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Anyone remember the police beating case in Maryland where the dash cams of ALL SEVEN police cars on the scene simultaneously malfunctioned?

No ... and a Google search turns up nothing. Can you provide a reference?

Here's a reference:

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=428&s...

Seven cars responded, all required to have dashcams, yet somehow no dashcam footage of the incident was available.

And here's an article with links to other cases where police video disappeared:

http://www.theagitator.com/201...

And I found it with my first Google search for

> ... they WOULD BE pulling the shit you say they would, right now -- ....

I think that you may not have been paying attention.

The public can video the drone taking some action, but cannot link from that to the operator. If multiple drones are in operation at any one time, with multiple operators, reasonable doubt could be easily established simply by "losing" the drone captured imagery.

The police don't have to prove whatever drone problems they claim, they just have to create reasonable doubt.

The simple fact is that whichever party they're a member of, prosecutors have incredible levels of immunity from the effects of both their own malice and incompetence.

To go on the attack against Republicans, here in Texas, we (the taxpayers) had to pay out a pretty hefty wrongful imprisonment fee because one prosecutor hid the existence of a bloody bandana for years, and when it was finally discovered, a second prosecutor blocked testing of it for several years more.

When the Innocence Project finally got a court to force the prosecutors to allow testing of the blood, it turned up the victim's DNA and another man's DNA... the other man having gone on to possibly kill other people while an innocent guy sat in jail in his place. No big deal, apparently. The first guy might get to face a court regarding the withholding of evidence, but his tribunal seems to keep slipping farther into the future.

At least the second guy got voted out by an angry public (though that's not going to get them their millions of tax dollars back), but don't cry too much for him, his best bud Gov. Rick Perry will keep him employed.

The NYSenate are mostly first rate Republican morons.
The NY House are mostly first rate Democratic morons.

Some, however, consist of second or even third rate morons, and the level of moronity varies wildly depending on the amount of grandstanding the moron needs to complete to achieve the next level.

For example,

http://www.theagitator.com/2010/03/11/new-york-lawmaker-wants-to-ban-salt/

As you can see, Felix Ortiz needed to graduate to Grand Moron Extraordinaire, and did so with flying colors.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/01/25/ny-sen-wants-ban-on-chatting-while-crossing-street/
In this example, Senator Karl Kruger, also earned the title of Grand Moron Extraordinaire.

In conclusion, these people are fucking morons, they're elected because they know how to be popular, not because they have a clue.

Oh, really? In what way is police brutality not condoned by our government (and even moreso by many other governments around the world)? For example, the police officers depicted on this site?: http://www.theagitator.com/

And why aren't those officers behind bars?

They're just emulating US Police.

http://www.theagitator.com/?s=puppycide

Yeah, that's a great step forward. It is extremely rare for the courts to do something like this.

As strong as the police "get out of jail free card" of qualified immunity is, the prosecutor's absolute immunity is even stronger. Last year the Supreme Court held that prosecutor's offices cannot be sued when they repeatedly violate defendant's constitutional rights and put innocent people on death row. Because judges are lawyers, they created the concept of absolute immunity for their brothers in the prosecutor's office. There is no law granting them this protection, the courts just decided that it wasn't fair for prosecutors to be liable for any actions they might take in office - like framing an innocent man and putting him on death row. What did Mel Brooks say? "It's good to be the King!"

Not just In the 90's. Even nowadays somehow the cameras in 7 separate police cars can "malfunction" simultaneously: http://www.theagitator.com/2010/08/12/when-police-videos-go-missing/

Health benefits are not rights, so your example there sort of fails, although it would be nice if gays and straights had equal privileges too (I'm against marriage, both straight and gay, being a province or concern of government in the first place). Extending COBRA is not an instance of harm to you, it's an instance of giving benefits to someone else, which is not the same thing. I'd give you the inability to visit your partner, except that I haven't seen much proof that Democrat Politicians (unlike the rank and file) do anything more than pay lip service to equality here.

As for the police, compare and contrast with a Judge who takes away a child because of a complaint lacking any evidence. Or because a mother gave it a light swat on the behind. Or ignore there own laws and place a child with foster parents instead of her actual father. I vaguely recall at least one case of Family services taking away an infant, later to be proven wrong, only for the parents to be denied the return of custody because it's been 2 years and it would be too great a hardship on the child to be returned to the family that never did anything to justify his loss in the first place. I can't find the link on that one, but a quick search does turn up numerous other abuses by child protective services. I'm pretty sure CPS is in fact dominated by democrats in most areas, probably more heavily than police departments are dominated by republicans.

Yes, but the problem is today you have the guy dealing in kiddy porn who also has a PCP habit.

So everything should always be delivered by SWAT team, kicking in doors, throwing people down stairs, and pointing guns in their faces? "You see, the problem today is, you have the guy with unpaid parking tickets who is ALSO a serial killer who has wired half-the city block with C4, and . . ."

Nobody died because the police aren't there to shoot people

Err, the police do shoot innocent people in these kinds of raids. Sometimes because they "slip" ("The SWAT team was justified in this case of sports betting! He might have been a suicide bomber!") . Sometimes because the startled homeowner came out of a room with a baseball bat (thinking he was being robbed). Sometimes, there doesn't appear to be a reason when they gun down a grandpa. And they often get the wrong house.

If you haven't noticed, it is a war out there.

No it's not. Police deaths are declining. Critical Thinking 101: Just because the media hypes it up does not make it true.

I'm sure he's familiar with it, this case has gotten a lot of coverage in those circles. Since you like his work, I'll direct you to someone from the same spectrum that I enjoy more. Radley Balko over at The Agitator is a great, award winning writer who is known for finding stories that deliver a swift kick in the... well, a punch in the stomach. This story about a forensics team that framed a man for murder in Mississippi won him some heavy awards and helped the innocence project free a few wrongly convicted men. Just be sure you take your blood pressure medicine before you read that story - it really is too much to handle if you take justice seriously. There's a couple-dozen more at the same magazine that can keep your sense of moral outrage exercised for days.

You want citations?

Read any of Radley Balko's reporting on the War on Drugs (the "Studies" section of that page is a good place to start).

Reason Magazine has a number of articles on how asset forfeiture laws let cops seize things from innocent people and keep them (or auction the things to buy new toys), and how little traction the victims of the seizures get from the legal system.

If you would like more general examples, read this book.

I might think it was intentional, except the War on Drugs (a.k.a. the War on Blacks and Hispanics) and the War on Terror (a.k.a. the War on Muslims) have already proven that prosecutors are frequently just as malicious and short-sighted as they seem to be. But, hey - they've been profiting from it forever, so I don't suppose we could call it stupid.

Also, I've already seen a comment from someone who is familiar with Tague that this prosecutor is a "grandstanding douchebag".

Funny you should mention that - in this case the person arrested was trying to file a complaint about police misconduct and ran into a bureaucratic wall, so she recorded her final attempt on her blackberry. Many months later they are still starting their investigation into the police misconduct, but they wasted no time in getting her arrested and charged for making the recording.

I'm glad someone was able to help you pull the scales from your eyes. For a good look at why freedom is more important than security head on over to Radley Balko's blog.

He's an award winning reporter who focuses on exactly these issues. Most of his stuff deals with American justice system incompetence and abuses, but he'll frequently link to articles in your area.

Just this morning there was a link to a story from England about a couple of cops handcuffing a man in his own home and forcing him to remove a political poster because it called a candidate a wanker. The police said any reasonable person would find it alarming, harassing or distressful to call David Cameron a wanker. Probably half the population of England would disagree on a factual basis, but that didn't stop them from forcing him to remove the poster. I think the irony of actually harassing the guy with the poster in an alarming and distressful way was probably lost on the police....

http://www.theagitator.com/category/forensics/

You're talking about columnists, not reporters. They are different.

Not true for threereasons:

1) Most reporters just regurgitate whatever their sources give them (do you ever read what they usually write in a follow up on a crime?)

2) There are bloggers like Radley Balko who have stronger reporter bona fides than most of the people who work at the NY Times.

3) There are many reporters who run blogs as part of their business.

“My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.”

That's despite the fact that it is perfectly legal to open-carry in Wisconsin!

The police frequently think anything goes in enforcing the law, even violating "little laws" to enforce "big laws" is ok.

If only we went back to the old American model in which the police not only did not have a monopoly on enforcing the law (any private citizen could arrest you and bring you to a court), but anyone who broke the law while enforcing the law was civilly and criminally liable to their victim.

Go to reason.com and check out the vast numbers of stories compiled by Radley Balko (or go straight to his blog, http://www.theagitator.com/). The Cato Institute also has an interactive map available that shows all of the botched raids that have happened (http://www.cato.org/raidmap/).

Or just do a simple Google search for "swat raids wrong house". It turns up 103,000 pages. Even if the same event is reported ten times, that means there have been over 10,000 of these events. So yeah, that qualifies as "all the time".

For most jobs, drug users make pretty crappy employees.

There are a number of casual users who are good employees, if not employers. I've seen more people with alcoholics who are terrible employees than all other drugs combined. Then again I've seen people who don't use drugs but are still terrible employees.

many minimum-wage employees could be thrown in jail and replaced with robots, and it would cost less and provide economic benefit to the rest of us, overall.

No, that'd be a drain. You're taking taxpayers and turning them into prisoners. Not only are they not paying taxes, but they eating up taxes by keeping them in gaol. About the only ones who benefit are the private prison contractors.

I've actually met drug users who would rather be in jail than have access to drugs.

They need therapy then.

And, unfortunately, I believe history shows that violent crime rates rise with increased drug use,

If you're going to make such an assertion you need to provide evidence such as scientific studies that back that statement up. When Portugal decriminalized drugs "drug-related crime and violence was down, and there was no measurable uptick in overall drug use." CA legalized medical marijuana and though some say drug dispensers are easy to find violence has not escalated. The violence from drugs is mostly about gangs fighting to control the drugs, with legal drugs most violence should end.

More importantly, the victims of those crimes are random citizens, not drug dealers or gang members fighting amongst each other.

Citation needed again.

I don't want government passing laws that make victim-less crimes.

I don't either. But that horse left the barn several decades ago. And there's no sign of it coming back. So until I can drive without being harassed for not wearing my seatbelt, I don't think this argument will gain any traction when it comes to anything more controversial.

I oppose seatbelt laws too. And that's something I find weird about the state I live in, MN. It has a seatbelt law but motorcyclists can ride their bikes without helmets. Conceivably I can see government requiring children to wear seatbelts but adults should be able to decide for themselves if they will wear them. Otherwise, I'd let auto insurance issuers charge higher premiums for those who do not wear them.

Falcon

Laws that are adhered to in spirit rather than wording. Judges and juries decide whether the crime fits the law and whether or not they're guilty. Simply written laws that any half-intelligent being can comprehend in minutes.

It has the benefit of covering crimes that haven't been though of yet, it obsoletes lawyers completely and the common man will become capable of comprehending every law he's subject to. It also has the benefit of being applicable on a case by case basis. This solves the problem of people falling unintentionally in the scope of draconian laws. This is a good thing. Because very few crimes are exactly alike.

It has the drawbacks of putting a lot of power on the judges (severe penalties need to be in place for corruption or graft).

And the laws go basically like this (it's a starter set). And you'll need to put aside your current ideas of laws before reading or you'll think I'm insane.)

• Stealing is illegal. (no, I don't mean you RIAA, your business model is your problem)
• Damaging something you don't own is illegal. (vanalism, hitting your car, etc)
• Harming someone is illegal. (stab someone, go to jail; punch a friend in the arm - not a crime)
• Attempting to deceive someone for profit or benefit is illegal. (this nails deceptive advertising mostly)

Obviously the interpretation is the important part. Under our fucked up system people would attempt to take their significant other to court based on the wording of that last one. Under the system I have in mind they'd be laughed out of court. If not charged for it themselves. Eventually people would learn that stupid dramatic shit doesn't count, (society at large doesn't give a shit if your spouse lied to you).

The goal of the thing is simple: fair justice.

They always seem to forget that the "come back with a warrant and tear your house apart" SOP also includes shooting your dog as a matter of course.

Why does a dog always have to be kicked? Why can't it be a cat or a rabbit?

http://www.theagitator.com/2006/01/23/they-always-shoot-the-dog/

Here's my prediction, on record: this policy will be a real boon for micro laptop companies like Asus. Who is going to want to travel with an expensive laptop that can get snatched up by an avaristic or paranoid border cop? It bothers me to no end that they don't need due processes for this because I have a new MacBook Pro. The thing is worth $2,000 and is precisely the sort of thing that would become a target of something like this where the cops turned seized cars into a private car rental service for their own pleasure.

So I guess what'll happen is that people will take an Eee PC with them, and then download the data as needed from some offsite backup service. That, and the whole problem of people avoiding business travel to the United States.

Just because the state says it's legal, doesn't make it moral. This, and asset forfeiture laws, are nothing more than a tyrannical attempt to legalize armed robbery committed by government employees. A federal agent who seizes a laptop without sufficient probable cause is no less of a criminal in a moral sense than a thug who steals it from a coffeeshop while you work or from your house. Furthermore, I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet good money that this will happen to many of the laptops stolen. Everyone who has paid attention to the state of federal law enforcement knows that increasingly, the feds just don't give a damn what the law says, like how the FBI has a serious culture of just breaking the law WRT national security letters, even after the AG has filed reports to Congress that should have shamed them into compliance.

Dallas SWAT has been raiding poker games. Drew Carey covered this at http://www.reason.tv/video/show/172.html.

When one of the defendants subpoenaed copies of the video tapes made
of the raid -- the reality show "Dallas SWAT" had filmed it -- he was
told that no copies of the tapes existed. See http://www.theagitator.com/2007/04/20/tales-of-a-dallas-poker-raid/

In Oceania, members of the Inner Party were allowed to turn off their
telescreens.

No, the teenager.

That's right, the "victim" was also the "perpetrator."

http://www.theagitator.com/2007/02/10/sex-crime-stupidity/

Okay, and your point is? You are suggesting that there is a corruption so pervasive in law enforcement that your complaint will make an enemy of the entire police force who will them abdicate their sworn duty to the public in order to be vindictive about a complaint so minor you didn't bother to actually take it up with someone who could actually do something about it.

If that's true, your worry is not how many minutes it will take the police to arrive, but when they're going to shoot you dead for parking in a handicapped spot or mouthing off to one of their friends.

 
Yes. That is exactly what he is saying. And your followup point is spot-on as well. Since this wasn't obvious to you, I must assume you're under 20 years old.

My personal experience is that most law enforcement officers are unintelligent, lying, corrupt, self-serving jerks. You see, they support a corrupt system. The powerful need them to be this way. Follow the money.

I really can't blame local/county beat cops. They don't know any better. (You'll note, most local cops are ex-military. That's an advantage, as their sense of right and wrong has already been replaced with a misplaced sense of "duty".)

Feds (and politicians), on the other hand, are smart enough to know better. They are truly evil.

http://www.theagitator.com/

The Democrats also choose pork barrel politics to police accountability. What else is new? Congress gets paid for making the system work for some people, not the people.

They're out there. Radley Balko has been doing good work assembling cases of SWAT raids gone wrong through error and malice and the trend line seems to be going in a bad direction.
http://www.theagitator.com/

"There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people.
When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
-Commander Adama
  Battlestar Galactica
"Water" (Season 1, Episode 2)

"There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people.
When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
-Commander Adama
  Battlestar Galactica
"Water" (Season 1, Episode 2)

Plus, consider that our military during times of peace consists of volunteers. They're citizens, and people just as you are. You really think most of the armed forces are going to unload their stuff on their own people, because they're ordered to do so?

I don't worry about a military dictatorship in this country. But a Police State is another thing.

Police officers have already demonstrated a willingness to kill civilians over trivial matters, and then rationalize it afterwards. The prosecutors that are supposed to oversee the police do not hold them accountable for their crimes.

Radley Balko has been doing a marvelous job of researching and reporting about this.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476

http://www.theagitator.com/category/paramilitary-police-raids/

http://www.theagitator.com/category/police-professionalism/

http://www.reason.com/staff/hitandrun/143.html (scroll down)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193652,00.html

See also

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4203345.html

http://instapundit.com/archives2/2006/11/post_685.php

http://justiceforsal.com/

http://joelrosenberg.livejournal.com/

I don't know if things have always been this bad and if a communication medium like the internet is making it easer to report and read about these atrocities, or if things are genuinely getting worse. Probably both.

But it's telling that those who believe we currently live under a fascist regime are also proponents of gun control ( http://www.reason.com/news/show/117833.html ). I'm sure it's not fascism they oppose, as long as their guy (or gal) is in power.

Plus, consider that our military during times of peace consists of volunteers. They're citizens, and people just as you are. You really think most of the armed forces are going to unload their stuff on their own people, because they're ordered to do so?

I don't worry about a military dictatorship in this country. But a Police State is another thing.

Police officers have already demonstrated a willingness to kill civilians over trivial matters, and then rationalize it afterwards. The prosecutors that are supposed to oversee the police do not hold them accountable for their crimes.

Radley Balko has been doing a marvelous job of researching and reporting about this.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476

http://www.theagitator.com/category/paramilitary-police-raids/

http://www.theagitator.com/category/police-professionalism/

http://www.reason.com/staff/hitandrun/143.html (scroll down)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193652,00.html

See also

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4203345.html

http://instapundit.com/archives2/2006/11/post_685.php

http://justiceforsal.com/

http://joelrosenberg.livejournal.com/

I don't know if things have always been this bad and if a communication medium like the internet is making it easer to report and read about these atrocities, or if things are genuinely getting worse. Probably both.

But it's telling that those who believe we currently live under a fascist regime are also proponents of gun control ( http://www.reason.com/news/show/117833.html ). I'm sure it's not fascism they oppose, as long as their guy (or gal) is in power.

Speaking of DWI
Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

A Lancaster, Ohio man was arrested for driving while intoxicated despite repeatedly blowing 0.0 on a breath test. The double standard here is that blowing a .08 or higher is generally an automatic conviction. But blowing 0.0 can still trigger an arrest.

The police officer says the man failed a roadside sobriety test. That doesn't mean much of anything. The roadside sobriety test is a farce, with no scientific research whatsoever to attest to its effectiveness. A couple of years ago, the Washington Post published a terrific article on the test, including its ridiculous history, the lack of peer-reviewed scientific data to back it up, and how the federal government and police departments across the country have for 30 years been using it to arrest drivers, anyway.

I'm not sure how much you know about sex offender registries. The first time I heard about a publicly available list I thought it would make sense. You could look at a map and see where they lived. However, since that early, naive time I've learned a lot. The biggest problem with these lists is that they're poorly maintained by the government (surprise!). So here's yet another example of how these things go wrong, as they invariable do:
http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/10/hey-not-our-fault/

Hey, Not Our Fault Monday, December 10th, 2007

Nevada's Public Safety Commission has set up a website that includes searchable maps of where the state's sex offenders live. The city of Las Vegas then decided to set up its own site, with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The problem is that both websites populate their databases with information from sex offenders themselves, people who, as you might imagine, aren't terribly vigilant about keeping their addresses up to date with state authorities. This has led to neighbors harassing non-sex offenders who happened to have moved into residences formerly occupied by sex offenders.

The city says it isn't to blame because . . . it includes a disclaimer on the website stating it shouldn't be used to harass or intimidate sex offenders. Pitchfork-toting crowds, city police say, should be aware of the fact that sex offenders supply the state with it's information, and that they 100 percent accurate. Sounds . . . dubious.

When 71-year-old Harry Berlin, a non-sex offender who's been mistakenly harassed and threatened by neighbors, asked city officials to correct their records, they told him he had to ask the people who run the state database. When he went to the state, they told him to go back to the city. So now he's suing. In the meantime, his neighbors will continue to periodically gather outside his door to taunt him.

Maybe Berlin should consider himself lucky. Matt Welch notes that a guy in California was stabbed to death last month after a neighbor found his name on a sex offender list. There were two similar vigilante murders in Maine earlier this year, and two more in Washington State last year. Both pairs of murders involved online sex offender lists. I can't seem to find a link to an online version, but CNN did a special about a year ago on a mentally retarded kid in his late teens who had the mental capacity of a 10-year-old. He was convicted of a sex crime after exposing himself to a minor in a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" kind of way. After moving, his new neighbors found his name on a sex offender list, and began posting signs around the neighborhood warning about the "rapist" who lived at his address. The kid ended up killing himself.

This kind of thing was pretty predictable.

January 26, 2006 Salvatore Culosi, Jr., Dead by Government The Washington Post offers more details on this week's police shooting death of a Fairfax County, Virginia man: Fairfax County's police chief said yesterday that one of his officers accidentally shot and killed an optometrist outside the unarmed man's townhouse Tuesday night as an undercover detective was about to arrest him on suspicion of gambling on sports. Police had been secretly making bets with Salvatore J. Culosi Jr., 37, since October as part of a gambling investigation, according to court records. They planned to search his home in the Fair Oaks area, just off Lee Highway, shortly after 9:30 p.m. Culosi came out of his townhouse on Cavalier Landing Court about 9:35 p.m. and was standing next to the detective's sport-utility vehicle, police said, when the detective gave a signal to tactical officers assembled nearby to move in and arrest Culosi. "As they approached him . . . one officer's weapon, a handgun, was unintentionally discharged," said Fairfax Police Chief David M. Rohrer. [...] Perez said Culosi had not displayed a weapon or shown any violent tendencies while he was being investigated by Baucom. But Perez said police had to be prepared for any possibility, because "the unexpected can occur." "Tactical officers" is a eumpemism for SWAT team. So yes, the Fairfax County police department dispatched the SWAT team to arrest an optometrist suspected of gambling. They had their guns drawn. The descended upon him. And one of them killed him. Fairfax police can talk all they want about a "thorough investigation." But whether the officer has his finger on or near the trigger, whether he tripped or was bumped, or whether or not his gun was faulty -- frankly, none of that means a damn thing. A 37-year-old man is dead because the Fairfax County police department, like police departments all over the country, is sending SWAT teams to serve gambling warrants. And nonviolent drug warrants. And a host of other warrants. Lt. Perez is wrong. SWAT teams don't diminish the risk of violence. They escalate it. In rare situations -- hostage crises, barricades, or violent crimes-in-process, for example -- escalation is necessary to stave off immediate harm. In inherently nonviolent, routine police work -- like serving warrants on optometrists -- they're needlessly provocative and dangerous. A growing pile of bodies testifies to that. And until spineless lawmakers put an end to this idiocy (and yes, risk being called "soft on crime" as a result), the pile is only going to get larger. Posted by Radley Balko on January 26, 2006

Our own government prosecutes pornographers while overseeing the sale and rental of porn. Consistency was never a virtue of any standing government in modern times.

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

There is no #1 without #2.

As Olberman makes clear, the Bill of Rights is pretty much worthless without habeas corpus. And as far as standing up to the Feds goes, why don't you ask Randy Weaver how well his guns worked for him.

Of all the things that the ACLU stands for, this is one I have NEVER seen them stand for.

I'm sorry, but this one is quite obvious. Why should the ACLU, an organization concerned with civil liberties, spend precious recourses on 2nd Amendment cases when the NRA, one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the country, is ONLY concerned with gun rights? Except when they aren't. It's been five years since cops broke into the man's home w/o a warrant, and I have yet to hear a peep out of the NRA on his behalf. Nor have I heard any "gun nuts" complain about the NRA not supporting this guy, but I still see complaints about the ACLU. Hmmm....

Firstly, not all soldiers would open fire on US citizens,

But most cops probably would.

It's not a military dictatorship I fear, but a police state (which we sort-of have now).

Send in S.W.A.T. after these pirates.

The funiest part is that in WA we have tribal gambling, lotteries, and you can even have actual poker rooms off the reservation if you get the permits etc. So gambling is apparently fine, it's the online part that is illegal.

It's not surprising:

http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026550.php#026 550

From the article:

Probably won't surprise you to learn that the bill's sponsor is heavily supported by Washington State's thriving bricks-and-mortar casino industry.

Simply trying to protect their business. I am just waiting for the day that our bought and paid for legislators are kicked out of office.

March 23, 2006 No Accountability

The cop who shot Sal Culosi won't face charges:

The Fairfax County police officer who shot an unarmed man to death in January will not be charged with a crime, the county's chief prosecutor announced this afternoon.

From the start, Fairfax police declared that the killing of Salvatore J. Culosi Jr., 37, was an accident and that the SWAT officer who fired had done so unintentionally. Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. said that when a person fires a gun without malice and unintentionally kills someone, "they do not commit a crime."

I'm calling bullshit, here. In 30+ years as a prosecutor, Mr. Horan has never pursued charges against a police officer. Not once.

Horan said the officer was aware that he should not have had a finger on the trigger and that he should not have had his .45-caliber H&K handgun pointed at anyone. "As he [the officer] says, you keep your finger straight," Horan said. "He felt his finger was straight. . . . But obviously his finger is not straight up. His finger has to be on the trigger."

Tests showed no defect in the gun.

So a cop draws his gun and points it at a suspect (a no-no), has his finger on the trigger (a no-no), the gun goes off and kills a man, and Horan can't find enough to make the case for criminal negligence?

And why don't we get to know the name of Culosi's killer?

Let's apply these standards to a civilian. Let's say I'm showing my new, legally-purchased MP5 to a buddy. Just for kicks, and wholly without malice, I pretend like I'm a cowboy cop, and my friend assumes the role of the hapless optometrist I suspect of gambling. I pretend I'm raiding his home, point the gun at him, and, having put my finger on the trigger and having forgotten there's a bullet inside, the gun goes off, killing my friend.

Anyone think the police would hold off on releasing my name to the press?

Anyone think I'd escape criminal negligence charges?

More here:

March 29, 2006 Sal Culosi Update

A few items culled from the Justice for Sal site maintained by Culosi's family:

1) A couple of weeks ago, the Fairfax Police Department incredulously issued a news release warning that it would be cracking down on illegal NCAA tournament pools. Three months after one of its officers shot and killed Culosi, Fairfax PD titled its press release, "Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk." Words fail.

2) Here's a very recent case from Portsmouth, Virginia in which a kid was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after accidentally shooting a friend. The case is significant because Fairfax prosecutor Robert Horan has repeatedly insisted that Virginia law won't let him charge Officer Bullock with a crime. The facts of the Portsmouth case pretty clearly suggest otherwise.

3) The Washington Post weighs in with another editorial, this time with pointed criticism of Horan for declining to bring charges. The Post also reiterates its position against using SWAT teams for routine policing.

March 23, 2006 No Accountability

The cop who shot Sal Culosi won't face charges:

The Fairfax County police officer who shot an unarmed man to death in January will not be charged with a crime, the county's chief prosecutor announced this afternoon.

From the start, Fairfax police declared that the killing of Salvatore J. Culosi Jr., 37, was an accident and that the SWAT officer who fired had done so unintentionally. Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. said that when a person fires a gun without malice and unintentionally kills someone, "they do not commit a crime."

I'm calling bullshit, here. In 30+ years as a prosecutor, Mr. Horan has never pursued charges against a police officer. Not once.

Horan said the officer was aware that he should not have had a finger on the trigger and that he should not have had his .45-caliber H&K handgun pointed at anyone. "As he [the officer] says, you keep your finger straight," Horan said. "He felt his finger was straight. . . . But obviously his finger is not straight up. His finger has to be on the trigger."

Tests showed no defect in the gun.

So a cop draws his gun and points it at a suspect (a no-no), has his finger on the trigger (a no-no), the gun goes off and kills a man, and Horan can't find enough to make the case for criminal negligence?

And why don't we get to know the name of Culosi's killer?

Let's apply these standards to a civilian. Let's say I'm showing my new, legally-purchased MP5 to a buddy. Just for kicks, and wholly without malice, I pretend like I'm a cowboy cop, and my friend assumes the role of the hapless optometrist I suspect of gambling. I pretend I'm raiding his home, point the gun at him, and, having put my finger on the trigger and having forgotten there's a bullet inside, the gun goes off, killing my friend.

Anyone think the police would hold off on releasing my name to the press?

Anyone think I'd escape criminal negligence charges?

More here:

March 29, 2006 Sal Culosi Update

A few items culled from the Justice for Sal site maintained by Culosi's family:

1) A couple of weeks ago, the Fairfax Police Department incredulously issued a news release warning that it would be cracking down on illegal NCAA tournament pools. Three months after one of its officers shot and killed Culosi, Fairfax PD titled its press release, "Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk." Words fail.

2) Here's a very recent case from Portsmouth, Virginia in which a kid was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after accidentally shooting a friend. The case is significant because Fairfax prosecutor Robert Horan has repeatedly insisted that Virginia law won't let him charge Officer Bullock with a crime. The facts of the Portsmouth case pretty clearly suggest otherwise.

3) The Washington Post weighs in with another editorial, this time with pointed criticism of Horan for declining to bring charges. The Post also reiterates its position against using SWAT teams for routine policing.

your opposition has clusterbombs and cruise missiles.

Actually, the "opposition" probably won't be a military dictatorship, but a police state.

The police don't have clusterboms and cruise missiles (at least, not yet).

How come when the property of regular citizens is siezed for investigation of a piracy or drug-related crime, you always hear the term "raid."

I mean, surely when the Justice Department needs to take a look at Microsoft's paperwork, they send in in an elite squad of ATF agents to rappel down from above, crash through the roof, and storm the building with machineguns drawn.


http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026298.php

In the 1960s, imprisoning a half million people for smoking pot in the USA would have seemed laughable. Forty years later, that is roughly the number of people in prison for non-violent drug offenses, many of them for marijuana.
    http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/409/toohigh.sh tml

Many other prisoners are also there for things like theft related to a drug habit (despite that addiction is often more a medical problem, or sometimes also from an economic problem leading to depression which our society refuses to deal with).

One major reason pot was pushed to be illegal is because hemp is such a versatile product and threatened timber and paper monopolies (although there were other factors as well).
    http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/ whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html
    http://www.cannabis.com/faqs/hemp2.shtml
    http://www.theagitator.com/archives/002065.php

So, will it be any surprise if copyright laws go the same way -- towards Richard Stallman's "Right to Read" cautionary tale?
    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Will there be a half million kids in prison for using file sharing software in a couple of decades? Or just even using GNU/Linux? :-)

This will shed some light.