Category Archives: fourth amendment

PR Watch

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…has a few links up:

ALEC anniversary being celebrated in Chicago.  A few folks thought they’d drop by….

MOVIE SCREENING: On Wednesday, August 7, at 6 p.m. Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, and others will host a screening of the Bill Moyers documentary the “United States of ALEC” followed by a panel discussion. The screening will be held at the University Center, 525 South State Street in Chicago.

RALLY: At noon on Thursday, August 8, a coalition of groups, spearheaded by the Chicago Federation of Labor, is calling on people to gather outside the ALEC conference at the Palmer House Hotel, located at 17 East Monroe Street for a march and rally. You can tell them you are coming here.

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ALEC, Big Oil, and Big Ag…

 

ALEC and low wages…

 

Public Television pulls funding for documentary on the Kochs…because the Kochs are million dollar contributors.   Selling their soul doesn’t come cheap, you know…

 

 

Speaking of Badasses

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Diane Ravitch has a blog on the Badass Teachers Association:

 

 

 

 

I didn’t know what they meant when I searched for G4s –it came up a security agency and had many links including Israel.  However, when I searched for Gates and prisons, voila.

So I’m trying to wrap my brain around this, because Gates had invested in Monsanto, which purchased Blackwater/Xe…

…..so I’ve read several different sites that claim Monsanto did NOT buy Blackwater.  Stay tuned…jury is still out.

Whether Monsanto owns Blackwater or not, it is still a reprehensible corporation, and owning prisons?

Yeah…this would not have been possible if we didn’t have state governments privatizing state services like prisons…

Do you get the theme here?  Privatizing schools, privatizing prisons, cornering the biotech market and bullying farmers….

I found this on Cascade Investment, which is owned by Gates and family. More stuff here

Don’t like the NSA? How About Gates snooping into children’s school records?

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Diane Ravitch has this and this up on the continued invasion of privacy…only this time, it’s your kid they are gathering information on.  This critical information gathered by a Foundation that now owns 500,000 shares of Monsanto, .

…and what about Rupert Murdoch getting hold of your family’s records? Especially since the newspaper he owned invaded people’s privacy already…even after a warning about his dealings went unheeded.  

From the first Guardian article:

When the high court last summer ordered the News of the World to pay damages to Max Mosley for secretly filming him with prostitutes, the paper was furious. In an angry leader column, it insisted that public figures must maintain standards. “It is not for the powerful and the influential to run to the courts to gag newspapers from publishing stories that are TRUE,” it said. “This is all about the public’s right to know.”

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Does anyone else see the irony of a paper that is invading innocent people’s privacy complaining about maintaining standards….apparently lying and invasion of privacy are not standards someone should uphold…?

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The Uniparty

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One of the commenters here called the absence of real oppositional parties the “Uniparty”. …yep.

See…the Dems really believe in the Fourth Amendment and the rights of the American public to be let alone…

bwhahahahaha *snort*  bwahahahaha…

Don’t blame me.  I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.  The first time in all the years that I had been voting that I wrote a candidate’s name on the ballet.  Of course, now Indiana has changed to the computerized system so a voter wouldn’t be able to just write in a candidate.   Supposedly, they have paper ballots at each voting station, but this voter was not told there were paper ballots available, not even when I voted early, nor were there any paper ballots visible so that one could ask for it.

They changed the law so that one had to have 2% of the general votes cast for the Secretary of State in the previous election.  Note the deadlines were repeatedly pushed back in order to diminish the ability to gather signatures during summer events where crowds gather…

I found this page absolutely fascinating.  I had no idea that we had other candidates to choose from, as the write in candidates were not on the electronic ballot.  And being without access to media (no TV antenna in the community room at the time), nor did I have more than an hour per time from the library’s internet computers…so information was limited, as are most poor.  And I would venture a guess that even with cable TV, many middle class were also ignorant of this–funny how the nooz just doesn’t seem to get around to covering important issues like this….they’d rather scare you into getting a vaccine that will likely cause as much harm to your body as any good or tell you not to take Vitamin E because some bogus *study* says it’s bad for you…pfft.

The Bullying Society

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Diane Ravitch has this up.

As I said in my comment there, bullying from children is just a reflection of the adults and culture around them.  We have shows like “Survivor” that encourage groups to pick apart others and zero in on a target.  My Boomer generation didn’t have violent video games which desensitizes one to violence.

I think these all feed into the bullying mentality. Pick on those that are different or weaker. Keep at it until they disappear–either through suicide or crushing their soul until their light goes out…the effect is still the same.

It has even broader implications than “just” bullying–creativity comes from thinking differently.  Bullying will crush the ones that think differently, limiting the greater impact they might have had on the world.

I don’t think the solutions are campaigns telling kids to stop bullying.  It’s too complicated a problem.  And it’s not the kids fault as much as it is society’s.

The gun wins

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Zimmerman is found not guilty.  <sigh>

The jury asked for clarification of manslaughter, but the court would not tell them what the law means?  WTH?

Unless you have had some legal training, you’re not likely to be up on what the charge “manslaughter” means, and it’s perfectly reasonable to ask for clarification.  They said they would answer specific questions, but the jury never sent another question.

This leads me to believe they didn’t understand the term “manslaughter”….because this case met the criteria.

I forgot to mention in the other post that the fact that Zimmerman lied about the money he had showed his true character, and that should have been considered in the trial.  What else did he lie about?

 

(With that, I’m out of here for a few days–getting my migraine.  See you all in a few.)

Israel launched Air Strike Against Syria

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You know, I have been wondering about all the important news out there that has been happening while they’ve been broadcasting the Zimmerman trial nonstop….

It’s not that I don’t think it is important–it is….but it does not need 16 hour coverage five days a week!

And I think the minute Zimmerman grabbed his gun and uttered the words “I’m sick of these punks getting away…” he met the legal standard of manslaughter, perhaps even murder.  I hedge on that because murder is premeditation–you decided you were going to kill your spouse when you found out they were cheating on  you.  This, on the other hand, sounds more like manslaughter–you weren’t intending on killing someone, but nevertheless, you did.

Self-defense is the only reason for someone to be set free.  I don’t believe in my heart that Zimmerman feared for his life.  Again, the words “I’m sick of these punks getting away” is an aggressive stance, not one of fear.

So…what’s been happening?  This, for one.  Happened a week ago!

More on the abortion debate in Texas.  I agree with limiting it to 20 weeks, even twelve weeks, but the rest is draconian and meant to interfere with a woman’s right to an abortion in that time frame.

Napolitano leaving

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Janet Napolitano is leaving the Dept. of Hysterical Security to head up….wait for it…the University of California, including Berkeley.…

While reading the article, I again ask myself, “why is one person head over natural disasters, the CDC,  as well as security?”

No More State Secrets

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Judge Jeffrey White  is allowing the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to move forward.   Don’t fly in any small air craft, judge.  Or drive a car...

From the EFF website:

“The court rightly found that the traditional legal system can determine the legality of the mass, dragnet surveillance of innocent Americans and rejected the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege to have the case dismissed,” said Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Legal Director. “Over the last month, we came face-to-face with new details of mass, untargeted collection of phone and Internet records, substantially confirmed by the Director of National Intelligence. Today’s decision sets the stage for finally getting a ruling that can stop the dragnet surveillance and restore Americans’ constitutional rights.”

Rewriting history

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Is what seems to be happening in the last few weeks of the “George Love In”….with the *cough* George W. Bush library that re-programs, er I mean, explains to the public  how it really was when he was president…