Tag: US

Nappy headed hos vs. Alberto Gonzales subpoena

The supposedly serious news outlets CNN and New York Times are both currently running the Imus vs. Rutgers women’s basketball team incident as their lead stories. This while at the same time the US Attorney General has been subpoenaed by the Congress to produce documents in the ongoing investigation about the firing of US attorneys.

The US Congress is basically going to war with the 2nd (or 3rd) most powerful man in the United States Government, and the US President, and these news outlets are running the story about a shock jockey who shocked as their lead story. Incredible.

-TPP

Hate and Hypocrisy – The Right Way of doing politics

John Edwards is a “faggot” [1], Al Gore is “a total fag” [2], Barack Obama is hunted in Pakistan [3] and cheating is ok in the Speaker’s house, but not in the White House [4].

So those would be examples of compassionate conservatism and family values, eh?

Let’s just leave it at that, no other comment is really necessary.

-TPP

1. Coulter on Edwards at CNN.com
2. Coulter on Gore at MediaMatters.org
3. Fox News chief on Obama at Huffington Post
4. MSNBC on Newt Gingrich

Cover Your Ass Security

Bruce Schneier, a security expert, writes in Wired about how security policies in the US are based on cover your ass mentality rather than careful planning and assessment of real security threats.

He calls the concept Cover Your Ass Security. I’d call it After The Fact Security myself. He gives great examples of how security policy always changes after the fact as a response to a specific attack that already happened elsewhere.

-TPP

Once a terrorist suspect, always a terrorist suspect?

A Syrian born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was detained in 2002 in JFK airport in New York, NY, USA on a connecting flight to Montreal. He was arrested under suspicion of terrorism, interrogated for 11 days by the FBI, then deported to Syria for further “interrogation”. Turns out the Syrians are rather fond of torturing their terror suspects. The FBI, of course, was completely unaware of this. Suuuuuuuuure.

The reason Mr. Arar was detained in New York was that Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had supplied the FBI information that was later found inaccurate.

The Canadian Government has issued a formal apology over its role in Mr. Arar’s detainment and torture and has agreed to pay about $10M in compensation to Mr. Arar as reported by CNews.

Meanwhile the US Government is refusing to apologize or remove Mr. Arar from the terrorism watch list. They refuse to investigate the issue at all.

It seems to be that in the name of the war on terror, the US Government is effectively terrorising innocent people.

How proud must Osama bin Laden be. Mission truly and utterly accomplished.

-TPP

The War on (non-State sponsored) Gambling goes on

The FBI has arrested two former executives of Netteller, a payment processing company catering almost exclusively to online gambling site customers.

I wonder why I’m able to gamble with practically no limitations in Las Vegas and various Indian tribes’ owned casinos around the country, but if I gamble on PartyPoker.com or sports betting sites, I’m suddenly Public Enemy Number One.

-TPP

Illegal immigrants have no rights. Really?

Three months later, protesters waving flags and holding signs that said “Illegal immigrants have no rights” stood outside Columbia University.

What these racist bigots don’t realize is that then the US Constitution says “people” it means all people, not just citizens. So, yes, even illegal immigrants, those dirty criminals, who steal “our” women and jobs and probably all terrorists anyway, do, in fact, have rights.

-TPP

Foreigners in the US – guilty until departing the country

The Guardian is reporting on new plans by the US Government to extend the US-Visit program’s fingerprinting requirements for foreign visitors to the US.

The US is planning on taking 10-digit, instead of today’s two-digit, fingerprints from all foreign visitors, storing the fingerprints in the FBI fingerprint database, and allowing sharing the fingerprint information with foreign law enforcement agencies effectively bypassing any due process rights you might’ve otherwise had in case you do end up in legal trouble.

All this, of course, to catch the terrorists. Terrorists, who wouldn’t forge their identity, including fingerprints. Yes, that’s entirely possible, and according to studies, even easy.

Let’s see who is the first innocent bystander, who gets falsely identified as a terrorist.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to have plastic surgery to get 10 middle fingers? Anyone?

-TPP

Congressional aide to U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) commits a felony crime

Todd Shriber, 28-year-old communications director for Representative Denny Rehberg (R-MT), has been exposed to have solicited two computer hackers to commit felony crimes.

It appears Mr. Shriber felt his college grades weren’t good enough and engaged two well known operators of the website attrition.org in an email conversation about hacking into the computer system of Mr. Shriber’s College to alter his grades. The school he went to: Texas Christian University. Thou shalt not steal, Mr. Shriber?

What Mr. Shriber didn’t know is that attrition.org operators are white-hat hackers and had no intention of going through with the plan. Instead they strung him along and finally posted the entire Email conversation on their website. A reporter investigating the story then found out Mr. Shriber’s true identity.

Mr. Shriber was fired from his congressional aide position.

There is no word, as of yet, on any possible arrest warrant issued for him. Soliciting someone to commit a felony crime is a crime in itself. Federal guidelines state soliciting felony crimes should be punishable by half the sentence of the crime being solicited.

The email conversation is posted on attrition.org website.

More links to the press coverage on the story:
Talking Points Memo

-TPP