Legal News Edition

If I never see the good old days shining in the sun...

I'll be doin' fine, and then some.

American Libel
So a group of DEA agents are suing American Gangster, the Russel Crowe/Denzel Washington buddy pic/crime drama for defamation.

ABC News has learned that a group of former federal drug enforcement agents has filed a class-action lawsuit against NBC Universal today, asserting they were defamed by the blockbuster flick "American Gangster."

Well, ok. Surely the movie wouldn't have been so stupid as to libel a bunch of federal cops, though--

As the final credits roll on the flick starring Denzel Washington as Harlem drug thug Frank Lucas, a screen appears that states three-quarters of the drug enforcement agents assigned to New York were convicted as a result of Lucas' cooperation with "outcast cop" Richie Roberts, portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie.

There were no such convictions, Drug Enforcement Administration officials told ABC News

Oops. Oh well. At least this one should be over pretty fast.

Source: ABC News/The Blotter

Nuisance Suits from One Big Nuisance
Speaking of lawsuits, the 'Church' of Scientology is threatening a big one against the author of a new unauthorized bio of Tom Cruise, and threatening websites that have clips promoting the book and making Tom look silly.

Man I hate those crazy idiots.

Source: Gawker

Lawsuit Waiting to Happen
Here's a doozy. The FBI, it seems, may have been employing an infamous Neo-Nazi hatemonger and radio demagogue, even as he incited violence against other Feds:

New Jersey radio host Hal Turner is well known as one of the most vicious neo-Nazis in America, a man who routinely suggests killing his enemies.

Railing against President Bush, he told his audience last June that “a well-placed bullet can solve a lot of problems.” He has written that “we need to start SHOOTING AND KILLING Mexicans as they cross the border” and argued that killing certain federal judges “may be illegal, but it wouldn’t be wrong.” In 2006, after he published an attack on New Jersey Supreme Court justices that also included several of their home addresses, state police massively beefed up security for the members of the court, checking on one justice’s house more than 200 times.

Hal Turner is one serious extremist. He may also be on the FBI payroll.

What follows is so far-fetched that if it were a movie I'd probably be laughing, but it seems to be the real deal:

On Jan. 1, unidentified hackers electronically confronted Turner in the forum of his website for “The Hal Turner Show.” After a heated exchange, they told Turner that they had successfully hacked into his server and found correspondence with an FBI agent who is apparently Turner’s handler. Then they posted an alleged July 7 E-mail to the agent in which Turner hands over a message from someone who sent in a death threat against Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.). “Once again,” Turner writes to his handler, “my fierce rhetoric has served to flush out a possible crazy.” In what is allegedly a portion of another E-mail, Turner discusses the money he is paid.

On Thursday, as the E-mail exchange was heatedly discussed on a major neo-Nazi website, Turner suddenly announced he was quitting political work. “I hereby separate from the ‘pro-White’ movement,” he said, adding that he was ending his radio show immediately. “I will no longer involve myself in any aspect of it.”

The FBI declined comment. “Longstanding FBI policy prohibits disclosing who may or may not provide information,” Agent Richard Kolko of the agency’s press unit said. Reached in New Jersey, Turner also declined all comment.

Wowser. But of course, it gets worse... this guy is all tied up in the murder of a Federal Judge's family.

A self-described "white racialist" Internet author is soliciting the addresses of three judges who ruled against white supremacist Matthew Hale, one week after the family of a federal judge was murdered.

One week ago, federal judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's husband and mother were found murdered in her home. Lefkow is now under federal protection. There have been more than 600 tips to a special police hot line on the Lefkow case, while there have been more than 30 calls to "America's Most Wanted" television show, which featured the case this weekend.

On his Web site, Hal Turner makes references to all three 7th Circuit judges who ruled against Hale in a trademark solicitation case, NBC5's Phil Rogers reported. He then asks readers to provide their home addresses. Turner said he wanted the judges' addresses to apply pressure to them through protests, mail or other external means for their rulings.

"I can understand why people might think that's something to be concerned about," Turner said. "But certainly, I have no malicious intent -- I do not intend to hurt the judges or incite any harm to the judges, but have you to have faith in the American people."

The FBI is investigating Turner, Rogers reported, and paid a visit to him last week.

Turner's Web site is loaded with references to other judges who have been the subject of violence. Turner's Web site has posted a photo of Lefkow with the caption "Gotcha." Turner said he has the judges' addresses, but doesn't know if he will post him on the Web site.

Looks like that investigation led to a JOB INTERVIEW instead.

They really know how to pick our allies lately, don't they? As I said in the title, this is one big, fat class action suit waiting to happen. Employing NEO-NAZIS? You've got to be kidding me, FBI.

Sources: Southern Poverty Law Center
Pam's House Blend

Sue Over Tasty Brains
So I wrote before about a mysterious disease outbreak in Minnesota among slaughterhouse workers who used air hoses to blast out the brains of pig skulls, right?

Well, either it's spreading, or this was a bad idea to start with:

Ill workers at an Indiana slaughterhouse where compressed air was used to remove pig brains have symptoms similar to those involved in an earlier outbreak in Minnesota, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The employees who became ill worked on the killing floors' "head tables," where the animals' heads are processed, Centers for Disease Control spokeswoman Lola Russell said. Both plants shoot compressed air into the skulls until the pigs' brains come spilling out.

"It may be associated with this particular technique of using high-pressure air to remove the pig's brain," Russell said.

Once again, who could ever have guessed that INHALING NEUROLOGICAL TISSUE FROM RANDOM ANIMALS would be a health risk.

Geebus.

Source: Raw Story

More Contempt of Congress
So the Bush administration is blocking California and 15 other states from implementing meaningful emission controls because Big Auto doesn't like the idea of actually competing with Toyota and Honda on cleaner cars; they'd rather continue the Ethanol/Hydrogen/Fuel Cell fantasies.

Sen. Boxer, of California, is demanding to know why the Environmental Protection Agency is opposed to Environmental Protection.. but she's not getting any answers:

Invoking executive privilege, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations.

The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that many of the documents she had requested contained internal deliberations or attorney-client communications that would not be shared now with Congress.

You can't see our super-secret plans! That's why we label them 'super-secret'! Also, we're rubber, you're glue!

In denying California's waiver last month, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that the federal government is implementing its own national fuel efficiency standard.

Johnson's decision spurred several congressional investigations and a legal appeal earlier this month by California and 15 other states.

Boxer and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., for weeks have asked the agency for more information about why it denied California's plan.

She called the agency's failure to comply with a legitimate congressional request "an insult to the American people and a dereliction of duty."

Scandal Number 51 for Olbermann to track, I suppose. At least he keeps busy.

Source: Raw Story

One More Time (News)

Make your decision you know that it's long overdue....


Who Needs Working Fire Systems In a Warzone Anyway?
So the continuing spiral of corruption in constructing our huge (bigger than the Vatican), fortified (yet still in range of Iraqi mortars) compound... err, embassy in Baghdad gets worse every time you look. This time?

It turns out the fire systems, aka sprinklers, detectors and the like... doesn't work. Or to be more precise, since it's not been tested, is likely to catastrophically fail in the event of a fire.

Specifically at issue here are the underground pipes that feed high pressure water into the sprinkler system.. pipes which don't seem up to code.

WASHINGTON — The fire-fighting system in the mammoth new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is defective, according to documents obtained by McClatchy and U.S. officials, who said that their concerns were ignored or overruled in a rush to declare the complex completed.

"As far as I know, nothing's been fixed," said one State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for speaking to the news media. "The lives of the people who are working in that building are going to be at stake" if the complex doesn't meet building codes, he said.

What reason could one have for cutting corners on such a huge project on which so many lives will depend, I wonder?

Last month, 19 days before he retired, State Department buildings chief Charles E. Williams certified key elements of the embassy's fire-fighting system as ready for operation, according to the documents McClatchy obtained.

His own fire-safety specialists and an outside consultant, however, had warned Williams and his aides repeatedly about numerous fire safety violations.

Moreover, Williams' thumbs-up was based on tests run by another contractor that was hired, not by the State Department, but by the company building the embassy, First Kuwaiti General Contracting and Trading Co. State Department officials, members of Congress and others have accused First Kuwaiti of shoddy construction and questionable labor practices.

Mindboggling.

Anyone want to lay odds that he has a financial tie to the contractors? This IS the Bush administration after all.

Source: McClatchy

Reason Enough to Vote For Him, Right Here
Reuters Headline: Corporate elite fear candidate Edwards

Apparently, according to various corporate lobbyists (aka, scum), the big money world is scared to death that Edwards might end up President.

That right there should secure your vote, ladies and gentlemen.

Source: Reuters

WGA Strike Grinds On; Oscars in Doubt
So the Writer's strike is grinding on due to complete intransigence on the part of the owners, despite their ever-mounting losses (now at 1.4 BILLION dollars to the Los Angeles economy), and now it looks like they're going to lose their single biggest PR move of the year -- the Oscars.

No red carpet, no Keira or Angelina, no best-dressed/worst-dressed lists, no goody bags, no limo rides, no parties and no champagne. Tonight's lacklustre Golden Globe awards will sound an alarm across Los Angeles: the show does not go on.

Hollywood is on strike and it is beginning to hurt the city built around the entertainment industry. People are out of work, the local economy is suffering and the biggest blow to both revenue and prestige could be yet to come - the cancellation of the Oscars.

See, the strike already killed the Golden Globes, because the nominees, and good for them on this btw, would not cross a picket line.

Usually one of the most glamorous events in the showbusiness calendar, tonight's Globes at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be reduced to no more than a one-hour press conference in which the winners' names will be read out. The losses incurred by caterers, hairdressers, hotels, jewellers, limousine firms, party planners, stylists and other support workers are estimated at $70-80m.

I actually feel badly for the collateral damage the strike is causing, but we all know who to blame -- the same people who won't share a couple percent of their revenue with the people who write their products.

For shame.

Source: The Guardian

Blackwater Coverup
So immediately after the shooting spree that led to the Iraqi government demanding that the mercenary company be thrown out of the country, Blackwater repaired and painted over all the vehicles involved.

Conveniently destroying all the evidence.

Blackwater SAYS there were lots of bullet holes and damage and such, and can produce unverifiable photographs to prove it -- but the actual cars are now mint.

So, either they were riddled with the enemy fire that most observers believe never existed, in which case Blackwater destroyed their best legal defense, or, in an attempt to obsfuscate their role in a spree killing, they repaired basically intact vehicles, then lied about what repairs they had done.

You can tell which theory I buy into.

Source: Raw Story/AP

Student Rights
Ahh, the University. A place of learning, of reasoned discussion, of disagreement in a civilized atmosphere.

Or failing that, a place where the administration can screw you because they feel like it.

T. Hayden Barnes opposed his university’s plan to build two large parking garages with $30 million from students’ mandatory fees. So last spring, he did what any student activist would do: He posted fliers criticizing the plan, wrote mass e-mails to students, sent letters to administrators and wrote a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. While that kind of campaign might be enough to annoy university officials, Barnes never thought it would get him expelled.

...

Rather than ignore him or set up a meeting with concerned students, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, informed Barnes, then a sophomore, that he had been “administratively withdrawn” effective May 7, 2007. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.


...


As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated, at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.”

I'm not entirely sure where oil comes into it, mind you, but, yeah, not a huge threat here.

The letter also said that in order to return as a student, a non-university psychiatrist would have to certify that Barnes was not a threat to himself or anyone else, and that he would receive “on-going therapy.” After he appealed, with endorsements from a psychiatrist and a professor, the Georgia Board of Regents “didn’t do the right thing and reverse the expulsion,” said William Creeley, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization that defends students’ free expression rights and helped Barnes secure legal counsel.

Oh-ho, the changing goalposts defense! My how I love that one.

So his grand total of offenses runs: he made a collage, he had a link on his page to a photography contest, and he was cleaning his room to relax.

WHAT A MONSTER.

Yeeeeesh.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

Dodd Wins! We All Win!

The Wall-Street Journal is moaning that Telecom Immunity is off the table -- for good!

In what is surely the biggest legislative victory for the blogosphere ever, it now seems that there won't be any new FISA bill as long as Bush is in office. Check out the Wall Street Journal's whining:

Senator Chris Dodd's Presidential campaign died with a whimper in Iowa. But he still seems to be dictating national security policy to fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill, and unless the Bush Administration is willing to fight, perhaps to the next President too.

We're told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won't attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he'll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. Among other problems, the temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.

Suck on that, AT&T!

Source: OpenLeft

Some News You Can Use

Well, probably not.

Why Let the Courts Settle Anything?
So a couple who are suing a kid and his dad for negligence resulting in (supposedly) some pretty severe injuries are being harassed endlessly by the kid's supporters. The article makes it sound like a flash mob thing.

People in America love to hate lawsuits; they love to hate the rule of law period, actually. Look at the 24 torture porn obsession.

The basic story is this. The kid and his dad were out skiing. The dad let the kid go on ahead. He wasn't careful and struck another skiier. This is where the stories diverge. The kid and his dad claim that the other skiier was not hurt. The man hit says he was knocked down hard enough tear his rotator cuff and break his clavicle. He's suing for the medical costs, about 35,000 dollars.

There's no huge punitive damage attached, no millions of dollars for a ruined suit. This is a simple negligence case. Under Colorado law, where the injury was sustained, anyone can be held liable of any age for skiing accidents. My guess though is that they had to name the kid to get at the dad's deep pockets.

Now, assuming he actually was injured in this way, shouldn't the man have the right to compensation for his injuries? All he wants is the medical costs. Shouldn't a parent properly supervise their kid?

Still, the story is 'Kid gets sued by big evil man', and that's how it plays. Yeesh. Even this paper gets in on the act with their headline.

Source: Rocky Mountain News

Nifty Poster Department
I also need to get the movie attached to this. It'd probably be neat at Atomic Age.

Source: Random Blogger Thingummy

Free Music
Legal too.

Source: Internet Archive

Collapse of More Markets
The credit problems from the housing market is leading to a sharp downturn in commercial construction as well, which should put us nicely into a recession.

Thanks El Presidente!

Source: Calculated Risk

Merry Christmas, Retailers
Holiday season revenue is far below what the big chain stores had hoped. Rising costs of food and fuel are cited as reasons, but the worthless dollar can't help either.

You win again, El Presidente!

Source: Firedoglake

Newsie News News

Type your summary here

Chuck Norris is a Jerk Department
So Chuck Norris, after capitalizing on his internet mythology to publicly whore himself for Huckabee's Presidential campaign, is now suing Penguin books for publishing a collection of those myths, because they infringe on his right to.. I'm not sure.

Sorry Chuckie, but the boat on that really sailed when you decided to become a public figure and join the Huckabee campaign. If it hadn't already.

Source: Reuters

Putin Corrupt After All?
Time made it sound like he was an honest dictator surrounded by Plutocrats, but the issue may not be so clear-cut.

There are allegations emerging that Putin has in fact swindled the Russian people out of forty BILLION dollars. As for being a competent dictator, it seems that he is all that is holding his government together and can't retire because two rival factions beneath him are at war with one another.

No good guys to root for there, btw. You have old KGB hardliners versus modern oligarchs.

Source: The Guardian

Maybe History Really is Cyclical
So it seems that J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to permanently detain people he disliked politically, using war as a convenient cover, and sham trials to justify their detention. Wow.

Great minds think alike, I suppose. Cheney and Hoover even look a tad alike.

I wonder if this means that Cheney has dresses in his closet in front of the skeletons...

Source: Raw Story

I Want My Obituary to Read
At least, in part: "Authorities have yet to find the head."

Source: Casey and Andy

Pleo Takes Over the World?
New robot toy is a cross between Furby and the Robosaurus. Plots our collective doom.

From cuteness.

Source: The Washington Post

Women in Iraq

There has been a lot of news coverage devoted over the last few days to the ghoulish story of an employee of KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root), a former subsidiary of Halliburton (Dick Cheney's private empire), and her vicious gang rape and imprisonment by her fellow colleagues.

As horrible as this story is, it's only the latest in a raft of stories about the catastrophic decline of the rights of women in Iraq. For all the rhetoric about liberating the Iraqi people, all the blase Bush administration propaganda about 'rape rooms' under Saddam, the endless litany of human rights abuses recited during the war, after our WMD excuse fell through, what does it say about the grand military experiment by the greatest power in the world when we sit by and allow this slide into the dark ages to occur?

Nothing good, that's for sure.

First, it's worth noting that since the United States took power, of a sort, in Iraq, women have been under ever-increasing pressure from the theocratic thugs who are seizing the reins of government.

The government under Saddam was a mostly secular dictatorship. It had little interest, in particular, in abusing or oppressing women. I mean, it had a great deal of interest in abusing and oppressing, well, everyone. And a definite focus on genocide against certain ethnic groups (say, the Kurds, Mash Arabs, etc).

Despite what your Neo-Conservatives might claim, it does not diminish these terrible crimes to note that under Saddam, Iraqi women had it better than they do today. The United States shares no small part of the blame for this sad state of affairs.

As the Shiite theocratic parties take control, women are being subjected to a reign of terror. Notably starting in the Shiite stronghold of Basra, in Iraq's south, but having spread north as society crumbles, women are targeted for torture, mutilation and death. Their crimes? Wearing makeup. Not wearing a veil. Seeking basic human rights and dignity.

BASRA, Iraq, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Women in Iraq's southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behaviour deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief says.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment.

"Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.

Good to know they have God on their side; just like every other lunatic killer in the world.

Funny how God never tells people to get along and respect civil rights, huh.

A group of tribal Shi'ite leaders told Reuters in October that Shi'ite Islamist political parties were imposing strict Islamic rules in southern provinces and using their armed followers to create a state of fear.

The sheikhs, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the conservative attitudes meant that only religious music was now allowed to be played in public places and dancing was forbidden, as was drinking alcohol.

You know the news is depressing when it reads like The Handmaid's Tale.

The United States meanwhile stands by and does nothing to stop this erosion of rights; hell, we even set the example, as with the recent KBR scandal.

The Kellogg Brown and Root scandal serves to illustrate both the complete lawlessness we have devised in Iraq and the low regard we hold, not just Iraqi women, but our own, when outside of the civilizing legal framework at home.  

The story is as simple as it is ghastly.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Her co-workers raped her; her company decided to imprison her and try to shut her up. They held her against her will in a box, a literal god damned box, for being a rape victim. Because it was bad PR.

In the end, it took a minor miracle to even get out of this abduction alive.

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

That's right; we had to send the State Department to rescue a kidnapped rape victim from an American company. It sounds like the plot to bad movie, doesn

But this really happened.

Will the men who raped her face prosecution? Well, that's unlikely for two reasons. One is the fact that US military contractors in Iraq are exempt from Iraqi and US law, a legacy of Paul Bremer, Viceroy of Iraq.

The other is the fact that the Army ensured that the evidence of her rape would be conveniently disappeared.

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

They handed over the evidence of a crime. To the criminals.

Gee Mr. Corleone, could you hold on to this pistol for us? We'd be EVER so grateful!

Even as we allow our contractors to run rampant, we let our 'allies' in the Iraqi government disarm and segregate women, driving them out of professional work and literally leaving them helpless second-class citizens.

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation's police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title "policewoman" by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs.

Of course it doesn't.

We've spent 800 billion dollars on this experiment in government by explosion, and what do we get for it? A LESS democratic, more violent, more religiously hostile society? Gee, what a value.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers.

Even better of course is the fact that this will end up getting more of our soldiers killed.

Without policewomen, Phillips said, there will be no officers to give pat-down searches to female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.

Oh good, we had too much security going on. 

It's not so hot for the Iraqi women either, naturally.

Another U.S. advisor noted that forcing out female officers will hamper investigation of crimes such as rape, which stigmatizes women in Iraq, because few victims feel comfortable reporting it to policemen.

This of course assumes that you want such crimes prosecuted in the first place.

What about the women who have taken our side and taken up arms, literally, to try and put their shattered country back together?

Well guess what. It's not good to be a US ally in the Middle East (Israel excepted of course) -- just ask the Kurds.

Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents. Men and women have traditionally been allowed to carry their Glock pistols with them after hours for security.

"We are considered policewomen. We face kidnapping. We could be assassinated. If anyone knew where we worked, of course they would try to do something to us," said a 27-year-old interviewed Sunday.

"How can I be a policewoman without a weapon?" she asked incredulously as three female colleagues nodded in agreement.

Well, you're not supposed to be one. That's the point. You're supposed to stay at home, wear a veil, shut up and pop out kids. If you get out of line, there's a Mahdi militia man ready to teach you the error of your ways.

With a power drill.

Phillips, who works closely with Interior Ministry officials, said he got wind of the latest move to rein in female officers last month. When he questioned the plan, Phillips said, he was told by one ministry official: "Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers."

Oh, they're getting taken care of, all right. That's the whole frikkin problem.

What does out esteemed occupying Army have to say about this?

Phillips, though, said U.S. officials have limited options.

"It's a sovereign nation. We turned over the running of their own police force to them," he said. "We don't have a veto."

OH, SO **NOW** THEY ARE A SOVEREIGN NATION. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO KNOW FIVE YEARS AGO.

I... wow... I think I need to go lay down. I'm about to blow a blood vessel here.



Sources: ABC News
                The LA Times
                Reuters
                

Yet Another Reason to Turn Off Your Phone

Technological developments to make the Stasi drool!

The Washington Post has an excellent, though disturbing, article on a new practice by our liberty-hating governmental overlords -- the warrantless tracking of an individual's movement and location. How might they do this, you ask? Simple! By abusing, blatantly and cynically, the 911 system built into newer cellular phones!

See, the feds required a while ago that cell phone companies upgrade to a system that tells them, within about 30 feet, where you are in case of a 911 call. It uses GPS so it's not exactly pinpoint. This was generally thought to be good; I wasn't opposed, certainly, to the idea of a paramedic being able to find me if I called 911 from my phone.

Ahh, but that was a younger and less cynical me. Given a few years, they've managed to turn a life-saving innovation into an electronic tracking collar. Which you pay for and can buy cute little faceplates to adorn!

*breaks into a rousing chorus of God Bless America*

So you might want to leave the phone in the car. Or turn it off. Or even turn it off and remove the battery, when not in use, in case it's being sneaky and operating in a low power spy-mode.

Or just vote for a better government next November. I don't know about you people, but I'm a bit tired of living in an Orwellian farce.

Source: The Washington Post

Legalese

Just to get this out of the way, this blog is licensed under a Commercial Commons 3.0 Non-Commercial-Attribution License. That means you can feel free to redistribute, alter, rewrite or reincorporate anything from this blog in any way you like, as long as you meet two simple conditions.

1) You attribute the original work to me. I'm fine with simply putting a link to the blog, preferably the post in question, but just linking to Here Comes Tomorrow itself will do.

2) You don't go out and sell my stuff. If anyone gets to whore out my crappy work, it's me. That's all I'm saying.

That's it, back to your regularly scheduled programming, and if you need more information, go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ for the details.