From the Trenches World Report

Fox News

Border Patrol agents at southern Arizona checkpoints routinely violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens with illegal searches and other actions despite the agency’s mandate that stops be limited to immigration enforcement, according to a complaint filed Wednesday.

The letter from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General seeks an investigation into 12 specific cases and a review of checkpoint policies to determine if agents are complying with constitutional guidelines.   Continue reading “ACLU: Border Patrol Agents Routinely Violate Rights Of U.S. Citizens At Highway Checkpoints”

Breitbart – by WILLIAM BIGELOW

It’s a heavyweight fight between the Agriculture Department and Congress over a major dietary issue: white potatoes.

The Agriculture Department, advised by the Institute of Medicine, wants to prevent participants in the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program from buying white potatoes. They say they are concerned that the women will turn the potatoes into dangerous French fries, frying or baking them in fats and oils and jeopardizing the health of children across America. In 2009, the Department allowed the women to buy fruits and vegetables with their vouchers but no white potatoes.   Continue reading “Agriculture Department: No More White Potatoes, No More French Fries”

MassPrivateI

Paper or plastic? cash or charge? Now there’s a new question when it comes time to pay: What kind of receipt would you like?

As CBS 2′s Maurice DuBois reports, stores are increasingly offering to send customers email receipts, which are convenient and save paper.   Continue reading “E-receipts a privacy nightmare for consumers”

Mail.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Actor Russell Johnson, who became known to generations of TV fans as “The Professor,” the fix-it man who kept his fellow “Gilligan’s Island” castaways supplied with gadgets, has died. He was 89.

Johnson died Thursday morning at his home in Washington State of natural causes, said his agent, Mike Eisenstadt. Johnson was a busy but little-known character actor when he was cast in the slapstick 1960s comedy about seven people marooned on an uncharted Pacific island.   Continue reading “Russell Johnson, ‘Gilligan’ professor, has died”

RT News

The Pentagon is cutting its order for Littoral class warships for the US Navy to 32 from the original 52 due to budget cuts and the poor performance of the vessel. One top Pentagon official has said the ship was “not expected to be survivable” in combat.

The decision was announced in a Jan. 6 memo from acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Christine Fox after the Pentagon received its final fiscal year 2015 budget guidance from the White House. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program was one of many acquisition decisions put on hold as budget considerations were being finalized, according to Navy Times.   Continue reading “Pentagon cuts order for Navy warship critics call ‘unsurvivable’ in combat”

RT News

Security researchers have discovered the first broad Internet-of-Things cyberattack, targeting household gadgets and appliances, including at least one refrigerator.

Proofpoint, a vendor that offers data protection services, said Thursday it had uncovered an unprecedented hack that encompassed “more than 750,000 malicious email communications coming from more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets such as home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions and at least one refrigerator that had been compromised and used as a platform to launch attacks.”   Continue reading “Beware the fridge? Hackers targeting ‘smart’ home appliances”

Fox News

A North Texas man is trying to clear his name after he was arrested and cited for allegedly violating a city ordinance for holding a homemade sign warning drivers about speed traps.

Ron Martin, 33, was arrested last October after an officer saw him standing in the median on the Eldorado Parkway in Frisco holding a sign that read “Police ahead,” letting drivers know an officer was waiting at the opposite side of a nearby bridge, MyFoxDFW.com reported.     Continue reading “Texas man fights citation after warning drivers of nearby speed trap”

Mail.com

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli draft law that would criminalize the use of the word Nazi in most cases has sparked a debate on freedom of speech in a state that was founded out of the ashes of the Holocaust.

Seven decades later, memories of the extermination of millions of Jews during World War II permeate virtually every aspect of life in Israel. Public figures and interest groups frequently invoke the World War II genocide to score political points, and the word and Nazi symbols have slipped into Israeli discourse over the years.   Continue reading “Israeli bill to outlaw the word Nazi sparks ire”

Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he’s fed.

Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.   Continue reading “Taxes”

Fox News

WASHINGTON –  Congress sent President Barack Obama a $1.1 trillion government-wide spending bill Thursday, easing the harshest effects of last year’s automatic budget cuts after tea party critics chastened by October’s partial shutdown mounted only a faint protest.

The Senate voted 72-26 for the measure, which cleared the House a little more than 24 hours earlier on a similarly lopsided vote. Obama’s signature on the bill was expected in time to prevent any interruption in government funding Saturday at midnight.   Continue reading “Senate passes $1.1 trillion spending bill”

The Organic Prepper

The mainstream media reports that things are starting to look a little brighter after a chemical spill in West Virginia resulted in a complete ban on tap water last week. Residents were urged not to use the water for drinking, cooking, or even for bathing because of an industrial accident that released toxic chemical 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol into the municipal water supply.

Local authorities report that the water is now safe in some areas, partially lifting the ban, with the careful wording that the current levels of chemicals in the water are “believed to be safe”.  Local stores ran out of water very quickly after the spill occurred, and those without stored water were left to fight it out over the few remaining bottles within a day of the accident.   Continue reading “West Virginia Water is Declared Safe…Sort of…Maybe…as the 60-Mile Chemical Plume Heads to Ohio”

NBC News – by Kasie Hunt and Carrie Dann 

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday that would restore protections in the Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court last year.

Wake Up World -by Gavin Bragg

Fukushima may soon become the greatest environmental disaster site the world has ever seen. If the more than 1300 fuel rods from the badly damaged reactor 4 fuel pool, that is perched 100 feet in the air, are not brought to the ground with absolute precision it could spew out the radiation equivalent of more than 15,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.[1]   Continue reading “How to Naturally Remove Radioactive Particles from Your Body in 5-7 Hours”

AlterNet – by Nick Turse

They operate in the green glow of night vision in Southwest Asia and stalk through the jungles of South America. They snatch men from their homes in the Maghreb and shoot it out with heavily armed militants in the Horn of Africa.  They feel the salty spray while skimming over the tops of waves from the turquoise Caribbean to the deep blue Pacific. They conduct missions in the oppressive heat of Middle Eastern deserts and the deep freeze of Scandinavia.  All over the planet, the Obama administration is waging a secret war whose full extent has never been fully revealed — until now.   Continue reading “REVEALED: America’s Secret War in 134 Countries”

AlterNet – by Martha Rosenberg

Editor’s note: The following article is a follow up to a previous AlterNet piece about drugs whose dangerous side-effects emerged only after the pharmaceutical industry’s patents ran out. Read part 1 here.

When a prescription drug causes risky side effects, the word often doesn’t get out for years, allowing Big Pharma to make money anyway.   Continue reading “6 Drugs Whose Dangerous Risks Were Buried So Big Pharma Could Make Money”

The Raw Story – by Agence France-Presse

Mexican vigilante militias battling drug-traffickers in the restive state of Michoacan said Thursday they had returned several hundred acres of land seized from villagers by the notorious Knights Templar cartel.

The symbolic handover of some 654 acres (265 hectares) of land, which included many avocado and lemon orchards, took place in the village square of Tancitaro in the Michoacan highlands.   Continue reading “Mexican anti-drug militias return seized land to villagers”