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  • No Warrant Needed to Search Cell Phone

    … The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled it is now legal for police to search cell phones without a warrant.  …

    The decision stems from an Indiana case where police arrested a man for dealing drugs. An officer searched the suspect’s cell phone without warrant.

    The judge in the appeal case, Judge Richard Posner, agreed that the officer had to search the phone immediately or risk losing valuable evidence. Judge Posner ruled it was a matter of urgency, arguing it was possible for an accomplice to wipe the phone clean using a computer or other remote device.

    Defenbaugh says the ruling takes into account exigent or time-sensitive circumstances that could be life saving in more urgent cases, such as child abduction. ”If the child is alive and you’re only minutes behind, that could be critical to recovering that child alive,” added Defenbaugh.

    via CBS Dallas / Fort Worth.

    Again, the 7th Circuit shows that it’s inept.  This case needs to go upstairs to the USSC and be corrected right away.

    Note that the actual facts of the case so not present any “child abduction” or any other life or death situation.  Yet this is the hypothetical the court relies on in order to make its case.

    It again reminds me of the Simpson’s.

    There were no facts in this case that present any “exigent circumstances” that required police to take immediate action (yes, I know this sentence is redundant.)

    And even IF the police were concerned about the spoliation of evidence by someone other than the person in custody using a computer to delete evidence on the cell phone there is a very simply solution.  TURN OFF THE PHONE.  Take it back to the lab and let the boys and girls with glasses and pocket-protectors have at it — AFTER YOU HAVE THE WARRANT.

    This is another example of our civil rights being eroded by a government that wants absolute control over every aspect of your life.

  • TSA Nude Body Scanners Don’t Work

    Controversial nude body scanners used at U.S. airports have come under fire again – after a blogger claimed he could easily smuggle explosives through them onto a plane.

    Engineer Jonathan Corbett has published a video where he shows how he took a small metal case through two of the TSA’s $1billion fleet in a special side pocket stitched into his shirt.

    This is because, he suggests, the scanners blend metallic areas into the dark background – so if an object is not directly placed on the body, it will not show up on the scan.

    The metallic box, he claims, would have set off an alarm had he passed through the old detecting system.

    His revelation comes just weeks after Europe banned the ‘airport strip-searches’ over fears the X-ray technology could cause cancer.

    via Daily Mail (UK).

    A fascinating article about how the TSA is basically only creating the illusion of security.

    [Corbett] added: ‘Now, I’m sure the TSA will accuse me of aiding the terrorists by releasing this video, but it’s beyond belief that the terrorists haven’t already figured this out and are already plotting to use this against us.

    ‘It’s also beyond belief that the TSA did not already know everything I just told you, and arrogantly decided to disregard our safety. The nude body scanner program is nothing but a giant fraud.’

    There are only two options:

    • Either the TSA was already aware of this serious flaw in these machines; in which case they have been snapping naked images of U.S. travelers needlessly and possibly giving them cancer without providing any increase in security, or
    • the TSA was un-aware of this serious security flaw in these machines; in which case they are all bumbling idiots and this is just another example of government intrusion into our private lives run amuck.

    This calls for a congressional investigation.

  • So Now What That the G-8’s Gone?

    Yesterday’s news:

    The White House abruptly announced Monday that it had scuttled plans to hold the upcoming G-8 economic summit in Chicago, and would instead host world leaders at the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland.  …

    A spokeswoman for Emanuel said the Chicago mayor was informed about the location change in a Monday phone call from a White House official.  …

    The summits have become a target for large, and sometimes violent, protests in recent years, making security costs a concern for host cities.  …  But Joe Iosbaker of the United National Antiwar Committee in Chicago said protests would still go on during the NATO summit.

    via The Washington Post.

    This Iosbaker fellow received more than a passing mention in this article here yesterday about the G-8.  It seems he’s quite the professional rabble-rouser.

    I would be curious if Eric Holder thinks that the “Government” could order his execution for creating violence on U.S. soil.

  • Holder: Your Government Can Kill You

    He said the legal right to kill U.S. citizens overseas without benefit of a trial was based in Congress’ authorization to use all necessary and appropriate force against the perpetrators of 9/11 or those who helped them and the president’s power “to protect the nation from any imminent threat of violent attack.”

    That authority is “not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan,” Holder said, adding that “We are at war with a stateless enemy, prone to shifting operations from country to country.”

    via Chicago Tribune.

    This is just about the craziest thing I have read in weeks.

    Never before has a presidential administration been so completely inconsiderate of the Constitution.  A United States Citizen’s rights do not simply vanish because they leave the country.  In fact, our courts have held that you are still subject to U.S. laws even when out of the country. When the criminal laws apply so do the protective laws.

    The Constitution provides:

    In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

    The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

    I don’t care what Congress passes; if you want to change the Constitution then you have amend it.  There’s a procedure for that.

    Until that procedure is followed, the 6th Amendment still applies.

    Obama and Holder and just plain wrong, very very wrong on this issue.

  • Gun Owners Need Not Provide ‘Good Reason’

    Good news for those who believe in the Second Amendment:

    Maryland residents do not have to provide a “good and substantial reason” to legally own a handgun, a federal judge ruled Monday, striking down as unconstitutional the state’s requirements for getting a permit.  …

    “A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights,” Legg wrote. “The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”  …

    “People have the right to carry a gun for self-defense and don’t have to prove that there’s a special reason for them to seek the permit,” said his attorney Alan Gura, who has challenged handgun bans in the District of Columbia and Chicago as an attorney with the Second Amendment Foundation. “We’re not against the idea of a permit process, but the licensing system has to acknowledge that there’s a right to bear arms.”  …

    “In addition to self-defense, the (Second Amendment) right was also understood to allow for militia membership and hunting. To secure these rights, the Second Amendment’s protections must extend beyond the home: neither hunting nor militia training is a household activity, and ‘self-defense has to take place wherever (a) person happens to be,’” Legg wrote.

    via Fox News.

    I believe the judge not only reached the correct verdict but did so with the correct logic.  At the end of the day, our right to defend ourselves is given to us not by government but by our creator. i.e. by nature for you atheist folks.

    Before the McDonald case reached the USSC it was heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.  In that opinion J. Easterbrook wrote:

    Self-defense is a common-law gloss on criminal statutes, a defense that many states have modified by requiring people to retreat when possible, and to use non-lethal force when retreat is not possible.  An obligation to avoid lethal force in self-defense might imply an obligation to use pepper spray rather than handguns.  A modification of the self-defense defense may or may not be in the best interest of public safety—whether guns deter or facilitate crime is an empirical question—but it is difficult to argue that legislative evaluation of which weapons are appropriate for use in self-defense has been out of the people’s hands since 1868. The way to evaluate the relation between guns and crime is in scholarly journals and the political process, rather than invocation of ambiguous texts that long precede the contemporary debate.

    Easterbrook wrongly binds our right to self-defense to criminal statutes.  By this logic the right to self-defense simply did not exist at all until the criminal statutes were but into place.  This is of course absurd.

    Our founding fathers knew this:

    When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolves the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, …

    (You should be ashamed if you don’t know the source.)

    The powers of the earth together with the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle each and every living thing to defend itself, its progeny, and its kind by whatever means available from any threat.  If you doubt this, go put yourself between a mother lion and her cubs.

    Kudos to J. Everett Legg for at least bringing the self-defense argument front a center when it comes to the Second Amendment.

  • G-8 Summit Moved to Camp David

    Big News!!

    The Group of Eight meeting will be moved to Camp David, according to the White House, but the gathering of NATO allies and the International Security Assistance Force will go on in Chicago as planned in mid-May.

    Camp David will more closely approximate the remote settings in which the G8 leaders prefer to gather. Summits in large cities typically see clamorous protests, while those in the countryside are calmer and more sedate.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Of course this has absolutely nothing to do this this:

    The Occupy movement is likely to escalate months before the Sept. 3-6 event. A slew of extremist organizations, some tied to Obama, are preparing protests to coincide with major NATO and G-8 summits slated for Chicago in May.

    Foreshadowing possible violent confrontations, some of the same radical trainers behind the infamous 1999 Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization have been mobilizing new protest efforts geared toward world summits.  …

    One endorsing group, which calls itself the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, is also a main organizer of the protests being scheduled for Chicago’s NATO and G-8 summits in May.

    via Klein Online.

    And then there’s this:

    “To facilitate a free-flowing discussion with our close G-8 partners, the President is inviting his fellow G-8 leaders to Camp David on May 18-19 for the G-8 Summit, which will address a broad range of economic, political and security issues,” the White House announced this afternoon. “The President will then welcome NATO allies and partners to his hometown of Chicago for the NATO Summit on May 20-21.”

    Maybe I’m reading English here, but that sounds like the president concluded it would be harder to have a “free-flowing discussion” in Chicago—yet still wanted to throw Rahm Emanuel a bone. NATO summits don’t generally excite people as much as meetings of the most powerful money guys in the world.   …

    Not even a carefully crafted statement from the City Hall press machine could conceal his disappointment: “We wish President Obama and the other leaders well at the G8 meeting at Camp David and look forward to hosting the NATO Summit in Chicago. Hosting the NATO Summit is a tremendous opportunity to showcase Chicago to the world and the world to Chicago.”

    So far, aldermen haven’t been briefed. “Do you think this administration tells us anything?” says Second Ward alderman Robert Fioretti, who for months has been wary of Emanuel’s behind-the-scenes summit planning.

    via  Bleader @ Chicago Reader.

    It’s safe to say there is a LOT more to this story than we’re being told.  Of course we’ll never find out.  But it can be a lot of fun to think about.

    And lastly… only time will tell if this move will reduce the protests.

  • Obama Offers Legal Backing for Targeted Killings

    The Obama administration on Monday plans to outline how U.S. laws empower the government to kill Americans overseas who engage in terrorism against their home country, a source familiar with the matter said, months after a drone strike killed a U.S.-born cleric who plotted attacks from Yemen.  …

    U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plans to address the issue and the underpinning legal principles for using lethal force during remarks at Northwestern University School of Law on Monday afternoon in Chicago, the source said Sunday on condition of anonymity.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    What?!  This is just crazy.  The only way to handle this is the stop this insanity and issue a new policy that simply states, “The United States government does not — will not — knowingly kill any American citizen without a conviction of a capital crime at a trial by jury.”

    Look at this another way, would the U.S. allow a foreign government to kill a foreign citizen on U.S. soil?  Of course not.  The notion is absurd.

    There are so many legal problems with this that books will be written on the topic.

  • Protesters Crash Chicago’s 175th Birthday

    Chicago celebrated its 175th birthday Sunday to the tune of protest rants.

    A small group shouted during part of the ceremony about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to close six mental health clinics in the city.

    As the mayor stood beside a colorful birthday cake and the Chicago Children’s Choir, protesters yelled that the closings make it harder for people to get help and ultimately cost lives.

    Emanuel quickly left the room looking mildly insulted and without responding to anyone in the group. A voice directed partygoers to the next room. “Please join us in the next room for birthday cake,” the voice said.

    via NBC Chicago.

    So Rahm cannot keep protesters out of a small birthday celebration.  How’s he ever going to keep protesters in line during the G-8/NATO summits?

    Just say’n.

  • Teenagers Pour Gasoline on Boy Walking Home From School

    Is this really what we’ve come to?

    A 13-year-old boy who police say was doused with gasoline and lit on fire last week while walking home from school is recovering from first-degree burns to his face and head.  The boy was just two blocks from his home in Kansas City Tuesday when two teenagers began to follow him and then attacked him, his mother, Melissa Coon, said.

    Police have described the suspects as black 16-year-olds, while the victim is white.

    via NY Daily News.

    My initial thought was pretty simple.  Something along the lines of, ‘how horrible.’

    My second thought was a little more complex, like: ‘I guess this used to happen the other way around in the 50’s and 60’s but that still don’t make it right.  I thought we’re trying to move past all that.’

    My third thought was a little more controversial:  Can you imagine if two 16 year-old white boys poured gas on a 13 year-old black boy and lit him on fire?  What would the reaction be?  Would there be a march?  A riot?  A protest?  Would there be demands for an investigation into whether his parents were Nazis or otherwise racists?  Would Jesse Jackson show up and lecture everyone on how to behave?

    I don’t know; don’t have the answers.  But whatever we’re doing isn’t working.

  • Killer Received Unemployment While In Jail

    Authorities say a convicted killer who gained notoriety for having a murder scene tattooed on his chest received unemployment benefits while he was in jail.

    Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker said Saturday that Anthony Garcia, nicknamed “Chopper,” received more than $30,000 in fraudulent unemployment while in Los Angeles County jail from 2008 to 2010.

    via Fox News.

    Our government let’s these sorts of things slip through the cracks everywhere.  This story is from California; where at least someone was looking into the situation.  What do you think it’s like in Illinois where no one is looking?  My guess is much, much worse.