Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

Reason – by Jacob Sullum

Late one night in June 2013, the police department in Waterloo, Iowa, received a 911 call from Patience Pye, who reported that she had been a victim of domestic violence. Upon arriving at Pye’s house and conferring with her boyfriend, Kendrall Murray, two officers concluded that Pye had been the aggressor in the altercation. Murray reported that she had become enraged and punched him the eye when he refused to give her the car keys because she was drunk (and in any case did not have a driver’s license). He claimed Pye often became belligerent when she was drinking. The cops arrested Pye—not for assault but for public intoxication, even though she ventured no further than the front steps of her own house.   Continue reading “Iowa Supreme Court Says Porch Drinking Is Not a Crime”

Breitbart – by AWR Hawkins

Breitbart News sat down with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY-4th Dist.) earlier this week, and he explained that he put forth a rider to a Department of Justice appropriations bill to block the ATF “from banning common rifle ammunition” out of concern that “Obama’s swan song is gun control by executive order.”

On June 3, Breitbart News had reported that GOP representatives were adding riders to the bill to deny funding and block the DOJ and ATF from following through on backdoor gun controls under consideration at the time. Massie now explains:   Continue reading “Rep. Massie: ‘Obama’s Swan Song is Gun Control by Executive Order’”

Intellihub – by Shepard Ambellas

The Army’s new camouflage uniforms are set to hit store shelves July 1 for beta-testing before being launched in solidarity Jan 2016.

Interestingly enough the new uniform appears to be printed in a woodland-type pattern and almost looks as if it would work perfectly domestically.   Continue reading “Army commissions new camouflage uniforms July 1 to match Americas background, ‘woodland style’ pattern”

The Washington Post – by Christopher Ingraham

Each year, Philadelphia cops take millions of dollars in cash from city residents under the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws. Roughly one-third of these residents — 1,500 of them — are never convicted of a crime. And much of their money — about $2.2 million a year — goes directly into the coffers of the Philadelphia district attorney’s office, which oversees the forfeiture process.   Continue reading “How Philadelphia seizes millions in ‘pocket change’ from some of the city’s poorest residents”

Think Progress – by NATASHA GEILING

On Wednesday, both the North Carolina House and Senate voted to override Gov. Pat McCroy’s veto of House Bill 405 — referred to by opponents as North Carolina’s “ag-gag” law. The bill is set to become law January 1, and environmentalists are worried that its impacts won’t be limited to animal rights and potential whistle-blowers.

“It would have an environmental effect,” Gray Jernigan, staff attorney and communications coordinator with Waterkeeper Alliance told ThinkProgress. “If there was a spill of swine waste due to a lagoon failure, or an equipment malfunction on a hog facility, this would really make an employee second-guess whether they call environment or public health officials to come respond to the problem.”   Continue reading “The Unintended Consequences Of North Carolina’s ‘Ag-Gag’ Law”

The Intercept – by Glenn Greenwald

Two weeks ago, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was widely mocked for this breathless, fearmongering tweet:

We have never seen more threats against our nation and its citizens than we do today.

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) May 22, 2015

Continue reading “For Terrorist Fearmongers, it’s Always the Scariest Time Ever”

Washington’s Blog

The International Business Times reports that the head of special forces chief in Tajikistan was trained by American mercenary company Blackwater, but has now joined ISIS.

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill notes that Zacharias Moussaoui – the so-called “20th 9/11 hijacker” – had Blackwater’s number in his notebook.   Continue reading “Blackwater Trained Some of World’s Top Terrorists”

Pro Liberate

When Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo mounted the hood of a Chevy Malibu and fired fifteen shots through the windshield, killing Timothy Russell and Melissa Williams, he behaved in an “unreasonable” and “unconstitutional” fashion. This was the testimony offered by W. Ken Katsaris, a nationally renowned expert witness on use-of-force issues, during Brelo’s bench trial for two counts of voluntary manslaughter.    Continue reading “Only “Blue Lives” Really Matter”

Tech Dirt – by Mike Masnick

Yesterday morning, prior to the Senate debate that has resulted in the (brief) expiration of a few provisions in the PATRIOT Act, CIA director John Brennan went on one of those Sunday morning talk shows and made a complete fool of himself, pretending that merely debating things like the 4th Amendment was helping the terrorists. It started off with a claim that various bad people are “watching carefully” what happens, as if anyone honestly believes that terrorists are looking at last night’s vote and thinking, “Oh boy, now we can plan a new bombing campaign by calling America again!”   Continue reading “CIA Boss Claims That Merely Debating Surveillance Is Helping The Terrorists”

The Week

In a statement released Tuesday, WikiLeaks announced that it is offering a crowd-sourced $100,000 reward for the “missing chapters” of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal.

A video posted to WikiLeaks’ YouTube channel features top Democrats speaking out against the trade deal. According to its opponents, the deal would offer incentives for big businesses, while harming American workers.   Continue reading “WikiLeaks is crowd-sourcing $100,000 for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal”

The Guardian – by Corrina Regnier

Ray Charles Staten Sr. should have celebrated his 60^th birthday this month. Instead, his family marked the fourth anniversary of his death. It all started, according to a lawsuit that settled in March 2015, when a small debt became a death sentence in the spring of 2011.

Unable to pay an outstanding debt of $409 in court fines, Mr Staten was arrested and sentenced to 16 days in Mississippi’s Harrison County Jail. Shortly after being booked at the jail, Mr Staten fell seriously ill. Despite his obvious symptoms and his cellmates’ cries for help, the jail’s privately-contracted medical staff allowed his condition to worsen until – on the fifth day of his sentence – he collapsed in his cell and, upon being transported to a medical center, could not be revived. He had suffered acute peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the abdominal lining for which early treatment is essential.   Continue reading “America cannot lock its poor in debtor’s prisons to fund its police departments”

Washington Post – by Adam Taylor

The United States is bound by a number of treaties that could, in theory, force it to get involved in a war if an ally is attacked. Consider, for example, the situation in Ukraine, a non-member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. If a NATO ally were to find itself under similar threat from Russia, the U.S. may find itself duty bound to war.

Or alternatively, cast your mind to the South China Sea and its territorial disputes. If China were to engage militarily with the Philippines at some point in the near future, the U.S. may well be expected to step in to protect its ally: Since 1951, the U.S. and the Philippines have had a bilateral agreement for mutual defense.   Continue reading “Map: The U.S. is bound by treaties to defend a quarter of humanity”

Yahoo News

(Reuters) – An Ohio prosecutor on Friday asked a state appeals court to correct legal errors made by a judge who found a Cleveland officer not guilty in the shooting deaths of an unarmed black man and woman after a high-speed car chase in 2012.

Timothy McGinty of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office filed the motion highlighting “egregious” mistakes in Judge John O’Donnell’s ruling last Saturday that cleared officer Michael Brelo in the shooting deaths of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell.   Continue reading “Prosecutor asks court to correct judge’s errors on Cleveland officer verdict”

New York Post – by Larry Celona and Bob Fredericks

Workers who fix elevators in the city’s housing projects have been ordered to wear bright-orange vests by supervisors calling NYPD cops “trigger-happy,’’ sources told The Post.

The edict came down from city Housing Authority brass after an officer fatally shot an unarmed man in the stairwell of a Brooklyn complex and other cops accidentally pulled a gun on a maintenance crew, sources said.   Continue reading “City Housing puts workers in bright vests in fear of NYPD shootings”

MassPrivateI

“Some of them are a little unreasonable, I believe, and don’t quite fall in line with things I think are in the best interest of the police department,” said Capt. Jim Steffen.

Not surprisingly DHS run ‘Community Oriented Policing Services’ (COPS) and the ‘Police Executive Research Forum’ (PERF) have come out in opposition of police camera regulations. Click here to read their report. PERF is an organization composed of police chiefs of the nation’s law enforcement departments. Click here & here to find out about PERF’s close relationship with DHS.   Continue reading “Police agencies and politicians fight body camera recommendations”