Author: Joe from MassPrivateI

Papers, Please!

Since late last year, we’ve gotten several inquires from readers wondering why they got a boarding pass marked “TSA Pre-Check” or were sent through the “Pre-Check”lane at a TSA checkpoint even though they hadn’t participated in the “TSA Pre-Check Application Program”.

The confusion stems from the TSA’s own misleading publicity about the program, which tries to persuade travelers “voluntarily” to provide additional information to be used by the TSA, in exchange for the hope of being subjected to slightly less intrusive searches at TSA checkpoints.   Continue reading “TSA includes all air travelers in pre-crime profiling”

Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel – by Bruce Vielmetti

After three years of pre-trial litigation that went all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court — twice — a Racine County billionaire who had been facing felony charges he sexually assaulted a girl pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.

The victim in the case had moved to North Carolina, said she wished the case would be dismissed, and fought legal efforts to make her come to Wisconsin to testify.   Continue reading “Billionaire Johnson heir gets brief jail term in sex assault case”

Continue reading “The 19 Worst Children’s Book Titles Ever!”

The Center for Public Integrity – by Susan Ferriss

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — She was barely 15 and scared at the prospect of being in court. She agreed to plead guilty to truancy. But when Judge Tim Irwin announced what he planned to do with her, the girl known as A.G. screamed in disbelief.

Guards forced the sobbing teen out of the Knox County Juvenile Court and clapped shackles on her legs. She had been struggling with crippling anxiety and what she said was relentless bullying at school. Now she was being led through a county juvenile detention center to a cell with a sliver of a window and a concrete slab with a mattress. For truancy.   Continue reading “Juvenile injustice: truants face courts, jailing without legal counsel to aid them”

Forbes – by Nick Sibilla

Texas law enforcement are continuing to enrich themselves using a little-known legal doctrine known as civil forfeiture, according to a new series of investigative reports. Under civil forfeiture, property can be forfeited even if its owner has never been charged with a crime. In these proceedings, accused criminals have more rights than innocent owners and the government sues the property, not its owner. These cases can be so baffling, one Texas Supreme Court Justice recently compared civil forfeiture to Alice in Wonderland and the works of Franz Kafka. But civil forfeiture isn’t just a quirky curiosity—it’s a powerful incentive for law enforcement to take millions.   Continue reading “Cops In Texas Seize Millions By ‘Policing for Profit’”

WMUR

ALSTEAD, N.H. —An 84-year-old New Hampshire woman on Friday will be out of the modest mobile home where she’s lived in for the past 27 years after the state’s highest court upheld her eviction.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Leona Berger said Thursday. “I’ve redone this house inside from paint, paper to floors, and I don’t know what I’ve done. I bother nobody. My house is probably the neatest one.”   Continue reading “Court upholds eviction, 84-year-old woman forced out of home”

This is B/S!!!!!!!!!!!!

It will soon become a national law, we’ve already see it happening in numerous states (MA) etc.

If one state can get away with it every other state will follow!

Where I Am

I. Am. The. Mom.

Let’s get one thing straight: no doctor or nurse is going to sequester my children in an exam room and talk to them privately. Period. This public service announcement made necessary because of this sign, posted at the check-in counter of my doctor’s office:   Continue reading “Michigan law requires doctors to have a private conversation with minors, parents banned”

Huffington Post – by Elizabeth Daley

PITTSBURGH, Pa. June 6 (Reuters) – A federal agent shot and killed himself inside a U.S. Department of Homeland Security building in Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon, county officials said.

James McConaughy, 43, of Beaver Falls, was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:19 p.m. (2019 GMT) from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office said. An autopsy is scheduled to take place on Friday. Continue reading “Federal Agent Commits Suicide In Pittsburgh Homeland Security Office”

LA Weekly – by Dennis Romero

You’re in the heat of the moment, rounding third, but then you must stop and ask, Can I have your verbal or written consent to have sex with you?

Sounds quite unspontaneous. But a law co-authored by L.A. state Sen. Kevin de Leon would have state-run college campuses establish an “affirmative consent” standard for its students.

According to the language of the bill, SB 967, students who want to have sex must essentially establish that there has been “an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity.” In fact, the legislation says, …   
Continue reading “Verbal or Written Permission Could be Required For College Sex”

The Buffalo News – by Phil Fairbanks

In the end, it wasn’t just the videotaped beating of a handcuffed suspect on a sidewalk that got Buffalo Police Officer John A. Cirulli in trouble.

Cirulli also found himself in hot water for what he did later while the suspect sat inside a police cruiser. He hit him again.

Cirulli’s admission that he struck John T. Willet, 22, in the face a second time is part of a plea deal that could send the former officer – he resigned Friday – to federal prison for up to two years.   Continue reading “Buffalo police officer admits hitting suspect – twice”

Wicked Local Ipswich – by Kate Evans

Two sixth grade math classes lost an entire week’s worth of instruction taking a trial run of a new test and now they want payment for their time.

The state randomly selected Ipswich Middle School teacher Alan Laroche’s A and B period math classes to take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test drive.   Continue reading “Ipswich 6th graders calculate a rebellion”

New York Times – by Elizabeth A. Harris

Thomas A. Mars, formerly the chief administrative officer for Walmart in the United States, stepped down. José Luis Rodríguezmacedo Rivera, once the general counsel at Walmart’s Mexican division, quietly left the company. And H. Lee Scott Jr., who was Walmart’s chief executive, will retire from the board this month.

These men belong to a list of executives from the uppermost reaches of Walmart’s management who held critical positions when corruption scandals engulfed the company’s international division. Come July, almost every person on that list will no longer be with the company — but no departure has been cited by Walmart as a way to clean house after those scandals.   Continue reading “After Bribery Scandal, High-Level Departures at Walmart”

TechDirt – by Tim Cushing

Maybe if schools stop handing misbehaving students over to police officers, aggrieved parents won’t be nearly as aggrieved… or so likely to sue. Schools are publicly funded already, but that’s no reason to keep dipping into homeowners’ wallets to pay out settlements for schools’ bad decisions.

The very short background on this particular lawsuit is this (via Courtroom News Service):    Continue reading “Father Sues School After It Brings In Cops To Question His Son About Drawing Of A Person Being Hanged”

MassPrivateI

Scranton, PA –  Authorities in Scranton are looking to increase surveillance all over the city. Not by adding more cameras, but by adding more spying eyes looking at the cameras already in place.

Where does it end? Will we be surveilled everywhere we go by police & private companies?

Scranton City Council announced this week that it is applying for a DHS grant that would create community-wide surveillance for Scranton Police. Continue reading “Police are using DHS grant money to spy on us using private surveillance cameras”

Huffington Post – by Ed Mazza

Three women are suing the Alameda County, Calif., Sheriff’s Office over its practice of forcing every detained female to take a pregnancy test.

One of the women in the suit, 72-year-old Susan Harman, was 69 when she was arrested at a protest in Oakland. She says she was still recovering from a club to the head, courtesy of the police, when she was forced to hand over a urine sample.

“To know whether or not you’re pregnant is very intimate and personal, and something that a woman would want to discuss with her loved ones and her doctor.Not with some matron in a jail,” Harman told KTVU.   Continue reading “Forced Pregnancy Tests Lawsuit Filed Against Alameda County Sheriff’s Office”