Who needs a Posturepedic when you have this?
By Mark Esposito, Weekend Contributor
Lucky or just good? That’s what police in Madison, Wisconsin are wondering after crime analyst, Caleb Klebig, successfully predicted the date and time of Scottie T. Patterson’s, 28, latest and last bank heist. Using data from other similar robberies, Klebig estimated that the then unknown Patterson would hit his next bank on a Wednesday or Thursday between 2 and 7 p.m. He narrowed the field of potential targets to five banks in greater Madison. Police staked out the banks and, sure enough, Patterson arrived right on cue at 2:40 p.m. on Wednesday. Confronted by the seemingly omniscient detectives while exiting the bank with the loot, Patterson made a break for it but was captured behind a nearby shopping center. Continue reading “Predicting Crime and Criminals — “Minority Report” Or Good Policing?”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
As the son of a fallen Air Force pilot whose remains were never found, I am sensitive to the plight of family members of servicemen and women whose remains may be recoverable, but yet are still not identified. There are multiple military and defense department agencies who are responsible for locating and identifying the remains of veterans from World War II, Korea and Vietnam and Cold War missions.
The purpose of this article is to examine the efforts of just one of those agencies. The Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command, or J-PAC, is an example of an agency that is crucial to both locating and identifying remains, but because of bureaucratic constraints, outdated methods and the possible stubbornness of its scientific head, has produced very little results at a very expensive cost to the taxpayers. Continue reading “Time to Clean House at J-PAC?”
By Charlton “Chuck” Stanley, Weekend Contributor
A few days ago, there was some good-natured banter in the comments about Chicken, Alaska. Since I have relatives who do gold mining there during the summer months, I followed up with some reading about Chicken. This old gold mining town was founded in 1886. We often hear of something being “in the middle of nowhere.” In this case it’s true. Chicken is a six hour drive northeast of Fairbanks on the Taylor Highway, which goes to Dawson, Yukon.
This is one of the most isolated and difficult to reach communities on the North American continent. The only way in and out is either by the Taylor Highway or a small airstrip. I was surprised to learn that this town of 17 people (6 households and 4 families) was the subject of a raid last fall. The raid was carried out by a black-clad SWAT team in full body armor and armed to the teeth. The eight agents appeared out of nowhere in the tiny town. They were from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on a mission to inspect the water associated with gold mining.
Continue reading “The Great Chicken (Alaska) Raid Lays An Egg”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
In two precedent setting rulings, the Washington Supreme Court expanded the privacy expectation of text messages on both statutory and unlawful search and seizure grounds.
Washington’s Supreme Court Ruled on February 27th the people have a right to privacy in text messages even if the person cannot be certain someone is reading them the court held. In State v. Jonathan Nicholas Roden the defendant asked the court to decide whether Washington’s privacy act protects text messages intercepted by a detective who possessed the intended recipient’s cell phone after a warrantless seizure. In State v. Hinton the court held that a text message conversation was a “Private Affair” protected from warrantless searches as enacted in Article I Section 7 of the Washington Constitution.
Continue reading “Washington Supreme Court Rules Citizens Have Right To Privacy In Text Messaging”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Last week, I wrote a post about Josh Miller (Not All Needy People Are As Deserving As Others), a young Republican state legislator from Heber Springs, Arkansas. Miller, who was paralyzed more than a decade ago in a catastrophic car accident, has been able to live a productive life due to the medical benefits he has received from both Medicare and Medicaid. Yet, this young state senator has spoken out against Medicaid expansion in Arkansas. Some of us find his stance on this issue to be hypocritical.
This past Tuesday, lawmakers in Arkansas voted to continue allowing the state “to use Medicaid dollars to buy private health-care insurance for poorer residents, overcoming resistance from some Republicans who said the program amounted to an endorsement of the Affordable Care Act.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Arkansas became the first state “to offer a ‘private option’ to extend coverage to lower-income residents…” Supporters of the program saw the private option “as a way to accept federal dollars and cut the number of uninsured residents without enlarging Medicaid.”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Mark Zmuda announced he is suing Eastside Catholic school and the Seattle Archdioceses for wrongful termination after he legally married his male partner. The case stems from his employment as vice-principal to the school was satisfactory for years and that after he announced he had married his male partner, he was given an ultimatum to divorce his spouse or his employment with the school would be terminated. Mark refused to divorce and was fired.
Employment Attorney, Jeffrey Needle, stated the case is likely to go to the appellate courts and potential the state supreme court for its precedent setting nature. The church counters Mark’s claim, proffering its status as a religious organization which holds tenets that bar gay marriage. However, a recent state supreme court decision might prove difficult for the church to support that position.
Continue reading “Former Vice-Principal To File Lawsuit Against Catholic Church Over Termination For Gay Marriage”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Mark Fiore said he was thankful that Governor Jan Brewer vetoed Arizona’s “religious freedom” bill last week. If the bill became law, Fiore said, it “would’ve given people carte blanche to discriminate against gay people (and others, for that matter).” Fiore also said what he found most baffling about the whole thing was the existence of a state legislature that would pass such a bill.
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Prompted by public outcry into Los Angeles area Centinela Valley School District’s extreme 2013 Superintendent compensation of $633,000.00 that included a $910,000.00 mortgage at half market rate and a million dollar fully funded whole life insurance policy California Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on education Finance, said Assembly Bill 2710 would ensure greater transparency and accountability, in part by requiring all local school districts to post the employment contracts of their superintendents online.
Continue reading “California Assemblyman Proposes Law To Limit Excessive Superintendent Compensation After Fiasco At Centinela School District”
The CIA is in a rare confrontation with the Senate Intelligence Committee, a committee widely viewed as a rubber stamp for the intelligence community and headed by Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein has been ridiculed for her defense of the intelligence services, attacks on whistleblowers, and support for the expansion of surveillance operations. Feinstein also helped cover up past intelligence scandals from the torture program to the recent alleged perjury by National Intelligence Chief James Clapper. After dismissing concerns over the surveillance of ordinary citizens, Feinstein is now dealing with surveillance of her own committee and staff. Staff members allege that the CIA violated core constitutional and statutory protections by monitoring their computers in an oversight investigation. The CIA has accused Senate staff members of sneaking out classified documents — documents that the staff say prove that the CIA lied to the Committee in its investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogation and detention program.
Somehow I knew this day would come. Down deep I knew that there would come a time when I had to express sympathy of Justin Bieber. Thanks to the Miami Police and a Florida law that day has come. CBS4 News, the Miami Herald and other media outlets went to court under the state’s open records law to demand videos of Bieber giving a urine sample. This followed Bieber’s arrest after he drag raced a Lamborghini on a residential road in South Beach and admitted to smoking marijuana and taking prescription pain killers. The video showed Bieber urinating and a black box had to be placed over his genitalia by court order of Judge Miami-Dade County Judge William Altfield in the interests of his privacy. What I fail to understand is why the entire video of urinating is not treated as a protected matter for privacy purposes. The demand by these media outfits truly disgusts me but I am more concerned in how this law is being interpreted to publicly release videos of people urinating.
Oklahoma City attorney, Frank Kirk, 70, is looking at a likely disbarment after his arrest in a bizarre discovery in the Oklahoma City Jail. Kirk is accused of smuggling in a sex toy for a female prisoner to use in exchange for his legal representation. He is now charged with possession of contraband and multiple counts of offering to engage in an act of lewdness. What is interesting is that one of the most serious charges is not his sneaking in a vibrator or the sexual acts but the cellphone that he had with him. It is a felony to bring a cellphone into a prison interview room. What is particularly distressing is that this alleged act of depravity is now the basis for proposed changes limiting counsel and expanding searches. This is a case that by any measure is bizarre and grotesque. It does not reflect either the criminal defense bar and makes for a poor basis for rewriting interview policies in my view. Notably, this was a sting operation so the prison was made aware of the violations and audio taped the encounter.
What is fascinating about the utter failure of our duopoly of two parties is how they have failed to even do the little things rights. You would hope that, while wasting hundreds of billions, the two parties could at least offer a modicum of help for citizens. This week’s report from Ookla Speedtest offers one clear example. The United States ranked behind Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay. We are 31st in the world.
Continue reading “United States Ranks 31st in the World on Internet Speed”
Censor boards in Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have sunk Darren Aronofsky’s new Biblical epic, Noah. The Paramount movie is now banned because it allegedly contradicts Islam by portraying a prophet and no one in these countries can see an alternative account of religion other than Islam.
Continue reading “Film Fatwah: Noah Banned In Middle Eastern Countries As Anti-Islamic”
The persecution of homosexuals continues in Nigeria with four young men convicted of homosexual relations and flogged on in open court. The judges and lawyers watched as the men (aged 20 to 22) were laid prostrate on the floor, stripped, and whipped on their buttocks in a demonstration of Sharia justice. The sadomasochistic nature of the punishment appears to have escaped the onlookers. While a crowd outside tried to grab the men to kill them, the court explained that stoning was not needed since the men admitted to homosexual acts previously but said that they were no longer engaging in such relations.
Continue reading “Nigeria Flogs Four Homosexuals . . . Crowd Demands Death”