That awful 99.999%....

...making the rest of us look bad.

Pre-Crime

Okay, all the feel good bullshit from the last day or so is over.  New Jersey is going to start spotlighting people they think are about to commit a crime.

Two thoughts: how long before this gets abused?  I'm betting on the first night shift it's in use, at about 2200 hours.


Also, why do police chiefs get to wear so many damn stars?  Does this guy really think that being the chief of police for East Orange, New Jersey equates with being a Vice Admiral?

The world as battlefield

I'm very, very leery of the Alex Jones crowd.  I worry that even, no ESPECIALLY, when he writes something I agree with, that I'm falling off into the deep end of paranoia.  As part of my life goal of never starring in a movie with a creature that could bite my head off, it's important to me to avoid sounding like Mel Gibson in conspiracy theory (or in real life, I guess).





That Eat Pray Love movie is stranger than I realized. Also, does she consider eating babies a snack because they're bite-sized?

 

But when someone points out to me that the crazier versions of what the "beared porcupine" said turns out to be not only true, but increasingly likely, I get worried.

Obama had originally threatened to veto the bill, but not over the indefinite-detention clauses. In fact, bill sponsor Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) says it was the White House that insisted the language be altered to include American citizens:

The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved….and the administration asked us to remove (it) which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.

Under the bill, American citizens can be indefinitely detained without proof merely on suspicion of having supported terrorist groups. Exactly what constitutes such “support” is, as always, the government’s guess.

Does this mean I need to go buy "Catcher in the Rye?"  Or, since I'm technically working for the bad guys, do I get a black helicopter of my own? That would be sweet.

Yes, I'm lazy. Deal with it.

Reading Remus ought to be required in schools.

Before DC captured the National Guard, before it became a de facto federal auxiliary and reserve, before it was named the National Guard, they were state militias, a fully realized state-level Second Amendment. A cynic would see today's National Guard as federal garrisons merely, DC's de jure armies of occupation. A cynic would see the National Guard and the newly militarized police forces as an emerging duo, the one trained and equipped for urban and local warfare, the other for home invasions and small scale raids. Throughout history the cynics have seldom been wrong. Perhaps after sixty years of undeclared wars we shall now have undeclared military rule.

A handy Dandy List

Here is a list of all the senators that voted either for or against the Repeal of the Posse Comitatus act, or whatever it's called.

For those in the back of the classroom, the bill would have made it legal for the federal government to arrest american citizens, on american soil, and hold them indefinitely with no charges being brought against them.

I seem to remember something in history class about this sort of thing.  What was it?  Hmm. Must not have been that important.

First Amendment? Not important.

Don't go to Long Beach to take photos.  They are "contacting" photographers, and apparently do not know, or will not say, when a "contact" becomes a "detainment."

"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

See, now that's just not true. Contact becomes detainment if you impede the contactee's movement or action.  Period.  I'm just a gummint cop, about as low on the totem pole as you can possibly get, and I know that.  I feel certain that this asshat knows that, too, he just doesn't want to admit that this is all QUITE illegal, along with morally repugnant.

Fear the Future (any day now...)

Because life isn't cool enough to imitate art, it has to imitate crappy Tom Cruise movies.

But the presence of the police officers in the garage that Friday afternoon in July was anything but ordinary: They were directed to the parking structure by a computer program that had predicted that car burglaries were especially likely there that day.

You know where this is going, right?  We're going to surrender our law enforcement to robots.  And it's not going to be awesome like what happened in Detroit in the 80's.

Look how well that turned out, though.

What happens when you turn the already over militarized police force into the servants of a machine that can predict crime?  What happens when those cops are encouraged to help justify the expense of that program and the erosion of liberty?

For your own fucking good.

Won't someone please think of the children?

Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activities loses its Fourth Amendment protection when it’s held by a “third party” corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider.  As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process.  Step one:  The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can’t easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone—anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all.  No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it’s not the government gathering it!  Step two:  The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge.  No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they’re just getting a corporation’s business records, not your private records.  It makes no difference that they’re only keeping those records because the government said they had to.  Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects—including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses—to ensure that evidence isn’t erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order.  But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet?  Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans—every one a potential criminal…

Lufkin cops arrest a retarded guy for being at home.

Having spent some time in East Texas, this really comes as no surprise.

Lufkin police officers responding to a call about a black male kicking in the door to a home, broke in, terrorized a hispanic male, who retreated to the bathroom to hide.  This guy is retarded, and not in the rude sense of the word.  It's not like he wears pink polo shirts with popped collars.  This guy "doesn't think like you and I do. He has a child’s mind. He operates on a lower level thinking than you and I do. Number two, he doesn’t speak this language.”

Get that?  A spanish speaking retarded guy fled from big scary rednecks kicking in his door and trying (successfully) to beat, spray and arrest him, and the court gives HIM 30 days and a $500 fine.

Big Brother's Intrusiveness knows no limit

I expect this sort of thing to become more commonplace as time goes on.

Fourth amendment, who needs it?

Certainly not Indiana, nor the supreme court.

What the hell?