We're supposed to trust these people why, again?

The Inspector General of the Justice Department has just released a report detailing the FBI's foot-dragging response to crime lab issues first uncovered in 1996. This is the third report to follow up on the DOJ "task force" and its efforts to right the wrongs caused by "serious irregularities" in its lab. 
 ...
 The problems ultimately lead back to 13 examiners. But those problems were multitudinous. In total, these 13 took part in nearly 8,000 cases, 2,900 of which resulted in convictions. This discovery led to the appointment of a DOJ task force, which then led to... not much.

The new report said the Justice Department "failed to ensure that prosecutors made appropriate and timely disclosures to affected defendants" and that the department "failed to staff the Task Force with sufficient personnel to implement a case review of the magnitude it undertook." The work took far too long, investigators said.

How did this lack of activity on law enforcement's end add up for some of those affected?

[T]hree other defendants, Donald E. Gates, Santae A. Tribble, and Kirk L. Odom, had served sentences in excess of 21 years based in part on FBI hair analyses and testimony that DNA analysis subsequently proved erroneous.

So the EffingBI was more interested in protecting their reputation than the lives damaged and cases screwed, and the DoJ, instead of kicking ass, played the game.  Wonderful, isn't it?
There's a lot more bad news in the report, but nothing really tops the FBI contributing to the death of at least one innocent person. This isn't something that was uncovered after the execution. This information came to light in 1996, but no one involved made any attempt to prioritize affected convictions. Innocent people died or were locked away for years and yet, the DOJ portrays itself as the injured party.

"Decades ago, the FBI corrected the deficiencies that led to the creation of the Task Force," the department noted in its official response, adding that the Task Force's work was "unprecedented both in its magnitude and its complexity."

Really?

The science hour has arrived,

and a fresh set is here

I have to say, my first thought is "You stopped too soon,

he's still breathing.

If some idiot prosecutor does charge him with something, I hope there's a fund for his defense to contribute to.

When a bank has to worry about a DoJ flunky saying this,

the flunky needs to become unemployed, and his bosses as well.  Because you know they're encouraging this bullshit.
The DOJ official reportedly told the banker, “I don’t like this product, and I don’t believe it should have a place in our financial system. And if you don’t agree, there will be an immediate, unplanned audit of your entire bank.”
Of course, it's Eric Holder running the Do'J', so the chances of that happening are near zero.  Which is one more reason he should be removed from that office.

And really, should never have been put in it.

If this story is correct, then Marshalltown High School principal Aiddy Phomvisay

 should be fired.
A star high school athlete in rural Marshalltown, Iowa has been suspended for three football games this fall because he posted a social media image of himself enthusiastically festooned from head to toe in white clothing during school spirit week. In the photo, he made the letter “W” with his hands — which in this case stands for white.
... 
The student’s parents say the the principal of Marshalltown High School called Van Staalduine a racist after concluding that his hand signal was a white pride symbol.
And why was he wearing white?
The school colors at Marshalltown High appear to be red, white and blue. Van Staalduine wore white because school officials had asked members of his class to wear white during school spirit week festivities.
Idiocy.  Sheer, unadulterated idiocy.

A: The 'once again vacation-ready' clown in the oval office should've done this

six years ago.

B: Just because he says they'll 'allow exploration' doesn't mean it'll actually happen.
Geophysical research companies contracted by the oil and gas industry will still need to apply for individual permits before conducting tests and undergo strict environmental reviews.
Considering Empty-Hat Salazar, his successor,  and Obama have been quite happy being under a contempt order over screwing with exploration and drilling in the Gulf; what makes you think they won't game this?  First clue:
The American Petroleum Institute said Interior is keeping in place "arbitrary" restrictions that "lack scientific support," and that will "discourage" exploration.

The enviroweenies are crying the usual doom, and you know the usual suspects in Sodom on the Potomac will be sucking up to them for money and votes.  So I'll believe both the exploration(some may actually happen) and drilling(not while The Lightbringer is in office) when they happen.

Obviously this man is a self-hating race traitor; why else

would he say these things about our sainted AG?
...Many of your fellow citizens are dismayed by your conduct, and our anger has nothing to do with the color of your skin.

You are the first attorney general in the history of the United States to be held in contempt of Congress. This had nothing to do with your skin color, and everything to do with your failure to explain how the United States government provided guns to Mexican drug cartels that were eventually used to kill Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010. This story may have disappeared from the headlines, but many of your fellow citizens are still upset our federal government would ever give guns to foreign criminals. Compounding this tragic error, neither you nor anyone else in the administration has explained what happened the night Terry lost his life. All we really know is that he was at the wrong end of a gun you approved handing over to drug dealers.
No idea whether Holder actually believes the 'racism behind everything' crap he spouts; being what he is, he probably does.  That leftists like to use 'RACIST!' as a way to shut down dissent is just a bonus.


If Professor Liao is serious, the man and those who think this is a wonderful idea is a danger to the human race.
The answer they landed on is human engineering: the biomedical modification of human beings to reduce their impact on the environment. The associate professor suggests that by changing our underlying biology – altering our size or diet, for instance – we could create greener humans.

While these researchers are not seriously proposing that we embark on a worldwide programme of invasively modifying human beings, it serves as an interesting thought experiment that could offer a new perspective on the impact we each have on the planet. “We’re not suggesting that we should mandate these ideas, but it would be good to make them options for people,” says Liao.
Reminds you of something, doesn't it?



Yeah, let's start bioengineering humans to fight Globular Warmering!  Whatever could go wrong with that?

The Eric Holder Justice Department in full flower

James Cole, deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, testified Thursday that the DOJ heard about the destruction of IRS officials’ emails in the news, even though DOJ has formally been investigating the IRS for more than a year.

“I think we learned about it after that, from press accounts,” Cole told House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan at a hearing Thursday on the DOJ’s response to the wave of computer crashes at the IRS that wiped out seven different employees’ hard drives. DOJ has allegedly been conducting a widely-mocked investigation into the IRS conservative targeting scandal for more than a year, and recently announced that a new investigation is underway into the IRS missing emails.
'Allegedly investigating' sounds like a decent description.  And much more polite than 'colluding with the criminals and other officials to pretend to investigate the offenses.'

Cole confirmed at the hearing that DOJ is now “looking into” the IRS commissioner’s delayed response in the IRS emails case.
And the 'looking into' will be delayed as long as possible.

The other day someone commented that it was scary to think how long it would take people to begin to trust these agencies again; with this further level of bullshit, my first thought is 'Will people EVER trust these bastards again?'

Remember the fancy 'This system will detect gunshots

so police can catch the perpetrator!' systems?  Not so much.

But just 20 months later ShotSpotter was judged to be a second failure.

In August 2012 West Midlands Police said of 1,618 alerts produced by the system since November 2011, only two were confirmed gunfire incidents.

What’s more, the force added, ShotSpotter had also missed four confirmed shootings.

The explanation/excuse is on the order of "It woulda worked better if you'd given us more money."  Of course.


Down in Australia, the new government has done what it promised: the carbon tax is gone.

And the Greens are having the screaming outrage you'd expect, so

One more thing for this morning, which must be causing Bloomberg and Watts & Co. a serious amount of indigestion:
The chief of Detroit police credited legally armed residents for a substantial decrease in crime in a city that desperately needs it.

“Criminals are getting the message that good Detroiters are armed and will use that weapon,” said chief James Craig, according to The Detroit News.

“I don’t want to take away from the good work our investigators are doing, but I think part of the drop in crime, and robberies in particular, is because criminals are thinking twice that citizens could be armed.”
With this testimonial included:
Al Woods, an ex-criminal in the city, backed Craig’s claims.

“If I was out there now robbing people these days, knowing there are a lot more people with guns, I know I’d have to rethink my game plan,” Woods told The Detroit News.
I shall now adjourn for a modified version of the Happy Dance(it's raining, and I think dancing in the front yard with a rifle might upset the neighbors).

Son and wife are in town for a few days, so I'm going to spend some more time with them today.  Bloggage will probably be intermittent.

Fear not, the TSA has Top Men working for them....

Justin Gray was flying home to D.C. from Orlando International Airport when according wftv.com, a TSA agent asked to see Gray's passport because his D.C. driver's license wasn't a valid form of identification. Gray works as a reporter in Cox Media Group's Washington bureau.

".@TSA Agent in Orlando never heard of "District of Columbia." Demanded passport because he didn't believe my drivers license was from US!?" Gray tweeted on July 12.


Just as professional as the people running the VA, it seems.

Before the meeting began, one of Miller’s staffers, Lauren Rogan, went to the bathroom, where she saw a notebook by the sink that included the phrase “ignore Rory,” a reference to her colleague Rory Riley.
Circled at the top of the page were the names of two whistleblowers who were cooperating with the committee to expose improper processing of veterans claims in a way that improved agency statistics but did not resolve the cases.
The notebook belonged to Lucy Filipov, acting director at the regional office. It apparently reflected an earlier conversation with Diana Rubens, who at the time was deputy under secretary for benefits.
And, just to make this crap even better,
After the meeting, case files and computers were placed in a room where Filipov insisted Rogan and Riley should work. As the two checked the room, they found the sound and video equipment were active, and they insisted on being moved.

Modern Education, History Division

Back in April, a school district in Southern California required several hundred eighth-grade English class students to write essays based on bizarre propaganda about whether the Holocaust really happened or was just a “propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain.”

Before apologizing profusely, Mohammad Z. Islam, the interim superintendent of the Rialto Unified School District initially defended the assignment. After a wave of criticism, he promised to “assure that any references to the holocaust ‘not occurring’” would be stricken from future assignments.

Now, the Los Angeles Daily News has completed an in-depth investigation into PDF files of the actual essays students wrote. Turns out, the school district was flatly wrong when it claimed that no students wrote essays denying the Holocaust.

At least 50 students either denied or expressed doubt that the Holocaust happened.
I realize it makes me a racist right-wingnut, but I wonder if the name of the superintendent might give us any indications in this...

In today's edition of "Who the hell gave these people badges?"

The family who lives on the property said their 10-year-old son was shot in the back of the knee. Sheriff Wooten later confirmed that the boy, identified by the family as Dakota Corbitt, had been shot by one of the deputies at the scene.

But the situation of how the child was shot remains somewhat unclear.

Sheriff Wooten said a deputy, who was not named, was on approaching the property when a dog ran up to him. The deputy fired one shot, missing the dog and hitting the child. It was not immediately clear if the gun was accidently fired by the deputy.
This is very much a 'What the hell exactly went on here?' situation.  Which means I'm wondering if we'll ever hear exactly what happened.  Big dog?  Small?  Wagging tail or barking?  Idiot with finger on trigger, or scared of dogs?  Kid was hit in the knee, could be screwed for life from that.

Bloomberg is buying more astroturf;

wonder if he gets a bargain rate for bulk purchases?
So the statewide advocacy lead (who I’ve never actually heard of) from Moms Demand Illegal Mayors for Everytown, a wholly owned subsidiary of Michael Bloomberg, Inc. has taken over as Executive Director of the only actual anti gun group in the state, in the process throwing the previous chair warmer over the side. In business this would be called a “hostile takeover.”

So let’s find out a bit about our new friend Becky Ceartas.


Speaking of assholes who want to control lives, I give you Grant County, Wisconsin, District Attorney Lisa Riniker.  Who's such a fucking dirtbag that- well, this covers it:
District Attorney Riniker is prosecuting a child, now 7, for a first-degree felony sexual assault that supposedly took place when he was 6. The boy’s alleged crime? His part in a play date with two 5-year-old siblings, a boy and a girl, that degenerated into a “butt doctor” party.
 I'd go with firing, disbarment, and having her ass sued off.  Especially after reading this tidbit:
D’s parents, identified as Jennifer and Kurt D, have filed a lawsuit against Lisa Riniker, and Grant County Department of Social Services investigator Jan Moravits. The suit alleges that D has suffered “anxiety, depression, vomiting, crying and lack of sleep because of the investigation and prosecution” and claims that Riniker delivered a summons to the 6-year-old threatening him with jail for failure to appear. Riniker is also depicted implying that she will seek to remove the couple’s children from their custody if they refuse to sign a consent decree admitting guilt. Riniker’s prosecutorial zeal is not entirely inexplicable. The suit contends that the girl’s father is a highly placed, politically connected official in Grant County, and that social services investigator Jan Moravits, who is said to have accused D’s parents of witness tampering, is the girl’s aunt.
Lawsuits all 'round, for everything they have.  This is such bullshit it's hard to describe.

So the VA is even more corrupt

(corrupter?) than we thought, which hardly seems possible. 
As several committee aides were preparing to meet with officials July 2, one aide visited the restroom. In the restroom, the committee aide found a notebook that belonged to Acting Regional Director Diana Rubens,  apparently directing an official preparing for the briefing to ignore a certain committee aide’s questions. The notes also listed the names of two whistleblowers the committee had been in communication with as well as the names of committee investigators.

Rubens, who claimed that her comments on the notebook were taken out of context, and that she simply wrote the names down when they were mentioned to her.
Oh, sure.  Right.  Uh huh.

And this is the kind of 'excuse' they come up with:
The Under Secretary for Benefits apologized to the committee, clearly embarrassed.
“What occurred was not acceptable and not indicative in normal ways of which Ms. Ruben would behave,” Allison Hickey, the VA’s Undersecretary for Benefits, said. “I offer my sincere apologies to your staff and my commitment that it will not happen again. You’ll receive anything you need.”
Yeah, I bet.  When pigs fly out of my ass.

And the Touching Special Areas people find another way to screw with people

TSA will single out breast cancer survivors for special humiliating pat-downs. It will bring a wheelchair-bound three-year-old to tears. It will strip-search an old woman and force her to remove her underwear. TSA agents will go into conniptions over a special formula for sick children, even when they’ve been warned ahead of time. The agency will force crippled children to walk on their own (the TSA is truly monstrous towards disabled kids). It will turn away a mute woman, whose inability to speak was due to a stroke. Its agents will throw hissy fits if someone films them (if you were engaged in such depravities, wouldn’t you?).
And now: if your laptop or phone won't power up, you're screwed.


And now, on to corrupt activities in the IRS and FEC:

The Federal Election Commission recycled the computer hard drive of April Sands — a former co-worker of Lois Lerner’s — hindering an investigation into Sands’ partisan political activities, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Sands resigned from the Federal Election Commission in April after she admitted to violating the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from engaging in partisan political activities on federal time and at federal facilities.

The twist is that Sands also worked under Lois Lerner when the ex-IRS agent — who is currently embroiled in a scandal over the targeting of conservative political groups — worked at the FEC’s enforcement division.

Wonder how many low-level employees where they plan to blame for this?


And on the level of stupid hard to describe,
The Centers for Disease Control had even more security lapses when handling anthrax bacteria than it had previously admitted, according to a congressional report released Monday.

Federal CDC workers kept dangerous anthrax bacteria in unlocked refrigerators, transferred it in Ziploc bags that didn’t meet safety requirements and even let anthrax containers go missing, according to a federal inspection.


And last, the question is: Does Eric Holder actually believe this crap, or does he simply consider it the best way to drum up support from the True Believers?

It would take a special kind of demented to see racism in, well, everything the way he does.  'course, that doesn't mean he not demented.

One of the few good things Jimmy Carter ever did

was going after the Guinea Worm.  Well done, Jimmy.  Now if you'd just concentrated on this and Habitat for Humanity instead of kissing the ass of every tyrant in the world(twice for those who hate Jews), how much nicer we'd think of you!


On the subject of 'Natural things to worry about',
Tourists at Yellowstone National Park are being barred from areas of the park because the massive underground supervolcano beneath it is melting the asphalt roads.

“It basically turned the asphalt into soup. It turned the gravel road into oatmeal,” Yellowstone spokesman Dan Hottle said. In particular, Hottle said that the road between the park’s most popular attraction, Old Faithful, and Madison Junction has been dangerously compromised.

Park officials also asked tourists not to hike into the affected areas, as the danger of stepping through what appears to be solid soil into boiling-hot water was “high.”


And one more: that ebola outbreak?  Previously unknown strain, according to this.

The PRC decided to arm more police,

and instead of any of the existing stuff out there, they design a new revolver and cartridge. 

Cartridge is based on the .38S&W.  The pistol has a safety. 

And apparently the weapon and cartridge choice is based on 'Let's use a hardware solution to a software problem' thinking:
An article in the Wall Street Journal posits that "Chinese ballistics engineers specifically designed the weapon to minimize risks associated with introducing handguns into a society that has little experience with firearms."
If so, bad idea; the solution to that problem is training, not 'let's complicate the tool itself a bit'. 

From one of the links in the post, this on the ammunition:
The jacketed bullet is interesting. It has a copper jacket covering a block of high-density polyethylene at the front and a lead disc at the base. The lead base looks like it makes up around 40% of the total volume of the bullet.

According to the specifications also published in Chinese forums, the bullets weighs 123 gr and has a muzzle velocity of 721 fps. This works out to a muzzle energy of just 142 ft.lbs. This is the same muzzle energy as a high velocity .22 LR and less than a hyper velocity .22 LR. Penetration would be a lot worse than a .22 LR owing to the larger caliber and expansion of the polymer components.
"Let's make a holster that requires extra motions if you do need to draw, and throw on a safety, and make a cartridge that can't be counted on to stop an attacker(especially a worked-up Uiger with a knife bound on glory for Allah) so that if they screw up and shoot when they shouldn't it'll be less likely to kill an innocent.  And if they do hit the bad guy overpenetration won't be a problem!"

I foresee problems with this.

Because the Department of Justice has nothing more important to do

than investigate a case of lèse-majesté against The Lightbringer.  Such are the priorities of Eric Holder & Co.


More wonderfulness of Common Core.  So wonderful they don't want people to know about it until it's too late.
The upshot is that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other founders are largely left out of the new test, unless they are presented as examples of conflict and identity by class, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. The Constitution can be studied as an example of the Colonists’ belief in the superiority of their own culture, for instance. But any teacher who presents a full unit on the principles of the American Constitution taught in the traditional way would be severely disadvantaging his students. So while allowing some minor flexibility on details, the new AP U.S. History framework effectively forces teachers to train their students in a leftist, blame-America-first reading of history, while omitting traditional treatments of our founding principles.

Read this, ref the OKC Bombing case

While the FBI did produce tapes from the buildings around the Murrah Building, the tapes had been edited, Trentadue said. As for the tapes from the cameras on the Murrah Building, the contents of which are described in a timeline prepared by the Secret Service, the FBI does not dispute that the existence of the unedited versions of the surveillance tapes recorded prior to the blast; instead, they say they cannot find them.
Two thoughts occur:
1: The EffingBI is so effing incompetent that they LOST THE ORIGINAL VIDEO IN QUESTION IN THE BIGGEST DOMESTIC TERRORIST ATTACK IN HISTORY, or
2: There's something one one or more that they consider so damaging that they'd rather say "We're incompetent" than let it be seen.

Here's the second part to think on:
In addition, FBI officials have refused to provided Trentadue, a one-time star athlete at the University of Southern California, with a copy of the original videotape showing the arrest of Timothy McVeigh as recorded on the dashboard camera of Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Charles Hanger’s vehicle the day of the bombing.
Why?  Simple arrest, so what's the big effing deal?

Hey, FBI, y'know that if you hadn't pulled so much crap the last years that makes people not believe or trust you, you might not be in this hole.

'Better to be prepared' my ass;

that was a show of force, using an actual arrest as an excuse.  "See what all we can bring down on you(and we needed practice anyway, for the future)."

A couple of Feebs and the local cops could've done this, but oh no!, they bring in friggin' DHS and Customs and every other clown they could drag along.

Remember that investigation of child molesters in the Brit government?

I was pointed to a couple of other things on this; can you say 'The fix was in'?
Official efforts to cover up a VIP paedophile ring at the heart of the UK political establishment shamelessly goes on unabated.
If you Google (on google.co.uk) the terms ‘Leon Brittan’ and ‘PIE’ (Paedophile Information Exchange) you’ll find this message from Google (at the bottom of the first page of results):

According to ChillingEffects.org the censoring is because an official Cease and Desist order was sent to Google who had a legal obligation to remove some of the results.
This comes after former Tory Home Secretary Leon Brittan admitted today that he lied last year to a Channel 4 journalist about a detailed dossier on a VIP paedophile ring he was handed in the 1980s which was then promptly lost.


and
According to media sources, the late Geoffrey Dickens MP stumbled across evidence of an horrific child abuse scandal, linked to Parliament.

Despite informing the powers that be about the alleged abuse, no investigation ever took place and as per their usual  MO, Dickens himself became the target of a dirty tricks campaign to ensure his silence.

My, my, my, all kinds of nastiness.   Looking down through both blogs at some of the links...  if they actually, fully investigate this, it's going to get very nasty.  And it should.