Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Railroaded? Female Cop Speaks Out After Nearly 10 Years in Prison for Unleashing Dog on Suspect
A female police officer sent to jail for ten years for police brutality has spoken out about what she claims is her unjust conviction, and what it means to have missed her son’s childhood.
Former police officer Stephanie Mohr was convicted of deprivation of civil rights in 2001, according to the Daily Mail, after an incident in which she set her police dog on a homeless man in Washington D.C. who was a suspect in a burglary. The end result of that encounter was a torn muscle in the man’s leg.
He has has since been deported, as he was in the U.S. illegally.
The Cost of Obama
President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing.
According to the White House’s own figures (see table S-1 here for 2011 to 2013, and table S-1 here for 2010), the actual or projected deficit tallies for the four years in which Obama has submitted budgets are as follows: $1.293 trillion in 2010, $1.300 trillion in 2011, $1.327 trillion in 2012, and $901 billion in 2013. In addition, Obama is responsible for the estimated $200 billion (the Congressional Budget Office’s figure) that his economic “stimulus” added to the deficit in 2009. Moreover, he shouldn’t get credit for the $149 billion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) repayments made in 2010 and 2011 to cover most of the $154 billion in bank loans that remained unpaid at the end of the 2009 fiscal year — loans that count against President Bush’s 2009 deficit tally.
Adding all of this up, deficit spending during Obama’s four years in the White House (based on his own figures) will be an estimated $5.170 trillion — or $5,170,000,000,000.00.
To help put that colossal sum of money into perspective, if you take our deficit spending under Obama and divide it evenly among the roughly 300 million American citizens, that works out to just over $17,000 per person — or about $70,000 for a family of four.
Stopped by police, he'll take aim with lawsuit
MARK FIORINO was legally carrying his .40-caliber Glock on his hip as he walked along Frankford Avenue on Feb. 13, 2011, when he was stopped by Philadelphia police, who pointed a gun at him, harassed him and handcuffed him.
Today, he plans to file a civil suit against the department for the incident.
Fiorino, who recorded his 45-minute confrontation with police and posted it on YouTube, is suing for "violation of his constitutional rights to be free from unlawful searches, excessive force and malicious prosecution," according to the complaint filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union. LANGUAGE
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Is Obama Using The IRS To Silence Opposition Voices?
Many of us joke about being audited by the IRS because our views are not in sync with the White House. President Obama himself has even joked about it back in 2009, when a visit to Arizona State University caused many to speak up against the President receiving an honorary degree.
That was back in 2009. And it was a joke, right?
Or was it?
In just the past week, we have received emails from various Tea Party groups around the country alerting us to the oppressive demands being sent to them from the IRS.
And so we ask the question: Is the Obama administration using the IRS to wage a war against opposition voices like the Tea Party?
One of the groups currently dealing with the government’s overreach is the Ohio Liberty Council Corp.
The OLC’s President, Tom Zawistokowski, posted a letter on the group’s website detailing the timeline of the their efforts to gain non-profit status and the recent demand for documents made by the IRS. In the letter Tom states:
George Dereef, Slaveholding Family of Color Descendant and NAACP Member
George Dereef, a Wisconsin attorney, was the descendant of a slave-holding free family of color from Charleston, South Carolina whose members had belonged to the Brown Fellowship Society. Originally from South Carolina, Dereef settled in Milwaukee in 1913 and figured prominently in the local branches of the NAACP and the National Negro Business League.
In the 1820’s George’s grandfather Joseph Dereef had purchased a troublesome Negro girl named Betsey for $270 and started on the road to slave ownership. His father Richard E. Dereef inherited Joseph’s slaves and added to this number, becoming a wealthy free black Charleston wood factor. His sons were listed in the 1862 Free Negro Tax Book as factors as well, one of which had the title “Doctor.” Son John Dereef was listed in his father’s household in the 1860 federal census, and paid municipal taxes on real estate worth $3,700. *Like white slaveholders, the Dereef’s were forced to sell their slaves after the war. *Needless to say, this statement is incorrect.
Other free black slaveholders like the Dereef’s were Robert Howard, one of the wealthiest free men of color in antebellum Charleston, and William Ellison, the wealthiest free Negro in South Carolina. Howard was a wood dealer like the Dereef’s, paying city taxes on five slaves and real estate worth $33,900. Ellison was born into slavery in 1790, but by the time of the War Between the States owned more slaves than any other free Negro in the entire South except Louisiana. Ellison bought his freedom in 1816, set up a cotton ginning business, and made enough income to buy 63 slaves and ex-Governor Stephen D. Miller’s former home and plantation.
Free black slaveholding was not unusual in the antebellum North and South as they utilized the labor of slaves for profit, hiring them out as simple labor or trained artisans. Though much is made of the benevolence of black slaveholders toward their kin, author Larry Koger (No Chariot Let Down) dismisses this as improbable as most black slaveholders were mulattoes (83.1%) while nearly all their slaves were dark-skinned (90%). He asked, “where was the kinship?”
Koger underscores that there were black masters in every State where slavery existed (including the North), many black Americans of the antebellum period believed that slavery was a viable economic system. In Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia, free blacks owned more than 10,000 slaves, according to the Federal census of 1850.
Sources:
Aristocrats of Color, The Black Elite, Willard C. Gatewood, University Press of Indiana, 1993
No Chariot Let Down, Charleston’s Free People of Color, UNC Press, 1984
Vice Admiral Mark Fox: “Absolutely Convinced” We Should Handle Iran With Diplomacy
Verbatim Post
Why don’t they? These nations have powerful navies, and they have nuclear weapons. There is no need for desperate measures like purposefully sacrificing your own people and craft to achieve goals. The last time a European power made a wide use of suicide boats was in 1588 when England had to defend against the Great Armada. The last time a great world power was forced to use suicide tactics was Japan in the last months of World War II. Suicide tactics is the weapon of the weak. A nation that has powerful forces and nuclear weapons doesn’t use suicide tactics.
That’s why the reports of the US Navy intelligence about Iran building a fleet of suicide boats to respond to a possible American attack are an important indicator about the true strength of the Iranian regime and its military. If Iran had nuclear weapons, or if they expected to develop them within the next several months (as we’ve been hearing for the last decade from our warmongers here in the US), this investment in the “weapon of the weak” is indeed strange. For all the strength of the US Navy, ships are very vulnerable to a nuclear attack. Nothing can defend even an aircraft from it. Why are the Iranians resorting to desperate measures if they already had the power to incinerate our naval forces in the Persian Gulf?
Vice Admiral Mark Fox, commander of the US naval forces in the Gulf, said that they are watching closely Iran’s preparations to defend themselves. No matter what Iran does, though, the US forces are incomparably more powerful than anything Iran can muster. Given the proper vigilance, the small suicide boats can not inflict too much damage. Fox said, “We are ready today. . . . Could they make like extremely difficult for us? Yes they could. If we did nothing and they were able to operate without being inhibited, yeah they could close it, but I can’t see that we would ever be in that position.”
Vice Admiral Fox also gave his opinion that war is not a solution to the problems in the region: “So when you hear discussion about all this overheated rhetoric from Iran we really believe that the best way to handle this is with diplomacy… I am absolutely convinced that is the way to go.”
Yet another military expert to say – in a very diplomatic way – that the banging of the war drums by the politicians in Washington DC is dangerous and useless. Another military expert who says that he is “absolutely convinced” that diplomacy is the way to go. Iran, obviously is a weak country. Their “overheated rhetoric” is the barking of a toothless dog. The moral way to go about it is peace and diplomacy.
If we only listen to the experts before it is too late.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
“Lose” the Drug War, Win the Moral War
And then, in 2001, the legislators did something very courageous and unusual: They ended the war on drugs. The government of Portugal admitted its defeat. Drug use was decriminalized. Instead of sending drug users to jail, the “non-problematic” drug users were left alone. Those diagnosed as “problematic” were only required to regularly appear before panels of psychiatrists and personal counselors for therapeutic sessions. The enormous expenditures for fighting the drug traffic were cut, and only a portion of them was now spent on therapy of the most serious cases of drug addiction.
Of course, it wasn’t so courageous after all. The Netherlands and Switzerland have had laxer policies about drugs for decades, and both countries have lower drug abuse than the rest of Europe. But Portugal, as a Latin, Mediterranean country, was expected to collapse under the weight of the increased drug abuse.
Ten years later, Portugal seems to be winning the moral war. Far from seeing an increase in drug abuse, the number of drug addicts have decreased to half of the number in the 1990s, before the end of the war on drugs. The streets of Lisbon are cleaner, and the drug traffic has declined in numbers. Drug use seems to be going out of fashion among the young people.
February 14, 2012: Issa takes step toward holding Holder in contempt of Congress
On Tuesday Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, took a major step toward holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to provide subpoenaed documents and other information about Operation Fast and Furious.
In a Jan. 31 letter, Issa had threatened Holder with such a move if he failed to provide all the subpoenaed documents relating to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal by Feb. 9. That deadline has come and gone, and Holder’s Department of Justice still hasn’t provided most of those documents. Issa’s subpoena dates back to Oct. 12, 2011.
On Tuesday in a seven-page letter, Issa revealed that Deputy Attorney General James Cole begged Congress to extend the Feb. 9 deadline. Issa wrote that the request was “ironic” and “ignores the reality that the Department has unreasonably delayed producing these documents to the Committee.”
“On its face, the requested extension demonstrates a lack of good faith,” Issa wrote to Holder. “With one exception, the Department has only produced documents responsive to the subpoena on the eve of congressional hearings in which senior Department officials testified. The Department appears to be more concerned with protecting its image through spin control than actually cooperating with Congress.”
“We cannot wait any longer for the Department’s cooperation,” Issa continued. “As such, please specify a date by which you expect the Department to produce all documents responsive to the subpoena. In addition, please specify a Department representative who will interface with the Committee for production purposes.”
Issa added that whoever Holder designates as the go-to DOJ official for delivering subpoenaed documents “should also serve as the conduit for dealing with the contempt proceedings, should the Department continue to ignore the Committee’s subpoena.” (RELATED: Full coverage of Eric Holder)
The California Republican slammed Holder, too, for claiming the congressional investigation into Fast and Furious was a political game for Republicans.