the story-and-a-half-high bluff on which the border fence sits and looked through the fence as Border Patrol agents and Nogales, Ariz., police conducted their investigation on the U.S. side of the fence.

They describe an area next to the fence, cordoned off with police tape, where they counted 11 shell casings, and another taped-off area, about 28 feet away, where they could see three more casings. This seems to suggest, Parra said, that agents fired from two different spots along the fence.

A Sonora ballistics report, meanwhile, describes the nine bullets recovered by Mexican police — six from the boy’s body, and three from the street — as hollow-point, .40-caliber slugs fired from one or more polygonal-rifled guns.

Michael Haag, a forensic scientist and ballistics expert based in Albuquerque, reviewed the report. He said this is a relatively uncommon type of rifling, a type used in the Heckler & Koch P2000 handgun, among others.

That is the standard-issue Border Patrol sidearm, a spokesman confirmed.

The ballistics report said polygonal rifling, which leaves a much smoother barrel than conventional rifling, makes it harder to distinguish whether all the bullets were fired by the same gun or different guns.

“Because it leaves no good marks on the bullets, it’s very rare by forensic science to identify the bullets back to a specific gun,” Haag agreed. He added, “You can ID it sometimes, so it should be attempted.”

He also noted that each Border Patrol agent should have told the FBI whether he or she fired shots that night.

The Sonora ballistics report identified the bullets as Starfire hollow points, but Haag said the poor-quality photocopies of the bullets show cannelures — a ring that runs around the circumference of the bullet — that are not found on Starfire rounds but are consistent with the similar Federal Premium HST .40-caliber rounds.

Those are standard-issue ammunition for the H&K P2000 handgun, a Border Patrol spokesman confirmed.

The Department of Homeland Security expects shortly to complete a review of the Border Patrol’s use-of-force policy, which allows agents to fire at rock-throwers, Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview with The Republic last week.

There have been eight incidents in the past three years in which agents have shot and killed alleged rock-throwers, among 20 deaths caused by agents since the beginning of 2010. In all but three of those cases, the FBI investigations remain open and the Border Patrol and the DHS have declined to release any information, including the names of the agents involved.

Reach the reporter at bob.ortega@arizonarepublic.com

NRA - Worlds largest gun control organization???

Some people like to say that the NRA is the worlds largest gun control organization.

I think this editorial cartoon by Steve Benson on April 11, 2013 gives credibility to that.

In the cartoon NRA leader Wayne LaPierre is picture on TV saying

We think it is reasonable to provide instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone.

Who is that idiotic bobblehead.

It's you Wayne, don't you remember.

Testimony before House Judiciary Committee on Crime, 27, May 1999

Government rulers all talk, no action on public records.

Arizona's public records laws, or freedom of information act which is A.R.S 39 §121 requires government bureaucrats and elected officials to answer all requests for public records as quickly as possible. That's the good news.

The bad news is there is no criminal or civil penalties for government bureaucrats and elected officials who refuse to obey the law.

And you can't call the cops to enforce the public records law. The only way you can do that is for YOU to sue the bureaucrat who refused to honor your request for public records.

And the Arizona's public records law doesn't even guarantee that your expenses for suing will be covered. It says "The court MAY award attorney fees and other legal costs"

Source

San Jose fights disclosure of email, text message records

By John Woolfolk

jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com

Posted: 04/12/2013 06:21:01 AM PDT

SAN JOSE -- San Jose drew praise for its progressive approach to open government in the digital age by adopting a policy three years ago making elected officials' personal email and text messages about city business public records subject to disclosure.

But the City Council this week voted unanimously to appeal a judge's ruling last month that effectively applies that policy to the whole city workforce by declaring government employees' communications about public business subject to the California Public Records Act whether on official or private devices.

The case sets up a showdown that will be watched statewide and beyond over what open-government advocates say has become a gaping hole in public records law that was written in the typewriter era and didn't contemplate officials with Gmail, Facebook and iPhones. And they say, bring it on.

"I'm glad the city is appealing the ruling, since it is likely to be affirmed on appeal," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition in San Rafael. "That will force all California cities and counties to treat emails about government business as public records, regardless of the status or ownership of the email accounts or devices. What matters is the substance of the message -- is it about government business or is it purely personal? -- not the technology."

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who ran as an open-government champion, had made the same argument in 2010 when he pushed a policy that would require disclosure of messages about city business sent or received by the mayor, council members and their staffs whether they were communicated on personal or city phones and networks. The City Council approved the policy unanimously in March 2010 on a trial basis and, citing no problems since, made it permanent in December.

Scheer said at the time the council adopted the policy that he knew of no other city that had gone so far in updating public records policy to account for modern technology. Most cities have fought efforts to force disclosure of officials' messages on private networks, citing both privacy concerns and practical questions of how a government could search for relevant documents and messages on phones and email networks it doesn't control.

Reed said that such disclosure rules covering private devices and networks can be justified and managed on a small scale involving a few dozen elected officials and their staffs. But he said the council appealed out of concern that applying those rules throughout a city organization of 5,500 full-time employees -- the practical effect of a decision that personal emails are subject to the California Public Records Act -- would be invasive and burdensome.

"It's about the scope of it," Reed said. "I think it's too broad. It sets up practical problems."

The case originated in June 2009 when activist Ted Smith requested voice mails, text messages, and emails sent or received by the mayor and council members related to a downtown redevelopment project in San Jose, whether on official or personal networks and devices. He sued in August that year when the city claimed it lacked authority to access any records on officials' private personal accounts.

Last month, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg ruled in Smith's favor, stating that under the city's interpretation of public records law, "a public agency could easily shield information from public disclosure simply by storing it on equipment it does not technically own."

"Regardless of where a record is retained, if it is drafted by a public official," Kleinberg wrote, it "constitutes a 'public record.' "

Scheer said that while the practical and privacy concerns cities have raised are legitimate, they can easily be overcome by requiring public officials to copy messages about public business to their official email where the city can search for and retrieve it.

In the city's petition with the Sixth District Court of Appeal, San Jose argues that the council disclosure policy for private email and phone networks is irrelevant to Smith's case because it was adopted 10 months after his records request and was not retroactive. The city added that "local policies simply do not affect the courts' interpretation of the Public Records Act," and that the council had chosen to limit its policy to affect about 30 city employees.

But San Jose also advanced arguments that seemingly conflict with the policy that the council adopted for itself.

"A council member is not a governmental entity," San Jose's appellate filing stated. "A council member is an individual public official with no authority to act alone on behalf of the city. Consequently, emails and documents found on a council member's personal computer or personal electronic device do not fall within the definition of a public record because any record personally and individually created by a council member is not a documentation of a transaction or activity of the city as a local agency."

Contact John Woolfolk at 408-975-9346. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/johnwoolfolk1.

Phoenix officers to begin wearing video cameras

This makes as much sense as giving bank robbers a video camera and telling them they are on the honor system to turn on the video camera before they rob any banks.

Of course I suspect now and then a cop will forget to turn off his camera before beating up a person.

That happened in the case when the Fullerton, California police beat up and murdered Kelly Thomas. But normally cops are smart enough to turn off their cameras before they commit any crimes. Or "accidentally lose and destroy the cameras" if they do forget to turn them off when they commit a crime.

Source

Some Phoenix officers to begin wearing video cameras

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 4:43 PM

Police officers in the Maryvale Precinct of west Phoenix will begin wearing video cameras on Monday to record their interaction with the public.

Phoenix Police Department teamed with Arizona State University to purchase 50 on-officer cameras with a $500,000 federal grant to study the impact of the cameras on crime and accountability. The cameras will be worn for about a year.

“The whole purpose of the test is to really find out what type of impact it has on law enforcement,” police spokesman Tommy Thompson said. “Is there really a need for this kind of technology?”

The camera is about the size of a pager and will be clipped in the middle of an officer’s shirt area, Thompson said. The officer will turn the camera on when dealing with the public and download the footage onto a computer at the end of the shift. The footage can not be edited. [So the cop will decide when to turn the camera on and off. Obviously most criminals, especially police criminals are smart enough to turn off the cameras before committing crimes, such as beating up a suspect!!!!]

Arizona law requires that only one person be aware that they are being recorded, but officers will disclose they are recording an interaction if asked, officials said. [Yea, sure they will. Just like they will always turn on the cameras before they commit any crimes!!!]

The Maryvale Precinct was chosen because it has two squad areas. One squad will wear the cameras and the other, as a control group, will not, Thompson said.

The data obtained from the two groups will help determine if cameras enhance an officer’s ability to conduct domestic violence and other criminal investigations, he said.

Thompson said many times in a domestic violence situation, a victim will later change the story in court because of financial dependency on the abuser.

The data also will show if the cameras measurably impact how officers and citizens behave, he said.

The department first tested the cameras in 2011 for 90 days with 18 officers in the South Mountain and Cactus Park precincts. The three-month trial period resulted in 860 hours of video, where footage was used as court evidence in 62 cases, according to police.

The pilot program was spurred by the recommendation of a task force created after a March 2010 controversy over an officer's confrontation with Phoenix Councilman Michael Johnson at the scene of a fire.

Other police departments in Mesa, Surprise and Peoria are testing or implementing digital cameras that officers wear to record virtually everything an officer does during a shift.

Cops read everything you post online???

This Chicago teenager was busted for the victimless crime of posting a Craigslist ad selling his pet alligator.

I also posted articles before about Phoenix and Tempe cops who work full time posting internet ads posing as hot, horny, underage teenager girls looking for old men to have sex with.

On these web pages I get at least one visit everyday from a site in the Washington D.C. area (IP address 76.114.145.234 located in Shady Side, Maryland), which appears to be a Homeland Security office that is spying on me for my posts documenting crimes committed by the police.

The site that logs the visits was broken into several times, by I suspect police with the Homeland Security, or perhaps hackers hired by the Homeland Security and they modified the logging software.

Sadly only 30 years after 1984, America is beginning to look like the police state written in the novel 1984.

Source

Police: Galewood neighborhood man tries to sell alligator on Craigslist

By Rosemary Regina Sobol Tribune reporter

2:30 a.m. CDT, April 16, 2013

A Northwest Side man accused of trying to sell a baby alligator on Craigslist for $300 was arrested Monday evening, police said.

Juan A. DeJesus, 19, of the 1700 block of Meade Avenue, was charged Monday with one count of misdemeanor possession of wildlife, police said.

A state Department of Natural Resources police officer responded to an advertisement that was posted on Craigslist and went to DeJesus' home Monday afternoon under the pretenses he was going to purchase the alligator, police said.

The ad, which has since been pulled from Craigslist, stated:

"Baby gator for sale, id consider a trade for a leachie gecko. Sale price is 300 obo asap."

DeJesus came out of his home with the alligator and said he would like to have $300 for it, but the officer identified himself and told DeJesus of the violation, police said.

The alligator was seized as evidence and given to other IDNR agents and DeJesus was transported to the Grand Central District police station to be processed, police said.

DeJesus could not be reached immediately Tuesday morning. He is scheduled to appear in court at the Daley Center on May 31.

rsobol@tribune.com

Tempe prosecutor Kathy Matz arrested for domestic violence

Source

Tempe assistant prosecutor, boyfriend held in assaulting each other

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:08 PM

A Tempe assistant city prosecutor and her live-in boyfriend were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assaulting each other, according to Tempe police.

Kathy Matz and Keith Walls were arrested late Wednesday night at the Tempe home they shared and transported to the city jail, according to a police report. Both had been drinking, police said.

Each posted a $500 bail Thursday, police spokesman Michael Pooley said.

Police arrived at the home at about 11:10 p.m. Wednesday after Matz called 911.

According to the report, Walls and Matz were on the bed, watching television when he asked Matz to move over. When he returned from the bathroom, she still had not moved and as he laid down in bed, she told him to get out and sleep on the couch, the report said.

Walls told police he refused and when he sat up in bed, Matz punched him in the back of his head.

They both got out of bed and Matz began shouting obscenities and swinging her closed fists at him, hitting him in the eye and kneeing him in the groin, he said.

Walls said he then threw water on Matz from a cup before he walked out of the room and proceeded to pack his clothes.

Matz told police that Walls was upset with her being on his side of the bed and he began to push her off the bed causing her to fall to the floor.

The report said Matz told police that Walls also threatened to shoot her with her gun that she kept under her side of the bed. She then pushed Walls away from her and he picked up a plastic cup of water and threw it at her, hitting her in the eye, the report said.

Police found no visible injuries on Matz when they arrived, but doctors found a bruise on the back of her head that she claimed was from hitting the headboard when she was being assaulted by Walls, according to the report. Doctors were unable to determine when she received the contusion and she never told officers on scene about the injury, police

Matz also complained that Walls gave her two bruises to her left wrist when he grabbed her. But police said they were unable to determine when she received the injuries and she did not tell officers on scene about the bruises.

Walls had a small bruise under his right eye, according to the report.

Matz will be placed on paid administrative leave while the matter is reviewed under the city’s Personnel Rules and Regulations, according to the city spokeswoman Nikki Ripley.

Her case will be transferred to a different jurisdiction in Maricopa County, she said.

Matz has worked for the city since 1998 in a number of roles, including city clerk and assistant to former Mayor Neil Giuliano, Ripley said. Her current salary is $115,045 and she is one of seven prosecutors on the city staff.

Both Walls and Matz told police they would not aid in the prosecution. Walls told police that he just wanted the relationship to be over.

Tempe prosecutor Kathy Matz arrested for assault

Source

Tempe assistant prosecutor, boyfriend held in assaulting each other

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:08 PM

A Tempe assistant city prosecutor and her live-in boyfriend were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assaulting each other, according to Tempe police.

Kathy Matz and Keith Walls were arrested late Wednesday night at the Tempe home they shared and transported to the city jail, according to a police report. Both had been drinking, police said.

Each posted a $500 bail Thursday, police spokesman Michael Pooley said.

Police arrived at the home at about 11:10 p.m. Wednesday after Matz called 911.

According to the report, Walls and Matz were on the bed, watching television when he asked Matz to move over. When he returned from the bathroom, she still had not moved and as he laid down in bed, she told him to get out and sleep on the couch, the report said.

Walls told police he refused and when he sat up in bed, Matz punched him in the back of his head.

They both got out of bed and Matz began shouting obscenities and swinging her closed fists at him, hitting him in the eye and kneeing him in the groin, he said.

Walls said he then threw water on Matz from a cup before he walked out of the room and proceeded to pack his clothes.

Matz told police that Walls was upset with her being on his side of the bed and he began to push her off the bed causing her to fall to the floor.

The report said Matz told police that Walls also threatened to shoot her with her gun that she kept under her side of the bed. She then pushed Walls away from her and he picked up a plastic cup of water and threw it at her, hitting her in the eye, the report said.

Police found no visible injuries on Matz when they arrived, but doctors found a bruise on the back of her head that she claimed was from hitting the headboard when she was being assaulted by Walls, according to the report. Doctors were unable to determine when she received the contusion and she never told officers on scene about the injury, police

Matz also complained that Walls gave her two bruises to her left wrist when he grabbed her. But police said they were unable to determine when she received the injuries and she did not tell officers on scene about the bruises.

Walls had a small bruise under his right eye, according to the report.

Matz will be placed on paid administrative leave while the matter is reviewed under the city’s Personnel Rules and Regulations, according to the city spokeswoman Nikki Ripley.

Her case will be transferred to a different jurisdiction in Maricopa County, she said.

Matz has worked for the city since 1998 in a number of roles, including city clerk and assistant to former Mayor Neil Giuliano, Ripley said. Her current salary is $115,045 and she is one of seven prosecutors on the city staff.

Both Walls and Matz told police they would not aid in the prosecution. Walls told police that he just wanted the relationship to be over.

Only police officers can be trusted to handle guns properly!!!!

Retired cop drops gun, shoots self at Des Plaines school

By Jonathan Bullington Tribune reporters

8:18 p.m. CDT, April 16, 2013

A retired police officer accidentally shot himself when he dropped his gun inside a Des Plaines school while attending his grandson's Boy Scout troop meeting.

Police and school officials said the man was carrying his licensed, loaded gun inside a fanny pack Monday evening at Iroquois School, and that the gun went off and a bullet struck him in the leg after he dropped the pack.

The man, who school officials called a troop leader, was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Des Plaines police Chief William Kushner said the man is a retired Chicago police officer.

No one else was injured, and police did not file charges because no laws were broken, Kushner said.

The retired officer is licensed to carry the firearm, according to a letter to the school community from Iroquois Principal Michael Amadei.

"Of course, the district does not condone bringing firearms on school grounds," the letter states.

Kushner said he initially heard that the retired officer was in serious condition, but school officials said the man's injuries were "not as serious as anticipated."

Amadei's letter said the school "will continue to work with" police and Scouting officials "to clarify any questions that arise. ... Student safety is our number one priority."

Representatives of the Boy Scouts of America Northwest Suburban Council could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

Tribune reporter Robert McCoppin contributed.

jbullington@tribune.com

LA shoots itself in foot with silly porn condom law!!!!

Porn filming declines sharply since L.A. condom law passed

By Kurt Streeter

April 17, 2013, 3:21 p.m.

Film permits issued for porn shoots in Los Angeles County have dropped to almost zero since a law was enacted requiring actors to use condoms during shoots.

So far this year, only two permits have been issued for pornographic filming, far off the pace for an industry that typically gets about 500 permits annually, according to Paul Audley, president of FilmLA, a nonprofit agency that oversees permitting throughout Los Angeles County. “It’s a steep drop,” Audley said, adding that “both of those applications came in January.”

Coupled with an apparent increase in filming in nearby Ventura County -- where one politician says some residents have complained about “seeing people naked” during film shoots -- the decrease has been seized on by porn industry insiders who have long claimed that efforts to regulate their industry would end up hurting Los Angeles’ pocketbook.

“We’re not surprised by this,” said Diane Duke, chief executive of the Free Speech Coalition, a film industry trade group. “Movie companies are beginning to look for other areas,” outside the San Fernando Valley, the longtime home base for most of the industry.

Duke said that Measure B, the ordinance passed by Los Angeles voters in November mandating condom use during film shoots, has created difficulties for the industry because most consumers want to see scenes without condoms. She added that many film companies are simply deferring production, waiting for the results of a lawsuit expected to be heard in U.S. District Court challenging the measure on free speech grounds. The new law also requires studios to apply to Los Angeles County for health permits.

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which like many other public health groups has strongly advocated the restrictions, said that porn studios in Los Angeles simply need to accept the vote.

The industry’s prediction of a filming exodus that would create a deep economic hole was “heard by the voters in L.A. County, and 57 percent voted for Measure B.” Weinstein said. “We live in a democracy.”

Weinstein added that there was no evidence the industry has started filming elsewhere, nor was their evidence that nearby states such as Nevada were keen to allow X-rated filming.

But parts of Ventura County are already grappling with an increase in porn film permits since the Los Angeles law took effect, said Linda Parks, a Ventura County supervisor. Parks said residents of a neighborhood she represents near Thousand Oaks are upset because companies from Los Angeles have started shooting and “people are hearing moans and groans and seeing naked people.”

The supervisor said she is planning to introduce legislation modeled on Measure B -- and a similar law in Simi Valley -- in an effort to regulate porn filming in her county.

State Assemblyman Isadore Hall (D-Compton) has proposed an Assembly bill similar to Measure B that would cover all of California.

The decline in permits was first reported by the Daily News of Los Angeles.

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema gets $333,000 in campaign contributions

OK, they are not bribes, they officially are campaign contributions, but for the man on the street it's hard to see the difference.

And of course people who give suitcases full of money to Congressmen, expect something in return for their cash.

U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema recently sponsored a $5 billion dollar corporate welfare program for corporations which make solar cells. I am sure she will say it wasn't a result of the campaign contributions she receive from the solar industry. But the rest of us have our questions.

Last but not least Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona State Legislator sponsored a bill which would have slapped a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana in an attempt to flush the will of the people down the toilet who voted for Prop 203 which legalized medical marijuana in Arizona.

Source

Sinema, Barber flex fundraising muscle

By Ronald J. Hansen and Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 17, 2013 3:51 PM

Though she is only a freshman on Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has quickly established herself as one of the more prolific fundraisers in Congress.

Sinema, a Phoenix Democrat, collected $333,000 between January and March and ranked 55th among all incumbents in the House. Her haul wasn’t far behind the $345,000 raised by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Posting an impressive fundraising total in the beginning of an off-election year could help Sinema ward off potential challengers to her toss-up seat — or at least intimidate them. Two fellow Arizona Democrats, Reps. Ron Barber of southern Arizona and Ann Kirkpatrick of northern Arizona, were close behind in total fundraising, reflecting the importance of campaign cash for the three incumbents who took narrow victories last year.

Barber raised $297,000 and Kirkpatrick $314,000.

By contrast, Reps. Trent Franks of Glendale and Paul Gosar of Prescott, two Republicans holding among the safest conservative seats in the country, raised less than $100,000 combined. Both ranked near the bottom of fundraisers among incumbents, Federal Election Commission records show.

“The first quarter fundraising shows that Kirkpatrick, Barber and Sinema are taking their re-elections seriously,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report, based in Washington, D.C. “If you raise a lot of money early, it does give challengers pause. But I don’t think at this early stage potential challengers look at a fundraising number and think, ‘It’s too big, and there’s not enough time to get there.’ ”

“By the time we get to next summer and fall,” Gonzales added, when the election cycle will be at its peak, “both sides will be dumping money in.”

Among potential challengers to Sinema, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Wendy Rogers, a Tempe Republican, raised $103,000 in the first quarter. Rogers’ total was among the highest in the country among non-incumbents. Sinema represents parts of Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Paradise Valley and Scottsdale.

Rogers, who has begun sending e-mails touting her campaign bid, ran in the district last year, as did Vernon Parker and Martin Sepulveda. Parker, who won the Republican primary and lost to Sinema in November, raised $11,000. Sepulveda took in 70 cents.

Republicans in Barber’s district appear to be pinning their hopes on retired Air Force Col. Martha McSally. Barber barely scraped by her in November, but easily raised more cash than McSally in the first quarter. McSally reported $8,400 in contributions, half of which came from a Georgia-based GOP PAC.

Barber’s district includes part of Tucson and all of Cochise County near the U.S.-Mexico border.

In recent months, McSally has appeared on national news shows, sent out e-mails from her campaign account and visited political groups in the district, sending signals that she will run again, but she has declined to make it official.

“If we see a couple more quarters from McSally with that showing, there will be concern on the Republican side,” Gonzales said. But “for someone like McSally who just got off the campaign trail, I think there’s usually a natural pause before getting things ramped up again.”

Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, raised $75,000; Rep. Ed Pastor, a Democrat, raised $90,000; Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican, raised $94,000; and Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican, raised $172,000.

Senate filings were not yet available.

Most Glendale tax dollars go to the POLICE!!!!

That is followed by the fire department which gets 22 percent of the budget.

And all other departments combined share the remaining 37 percent of the budget.

They had a second graph that showed the number of Glendale police employees was 550, the number of fire department employees was 250. All the other city employees on the graph were 500. So the police and fire departments have more employees then all the other departments combined.

Those numbers are typical for other city budgets I have seen and the money spent on the cops is usually twice as much at the fire department, and that the police and fire departments budgets are always more then that of all the other city departments combined.

Which leads me to say that America cities are police states because most of the money is spent on the police.

The sad part is that most of the arrests the police make are for victimless drug war crimes. I have read that at the Federal level two thirds of the people in prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes. I am not sure what percent of people in state prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes, but I suspect it is also a huge number.

Glendale city finances could be nearing steep cliff

Glendale city finances could be nearing steep cliff

By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 17, 2013 8:59 AM

The mostly new Glendale City Council is contending with a mostly old problem. The city’s financial position has been on a downward slope for years.

In an effort to offset declines in tax revenues, the state’s fifth-largest city has nearly chewed through its financial reserves while it has shed employees and cut services.

Yet, according to the city’s projections, its financial position is about to get far worse.

According to current forecasts, the city will have $3.4 million in reserve in the general fund at the end of fiscal 2014. Without serious restructuring, by 2015 the city would be $3.8 million in the red, and by 2018, the city would have a $20.3 million shortfall.

One option city bookkeepers recommend is to make $3.5 million in cuts for the fiscal year opening in July, followed by $10.8 million in reductions for 2015, and an additional $8.2 million in cuts in 2018.

The seven-member council, with its four new members, is trying to determine how to shape a budget that will keep enough police on patrol and parks in good repair.

But those goals seemed to border on unachievable during an opening series of budget workshops in recent weeks.

If all goes as scheduled, the council will offer a draft of the 2014 budget and a 10-year capital-improvement plan May 28, then authorize a final budget June 11.

Glendale’s financial experts project the city to finish the current fiscal year with an $11.4 million reserve in the general fund.

Ending with any savings, or a reserve, in 2014 requires $3.5 million in reduced spending that would be accomplished by eliminating vacant positions and related costs, Financial Services Executive Director Sherry Schurhammer told the council.

With those cuts and deeper ones recommended by staff, the city could build its reserve to nearly $20 million by fiscal 2018.

Without changes, the city’s financial position is set to become particularly grim in 2018, because that year marks the first year without revenue from a current, but temporary sales tax.

“What I want to make clear here — or hope I’m making clear — is that this ongoing structural operating deficit exists even if that sales tax does not sunset, because you’ve got this negative fund balance,” she said March 27.

The general fund is important because it’s the city’s largest operating fund and it supports the widest range of programs, she said.

The city’s financial position is headed downward because municipal spending patterns were based on prerecession tax collections, and spending was not reduced enough to keep pace as tax collections tapered off during the recession, Schurhammer said.

Most city departments have reduced spending by letting vacant positions remain unfilled in recent years, but those efforts aren’t enough to balance the books, she said.

The heads of most municipal departments told council members that staffing cuts already have cut into their programs.

Acting Police Chief Debby Black and Fire Chief Mark Burdick told council members that they have run out of ways to cover the staffing cuts by adjusting employees’ work schedules and assignments. Both departments need more employees, they said.

Likewise, the number of positions in the Community and Economic Development Department has fallen from 78.5 in 2009 to 39.8 this year, according to city records. Projections call for the department to lose three more positions next year.

Yet the city’s economic development officials are handling more business prospects than they have in years, Executive Director Brian Friedman said.

In addition to anticipated budget expenses across the city, council members are expected to consider an array of new expenses in coming weeks. Among them:

Payments to the potential new owners of the Phoenix Coyotes or a separate management firm to operate Jobing.com Arena. Next year’s budget assumes the city could pay an arena manager $6.5 million.

Funding air-traffic controllers at Glendale Municipal Airport beginning in June when the federal government discontinues the service.

Securing permanent parking and perhaps even building a parking garage around University of Phoenix Stadium.

Possible pay raises or cost-of-living adjustments for city employees, whose pay has been frozen for years.

Union contract prevents corrupt cops from being fired

Of course those same cops forget to say they are the ones that wrote up the contract.

If you are a criminal the best place for you to get a job is either as a police officer or an elected official. In both jobs you can usually get away with committing crimes that would send any of us normal serfs to prison for years.

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Chicago police officer escapes discipline despite inspector general's findings

Probe finds that contract prohibits reprimand

By Bill Ruthhart, Chicago Tribune reporter

8:58 p.m. CDT, April 17, 2013

The Chicago Police Department declined to discipline an officer who improperly used the job to generate business for a friend's firm, according to a quarterly report released Wednesday by the city's inspector general.

The Police Department agreed there was "substantial probability" that the officer acted improperly but said its contract with the union prevented it from taking action, according to the report.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said his investigators determined that while serving court summonses for building violations, the officer sought to drum up business for a friend whose company offered to resolve such violations.

The officer visited homes with "an official city summons in one hand" and a "friend's business card in the other," according to the report. The report did not identify the officer.

Ferguson's office, which also accused the officer of lying to investigators, recommended that the officer be fired.

The Police Department said its contract with the Fraternal Order of Police prevented it from disciplining the officer in a noncriminal case because any complaint — even one from the inspector general — must be filed by a "firsthand witness," according to the report. The city's Law Department agreed.

"The underlying issue here is that the city's Law Department and Police Department do not differentiate between an inspector general's investigation and a general complaint from a layperson," said Jonathan Davey, a spokesman for Ferguson.

Law Department spokesman Roderick Drew said the city recommended no action against the officer because Ferguson did not conduct his investigation properly and any discipline could have led to a union grievance or unfair labor practice complaint.

Drew said Ferguson's office should have presented the accusations to the officer in writing before investigators conducted a formal interview.

Davey declined to respond to the reasons given by Drew for not taking action against the officer.

The case is the latest example of the inspector general's reach being thwarted.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously last month that Ferguson cannot independently go to court to enforce a subpoena for documents from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration. Ferguson said he has asked the mayor to turn over documents despite the ruling but that Emanuel has not responded.

"The IG has the same power and capability that the state IG and federal IGs have," Emanuel said Wednesday. "I don't think they're not capable of doing their job, and I think he's a good IG. Therefore, I think he can do his job."

When asked whether he'd reappoint Ferguson when his term is up at the end of November, Emanuel demurred.

"I have plenty of time," he said. "I have a couple other appointments I'm going to be working on between now and then."

bruthhart@tribune.com

Twitter @BillRuthhart

Sheila Polk is a habitual liar on medical marijuana???

Source

Sheila Polk Was Wrong: 16 Medical-Pot Dispensaries Now Open in AZ and Not Being Shut Down by Feds

By Ray Stern Tue., Apr. 16 2013 at 9:05 AM

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk said last July that the feds would shut down medical-pot dispensaries in Arizona as they opened. With 16 dispensaries now open and more on the way, she's been proved wrong.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk announced in dramatic fashion last July that federal authorities would shut down every medical-marijuana dispensary in Arizona "as it opens."

Polk made the bad prediction in a letter she penned and sent to the governor after getting several other county attorneys to sign it. We checked into her assertion and reported to you at the time that Polk's claim appeared to be nonsense and was, in fact, a major exaggeration of something she'd been told by a retired drug agent.

How wrong was Polk's info?

As of today, there are 16 retail shops legally selling medical marijuana under Arizona law.

That's five more than were opened in late March, when we wrote of how the dispensary industry was taking off, finally. The first, Arizona Organix of Glendale, opened in November.

Now, there are legal weed stores for Arizona's roughly 40,000 qualified patients in Glendale, Phoenix, Mesa, Eloy, Wickenburg, Quartzsite, Globe, and many other towns and cities.

An additional 29 other shops are nearing their final inspection process, records from the Arizona Department of Health Services show, meaning those places will likely be open in a matter of weeks.

Another 25 would-be shops have requested dispensary applications but have not yet asked for inspections by DHS, the April 12 records show.

The lottery held last year by DHS granted 99 businesses the right to apply to open a dispensary in pre-planned geographic areas around the state.

Would-be pot-shop operators who won one of those "CHAA" areas in the lottery must request an inspection for their stores by DHS by June 8. Those who fail to do this will not be able to open a dispensary in the foreseeable future, and those "CHAAs" will go dark -- for a while, anyway.

Meanwhile, many "unauthorized" dispensaries, a.k.a. cannabis clubs, seem to be operating without much interference from authorities. Members of the Regulated Dispensaries of Arizona Association, have been urging law enforcement agencies to shut down the clubs, which provide marijuana for patients but aren't overseen by the state DHS. Patients may decide the issue by choosing to shop only at state-authorized dispensaries -- especially if the authorized shops can price their product more competitively.

So, Polk was wrong. Which isn't surprising considering that she exaggerated the quality of her information.

Arizona U.S. Attorney John Leonardo did not shut these legal Arizona dispensaries down as soon as they opened. Apparently, he has no imminent plans to do so.

Whether the feds ultimately do shut down Arizona's burgeoning dispensary industry is still an open question.

For now, with 16 dispensaries and many more on the way, the industry is beginning to bloom.

Cop pulls gun on McDonal's customer for taking too long in line????

Source

Posted: 4:39 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, 2013

DeKalb cop arrested for alleged assault at McDonald’s

By Alexis Stevens

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A sergeant with the DeKalb County police department was arrested Wednesday morning following an alleged assault against a teenager at a McDonald’s, according to police.

Scott A. Biumi, 48, of Cumming, was charged with aggravated assault for the April 9 incident at the McDonald’s on Old Atlanta Road, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office said.

Biumi was in the drive-through of the restaurant at 10:30 p.m. when he allegedly became upset with another customer, according to police.

“He exited his car, and following a verbal exchange with the customer, Biumi drew a gun and pointed it at the victim,” Deputy Courtney Spriggs with the Forsyth sheriff’s office said in an emailed statement.

Video footage from McDonald’s and released by the sheriff’s office shows a man, identified as Biumi, lunging into a pickup truck at the drive-through window. The alleged teenage victim, Ryan Mash, told Channel 2 Action News that Biumi got mad because it was taking too long to get his order.

“He grabbed me on my right shoulder and pinned me against my driver’s seat, and the next thing I know, I have a gun in my face,” Mash told Channel 2. “He goes, ‘Do you know who you’re messing with,’ and ‘You shouldn’t be holding up the line’ and all this and that.”

While investigating the incident, deputies determined Biumi was employed as a detective sergeant with DeKalb police, Spriggs said. At the time of the alleged incident, Biumi was driving a department-issued, unmarked Chevrolet and had a department gold star badge on his belt.

Biumi’s bond was set at $22,000 and he was in the process of bonding out of the Forsyth County jail Wednesday afternoon, Spriggs said. Biumi’s court date was set for May 23.

At an afternoon press conference, DeKalb County police Chief Cedric Alexander said he is awaiting the outcome of the Forsyth County investigation, but does not tolerate this type of behavior.

Source

Frustrated by delay, Georgia cop allegedly pulled gun in McDonald’s drive-thru line

By Michael Walsh / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, April 18, 2013, 3:17 PM

Food, folks and fun? More like gall, grouch and gun.

A young Georgia man was not "lovin' it" when a hold up in the drive-thru lane at McDonald's allegedly led to an armed holdup with an off-duty officer Tuesday night.

Student Ryan Mash, 18, was waiting for his order at the drive-thru window of a Forsyth County McDonald's when he was taken by surprise — and it was not a Happy Meal toy.

It was a gun allegedly brandished by Sgt. Scott Biumi, 48, a member of the DeKalb County Police Department for more than 20 years, authorities suspect.

Biumi apparently grew frustrated that the fast food experience was not faster, so he stepped out of his car and yelled, "Stop holding up the drive-thru line," according to Mash.

Mash claims Biumi thought his sincere apology was sarcastic. Then witnesses reported hearing Biumi scream, "You don't know who you are (messing) with!"

"And that's when he pulled the gun on me," Mash said, "and kept on yelling at me for about 30 more seconds. And then walked off."

A McDonald's security camera recorded the incident.

One of Mash's friends saw that the man had a police badge on his belt. The high school students also wrote down the man's license plate number.

Forsyth County Sheriff Duane Piper linked the license plate number to Biumi and the DeKalb County Police Department. The teenagers identified Biumi from a photo lineup, and he was arrested Wednesday, reported Atlanta station WXIA.

"It's a betrayal of a trust to the public," said Piper. "We're expected to handle ourselves correctly in high-stress situations, and it's very disappointing that an officer would snap like this. It's a break in judgment that can't be excused."

Biumi was booked at the Forsyth County jail and released the same day on a $22,000 bond.

"I'm just not going to stand for any behavior that goes outside that of the scope of the law," said DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric Alexander.

He is on administrative leave with pay from his job as the investigation proceeds. Mash, however, thinks Biumi should be stripped of his gun and badge permanently.

"He shouldn't be serving in our community," Mash said, "because you never know, he could get angry at somebody for speeding, and pull a gun on him."

DUI and "drug war" laws are a jobs program for cops????

When you’re paying officers $50-$60 an hour in overtime to make arrests and appear in court, the cash will be gone in a flash.

Source

Richardson: When will Arizona, cities get serious about alcohol-related crime?

Posted: Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:27 am

Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson

It was no surprise a 20-year-old man was arrested over the weekend for stabbing another man at the Country Thunder music festival in Pinal County. News reports tell of an argument escalating into violence. I’d bet excessive and criminal alcohol consumption played a part in this crime.

Country Thunder is well known for its wild parties, exhibitionism, drunkenness and violence. In 2011 an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer and Pinal County sheriff’s deputy were attacked by a drunken crowd resulting in serious injuries to both officers.

We constantly hear about violent outcomes to citizens encountering drunks and DUI drivers, but police officers contact drunks regularly and get hurt and killed. I can recall four officers, three from Tempe and one from Gilbert, in Tempe being seriously injured and killed. Two were shot — one beaten and another run over after their assailants spent the night drinking to excess at local watering holes and boozefests. Officers from Mesa, DPS, Chandler, Phoenix and other agencies have also fallen victim to criminal alcohol abusers in their communities.

[Oddly ex-cop Bill Richardson just plain forgot to mention DPS police officer Steven Svestka who was arrested, while he was drunk as a skunk at the Country Thunder concert who was busted in a woman's restroom.]

Gov. Jan Brewer’s Office for Highway Safety recently awarded an $80,000 grant to Tempe to the city get a handle on its illegal alcohol activities and related crime. Officials said the money would be used for “DUI enforcement downtown and on streets citywide, including to impact Large Party Liquor Enforcement, enhance existing Covert Underage Buyer Program in partnership with the Arizona Department of Liquor License, Control and Investigations, and limit the purchase of alcohol with fraudulent ID in liquor establishments.”

An amount like $80,000 will no doubt help pay the extra overtime in Tempe’s efforts, but what happens when the money is gone? When you’re paying officers $50-$60 an hour in overtime to make arrests and appear in court, the cash will be gone in a flash. [Sounds like a jobs program for overpaid and under worked cops. If we are going to pay them $50 or $60 an hour we should at least make them hunt down real criminals, not victimless liquor crime]

Will there be thousands for Scottsdale to help them with their booze related problems? What about Pinal County’s annual problems at Country Thunder? Will there be money for DPS and surrounding cities to deal with the problems that are pushed out of Tempe and onto the highways and into other cities? I doubt with Arizona’s budget and federal sequestration there’ll be many more handouts.

What’s going to be done long-term?

Does the Legislature need to make the criminal law violations relating to the liquor law enforcement more police friendly versus liquor industry friendly? Should it be easier for officers to make arrests for serving an intoxicated patron or allowing drunks on the premises? Should using a fake ID card to get alcohol be a more serious crime? What about a “sin tax” on alcoholic beverages and liquor licenses to pay for police to enforce liquor laws, grants for assistance, education and treatment of those with alcohol problems? [Sorry there already are hefty federal and state taxes on liquor which pretty much are sin taxes]

Should Arizona return liquor law enforcement to DPS and remove it from the state liquor board that’s run by a political appointee? Currently there are only 10 liquor board officers enforcing laws at 11,000 establishments. Should law enforcement “data mine” DUI arrest reports to look for bars that chronically produce drunk drivers? Police officers collect data on where arrested drivers were drinking but the information mostly sits in files and could be used as part of an intelligence led policing effort to prevent crime and target trouble spots. Bars have long been havens for money laundering, drugs, stolen property and the sex trade and with little or no liquor law enforcement these kinds of crimes have only flourished. Should liquor law enforcement be a higher priority for law enforcement?

There’s no question the criminal use of alcohol in Arizona has contributed to crime. [And no doubt that the "war on liquor", like the "war on drugs" is mostly a jobs program for cops and has nothing to do with public safety]

The question is, does Arizona and its cities really want to get serious about confronting alcohol related crime and the misery it causes?

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

H. L. Mencken

Source

Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo

By Richard A. Serrano

April 20, 2013, 10:33 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Saturday in a joint statement that alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be denied a defense attorney and declared an “enemy combatant.”

They added in a statement on Graham's Facebook page, "It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city.”

The two Republican conservatives have demanded that terror suspects not be Mirandized or tried in federal courts and instead be shipped to the detainee prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But the Supreme Court has never said that a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil, like Tsarnaev, could be treated as an enemy combatant.

“The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans,” the senators said. “We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives. The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.

"Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel. Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks."

In a separate tweet, Graham added, “The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'"

Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night in Watertown, Mass. He was being held at a local hospital, and a Justice Department official said he likely would be charged later Saturday. Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, invoked a “public safety exemption in cases of national security and potential charges involving acts of terrorism” as a reason not to immediately read him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.

In 2011, a Justice Department memo expanded the use of the public safety exception in domestic terrorism cases, so that it can be invoked in exceptional circumstances even when there is not an imminent safety threat. The changes were made after a controversy over the handling of the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 airline bomb attempt, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was questioned by FBI agents for less than an hour before being read his rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, said in a statement that “every criminal defendant” is entitled to Miranda rights, noting that Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen.

“The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule,” the ACLU said. “Every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. We must not waver from our tried and true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions."

F*ck his Constitutional rights, he is a criminal!!!

Sadly the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect us from those very government tyrants who want to flush his 5th Amendment rights down the toilet.

Of course if you ask me I would tell Mr Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev to take the 5th and not say a word to the cops. It's his Constitutional right!

Source

Debate Over Delaying of Miranda Warning

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: April 20, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s announcement that it planned to question the Boston Marathon bombing suspect for a period without first reading him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have a lawyer present has revived a constitutionally charged debate over the handling of terrorism cases in the criminal justice system.

The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, a naturalized American citizen, remained hospitalized on Saturday for treatment of injuries sustained when he was captured by the police on Friday night, and it was not clear whether he had been questioned yet. But the administration’s effort to stretch a gap in the Miranda rule for questioning about immediate threats to public safety in this and other terrorism cases has alarmed advocates of individual rights.

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it would be acceptable for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ask Mr. Tsarnaev about “imminent” threats, like whether other bombs are hidden around Boston. But he said that once the F.B.I. gets into broader questioning, it must not “cut corners.”

“The public safety exception to Miranda should be a narrow and limited one, and it would be wholly inappropriate and unconstitutional to use it to create the case against the suspect,” Mr. Romero said. “The public safety exception would be meaningless if interrogations are given an open-ended time horizon.”

At the other end of the spectrum, some conservatives have called for treating terrorism-related cases — even those arising on American soil or involving citizens — as a military matter, holding a suspect indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” without a criminal defendants’ rights. Two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called for holding Mr. Tsarnaev under the laws of war, interrogating him without any Miranda warning or defense lawyer.

“Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks,” they said. “We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.”

The Miranda warning comes from a 1966 case in which the Supreme Court held that, to protect against involuntary self-incrimination, if prosecutors want to use statements at a trial that a defendant made in custody, the police must first have advised him of his rights. The court later created an exception, allowing prosecutors to use statements made before any warning in response to questions about immediate threats to public safety, like where a gun is hidden.

The question applying those rules in terrorism cases arose after a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. After landing in Michigan, he was given painkillers for burns and confessed to a nurse. He also spoke freely to F.B.I. agents for 50 minutes before going into surgery.

After he awoke, the F.B.I. read Mr. Abdulmutallab the Miranda warning, and he stopped cooperating for several weeks.

Republicans portrayed the Obama administration’s handling of the case in the criminal justice system as endangering national security, setting the template for a recurring debate.

In late January 2010, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s family and lawyer persuaded him to start talking again, and he provided a wealth of further information about Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. Later, during pretrial hearings, his lawyers asked a federal judge, Nancy G. Edmunds, to suppress the early statements.

But Judge Edmunds ruled that the statement to the nurse had been voluntary and lucid despite the painkillers, and that the 50-minute questioning was a “fully justified” use of the public safety exception. She declined to suppress the statements, and Mr. Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

By then, the Justice Department had sent the F.B.I. a policy memo urging agents, when questioning “operational terrorists,” to use a broad interpretation of the public safety exception. The memo asserted that giving the “magnitude and complexity” of terrorism cases, a lengthier delay is permissible, unlike ordinary criminal cases.

“Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,” it said.

Judge Edmunds’s ruling was seen by the administration as confirmation that its new policy was constitutional — and that it was neither necessary nor appropriate to put domestic cases in military hands.

Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor, said the middle ground sought by the administration has put both the civil libertarian and national security conservative factions in a bind.

“This is the paradox of progressive national security law, which is how do you at once advocate for the ability of the civilian courts without accepting that some of that includes compromises that are problematic from a civil liberties perspective?” he said. “The paradox is just as true for the right, because they are ardent supporters of things like the public-safety exception, but its existence actually undermines the case for military commissions.”

Judge: Phoenix officers must do union work off the clock

And of course in this case the Phoenix City Council has been bribed by the Phoenix Police has has been giving them millions of dollars in government pork in exchange for their votes.

Source

Judge: Phoenix officers must do union work off the clock

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:55 PM

Phoenix officers must immediately stop working for the police union at taxpayers’ expense, a judge has ruled.

Judge Katherine Cooper of Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday granted the Goldwater Institute’s request for a preliminary injunction against part of the two-year labor contract ending June 2014 between the city and the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association.

The labor contract allows six city-funded officers to do union business full time, including representing officers on grievance and disciplinary matters; advocating for members’ interests, such as better pay and benefits; and providing training. The union represents more than 2,500 rank-and-file officers.

Goldwater, a conservative think tank, sued the city and the union, arguing that the practice violated the state Constitution’s Gift Clause. The Gift Clause requires that public entities receive substantial benefit from any public money they spend. A ruling on the lawsuit has yet to be made.

This is the second injunction Cooper has granted Goldwater, which challenged the practice of “release time” in June.

PLEA Vice President Ken Crane declined to comment.

The union and Phoenix officials have maintained that the city benefits because PLEA officers use release time to represent employees during administrative investigations, serve on Police Department task forces and committees, and facilitate communication between city management and employees.

Phoenix will comply with the judge’s decision, city spokeswoman Toni Maccarone said.

Effective immediately, the PLEA officers will begin a short-term assignment at the Police Department training academy, Maccarone said. The officers will then be assigned regular police duties by Monday, she said.

Goldwater lead attorney Clint Bolick said some of the union’s activities, including lobbying, should not be done on city time.

“The streets of Phoenix will be safer now that union officials must go back to the important police work for which they were hired,” Bolick said in a statement.

In Cooper’s 11-page decision, she found that “release time does not advance a public purpose.”

“It diverts resources away from the mission of the Phoenix Police Department, which is the safety of the community,” and instead applies those resources to the interests of a single group of city employees, she wrote.

Cooper said the union’s activities are solely to advance the interests of its members.

Release time costs the city $852,000 a year, or $1.7 million for the entire two-year contract, according to Cooper. She said union work can be paid for by membership fees, with each officer paying $322 a year, instead of by taxpayers.

Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio hailed the decision as a win for taxpayers.

“This is fantastic news for the hardworking taxpayers in Phoenix,” DiCiccio said. “This is big news, huge news.”

DiCiccio said the practice is widespread, with local and state governments paying their employees wages and benefits while they conduct union business.

“They can do stuff for the union but not while on the government payroll,” DiCiccio said.

Bolick said that if the group succeeds in its lawsuit, it will stop the practice “in all state and local labor contracts.”

Previous Articles about Sheriff Paul Babeu

And here are more previous articles on Sheriff Paul Babeu. And even more articles on Sheriff Paul Babeu. And even more articles on Sheriff Paul Babeu. And even more articles on Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. And even more articles on Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. And even more articles on Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. And even more articles on Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.

Sheriff Paul Babeu seems a little bit smarter and much less of a buffoon then Sheriff Joe. But that doesn't make him any less evil, and in fact some of us think that possible Sheriff Paul Babeu could be worse then Sheriff Joe.

And here are even some more articles on Sheriff Paul Babeu and his minions in Pinal County!!!