Category: Uncategorized

(William Norman Grigg) — The eleven-year-old girl shrieked in horror as the shower curtain was ripped away, leaving her exposed to the view of a large male stranger. Her sense of violation was compounded by the threat of immediate, violent death: The marauder was wearing body armor and aiming an assault rifle at the naked, terrified child.

Downstairs, the offender’s comrades were ransacking the house and barking profane orders at the traumatized child’s family. Sterling Harrison, her 19-year-old brother, was sitting in front of a game console when three of the invaders burst into his upstairs room, bound him, and …read more

“Today, it’s testing at the border, tomorrow it could be facial recognition deployed in public places,” Dave Maass, Electronic Frontier Foundation

(RT) — In an effort to speed up travelers’ passage through airports, a French electrical systems company has come up with robots that could soon replace border police.
“You would only need one agent for every four or five machines,” said Pascal Zenoni, a manager for Thales, a company that specializes in electrical systems for the aerospace, defense and security sectors, said while presenting the new product at the Paris Air Show this week.
Passengers won’t have to deal with check-in desks, …read more

Seattle, Wa — On Tuesday, the city of Seattle confirmed it will be paying out what is thought to be the largest use of force settlement to a man named Nathaniel Caylor, who police shot in the face in 2009.
Caylor sued Seattle PD officers Schubeck and Leslie “in federal court, alleging excessive use of force and outrage, and accused the department of conducting a negligent investigation into the shooting that resulted in his son being taken away from him for a year,” according to The Seattle Times. After 17 surgeries and “a face full of screws, metal plates and bone …read more

Memphis, TN — A Tenessee Highway Patrol trooper is in hot water after he was caught in a severely hypocritical situation.
Trooper Mark D. Williams was arrested Friday afternoon when he was caught purchasing hydrocodone on the black market; an offense he has likely ruined many lives over.
Williams was caught in the act by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigator’s Drug Investigation Division as he purchased the narcotics from his suspected drug dealer, Elliot Goode.
According to the TBI, Williams was on duty and wearing his THP uniform during the transaction.
After the TBI agents had witnessed the deal, both men were arrested and …read more

On June 18, the New York State Senate passed SB 5958, which moves the presidential primary from February 2 to April 19. Parties are free to decide for themselves how presidential candidates get on their primary ballot. They can choose petitions, or to place candidates on the ballot who are eligible for primary season matching funds, or candidates who are discussed in the news media. If they choose petitions, the number is 5,000 or 5% of the party’s membership.
UPDATE: this article says New York Democratic legislators don’t like April 19 (the Senate has a Republican majority). …read more

Pennsylvania will hold a special election on August 4, to fill the vacant seat in the State House, 161st district, in Delaware County. According to this story, a strong write-in candidate, Lisa Esler, has emerged. She had sought the Republican nomination but failed to obtain it. …read more

Rapper Tupac Shakur would have turned 44 this week if he was still alive, and many still wonder what type of impact he would have had on the world if he was not taken from us before his time.
In memory of Tupac and his legacy, we are sharing an interview that Tupac did in 1992 about state violence, police brutality and how the culture of hip hop is a response to the violence that people endure every day.
In the interview, Tupac said that:
“I wanna see the true picture, because I don’t care if he feels uncomfortable. What about when I …read more

This week, 60-year-old radiologist Kenneth Najarian was killed by a drunk driver when he took a bike ride through his neighborhood before dinner. The driver may actually end up getting off easy, because she happens to be married to a cop.
“He said he was going for a quick bike ride, and he would be back, but he wasn’t back,” Najarian’s wife Krissi told reporters with the Burlington Free Press.
“I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was afraid he went into some tall brush. That’s when I came upon the accident scene,” she recalled.
Najarian was sadly run down by 36-year-old Holly Gonyeau, …read more

Former Congressman Charles Bass of New Hampshire has this op-ed in the Washington Post, predicting that New Hampshire election authorities will keep Bernie Sanders off the 2016 Democratic presidential primary ballot.
Bass probably doesn’t know that in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court said in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that political parties have an right to nominate non-members if they wish. Clearly, if parties are free to nominate non-members, they certainly have a right to see to it that non-members are permitted to run in their primaries. It is true that the comments about political parties nominating non-members …read more

On June 18, a North Carolina conference committee amended HB 836 to add a new provision, substantially relaxing the state’s rules that voters at the polls must show a government photo ID. Voters without such ID can still vote if they reveal the last four digits of their Social Security number, their birthdate, and certify that they have a reason why they haven’t been able to obtain government ID.
HB 836 started out as a bill relating to street closings, going out of business sales, and audits of local government payrolls. As it made headway through the legislature, the …read more