Month: April 2017

ABC News – by Olivia Smith

They sit for hours at a time, hunched over tables with scissors in one hand and marijuana in the other. The work is tedious, but it pays well -– for now. This once mostly black market trade is slowly becoming more regulated, hindering the flow of quick, under-the-table cash.

Time melds together, the sound of snipping and sticky scissors clinking as they are dipped in jars of alcohol, before they get back to grooming the weed.   Continue reading “Migrant workers are making thousands trimming marijuana in California”

Eric Peters Autos – by Eric

Law enforcers aren’t “heroes”  . . .  but what about firemen?

Are they Hose Heroes?

People are pressured to regard them as such. Much as they are pressured to genuflect, North Korean funeral-style, before the Presence of a law enforcer.   Continue reading “Hose Heroes?”

Pitchfork – by Jazz Monroe

Bruce Springsteen has reunited with longtime collaborator and Houserockers frontman Joe Grushecky for an anti-Trump protest song, “That’s What Makes Us Great.” You can purchase the track, which premiered this morning on SiriusXM, on Grushecky’s website. “I had this song, and Bruce and I had been talking,” Grushecky told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I sent it to him and he liked it. I said, ‘What do you think about singing on it?’ He gave it the Bruce treatment.” The song’s lyrics target various aspects of the Trump administration. Springsteen sings, “Don’t tell me a lie/And sell it as a fact/I’ve been down that road before/And I ain’t going back.” Later he sings, “And don’t you brag to me/That you never read a book/I never put my faith/In a con man and his crooks.”   Continue reading “Bruce Springsteen Releases New Anti-Trump Protest Song With Joe Grushecky”

ProPublica – by Charles Ornstein

The public could soon get a look at confidential reports about errors, mishaps and mix-ups in the nation’s hospitals that put patients’ health and safety at risk, under a groundbreaking proposal from federal health officials.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wants to require that private health care accreditors publicly detail problems they find during inspections of hospitals and other medical facilities, as well as the steps being taken to fix them. Nearly nine in 10 hospitals are directly overseen by those accreditors, not the government.   Continue reading “Secret Hospital Inspections May Become Public at Last”

AP – by Paisley Dodds

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — In the ruins of a tropical hideaway where jetsetters once sipped rum under the Caribbean sun, the abandoned children tried to make a life for themselves. They begged and scavenged for food, but they never could scrape together enough to beat back the hunger, until the U.N. peacekeepers moved in a few blocks away.

The men who came from a far-away place and spoke a strange language offered the Haitian children cookies and other snacks. Sometimes they gave them a few dollars. But the price was high: The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as 12.   Continue reading “UN child sex ring left victims but no arrests”

Mail.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dow Chemical is pushing the Trump administration to scrap the findings of federal scientists who point to a family of widely used pesticides as harmful to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species.

Lawyers representing Dow, whose CEO also heads a White House manufacturing working group, and two other makers of organophosphates sent letters last week to the heads of three Cabinet agencies. The companies asked them “to set aside” the results of government studies the companies contend are fundamentally flawed.   Continue reading “Pesticide maker tries to kill risk study”

Mail.com

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — No matter what variation of the ‘n-word’ is spoken, a Florida state senator is learning the term is still offensive as Democrats and Republicans admonish him for using it during an exchange with two African-American colleagues.

Republican Sen. Frank Artiles tried to say his use of the word was actually “niggas” and explained that’s the way people speak in Hialeah, the city near Miami where he grew up. Even as he apologized on the Senate floor Wednesday, he said that his intention in using it was benign.   Continue reading “No inoffensive way to say the “n-word,” Fla. senator learns”

Mail.com

SEATTLE (AP) — Thursday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and when pot shops in legal weed states thank their customers with discounts.

his year’s edition provides an occasion for pot activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in eight states and the nation’s capital, as well as a changed national political climate that could threaten to slow or undermine their cause.   Continue reading “AP Explains: The origins of 4/20, marijuana’s high holiday”

Oregon Live – by Anna Marum

SALEM — Oregonians from across the political spectrum packed into the state Capitol Monday to testify on bills to limit some Oregonians’ access to guns, including people who show signs they’re suicidal or who don’t demonstrate they have the skills to shoot a gun.

Some gun owners worried that the bills would take away the constitutionally protected right to bear arms, while proponents of the bills insisted the proposals were necessary to prevent gun violence.   Continue reading “Oregon gun control bills get bipartisan support — and opposition”

The Great Recession

As president Trump relishes telling the story, he was sitting with President Xi of China, who was enjoying a beautiful, huge slice of chocolate cake — the best chocolate cake you ever saw, which can be enjoyed only at Mar-A-Lago — when Trump decided it was time to launch 59 cruise missiles at the Assad government.

As the Chinese president dabbed the chocolate decadence from his lips, Trump informed him that he’d just given the order to launch missiles at Assad’s air fare. The Chinese president paused for about ten seconds and then said, “Well, he did use gasses on children.”   Continue reading “Getting Trumped and Thumped in Syria”

Fruits From a Poisonous Tree, Melvin Stamper (2008)
FruitsFromaPoisonousTree

“The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” Revisited and Shepardized, 56 Calif. Law Review 579 (5-31-1968)
Lawrence S. Jezouit 3

And remember, you can always go to View / Read Out Loud and let the PDF read it to you if your eyes are old and/or tired;~)

This American Carnage

UPDATE 8/3/2017 – Adding names to the web as news breaks has been.. challenging.  We have decided the most feasible way of doing update this piece is to write an addendum at the bottom, building individual webs as names come out.  Wilbur Ross, Roman Abramovich, and JD Gordon have now been added at the end of this piece.

This is merely a consolidation of other’s investigative work.  All credit to @Khanoisseur, @20committee, @Funder, @LouiseMensch, @pwnallthethings, the infamous Jester, and James S Henry.   Continue reading “The Matryoshka”

The Daily Sheeple – by Lily Dane

A new study published by JAMA Surgery found that from 2006 to 2012, there were approximately 51,000 emergency department visits per year for patients injured by law enforcement in the United States, with this number stable over this time period.   Continue reading “Study: Police-Inflicted Injuries Send More than 50,000 to Emergency Rooms EVERY YEAR”

The Daily Sheeple – by Daniel Lang

Venezuela has been at the end of its rope for a long time. Between the food shortages, sky-high inflation, record levels of crime, and a rapid decline of their standard of living, the people of Venezuela can’t take much more. And it appears that their breaking point may have finally been reached last month, when President Maduro tried to strip the powers of the opposition led parliament, which would have made him a full-blown dictator.  Continue reading “Is Venezuela Finally Going Over the Edge? Massive Protests Erupt; Dozens Dead, Injured, or Arrested”

Nature of Healing – by Rosanne Lindsay

Medical Freedom is at risk in every state of the nation under vaccine mandates.

Since the removal of religious and personal belief vaccine exemptions by the State of California under law SB277, the federal government is widening the net to go after States by region through block grants for early childcare programs.

The government’s message? If you want federal assistance, ante up and remove the religious and philosophical exemptions for vaccines.   Continue reading “When Federal Grants Come With Vaccine Mandates”

Reuters

Israel’s military said on Wednesday it believes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces still possess several tonnes of chemical weapons, issuing the assessment two weeks after a chemical attack that killed nearly 90 people in Syria.

Israel, along with many countries, blames the strike on Assad’s military. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said French intelligence services would provide proof of that in the coming days.   Continue reading “Israel says Assad’s forces still have several tonnes of chemical weapons”