From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
Can you say $$$$?
WASHINGTON — Coming up on a driver going slowly in the left lane can be infuriating and the surprise can lead to safety issues if faster-moving drivers swerve around or act on their road rage, so a Virginia bill would add a fine for drivers who block the “fast lane.” Continue reading “Va. bill would fine slow drivers in left lane”
Here it comes — the exact sort of response Trump was looking for when he issued his “Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement Community” edict during his first couple of days in office.
One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community. A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.
Itron’s Wi-Fi smart meters are being installed in homes across the globe. Iltron’s ‘OpenWay CENTRON‘, and their EM420i modular smart meters, are a privacy nightmare.
Itron boasts that smart meters allow companies to track everyone’s energy usage. Their smart meters store seven categories of ‘events logs’ about everyone’s usage. You read that right, smart meters are keeping detailed records about our electrical, gas and water usage
Continue reading “The ‘Global Elite’ are installing next-generation spying smart meters in homes worldwide”
ProPublica – by Ryan Gabrielson
Drug field tests are too unreliable to trust in criminal cases, according to a Texas courts panel, which has called on crime laboratories across the state to confirm drug evidence actually contains illegal drugs for every prosecution.
State lawmakers created the Timothy Cole Exoneration Review Commission in 2015 to research wrongful convictions in Texas and suggest ways to prevent future injustices. The commission named field tests as a significant concern in its final report, released last month, due to their “questionable reliability.” Continue reading “Texas Panel on Wrongful Convictions Calls for Ending Use of Unverified Drug Field Tests”
Illegally Healed – by Angela Bacca
“Marijuana is safe, we know it is safe. It’s our cash cow and we will never give up,” Belita Nelson told an audience of doctors and nurses at the Marijuana for Medical Professionals Conference in Denver, Colorado this month.
Nelson says that was the first thing she learned from her Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) education coordinator, Paul Villaescusa, when she was hired in the Dallas office in April 1998. Continue reading “Former DEA Spokeswoman: Marijuana is Safe and The DEA Knows It”
The Denver Post – by Alicia Wallace
The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday ruled that law enforcement officers cannot be forced to return marijuana to defendants even after they are acquitted of pot crimes because doing so would force officers to be marijuana “distributors” and violate federal law.
The ruling overturns a decision by the Colorado Court of Appeals, which ruled that police officers must return marijuana to defendants who win court decisions related to illegal marijuana possession in Colorado. Continue reading “Cops can’t be forced to return marijuana in failed drug cases, Colorado Supreme Court says”
America is in trouble because Americans got lazy. Not so much physically but morally. They began to care more about some passing thing than about the things that truly matter; the things that made America unlike other places.
Better than other places. Continue reading “How We Got To Here”
If you have the bad luck to toll up on a DUI “sobriety” checkpoint, how should you handle it?
The fact that you haven’t been drinking is, unfortunately, immaterial.
Every person entering one of these checkpoints is treated as presumptively “drunk” until they convince a cop that they are not. You may be asked to perform curbside gymnastics or take a roadside breath test. Continue reading “Dealing With Checkpoint America”
WIAT – by Jamie Ostroff and Sarah Cantey
BROOKWOOD, Ala. (WIAT) — A Tuscaloosa County couple was served a restraining order, keeping them from parts of their own property.
CBS 42 was on the property along Lock 17 Road in Brookwood with Kenneth and Loretta Kennedy, when a Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy served them with an injunction that bars them from interfering with crews from the Black Warrior Methane Corporation. Continue reading “Drilling company serves Brookwood couple with restraining order”
The College Fix – by Jeremy Beaman
The Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Maryland has advised its faculty and staff not to ask about a student’s immigration status or use the term “illegal alien.”
The requests are part of a “What You Can Do” online message to employees as the public university works to help students in the country illegally feel safe and secure. The message is contained within a larger “Undocumented Student Resources” website recently rolled out by the university. Continue reading “Public university: Don’t use ‘illegal alien’ or ask about immigration status”
New York Post – by Lauren Tousignant
Seafood fans are ingesting up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic a year with unknown health effects, a new study reveals.
Ocean pollution is getting ingested by marine life in the form of tiny, toxic microplastics, according to researchers at the University of Ghent in Belgium. And if you eat a lot of seafood, these microplastics will eventually end up in your stomach. Continue reading “If you eat seafood, you are eating thousands of pieces of plastic”
It ought to bother us that in the case of most of the recent terror attacks in the United States, law enforcement knew the people involved.
Omar Mateen, who killed 53 in a gay bar in Orlando, had been questioned twice after people from his mosque told the FBI he had become dangerously radicalized. Russia had warned the FBI and CIA to beware of the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon. Continue reading “Congress must restore 4th Amendment protections for email privacy”
Breathometer’s ‘A01 Smartphone Breathalyzer‘ billed as the “world’s first smartphone breathalyzer” is a failure! The Breathometer company which ran a successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, received $1 million from wealthy investors on ‘Shark Tank‘ to develop a smartphone breathalyzer. Continue reading “Million dollar inaccurate breathalyzer “was deceptive and dangerous””
News Observer – by Abbie Bennett
Does former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory need protection? Do all current and former public officials? At least one state senator thinks so.
After a video was posted on Facebook Friday showing a group of people following McCrory during a trip to Washington, D.C., for inaugural weekend, chanting “Shame!” and calling him a bigot, Sen. Dan Bishop of Charlotte says he’ll introduce legislation to protect public officials. Continue reading “North Carolina wants to make it a crime to threaten, intimidate, or retaliate against politicians”
Courthouse News – by Molly Willms
MADISON, Wis. (CN) – Juvenile offenders in Wisconsin claim in court that they are treated “like dogs, in cages” by guards who liberally use pepper spray without cause and are quick to resort to solitary confinement.
In a federal class-action lawsuit filed Monday in Madison, the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and the Juvenile Law Center claim that at least 15 to 20 percent of residents at Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls are locked in solitary confinement at any given time. Continue reading “ACLU Decries Treatment of Wisconsin Teen Inmates”
Tech Crunch – by Darrell Etherington
Connected vehicles are booming – they’re often mentioned in the same breath as autonomous cars, but are much more achievable from a technical perspective. Car makers are increasingly making on-board cellular data connections a standard option, too, and now we have some insight into why – a survey of automotive company executives found that they share the opinion that connected cars are huge revenue generators, with around 10x the earning power of the average non-connected vehicle. Continue reading “Automotive executives see 10 times more revenue potential in connected cars”
Researchers have found that there may be a way to vaccinate people against climate change misinformation. The key? Telling them lies.
A team of psychologists from the University of Cambridge, Yale University and George Mason University studied the effect of “fake news” about climate change and how it can shift people’s opinions. Continue reading “Psychologists say they can inoculate people against fake news”
During my 34 years of working as a reporter, I’ve had many informal conversations with mainstream journalists. They were illuminating.
Here, from my notes (1982-2011), taken after the conversations, are what these guardians on the watchtower revealed: Continue reading “Reporters tell me the truth off the record: the fake news business”
Police across the country are trying to make it a hate crime, to criticize first responders or to resist arrest even if they’re innocent! (first responders are police, firefighters and EMS personnel.)
According to Louisiana’s new law, citizens who criticize first responders can be sentenced to prison for up to six months and given a $500 penalty. If convicted of a felony, they can receive an additional five years and fines up to $5,000. Continue reading “Cops want Americans charged with a hate crime for criticizing police”