Also mental midgets

The Government’s Lame “Gotcha” Backfires

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A drama played out last week between USA Today reporter Brad Heath and the Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility.  At Techdirt, Mike Masnick reported it, and Ken at Popehat followed it up. It matters because Brad has done some extraordinary investigations into systemic impropriety, and made some enemies along the way.
It began with Brad trying to FOIA documentation to find out what the OPR had done after the release of classified decisions showing that the FISA court had thrice chastised the DOJ for presenting misleading information to the court.

Heath had sent the DOJ a FOIA request to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) asking basically whether or not the OPR had been involved in any investigation concerning the recently declassified FISA Court order, about how the NSA had misled the FISA court and abused its capabilities repeatedly.

This resulted in a series of emails with DOJ’s chief flack Brian Fallon.

The DOJ claimed that there were no responsive documents — which even by itself is quite incredible. Heath appears to have then followed up with Fallon at the DOJ to seek comments. Fallon’s response by itself is stunning:

I have an answer from OPR, and a FISC judge. I am not providing it to you because all you will do is seek to write around it because you are biased in favor of the idea that an inquiry should have been launched. So I will save what I have for another outlet after you publish.

And so, the gauntlet was thrown down.  Brad had information from former assistant United States attorneys who worked in the Office of Professional Responsibility stating that such an order, even if non-public, should have generated an investigation into how the government misled the court in three separate cases.  Fallon wasn’t impressed with Brad’s dedication to his nation.

Fallon responds that he’s “done negotiating” and claims that he “will work with someone else afterwards explaining why what you reported is off base.”

You are not actually open-minded to the idea of not writing the story. You are running it regardless. I have information that undercuts your premise, and would provide it if I thought you were able to be convinced that your story is off base. Instead, I think that to provide it to you would just allow you to cover your bases, and factor it into a story you still plan to write. So I prefer to hold onto the information and use it after the fact, with a different outlet that is more objective about whether an OPR inquiry was appropriate

As if Brad was being tested by Fallon, he published his USA Today story, offering the only conclusion possible under the circumstances:

The Justice Department’s internal ethics watchdog says it never investigated repeated complaints by federal judges that the government had misled them about the NSA’s secret surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and Internet communications.

This is where the shoe was supposed to fall, where Fallon made good on his threat to smack Brad’s story with his bias, his misinformation, his closed mind, his refusal to promise to kill his story.  And the shoe turned out to be a flip flop:

In an email to POLITICO, Fallon explained why he didn’t think Heath should be reporting on the lack of an OPR investigation.
“Brad is reporting on the lack of an OPR inquiry, but that only seems newsworthy if one might be warranted in the first place. It isn’t,” he wrote. “For the last several days, we asked Brad to exercise discretion rather than write a story that leaves a false impression that there was any evidence of misconduct or basis for an inquiry. We proposed putting him in touch with people who could independently explain why no inquiry was warranted in hopes it might persuade him. When it became clear he intended to publish his story regardless, there was no point in asking any of those people to reach out.”

That’s it. That’s the smack the government delivered, that it didn’t think it did anything wrong in misleading FISC three separate times.  They didn’t do anything wrong. It was just hard to get it right because it was so complicated that government attorneys couldn’t be expected to get their facts straight.  Stercus accidit, you know.
Oddly enough, there may be some truth in Fallon’s contention, that government lawyers are simply not up to the task of providing accurate information to a court in an ex parte proceeding.  While AUSA’s have a tendency to believe that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, they haven’t mastered, many of us on the other side have watched, whether in bemusement or dread, as they got things horribly wrong.
But you can’t tell an AUSA they have no clue what they’re talking about. It makes them very angry to be told they aren’t brilliant, and they tend to take it out inappropriately. They may not understand drug dealing, corporate finance or technology, but they know only too well how to exercise discretion in a way to maximize harm.
What Fallon didn’t comprehend, however, is that even if his contention is right, that there was no misconduct in the sense of a deliberate effort to mislead the court, the same need for inquiry exists if the DOJ is providing false and inaccurate information to the FISC, upon which courts rely in issuing orders that give rise to massive intrusions into personal privacy.  There are two levels of wrong happening here, the first being that courts are being misinformed, the second being that they are being intentionally misinformed.  While the latter is malevolent, the former is incompetent.  That’s not really the sort of thing the government ought to be proud of.
Brad Heath did what he should have done as a reporter.  He sought all voices, but refused to commit to buy in advance. That Fallon thought this would somehow embarrass Brad suggests that he’s run head-on into the Peter Principle.  But no one really cares if Fallon makes a fool of himself.  What does matter is that Fallon, apparently inadvertently, announced to the world that the Department of Justice is incompetent to handle the task of conveying accurate and factual information under FISA, and cannot, therefore, be trusted to provide the court with reliable information upon which to plunder the communications metadata of Americans.
Thanks for the info, Fallon. And thanks to Brad for again providing us with a better and deeper grasp of how our government is doing its job.

Will Grigg strikes again. My kind of hero.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

The State: Always the Accuser, Never the Defendant

Jessica Nelson and Philemon Ellis were killed instantly when a car driven by Eddy Bustos blind-sided them at an intersection in Ogden, Utah. Bustos, who was trying to elude a police officer, plowed his vehicle into Nelson’s car at nearly 80 miles per hour. 

Bustos would be sent to prison for manslaughter. Ogden City officials would quite thoughtfully find a way to cut the victims in for a share of the blame for the incident as a way of insulating themselves from liability for the actions of Officer Matt Jones, whose unnecessary pursuit led to the crash. 

Jones, who has involved in police surveillance of a “known gang member” at what was called a “known gang/drugs/weapons hangout,” gave pursuit when Bustos left the area – apparently on the assumption that his presence in the area created reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. A federal court ruling notes that Jones “was aware of the residential address of Mr. Bustos and could have waited at that address to arrest Mr. Bustos for any crimes he may have committed.” Thus no exigent circumstances existed to justify pursuing Bustos, which is why “the officers were advised and ordered by dispatch to disengage from the pursuit.”

It was later discovered Bustos was driving while intoxicated. Officer Jones was under the influence of an even deadlier narcotic – a cocktail of adrenaline and power lust – as he blew through five stop lights, ignoring an order to terminate the chase.  After being ordered to stop a second time, Jones turned off his siren and running lights and ceased pursuit. A few seconds later, Bustos collided with Nelson’s vehicle. 

Two years after the fatal car crash, Bustos pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular manslaughter and is currently serving a potential thirty-year prison term. By the time Bustos was sent to prison, Ogden’s ruling political clique and the police force that serves it had already dealt with the problem posed by Officer Jones, who was, in effect, Bustos’s accomplice. 

Although Jones’s actions met the criteria for a charge of automobile homicide – which involves causing “the death of another person” while operating a vehicle “in a criminally negligent manner” – he was not prosecuted or disciplined for that offense. Instead, he was purged from the force because he had become an irritant to the mayor and police chief. 

On July 27, 2006, about eight months after the deaths of Nelson and Ellis, Jones was put on paid administrative leave after then-Mayor Matthew Godfrey complained about the officer’s involvement in a police protest over the city’s new pay policy. The new guidelines included a ticket quota as one of the 18 criteria for pay increases. Jones and other members of the Ogden Police Benefit Association – the local police union – had rented a moving van and decorated it with a banner reading: “Welcome to Ogden City, home of Godfrey’s ticket quota. If you disagree, call your city councilman.”

It’s important to understand that the police union was not taking a principled stand in opposition to the ticket quota; those officers certainly understood that extorting money at gunpoint was the most important element of their job. The officers involved in that protest were seeking an increase in pay and benefits without the imposition of performance criteria, and they were cynically exploiting public disgust over the ticket quota to that end.

Godfrey saw the van outside the Ogden Municipal Building. Noting that the person behind the wheel was a female who wasn’t a member of the Ogden PD, the Mayor lurked in the driveway long enough to see the driver picked up by a police officer he recognized on sight but whose name he didn’t know. He took down the license plate number of the officer’s car and called then-Chief Jon Grenier to demand that something be done. The Chief contacted a dispatcher and ran the license plate number. One hour later, a police lieutenant was knocking on Jones’s door to present him with notice that he was on administrative leave. 

It’s worth noting that Jones faced no discipline for his actions in precipitating a fatal car crash. The death of two Mundanes was scarcely worth notice. But criticizing the Mayor and confirming the existence of a ticket quota were firing offenses – and, sure enough, Jones’s paid vacation led to termination the following January.

When the internal investigation began, Jones insisted that he would not be treated fairly – and interesting assessment of the integrity of the department that employed him. After he was fired, Jones told the media that he was the victim of official retaliation, which is almost certainly the case. The Ogden PD replied to that criticism by publicizing the fact that Jones had failed a lie-detector test (a finding not admissible in court) concerning the theft of two wallets from “undocumented immigrants” who had been the subject of traffic stops. 

According to the department, the internal affairs investigation “demonstrated that Jones fit the description of the officer involved in the two thefts, that he was in the vicinity when the thefts occurred, that Jones had a pattern of targeting Hispanics, and that Jones had a pattern of manipulating and misrepresenting information about his activities and whereabouts on the job, thereby creating blocks of free time during which he was unaccountable to his employer.”

All of this may very well be true, but it doesn’t address some salient questions: Why didn’t Jones come under scrutiny until after he had offended the Mayor and Chief of Police by criticizing the ticket quota? Why didn’t the department investigate the possibility that Jones was profiling and shaking down Hispanics immediately after he had illegally pursued a Hispanic driver in an unnecessary car chase that led to the death of two innocent people?

Six months after Jones was fired by the Ogden PD, he was decertified by the Utah POST Council, which found that he had engaged in a “pattern of misconduct,” “sexual misconduct with a co-worker,” and general dishonesty.  In 2011, Jones and another former police officer named Daniel Kotter were found guilty of  trying to bribe a Utah Highway Patrol Officer who had arrested Jones for drunken driving. 

By this time, Ogden’s municipal government would have forgotten about Matt Jones – but for the fact that he figured prominently in lawsuits filed on behalf of the families of Jessica Nelson and Philemon Ellis, who had died because of Jones’s actions. 

The suit filed by Ellis’s family was quickly dismissed. The suit filed on behalf of Nelson’s daughter, who was 18 months old when her mother was killed, went to trial. The legal team defending the city persuaded the trial judge to exclude evidence regarding the reasons for Jones’s termination – that is, dishonesty, official misconduct, and criminal behavior that included preying on vulnerable Hispanics like Eddy Bustos. That evidence was of obvious and urgent relevance, but it was deemed inadmissible. 

Robert Sykes, the attorney representing Jessica Nelson’s family, filed a motion in limine prohibiting the City from trawling through the personal backgrounds of the victims. The trial judge responded by granting that motion – and then proceeding to ignore it as attorney Heather White, acting on behalf of the City of Odgen, fired a fusillade of greasy insinuations about the character and activities of both Jessica Nelson and Philemon Ellis. 

In her questioning of Theresa Nelson, Jessica’s mother, White insinuated that Jessica was a drug-addicted prostitute and that Ellis – a family friend – was among her clients. At one point White simply disregarded the order in limine outright and asked the grieving mother: “Did you know that [Ellis] had a criminal history dealing with prostitution?”

This prompted Sykes to object that “[Mr.] Ellis is dead, and his history has nothing to do with this, and [White is] trying to besmirch Jessica Nelson by using this improperly, and she knows it.” 

For what little it was worth, the trial judge upheld that objection, but White’s tactic had the desired effect: It placed the onus on the victims to explain why they were at an intersection at 3:00 a.m., rather than on the City of Ogden to defend the criminal actions of the disgraced police officer who had helped bring about their deaths. The jury played the expected role of upholding the city government’s claim that both Jones and the political junta that employed him were shielded by “sovereign immunity.”

 

“According to our laws and social values, prostitutes are criminals who should be punished, not rewarded with a verdict,” Sykes pointed out in a motion for a new trial. “There is a reasonable likelihood that the jury would have viewed the evidence in favor of Plaintiff’s case more favorably had [the City of Ogden] not planted the seed, without any basis, that Jessica and her passenger were involved in criminal activity” (which would have been more accurately described as consensual indulgence in vice, assuming any such activity occurred). 

The Utah Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Jessica Nelson’s “presence in the intersection was tragic and random. What she was doing in the intersection was irrelevant, what she had been doing that night was irrelevant, and any prior life history of either Jessica or Mr. Ellis was irrelevant. The questioning therefore … served only to prejudice the jury.” Attorney Heather White, the court observed, “surrendered, without resistance, to the impulse to win her case by bludgeoning the character of the dead.”

Those who belong to the political class assume that their natural and proper role is that of the accuser or the prosecutor, never the defendant. In the case of Nelson and Ellis, the Ogden political clique demanded that the long-dead defendants explain their actions, thereby inviting a credulous jury to make unwarranted and irrelevant inferences. 

This same mindset is at work in the Regime’s defense of drone strikes overseas in which dozens or hundreds of innocent people are killed – or in the notorious “Collateral Murder” video in which a US helicopter pilot who had just committed a war crime derisively blames the Iraqi victims for “bringing kids into a battle.” 

Both at home and abroad, the Regime’s armed emissaries are adept at the use of the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy” – essentially, shooting first and drawing a bull’s-eye around the bullet hole. This is how the people in charge of the “targeted killing program” can claim that drone strikes are a practically infallible method of killing militants: They simply redefine all “military-age” males (those at least 14 years of age) in a targeted zone as suspected “militants.”

A similar method is used by police who seek to justify patently indefensible shootings: The officer perceived a “threat” on the part of the poor schlep up was holding a garden hose, or a pair of underwear, or a cellphone, to kill whenever they consider themselves at risk, which is why pants-wetting cowardice is a job qualification, rather than a liability, for police “work.”

 

Heather White

In some police homicides – such as the deaths of Nelson and Ellis -- the claim of “officer safety” makes a poor fit. Thus the only suitable tactic is to do what Heather White did: Traduce the character of the dead victims in an attempt to convince the jury that they must have been guilty of something. 

Although White’s assault on the memory of Nelson and Ellis happened several years ago, the tactic she employed acquires new relevance in light of recent revelations regarding the Regime’s omnivorous surveillance program. 

The Regime and those who serve it have insisted that the NSA’s eavesdropping activities are benign because they “only” involve the collection of “metadata,” rather than content. Leaving aside the fact that this is a lie, the Regime’s collection of metadata is a totalitarian exercise. Through metadata analysis it is possible to extrapolate a detailed account of any individual’s daily life, his acquaintances, his habits, and his vulnerabilities. 

As Harvey Silverglate points out, each of us commits at least three acts each day that could be described as felonies by any reasonably ambitious prosecutor.  By using NSA-provided metadata to conduct a “pattern of life” analysis of a targeted individual, law enforcement agencies could probably contrive an excuse to arrest practically anybody at any time. This capacity will dramatically expand opportunities for official retaliation against Mundanes who seek redress for abuses committed by police – including family members of deceased victims. 

Bad as things are in this respect right now, it will get much worse, very soon.

Any questions?

State looking to revoke bail for raw milk farmer

June 3, 2013

tags: raw milk, hershberger, sauk county, wisconsin

Rob Schultz

6/1/2013

Source …..

State officials on Friday asked a Sauk County judge to send farmer Vernon Hershberger to jail for breaking conditions of his bail.
The state’s motion to revoke Hershberger’s bail cites a Capital Times report Wednesday in which the Loganville dairy farmer is quoted as saying he continued to sell raw milk and other farm products after the state ordered him to stop. The terms of his bail specify that he not sell or process dairy products without a license.
“It is a concern that any defendant would engage in and openly admit to actions which clearly disregard the court-ordered conditions of release (on bail),” wrote assistant attorneys general Eric Defort and Phillip Ferris.
Hershberger, 41, was acquitted May 25 by a Sauk County jury on three charges of producing, processing and selling milk without proper state licenses. But he was found guilty of one count of violating a holding order on products on his farm after a 2010 raid by agents from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
That meant Hershberger had to continue to operate under bail conditions set in January 2012 by Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Guy Reynolds that included an order not to sell any food or milk from his store. The state asked Reynolds to hear the motion Monday.
Hershberger’s attorney, Glenn Reynolds, called the motion disappointing because the bail terms he’s accused of violating are the same activities that led to the charges of which he was acquitted.
“It seems vindictive in my view,” he said. “He goes to trial and wins and now they want to put him in jail? What is the point of this sort of motion?”
Department of Justice spokeswoman Dana Brueck declined to comment on the motion.
Reynolds, who was out of the area Friday, was skeptical the hearing would take place Monday.
“Every single rule says that you have five days before you have a motion hearing,” Reynolds said.
He said he had not seen the state’s motion and hadn’t talked to Hershberger about it.
“If they want to revoke his bail and put him in jail, they’ll have to do it at a hearing where we take evidence and not just focus on what was said in a newspaper article,” he added.
The Capital Times story Wednesday quoted Hershberger as saying he never stopped selling raw milk and other products to his buyers club despite a state order on June 2, 2010.
“I can tell you the truth now. We never shut down,” Hershberger said in the article. “We continued to feed our community. That’s the way it continued all along.”
The state’s motion also claims Hershberger interfered with an inspection by the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection on Feb. 9, 2012, after which a Sauk County judge warned Hershberger that any violation of his bail conditions could result in criminal charges.

And we breath the same air

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Federal Officials Close the Investigation into the Death of the Late Derek Williams

The Department of Justice announced today that there is insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against any Milwaukee Police Department officer for the in-custody death of the late Derek Williams on July 6, 2011.

 

Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the department’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI met today with the Williams family and its representatives to inform them of this decision.

 

The department conducted a comprehensive and independent investigation of the events surrounding the arrest of Mr. Williams, who died while in the custody of Milwaukee police officers.  Specifically, special agents of the FBI interviewed over 50 civilian and law enforcement witnesses; consulted with various medical experts on Mr. Williams’ cause of death; conducted a physical examination of the involved squad car and recording system; and visited and canvassed the scene.  The special agents of the FBI also analyzed the patrol car video of the incident; the police radio transmissions; the autopsy reports; the testimony and exhibits admitted at the public inquest; the Milwaukee Police Department’s investigative file, including all the eyewitness and forensic evidence; the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office’s memorandum declining state charges; the City of Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission’s report; and the report of the special prosecutor. 

 

Under the applicable federal criminal civil rights law, prosecutors must establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a law enforcement officer willfully deprived an individual of a constitutional right, meaning with the deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids.  This is the highest standard of intent imposed by law.  Mistake, misperception, negligence or poor judgment are not sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil rights violation.  Specifically, the team of prosecutors and FBI agents considered two types of potential violations of federal criminal civil rights law.  First, they considered whether any Milwaukee police officer violated the law by willfully using unreasonable force during Mr. Williams’ arrest.  Second, they examined whether the officers willfully and unreasonably failed to respond to Mr. Williams’ medical need.

 

The federal investigation revealed no medical evidence to corroborate the use of unreasonable force by any officer, such as using excessive force while restraining Mr. Williams on the ground.  The vast majority of the witnesses interviewed provided no evidence of a willful violation of the applicable civil rights statute.  The two civilian eyewitnesses who reported observing unreasonable force gave inconsistent and conflicting accounts that could not be corroborated.

 

There is also insufficient evidence that the response by any officer to Mr. Williams’ medical needs was objectively unreasonable or carried out with willful intent.  The investigation did not reveal evidence that the officers had notice of Mr. Williams’ medical need, and the officers stated they did not know he had a medical need.  The squad car video depicting Mr. Williams’ death as he sat in the back of the vehicle is tragic and alarming to watch, but the evidence does not establish that the video duplicates what the officers saw in the back of the squad car that night.  The infrared camera, which captures images with little or no light, clearly showed Mr. Williams in the back of the car.  However, it cannot be established that this was the vantage point of the subject officers for several reasons.  First, there is no backseat lighting in the car and there were minimal artificial lighting sources where the squad car was located.  Next, each officer had custody of Mr. Williams for only a short duration of time and no officer watched Mr. Williams for the entire time that he was in distress in the squad car.  Finally, there is no evidence that the officers were watching Mr. Williams on the squad car monitor in the front seat. 

 

Although Mr. Williams made repeated statements to officers that he could not breathe, the officers observed him to be breathing. Based on both officer and civilian witness testimony, the lack of more significant physical signs of asphyxiation diminished the officers’ beliefs that Mr. Williams was in any distress.  Furthermore, the officers responded with medical treatment once it was obvious to them that Mr. Williams needed help.  The facts do not establish beyond a reasonable doubt a willful failure to act in response to a known medical need. 

 

Finally, after consulting with various medical experts, some of whom later testified at the county public inquest, the cause of Mr. Williams’ death remains unknown; it is equally unclear that any delay by officers in providing medical attention to Mr. Williams contributed to his death. Therefore, after a careful and thorough review, a team of experienced federal prosecutors and FBI agents determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that any Milwaukee police officer acted willfully with a bad purpose to violate the law.  Accordingly, the investigation into this incident has been closed without prosecution.

                                   

The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the Civil Rights Division and the FBI devoted significant time and resources into conducting a thorough and independent investigation.  The department is committed to investigating allegations of civil rights violations by law enforcement officers and will continue to devote the resources required to ensure that all allegations of serious civil rights violations are fully and completely investigated.  The department aggressively prosecutes criminal civil rights violations whenever there is sufficient evidence to do so.

13-612

Civil Rights Division

From my friend T. I posted this in Cops Being Cops but the 1st part fits here, too

A story about life in "this state." "This state" a non-constitutional/ commerce system of being i. e. state of mind. It is psychopathic in nature. The system is never wrong in it's own eye. It's main goal is to maintain this illusion. It judges itself based upon its "intent" Intent is always positive - it's ok if I beat you or kill you I'm enforcing the law. It's ok if I fund alcohol in your gas, so what if it runs up the price of food, shortens the life of your car, cuts your gas mileage. I'm saving the earth. If it works or not is unimportant my intent is pure therefore it is good. All others are judge by their results. With the added bonus of having the honor to fund one's own abuse.Truth is irrelavant - the illusion must be maintained.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.    - John F. Kennedy

Those that are having a hard time stepping away from "this state" are addicted to it. Many/Most are trauma bonded to it and are playing the victim role in a abusive relationship as in "Drama Triangle" where both parties get to play "victim, prosecutor and rescuer." Each blaming the other.

http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/the-criminalization-of-political-dissent-in-america/44096

The criminalization of political dissent in America
Posted on May 14, 2013 by # 1 NWO Hatr   

RINF

In a series of prosecutions, precedents are being established for the criminalization of political dissent in America.

Last week, Massachusetts high school student Cameron D’Ambrosio was arrested and charged under “terrorism” laws merely for posting lyrics on Facebook that make reference to the Boston Marathon bombings. He faces 20 years in prison. A string of similar “terror” prosecutions around the country take aim at the First Amendment protection of free speech and political expression. 

The authorities have already branded select participants in Occupy Wall Street and anti-NATO protests as “terrorists.” Last year, heavily-armed “domestic terrorism” commandos raided Occupy Wall Street protesters’ homes in Washington and Oregon, using battering rams and stun grenades. The commandos were authorized to seize all “anti-government or anarchist literature or material.”

As with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, also guaranteed under the First Amendment, has not been officially repealed. The reality, however, is that political assembly is already a semi-criminal activity in America. Political protests are routinely met with vastly disproportionate police mobilizations, confinement to oxymoronic “free speech zones,” “kettling” (in which protesters are surrounded and forcibly moved in one direction or prevented from leaving an area), beatings, tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades or rubber bullets. The standard government response to a political protest is a massive show of force, complete with police snipers on rooftops.

The drive towards the establishment of an American police state, initiated under the Bush administration, has shifted into high gear under Obama. For nearly twelve years, the phony “war on terror” has been used as the overarching pretext for illegal imperialist war abroad and a methodical assault on democratic rights at home. The basic structure of authoritarian rule is now emerging into plain view.

Over the recent period, the government has vastly expanded its warrantless surveillance of the population. The Obama administration has constructed a massive data center in Utah big enough to store the contents of every personal computer in the country. Already at a government agent’s fingertips–without a warrant–are all of a person’s Internet browsing activity, telephone conversations, text messages, credit card transactions, mobile phone GPS location data, travel itineraries, Skype and Facebook data, medical records, criminal records, financial records and surveillance camera footage.

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/the-criminalization-of-political-dissent-in-america/33336/

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Judge Issues Arrest Warrant for Former Prosecutor in Michael Morton Case

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Nancy Petro | 2 Comments

Judge Louis Sturns of Fort Worth today issued an arrest warrant for former Williamson County Prosecutor Ken Anderson, currently a Texas District judge, for his handling of the case of Michael Morton. According to the Wall Street Journal (here), following a weeklong Court of Inquiry earlier this year, Judge Sturns  has ruled that there was sufficient evidence that Anderson “was guilty of all three charges brought against him: criminal contempt of court, tampering with evidence and tampering with government records.”
Michael Morton spent nearly 25 years in prison following his conviction for the murder of his wife, Christine. He steadfastly maintained his innocence until his release in October 2011 after DNA testing of a bloody bandana found near the Morton home proved his innocence and led to the conviction last month of Mark Alan Norwood for Christine’s murder.
Anderson was accused of withholding evidence of Morton’s innocence, including statements by the Mortons’ three-year-old son who observed the perpetrator  of his mother’s murder and indicated that his father was not home at the time of the crime.
According to ABC’s KVUE (here) “Anderson must pay a $2,500 fine for each charge. Sgt. John Foster with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office says Anderson is heading to the Williamson County Jail with his lawyers where he plans to post bond.”
Anderson has indicated that he will fight the charges.  He also is being sued by the State Bar of Texas for his handling of this case.