Month: October 2013

The New York Post

PARIS — Tourists travelling to Omaha Beach to pay their respects to the 9,387 military dead at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial will find it closed, a victim of the U.S. government’s partial shutdown.

The site overlooking the D-Day invasion beaches is one of 24 U.S. military cemeteries overseas that have closed to visitors since Monday. Ten more cemeteries in in France, as well as others in various European countries as well as Mexico, Panama, Tunisia and the Philippines, will remain closed for the duration of the shutdown.   Continue reading “Gov’t shutdown spreads to beaches of Normandy”

Land Report

No. 1 John Malone, 2,200,000 acres

John Malone’s love of land may well be equaled by his wife Leslie’s love of horses. Fortunately for the two, the couple seems to have a knack for agreeing on properties where both features are a priority — wide-open spaces like New Mexico’s legendary Bell Ranch. This year the Denverites celebrated their shared passions with several acquisitions, including a historic Irish castle just outside Dublin and not one but two properties in Wellington, the epicenter of South Florida’s equestrian community.   Continue reading “America’s Top 100 Landowners 2013”

Tenth Amendment Center – by Lesley Swann

Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry signed a UN arms treaty that opponents say will implement a broad firearms registration scheme and eventually lead to global bureaucrats imposing gun control on the American people in spite of the Second Amendment. Despite the Obama administration’s support for the treaty, it remains to be seen whether the Senate will ratify it.

The Obama administration and other supporters of the arms treaty will likely claim that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution places treaties above the Constitution and other U.S. laws as the supreme law of the land. Under this interpretation, they believe they can get around the Second Amendment protections on the right to keep and bear arms.   Continue reading “The Constitution vs the UN Arms Treaty”

Tech Dirt – by Mike Masnick

Mary Ellen Callahan was the Chief Privacy Officer (and the Chief Freedom of Information Act Officer) at the Department of Homeland Security from 2009 until 2012 (though, don’t tell DHS, since they still have a page on their website about her claiming she still has that role — even though she left over a year ago). You have to imagine that being the Chief Privacy Officer within DHS (or any part of the federal government, really) is a pretty thankless job, and it appears that was absolutely the case when Callahan was there. Last night, she was given an award by the IAPP, the International Association of Privacy Professionals — and used it as an opportunity to reveal the work environment in her old job. From the sound of those in attendance, she gave quite a speech, unloading on the lack of respect for privacy in both the Department of Homeland Security and the wider intelligence community.    Continue reading “Former DHS Chief Privacy Officer Recounts How She Was Regularly Called A ‘Terrorist’ By The Intelligence Community”

MassPrivateI

The Department of Homeland Security wants a federal judge to throw out the remainder of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that has forced them to turn over information about hundreds of surveillance drone flights over U.S. soil.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital civil liberties group, sued the agency late last year for information on, among other things, the policies that the department and its component Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) had in place for domestic surveillance by unmanned aircraft. This question was answered in a Powerpoint presentation titled “CBP’s Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Nation’s Border Security.”   Continue reading “DHS wants 500+ domestic drone flights kept secret”

The Washington Times – by Shaun Waterman

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.

Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration.   Continue reading “NSA chief’s admission of misleading numbers adds to Obama administration blunders”

Huffington Post – by Matt Sledge

The government is arguing in the terrorism case that serves as the National Security Agency’s primary public justification for its bulk collection of telephone records that criminal defendants have no constitutional right to challenge the agency’s sweeping surveillance program.

In a filing made Sept. 30, U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy of the Southern District of California contends that only the telephone companies have a Fourth Amendment interest in their call records — and therefore that Basaaly Moalin cannot challenge his conviction for providing material support to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab.   Continue reading “NSA Phone Records Collection Can’t Be Challenged By The Callers, Government Argues”

The Economic Collapse – by Michael Snyder

All of this whining and crying about a “government shutdown” is a total joke.  You see, there really is very little reason why this “government shutdown” cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running.  63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this “shutdown”.

Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in Washington D.C. is being conducted pretty much as usual.    Continue reading “Government Shutdown? 36 Facts Which Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running”

Fox News – by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

While the nation’s political class has been fixated on a potential government shutdown in Washington this week, the NSA has continued to spy on all Americans and by its ambiguity and shrewd silence seems to be acknowledging slowly that the scope of its spying is truly breathtaking.   Continue reading “A government looking for witches will find them”

Borderland Beat – by Chivis

Though not directly related to Mexican drug war news, none the less, it is an example of  technology meeting criminality and an element that will be used in the future.  In this case Ulbricht made a couple of dumb mistakes as he initiated his internet drug market, which resulted in his identity being discovered, but overall he developed a sophisticated operation in 13 countries.  In his 2 1/2 year run he managed sales topping 1.2 Billion USD. One wonders what took so long to shut the operation down, A Forbes magazine reporter wrote about the website and his pot transaction from the website over a year ago…Paz, Chivis   Continue reading “End of Silk Road: Simple Errors Tripped up “Largest” Internet Drug Market”

The Washington Free Beacon – by Bill Gertz

China last week conducted a test of a maneuvering satellite that captured another satellite in space during what Pentagon officials say was a significant step forward for Beijing’s space warfare program.

The satellite capture took place last week and involved one of three small satellites fitted with a mechanical arm that were launched July 20 as part of a covert anti-satellite weapons development program, said U.S. officials familiar with reports of the test.   Continue reading “China Testing New Space Weapons”