From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
The government is like a poorly trained dog. If you let one bad behavior go, it just escalates until they bite.
The government has been searching electronics like cell phones and laptops at the border since early in the Bush administration. But because the 9/11 attacks were fresh, and because the practice was not widespread, it went largely unnoticed. Continue reading “Customs And Border Protection Clarifies: You Have No Rights While Traveling”
San Diego Union Tribune – by Lindsey Winkley
El Cajon police officers arrested about a dozen people for feeding the homeless at a city park Sunday afternoon.
The event was organized by a group called Break the Ban, which formed after the El Cajon City Council unanimously passed an emergency ordinance in October prohibiting the distribution of food on any city-owned property.
City officials said the ordinance was a way to protect the public from hepatitis A, but critics have called it a punitive measure to dehumanize and criminalize the homeless. Continue reading “About a dozen people arrested for feeding the homeless in El Cajon park”
A start-up company called ELUCD makes money by measuring public sentiment towards law enforcement.
According to an article in TechCrunch, Michael Simon a former Obama campaign manager, purchases ads on apps like Candy Crush which the NYPD uses to gauge public sentiment in real-time. Continue reading “Police are using 50,000 apps to influence public sentiment”
A police officer’s exaggerated testimony can still be used to convict a motorist of a traffic offense, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled last week. The justices overruled a three-judge panel of state Court of Appeals that had previously tossed the evidence gathered by Bloomfield Police Sergeant George Rascon, whose description of events of November 11, 2008, failed to match what the judges saw from dashboard camera footage. Sergeant Rascon said motorist Jennifer Martinez raced to the intersection of Sycamore and North Third. Continue reading “New Mexico Supreme Court Upholds Exaggerating Cop”
Buzz Feed – by Stephanie McNeal
Diana Durkin is a 19-year-old from Houston. She’s a sophomore at Texas Tech University, but took this past semester off to help her family recover from Hurricane Harvey. She told BuzzFeed News she’s REALLY excited to go back to school next week.
Diana has always had a lot of school spirit, and was even nominated for “most spirited” in high school. So when she got to Texas Tech, she said totally embraced her new school and all their customs and traditions.
Continue reading “TSA Interrogates Woman For Making Finger Gun Symbols At Airport”
RICHMOND – A month after the fury over what many drivers considered excessive tolls on Interstate 66, Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne defended the tolls, saying they are necessary for increasing the flow of traffic on the highway in Northern Virginia.
The tolls, which vary based on demand and amount of traffic, have reached as high as $44 for a 10-mile drive since they were implemented on Dec. 4. Continue reading “It was a choice to pay those high tolls on I-66, says state transportation chief”
Salon – by Phillip Smith, AlterNet
A Tennessee judge has taken the questionable logic of drug courts to a ridiculous and punitive extreme by jailing drug court participants for having smoked cigarettes.
That’s right, Hamilton County Drug Court Judge Tom Greenholtz has taken it upon himself to punish people under his supervision for using a legal substance because he thinks doing so will give them a “better chance at life.”
Continue reading “Tennessee Judge is Arresting People For Smoking Cigarettes”
Think Progress – by Luke Barnes
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spent millions of dollars over the past financial year to contract private debt collectors that targeted some of Americas poorest citizens for unpaid taxes and only recovered a small fraction of the funds they were supposed to return to the agency, a new report released on Wednesday found.
The report, by the independent Taxpayer Advocate Service, found that the debt collectors had cost the IRS $20 million but had only brought in $6.7 million — less than one percent of the total amount targeted for collection. In some cases, the private agencies received commissions for work they hadn’t actually carried out. Continue reading “IRS paid private debt collectors $20 million to recoup $6.7 million from low-income Americans”
The largest search engine in the world is now relying on hyper-partisan “fact checking” organizations such as Snopes and Politifact to provide disclaimers on articles primarily from conservative websites.
The Daily Caller’s Eric Lieberman notes: Continue reading “Google’s Fact-Check Feature Targets Conservative Sites”
The Daily Caller – by Rob Shimshock
A pro-liberty student group sued the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Monday for its free speech policy limiting speeches and rallies to one hour per day.
Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) sued the university for prohibiting students from engaging in speeches and rallies on campus during all times of the day except from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., according to a press release obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Continue reading “University Sued For Limiting Free Speech To Lunchtime”
The Los Angeles Police Department took another step toward using drones in some tactical situations after its civilian bosses Tuesday approved a $31,500 donation to purchase the controversial devices.
The LAPD has yet to fly any drones. The yearlong pilot program, approved by the Police Commission last fall, won’t begin until the department buys the drones and teaches officers how to use them. Continue reading “LAPD takes another step toward deploying drones in controversial yearlong test”
Why is the Department of Justice and Homeland Security allowing a foreign company to use covert license plate readers (ALPR), to spy on American motorists?
Selex ES and their sister company ELSAG a Leonardo company are using ALPR’s to spy on Americans in real-time. Fyi, Selex ES and Leonardo are an Italian owned corporation.
Continue reading “Will law enforcement put license plate readers in car washes?”
As it becomes increasingly clear that yesterday’s conspiracy theories are today’s real news, the call to kill the messengers just gets more shrill and hysterical.
The attacks on free speech with high-tech censorship campaigns and old-fashioned hit pieces in the “War on Fake News” are massive and concerted.
The book burners are starting so many fires it’s impossible to stamp them all out. Continue reading “Mainstream Media: The Evil Empire”
Sentinel & Enterprise – by Peter Jasinski
WESTMINSTER — While Vincent’s Country Store owner Brian Vincent claims that issuing a warrant for his arrest for not renewing his dog license was “extreme,” local officials maintain that all proper procedures were followed when handling the issue this week.
“I just don’t think the punishment fits the crime. Now I have a record and might need to get a lawyer,” Vincent said on Wednesday. “We’re very active in the community here at the store. We do a lot of fundraisers, we help out with the food pantry, and just to have this happen, I feel really let down.” Continue reading “Westminster man: Arrest warrant over dog license renewal is ‘extreme’”
Each year, I renew a contract to provide legal services to inmates in an Arizona county jail.
I have been doing this for 12 years without complications. Lately, though, there has been some extra paperwork that has nothing to do with my work as an attorney. Now, in order to renew my contract, I am being asked to promise that I will not participate in a boycott of Israel.
Continue reading “Why can’t I represent Arizona inmates if I boycott Israel?”
The Liberty Review – by Anders Hagstrom
The former supervisor of a disgraced Baltimore Police task force is expected to plead guilty to corruption Friday, becoming the sixth city officer to do so in an ongoing federal racketeering case.
Sgt. Wayne Jenkins is accused of working with other members of the Gun Trace Task Force to rob drug dealers and innocent civilians, the Baltimore Sun reported Thursday. Jenkins is one of eight officers to be indicted in the case, which the FBI is handling. So far, city prosecutors have been reconsider 850 cases potentially tainted by one of the officers’ involvement. Continue reading “Sixth Baltimore Officer Pleads Guilty to Corruption in Racketeering Case”
DHS and the US army have created an active shooter training scenario designed to turn teachers into first responders.
Watching the above video reveals how DHS uses our fear of mass shootings to keep the ‘War on Terror’ alive.
DHS and the US Army claim their latest ‘War on Terror’ video will be free to all school teachers this year. Continue reading “DHS and the US Army are turning teachers into first responders, who’s next?”
The massive Equifax data breach, which compromised the identities of more than 145 million Americans, prompted a telling response from Congress: It did nothing.
Some industry leaders and lawmakers thought September’s revelation of the massive intrusion — which took place months after the credit reporting agency failed to act on a warning from the Homeland Security Department — might be the long-envisioned incident that prompted Congress to finally fix the country’s confusing and ineffectual data security laws. Continue reading “After Equifax breach, anger but no action in Congress”
Natural News – by David Williams
The emergence of “big data” has been quite the revelation for many different industries. Whereas information used to be sparse and relatively hard to obtain, now it is available in such large quantities that specialized equipment and algorithms are needed to process them. The police industry is just one of the many industries that are being disrupted by big data, and now researchers have begun to look into exactly how much it could change things. Continue reading ““Big Data” police-state surveillance the new norm: Information from multiple sources (on any citizen) now being combined to generate a “criminal risk assessment algorithm””
TROY — The veteran leader of the Troy Police Department’s drug unit was indicted by a special Rensselaer County grand jury Thursday on nine misdemeanor charges tied to the alleged forgery of an incident report to cover up the unit’s warrantless search of a home.
Sgt. Ron Epstein pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include official misconduct, falsification of records, offering a false instrument for filing and other offenses that carry a maximum penalty of a year in jail. Epstein joined the department in 1998 and was promoted to sergeant in 2007. Continue reading “Head of Troy police drug unit accused of covering up warrantless search”