From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
Town Hall – by Courtney O’Brien
Illegal immigrants, or “undocumented workers,” as New York lawmakers like to classify them, were just given the green light to teach children in the Empire State. The state Board of Regents ruled on Tuesday that people who are enrolled in President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals plan will be eligible to apply for teaching credentials. Continue reading “Illegal Immigrants Will Soon Be Allowed to Teach in NY”
Las Vegas Sun – by Ricardo Torres
Depopulation in California jails and gang members moving to the Las Vegas Valley might be contributing to the rise in violent crime, according to Metro Police Sheriff Joseph Lombardo.
There’s a “plethora” of reasons why the valley might be experiencing a hike, Lombardo said during an editorial meeting with the Las Vegas Sun, but Metro has had an increase of interactions with California gang members during arrests and investigations. Continue reading “Sheriff links Las Vegas crime hike to California law to reduce prison crowding”
More than half the Democrats in the Senate, including many of President Barack Obama’s strongest supporters, signed a letter to him on Wednesday urging him to move more quickly to admit Syrian refugees into the United States.
Despite Obama’s pledge to admit 10,000 of the people fleeing Syria’s civil war in the year ending this September, only 1,736 have been allowed into the country so far. In contrast, more than 6,000 have been admitted from Myanmar and more than 5,000 have been admitted from Iraq. Continue reading “Many Senate Democrats frustrated with slow U.S. Syrian refugee admissions”
Of Two Minds – by Charles Hugh Smith
The fallacy in this assumption is that homeowners’ incomes do not automatically rise along with housing valuations.
In my recent entry Dear Homeowner: If You’re Paying $260,000 in Property Taxes Over 20 Years, What Exactly Do You “Own”?, I questioned the consequences of high property taxes. Some readers wondered if I was saying all property taxes should be abolished. The short answer is no–what I was questioning is local government reliance on property taxes to the point that owning a home no longer makes financial sense because the property taxes consume any appreciation other than the transitory “wealth” generated by a housing bubble. Continue reading “Are Property Taxes a “Wealth Tax” on the (Mostly) Non-Wealthy?”
WGGB-TV reports that Longmeadow, Mass. residents recently voted down a series of controversial gun control initiatives at the annual town meeting last week.
Voters rejected proposals that would require gun owners to provide the police department with descriptions of each firearm they own, limit where guns can be carried in town and ban certain types of guns and magazines inside town lines altogether. Continue reading “Voters Reject Bylaw To Give Police Gun Descriptions”
The Senate today confirmed Eric Fanning to be secretary of the Army, making him the first openly gay leader of a U.S. military branch.
The confirmation of Fanning, who has been serving as the acting Army Secretary since November 2015, was eight months in the making. Continue reading “Senate Confirms First Openly Gay Army Secretary”
A Washington, DC judge has struck down a key part of the capital’s ban on concealed firearms, questioning the provision’s constitutionality. Police can no longer ask for “a good reason” when a person requests a concealed-carry permit.
Until now, DC police would only approve permits for people who had a “good reason to fear injury” or those whose jobs involve high risk, like routinely transporting large amounts of cash. Continue reading “DC judge halts US capital’s ‘overly zealous’ ban on concealed guns”
As Brazil’s left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, has been suspended from office to face trial for disregarding budget laws, details have emerged on key figures involved in what Rousseff supporters are calling a coup, hinting at a covert plot involving Washington.
Following last week’s vote in the Brazilian Senate that led to the suspension of the country’s first female president, the left-wing politician herself noted that she “never imagined that it would be necessary to fight a coup in this country.” Continue reading “‘Made in USA’: 3 key signs that point to Washington’s hand in Brazil’s ‘coup’”
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Massive landslides triggered by torrential rains crashed down onto three villages in the central hills of Sri Lanka, and more than 200 families were missing Wednesday and feared buried under the mud and debris, the Sri Lankan Red Cross said.
Sixteen bodies have already been recovered and about 180 people have been rescued from the enormous piles of mud unleashed at around 5 p.m. Tuesday, according to military spokesman Brig. Jayanath Jayaweera. Continue reading “Over 200 families feared buried by landslides in Sri Lanka”
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A California city has moved to install surveillance cameras along a stretch of highway as authorities investigate a spate of freeway shootings that have taken the lives of six people, including a young mother of four, in the suburbs east of San Francisco.
The decision on Monday by Pittsburg is the latest action aimed at solving and stopping the attacks that also injured 11 people in the past year. Police say all 20 drive-by shootings on or near two major highways have been gang-related. Continue reading “Authorities move to stop California highway killings”
While facial recognition technology has a number of positive uses, such as finding missing people, an alternative form of ID, and even tagging friends on Facebook, it does have worrying implications when it comes to privacy.
In Russia, a new face recognition app is becoming so popular that it could result in the end of public anonymity, according to a report in The Guardian. Continue reading “Nightmare Russian facial recognition app is one step closer to the end of privacy”
Salon – by INGRID LEE AND STEPHEN TALBOT
William “Dub” Lawrence was a former sheriff who established and trained one of Utah’s first SWAT teams, only to watch in horror as that same unit killed his son-in-law in a controversial standoff years later. In Peace Officer, Dub, driven by an obsessive sense of mission, uses his investigative skills to uncover the truth about that incident and other officer-involved shootings in his community, while tackling larger questions about the changing face of police investigations nationwide. Continue reading ““I founded the SWAT team that killed my son-in-law”: A former Utah sheriff speaks out against police violence”
So this guy walks into an OB/GYN clinic and demands a gynecological exam. The doctor, a woman, takes one look at him and says, “That won’t work. You’re a man.” The man, however, “self identifies” as a woman and blasts the doctor for being a bigot. “I self identify as a woman,” he says. “And I demand to be treated as a woman, or I’ll call my civil rights lawyer.”
The doctor, not wanting to be called a bigot, proceeds to give the man a fake gynecological exam, playing into his delusional distortions about his own biology and arguably worsening his mental disconnect with his physical self. Continue reading “The transgender programming of children is child abuse, warns the American College of Pediatricians… chemical castration, genital mutilation and mental illness run amok”
A Portland police officer caught speeding of a different kind when a meteor flashed before his eyes during an early morning traffic patrol.
The meteor was captured on Sgt. Tim Farris’ dashcam just before 1 a.m. Tuesday and uploaded to Facebook by the Portland Police Department, who were evidently amazed by the celestial phenomenon. Continue reading “Cop dashcam captures spectacular giant fireball flaring over Maine”
As if the world wasn’t anxious enough about automation and artificial intelligence fleecing jobs from the working class, now even lawyers might feel a little nervous. Last week, the law firm Baker & Hostetler announced the hiring of IBM’s proprietary artificial intelligence product, Ross. Built by IBM’s own groundbreaking computing system, Watson, Ross is the world’s “first artificially intelligent attorney.”
Designed as a self-learning algorithmic tool, Ross is capable of most basic cognitive skills and possesses fine-tuned research abilities. This includes providing citations. Ross will join Baker & Hostetler’s team of 50 lawyers specializing in bankruptcy cases.* Continue reading “The Future Is Now: Law Firm Hires First Artificially Intelligent Attorney”
Once again, the practices of the “Too Big to Fail” banksters bring the financial money machine to the brink. The J.P. Morgan derivative losses and trading gambles by their “London Whale” demonstrates business as usual in the murky world of risk distortion. Even the vexing progressive Robert Reich makes an accurate assessment for breaking up the big banks and the resurrecting of Glass-Steagall.
“Word on the Street is that J.P. Morgan’s exposure is so large that it can’t dump these bad bets without affecting the market and losing even more money. And given its mammoth size and interlinked connections with every other financial institution, anything that shakes J.P. Morgan is likely to rock the rest of the Street.” Continue reading “Money Center Banks and Stricter Financial Oversight”
After questioning whether a self-imposed process to make airline check-ins more rigorous, knowingly increasing wait times, was a Federally-funded scheme to force travelers to enroll in pre-check programs, thus manipulating people into cooperating with authoritarian strategies; it seemed rather appropriate that the following video, which went viral, shows what is simply a stunningly long TSA line wait at Midway Airport.
As WaPo reports, when Sean Hoffman arrived at Midway Airport last week for his flight home to Oregon, he said he was taken aback by the comically long line to get through security. Continue reading “Viral Video Shows Nightmare TSA Line Stretching “For Miles””