Friday, April 01, 2011

No wonder DHS is teaching cops to lie about evidence:

it appears DHS has no respect for the law. Ought to read all of it and decide what you think; the end paragraph in the post:
After a witness interview on March 4, 2011, a Department lawyer attempted to remove Committee documents from the interview room. DHS Attorney Reid Cox attempted to leave the room with the Committee’s exhibits in his bag. Committee staff asked Cox if he had the exhibits in his bag, and he confirmed that he did. Cox was admonished by Republican and Democratic staff that he was not permitted to leave with the exhibits. Democratic staff advised Cox that the exhibits are Committee documents and as such, they are the property of the Committee and cannot be removed without permission. Cox explained that the Department disagreed with that position and he moved toward the door. Republican staff advised Cox to leave the exhibits and contact the Committee to discuss the matter. Cox had a counter-proposal: “How about I take the exhibits, and you call me?” While Cox ultimately left the documents, any attempt to steal Committee documents is a serious matter. If the motive for stealing Committee documents is to use them to conduct a forensic investigation to identify a Committee source, it creates an extremely sensitive situation.
"I'm with DHS and I can do whatever I want." Like lie about 'evidence'? Like try to steal documents?

Maybe we should relable DHS as Doing Harm to Security. Especially considering the borders situation.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Every time I think about the mistraining of LE

that was described here, the more pissed I get. It boils down to "If you can't find evidence of an actual crime, here's how you can lie about what you did find so as to make an arrest anyway. Or at least put the guy under suspicion."

And that's exactly what it is: training these officers to lie under oath and- they hope- get away with it.

The people doing this 'training' should be fired. And any officer who follows their advice should also be fired, and forever banned from ever again wearing a badge; they're dishonoring the one they have now.

Personal stuff to do the next few days

so the ice cream may stay in the freezer a while. In the meantime,
Hena Akhter's last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh's Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

Bloodied and bruised, she was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.
She was raped. And the local authorities tried to cover up her death as a suicide. And her family is being protected because they're under threat for daring to speak about the imam and elders and this disgusting display of-
I don't have the right words to cover this shit. I really don't.



United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed Israel’s policy and called for the division of Jerusalem on Tuesday. In a message delivered by his assistant at a UN regional meeting in Uruguay, Ban said: “The target date for completing the Palestinian Authority’s two-year State-building program is fast-approaching.”

“The occupation that started in 1967 is morally and politically unsustainable, and must end,” he told the UN Latin American and Caribbean Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace
.
The only words I can come up with are "Fuck you, you bastard. They took Jerusalem during a war started by people who want every Jew dead, and you want to hand half that city(now) and all the Israelis(later) over to the enemy? Fuck you twice you miserable little statist bastard."


Remember the Mexican Gun Lie?
Here’s a breaking story that’s only reported by Central American media and Fox.
The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published here Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.
Inventory includes grenades and rocket launchers, necessary items for beating the Mexican army.

This corroborates an LA Times report from early 2009, which catalogued “hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets…”
But Obama & Co. insist they're coming from the US. Yeah. Right.


More on Gunwalker:
Dodson's account: "The gun shops were more concerned than the ATF about the multiple sales because they knew that those who were buying weapons did not want them for their personal use. With this approach, the gun shops thought they were doing the right thing, they had no idea that we (the agents) were not intercepting the weapons. "
. . . .
However, agents of the ATF in Phoenix seized only a couple of arms shipments to Mexico. "The other weapons that ended in ATF's possession were seized by other agencies and they informed us," says Dodson."

A fine demonstration of liberal/leftist thought:

President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.

The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.
Got that? Here's the 'explanation':
“I don’t feel moved today to say ‘thank you, Mr. President,’” said Steve Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. But he said he understands the award to be “aspirational,” in recognition of Obama’s potential to do more on the transparency front.

“And in that sense, one could say it resembles the award at the Nobel Peace Prize,” Aftergood said. “It’s not because Obama brought peace to anyone but because people hoped he would be a force for good in the world, and maybe that’s the way to understand this award.”
So; he hadn't actually done anything but because people HOPED for Hopey-Changey he got a Nobel Prize, and a President whose people are involved in 'transparency' like this and this and this gets a 'transparency' award because(Hoping that?) maybe he'll do more...

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

I've thought of buying a laptop a few times, but if I do Updated

it looks like Samsung is NOT under consideration:
The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used." In other words, Samsung wanted to gather usage data without obtaining consent from laptop owners. While in the Sony BMG security incident described in the first article in this pair one had to buy and install the CD on one's computer, Samsung has gone one step further by actually preinstalling the monitoring software on its brand laptops. This is a déjà vu security incident with far reaching potential consequences. In the words of the of former FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, "Installations of secret software that create security risks are intrusive and unlawful." (FTC, 2007).
Update: Now they're saying it was a case of security software misidentifying a file; question then is why the supervisor at Samsung said it WAS what the guy suspected?



Michelle Malkin has a post up on Gunwalker, with lots of links.


What was that from Obama about 'no American troops on the ground' again?


What kid of useless damned ass-kisser of dictators is Jimmy Carter? This kind.

Why so many police officers have such a sucky attitude?

One course I attended used the example of a person employed as a plumber being the target of a search warrant. In this example, the officers were told how to use his employment as a plumber as further evidence of terrorism. The suspect’s employment would be described as an elaborate scheme to justify possessing pipes and chemicals so as to have bomb making materials readily available. Based on this example, all plumbers are potential pipe bomb makers. All gun dealers are plotting to provide arms to gangs or terrorists. All pest control companies are preparing mass poisonings. By using this logic, simply having the ability to do something criminal automatically makes the person guilty of plotting the crime. With all the various methods of manufacturing methamphetamine, it would also be easy to claim that a disassembled clandestine drug lab was located during the search. In other words, it is easy to frame anyone for possessing bomb making materials (or other crimes) if the officer knows what items to list in the report and how to link these items to terrorism.

And why would such 'training' be happening? Who'd want to do this?
During the past several years, I have witnessed a dramatic shift in the focus of law enforcement training. Law enforcement courses have moved away from a local community focus to a federally dominated model of complete social control. Most training I have attended over the past two years have been sponsored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), namely the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

No matter what topic the training session concerns, every DHS sponsored course I have attended over the past few years never fails to branch off into warnings about potential domestic terrorists in the community. While this may sound like a valid officer and community safety issue, you may be disturbed to learn how our Federal government describes a typical domestic terrorist
.

Go read the whole thing. Remember cases in the past where some ATF agent would find a piece of header pipe or exhaust pipe and charge the guy with making illegal silencers? Same thing, except your reloading or craft materials can be used to 'prove' you're a domestic terrorist.
Methods of developing evidence of terrorist activity from virtually any search have also been discussed. Various common materials which may be associated with homemade explosives are listed, such as lengths of pipe, gunpowder, matches, flammable liquids and fireworks. Officers are told when these items are found, they can be listed as “bomb making materials”. The training even goes so far as to instruct officers that the items are cleverly disguised as legitimate, such as gasoline stored near a lawn mower, pipes stored in a shop building or gunpowder stored with reloading materials.

Found over at Sipsey Street

Two things on the tsunami in Japan

Rodger had this video


Like a river in flood, the water just keeps coming.

Other thing I ran across is this:
A joint research team from Yokohama National University and University of Tokyo surveying the Ofunato city shoreline made the discovery.

They found fishing equipment scattered on the high cliff of the city’s Ryori Bay and have determined the tsunami reached as high as 29.6 meters.
About 100 feet high. Damn.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Why, Mr. Melson, did you chicken out?

Kenneth Melson, Acting Director of ATF, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Global Narcotics Affairs this Thursday. I even speculated that this would be a great time for the Senators to grill Mr. Melson about Operation Fast and Furious.

Mr. Melson must have had the same thought because he has decided not to testify. Moreover, no one from either ATF or the Justice Department are on the new list of witnesses
.
Isn't that a surprise?
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News contacted the Subcommittee for more information on why Melson will not be testifying.
We contacted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask why Melson is no longer scheduled to appear. They referred us to the office of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) who chairs the subcommittee holding the hearing. A press spokeswoman at the senator's office said it was Melson's decision not to testify, and that the subcommittee doesn't have jurisdiction over ATF.

Later, a spokesman told us in an email, "The Subcommittee had invited, but not confirmed, Mr. Melson as well as other officials from ATF to testify at the hearing this week. In the end, ATF declined to send a representative."
It is also speculated that one of the main reasons for the delay in confirmation hearings for Andrew Traver is the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious.
"You want me to get in front of these people and answer questions? You KNOW what they'll ask about!"

Another anniversary, Mr. Browning?

Oh yeah
Today is the date the Model 1911 was adopted by the US military

And it's still going strong

Gee, Rolling Stone slanted a story about troops?

Whoda thunk it?
The online edition of the Rolling Stone story contains a section with a video called “Motorcycle Kill,” which includes our Soldiers gunning down Taliban who were speeding on a motorcycle toward our guys. These Soldiers were also with 5/2 SBCT, far away from the “Kill Team” later accused of the murders. Rolling Stone commits a literary “crime” by deceptively entwining this normal combat video with the Kill Team story. The Taliban on the motorcycle were killed during an intense operation in the Arghandab near Kandahar City. People who have been to the Arghandab realize the extreme danger there. The Soviets got beaten horribly in the Arghandab, despite throwing everything including the Soviet kitchen sink into the battle that lasted over a month. Others fared little better. To my knowledge, 5/2 and supporting units were the first ever to take Arghandab, and these two dead Taliban were part of that process.

To Siim Kallas and the rest of the fascists at the EU:

Screw you, you miserable little statists.
Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities.

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.

"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."
Because the peasants won't simply tug their forelock and do what their betters tell them to, the EU lords will force them to.

Remember what has been pointed out many times, The power to tax is the power to destroy. I'll add and the power to enslave.

My response to the bishops

Bite me, priests.
"We are concerned also that these immigration bills will have the intentional or unintentional effect of instilling fear in an alreayd vulnerable population," argued the two...and human rights are not commodoties to be allocated acording to nationality." ...pass legislation that creates a path to legal status for the undocumented workers to 'bring them out of the shadows where they are so easily preyed upon by human traffickers and other unscrupulous profiteers'.
Here's an idea, guys: Tell them not to come here illegally and they won't have to worry about the traffickers and other unscrupulous profiteers. Tell them not to break the law and they won't have to be fearful of the laws on illegal immigration. And tell the bastards, as I'm telling you, that we have no intention of rewarding them for breaking our laws by letting them jump ahead of people who came here LEGALLY and actually want to be citizens.

In case you missed it, they've actually talked to a bunch of the illegals and they don't WANT to become Americans; they want us to accommodate them in every way and would really like to invade large parts of the southwestern US and take it over for Mexico. So screw you, Archbishop and Bishop, and all your "We must be nice to them" crap.

Monday, March 28, 2011

One of the finest mornings and rides I ever had

was several years ago. I'd been in Dallas and had to head back early morning. Right on the edge of cool/warm, clear skies, light wind, and almost no other traffic on the road. I came up I35 with the Vulcan running smooth, holding at about 80. It was glorious.

If I hadn't had to be at work the next day I'd have fueled up every 120 or so and just kept going.

Gunwalker update: CBS is keeping after it

and brought up this:
But who? In an exclusive interview with CBS News, the lead ATF official in Mexico at the time Darren Gil says somebody in the Justice Department did know about the case. Gil says his supervisor at ATF's Washington D.C. headquarters told him point-blank the operation was approved even higher than ATF Director Kenneth Melson.

"Is the director aware of this," Gil asked the supervisor. Gil says his supervisor answered "Yes, the director's aware of it. Not only is the director aware of it, D.O.J.'s aware of it... Department of Justice was aware of it."

Gil goes on to say senior Justice official Lanny Breuer and several of his deputies visited Mexico amid the controversy last summer, and spoke to ATF staff generally about a big trafficking case that they claimed was "getting good results." Gil says Melson, ATF's Acting Director, also visited Mexico City. Gil's Deputy Attache and his Analyst questioned Melson about the case that surrounding all the weapons showing up in Mexico. "His response was 'it's a good case, it's still going on,'" recalls Gil, "and we'll close it down as soon as we possibly can."

Now, can you imagine Holder NOT being aware of this? And if Holder was at least aware(if not giving orders or suggestions) Obama damn well knew.
"Well first of all I did not authorize it. Eric Holder the Attorney General did not authorize it. He's been very clear that our policy is to catch gun runners and put 'em into jail," Mr. Obama said of the controversial ATF operation called "Fast and Furious."

"You were not even informed about it?" asked Univision reporter Jorge Ramos.

"Absolutely not," said Mr. Obama. "There may be a situation here which a serious mistake was made and if that's the case then we'll find out and well hold somebody accountable."

Hmmm. Maybe the question isn't "Who" but "How many are going to be asked to go under that bus for Obama?"

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Over at AM he's got a nice post about riding

and recharging. My problem is I'm so damned used to "I need to be at X by Y" that it's hard to just ride and enjoy it. But I'm working on it.

I'm still getting used to the VFR in some ways. This is the hottest bike I've ever owned, and I still haven't been in a place where it'd be relatively safe(other traffic, etc.) to really push it. The VTEC doesn't kick in on this thing until about 6800 rpm; considering that- in sixth- the thing is only turning about 6k at 90mph...

About the third week I had it was coming down a ramp to I44 and punched it a bit, and it half-scared me: I'm not used to a bike that makes the front end that light at 70-75 when you upshift and hit it. I think I hit about 7500 that night, but I'm not sure as I was too busy watching the highway I was approaching at higher-than-expected speed and the aforementioned front end that- I think- came a bit off the road to look at the tach. Happily the thing handles very well, making that a exciting-scary vs. "I'm going to die" moment. About a week after that I stopped by the shop where I bought it to ask about bags and spent a while talking to the lady; mentioned the feeling and she said "Yeah, when you crank it it can be hard to keep the front end down on those", with an approving smile.

Realistically this bike has more power than I'll ever actually need, but I'd far rather have that than the alternative: ever been in a tight spot and not had the power to get the hell out of it fast? It sucks.

Oh, that 90mph? Got caught in some nasty(people changing lanes in too-tight spaces and such) traffic on I40 and decided to get clear and rolled on some throttle; when I was clear of it noticed- though it didn't feel that fast- the speed and tach. One of those "Y'know, if all these people'd get off my road..." moments.

You want to see someone very skilled and flat insane on a bike, go to YouTube and search 'ghostrider' and watch some of the video. Scary as hell.

So, is Calypso Louie actually mad at Obama

or is this a convenient distancing? I think it's real; as noted, Farrakhan's been getting money from Qadaffy for years, and the possibility of that cash being cut of probably pisses him off immensely. 'Course, it would take somebody as fricking nuts as Calypso to think Obama is a Jewish tool.


Remember the 'white supremacist racist gun nut' shooter scenario at the Iowa school? Got canceled. Because(of course!)
“During the last 24 hours, the Treynor school system has received threats to their employees and buildings due to the planned 'active shooter' exercise, " Pottawattamie County officials said in a written statement. “After consultation with the Treynor School District and the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, we have jointly decided to cancel the exercise due to these threats which we must consider viable.”
Ok, exactly what were the threats? Where's the actual investigation? WERE there any actual threats? Or is this a way of continuing the bullshit since they can't play out their scenario? Get this:
Kevin Elwood, superintendent of Treynor Community Schools, told FoxNews.com he started receiving complaints from all over the Midwest after the plan went out.

“I’m getting a few emails today saying, ‘Are you crazy? Are you really doing this in school?’” Elwood said Thursday.

Elwood said he was as surprised as anyone to see the scenario in the Exercise Plan.

“It hadn’t been discussed at any previous meetings leading up to this event or any of the planning sessions we’ve had," he said.
Really? Then whose idea was this bullshit, and why was it needed in the first place? Not an expert, so this is a real question: If you're going to train on a active-shooter scenario, why do you need a backstory? Every one of these things I've heard of you've got somebody killing people and you need to get in there fast and deal with the bad guys; only reason you'd need a backstory is if you were going to play hostage-takers as well, and that wasn't mentioned.
In a follow-up memo distributed Wednesday afternoon, Doug Reed, the lead exercise planner for the county’s Emergency Management Agency, said the scenario was only constructed for the purpose of securing Department of Homeland Security Grant funding, which requires the drill simulate a terrorism scenario.

“This scenario and supporting suspect profiles are only in the plan in order to define this FICTITIOUS INCIDENT as a domestic terrorism event and to provide simulated intelligence that responding law enforcement would want and/or eventually request during the event,” Reed wrote. “There will be NO role-playing of racist protests, slander or hate crimes during the actual exercise … the only thing being exercised is the RESPONSE to a shooting, we are not exercising events leading up to the shooting.”

So they had to make up this crap to get money from DHS? 'Simulate intelligence', etc.? Then why didn't the Superintendent know about it?


Why aren't we developing this? Because Obama & Co. want us in the hole, that's why:
...While the US is often depicted as having only a tiny minority of the world’s oil reserves at around 28 billion barrels (based on the somewhat misleading figure of ‘proven reserves’) according to the CRS in reality it has around 163 billion barrels. As Inhofe’s EPW press release comments, “That’s enough oil to maintain America’s current rates of production and replace imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years”. Next up, there’s coal. The CRS report reveals America’s reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for over 28 percent of the world’s coal... that’s a couple of centuries of coal use, at least.

...In 2009 the CRS upped its 2006 estimate of America’s enormous natural gas deposits by 25 percent to around 2,047 trillion cubic feet, a conservative figure given the expanding shale gas revolution. At current rates of use that’s enough for around 100 years... [and] methane hydrates [could] be enough to provide America’s natural gas for more than 400 years.”


You know what? Between Obama playing games in Libya and various liberal/socialist clowns playing games here, I just don't want to do this today. More later if I feel like it; I've got brass to process and other such fun activities.

Remember the anthrax attacks?

Ran across this a couple of days ago; long piece on the attacks, the investigation and the conclusions. And the ending sucks. "We think this guy did it, but we have no actual evidence that he did." And since they already had to pay millions to a guy they falsely accused of doing it...

Maybe Ivins did do it; but not only can't they prove it, they don't know it. Not good.
It’s an unnerving scenario. But there’s something much scarier to contemplate. There’s still the possibility that the government was as wrong about Ivins as it was about Hatfill. If that’s the case, the anthrax mailer is still at large. And that means someone launched the deadliest biological attack in the history of the United States—and got away with it.

Funny description the unions and Democrats have of 'silencing' people

and 'busting unions'.
The Florida House delivered a major blow to public employee unions Friday, approving a bill that would ban automatic dues deduction from a government paycheck and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes.
And if the members are all happy to be there and have no problem with how the unions spend their dues, how is this a 'major blow' to them?
"It's about silencing the opposition. That's not democratic," said Rep. Richard Steinberg, D-Miami Beach. Etc. ad bullshit.

Sounds more like the unions and Democrats are scared to death of having to actually account to members for the money and what they do with it, and scared to death of having to actually ask the members to pay their dues; because if you actually have to write a check, if you don't like the service you can say "No".

First, did Biden know his staff was engaging in

unlawful detention? If not kidnapping? And why would the editors of ANY paper(unless totally in the Democrat tank, of course) not raise hell about this happening to one of their reporters?

Or, if he was 'free to leave', what the hell kind of sorry excuse for a reporter wouldn't have been raising hell about it on his own?
Of course, there's the 'if true' question, but if it's not what reporter wouldn't say so?



Second,
Yet in a stunning reversal, Judge Collyer last week revisited her decision and dismissed the case. In direct contravention to her prior ruling, the judge said the Medicare statute does — with a little creative reading — contain a requirement that Social Security recipients take government health care. The Medicare statute provides that only individuals who are “entitled” to Social Security are “entitled” to Medicare. Therefore, argues the judge, “The only way to avoid entitlement to Medicare Part A at age 65 is to forego the source of that entitlement, i.e., Social Security Retirement benefits.”
Gee, I wonder who got to the judge, and with what threats? This is bullshit, and one more "We control you" action by these bastards. "So what if you paid for this? You don't do what we tell you, we'll screw you out of it."