Celebrate May Day. Potluck at MacArthur Park

“Hang out at MacArthur Park to honor and acknowledge the way our communities have been historically silenced, while celebrating the struggle and resistance of various communities in places like MacArthur Park and all over the world. This May Day, celebrate that you are a worker by hanging out with friends, having some food at the [...]

Green trial prosecutors tell of gruesome scene

PADUCAH, Ky. — A former U.S. Army soldier accused of raping an Iraqi girl and killing her and her family was upset after losing multiple friends in combat but didn’t appear to struggle more than anyone else in the unit, one of his commanding officers said. Steven Dale Green, 23, of Midland, Texas, faces more [...]

British agent loses top secrets

A British agent has left top secret information about covert operations on a transit coach at El Dorado airport in Bogota, Colombia. The incident occurred after the drugs liaison officer left her handbag on the bus. In the handbag there was a computer memory stick containing the names, code names, addresses and operational details of [...]

Former Florida sheriff pleads not guilty to money laundering

NICEVILLE, Fla. — A suspended Florida sheriff pleaded not guilty to money laundering and conspiracy charges on Monday, two days after two of his former deputies were killed by a National Guard soldier they were trying to arrest. Okaloosa County Sheriff Charlie Morris and Teresa Adams, his administrative assistant, made no comments following the brief [...]

Kids with ADHD Taking Meds Do Better in School

Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder who are treated score higher on math and reading tests than those with the condition who do not get drugs, according to a study to appear in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics. The study tracked 594 children with ADHD from kindergarten through fifth grade. Sixty percent of them [...]

New Report Released on the Status of SORT

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently published a report on the status of the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT). The report entitled: “Nuclear Notebook: U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2009: The United States has Officially Reached the Upper Limit of 2,200 Operationally Deployed Strategic Warheads Set by the Moscow Treaty, yet Warhead Dismantlement is Proceeding Slowly”, discusses [...]

Russian President Discovers Social Media

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev may not have the supervillain appeal of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. But he is staking his claim to be Russia’s fearless leader in the online world. Medvedev last week launched his own LiveJournal blog. It’s a rather earnest piece of work, featuring posts “On Internet Development in Russia” and “State and [...]

NYPD Officers Face Rape Charges

Prosecutors say two New York City police officers will face charges of rape, burglary and evidence tampering in connection with an attack on a Manhattan woman. Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata are accused of assaulting an intoxicated woman they had escorted home in December. The officers were initially responding to a 911 call from [...]

Bioethicist Steven Miles joins call for investigation of American Psychological Association ties to military

Bioethicist Steven H. Miles joins the call — first issued by Psychologists for Social Responsibility last week — for an investigation of the American Psychological Association‘s ties to the military-intelligence establishment that led to its continuing to support psychologist participation in US national security interrogations long past the point where it was obvious that psychologists [...]

“Don’t enlist, resist”

Minnesota saw a wave of dramatic anti-war protests at military recruitment centers, April 23. The call of the Twin Cities based Anti-War Committee for April 23 to be Zero Recruitment Day was taken up by a host of anti-war groups that joined together, visibly opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, exposing recruiter lies and [...]

New FAS-FAX Shows (More) Steep Circulation Losses

NEW YORK The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest metros continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation — now at a record rate. According to ABC, for 395 newspapers reporting this spring, daily circulation fell 7% to 34,439,713 copies, [...]

Specter Bills Seek to Rein In Executive Power

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) last week reintroduced three bills that he said were needed to limit presidential power and to restore the proper constitutional balance among the three branches of government. The first bill (S.875) would instruct courts not to rely on a presidential signing statement when interpreting the meaning of any statute. (Similar legislation [...]

Delaware Guardsman charged with raping soldier

GEORGETOWN, Del. — A member of the Delaware Army National Guard has been charged with raping a fellow soldier at the Georgetown Armory and sexual extortion. Georgetown police say Staff Sgt. Theodoric Dixon, 36, was arrested Friday and charged with first-degree rape, unlawful imprisonment, sexual extortion, coercion and official misconduct. He has since been released. [...]

Damage Done – The Drug War Odyssey

Former Orange County sheriff Michael Carona to get sentence on felony conviction

SANTA ANA, Calif. — It’s been more than five years since federal prosecutors began building their sweeping public corruption case against former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona. Now, with sentencing at hand, the disgraced lawman and one-time rising GOP star is about to find out how much longer his legal ordeal will last. Prosecutors [...]

Minnesota Looks to Oust Bad Judges

In response to dozens of petitions by the citizens of Minnesota, an ad hoc committee has been scheduled to hear the evidence of the corruption within the Minnesota judicial branch. The ad hoc committee was formed because the chairmen of the Senate and House committees that oversee matters of the judiciary have refused to hear [...]

“Bad Cop” suits cost NYC a half-billion

The city has coughed up $540 million in payouts related to improper police actions since 1998 — and taxpayer cost for such cases hit a record high last year. In 1998, the city paid lawsuit settlements or judgments to 571 claimants who accused the NYPD of bad behavior. That figure more than doubled to 1,265 [...]

Is the California DMV rigging DMV hearings?

I just received a response to a California Public Records Act request I filed about THREE MONTHS ago…. According to the documents, it seems that San Diego DMV Manager Brian Dawson is unhappy that his hearing officers (aka “HO’s” for fun), aren’t summarily suspending all people who challenge the California Department of Motor Vehicles evidence [...]

Journo Deemed A U.S Terror Threat

Apparently, the pen is so mighty, that we can’t even risk certain foreign journalists flying in our airspace. According to reports over the weekend, an Air France flight to Mexico was diverted because of one passenger, Franco-Colombian writer Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for the Le Monde Diplomatique, a left-wing French-based newspaper. Apparently, Ospina has [...]

Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom

Social Change Project, Mercatus, State and Local Policy Project Research Papers/Studies Download Document This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as [...]

Everything you know is wrong

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It’s not the Netherlands.) Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in [...]

Mexico: Piedras Negras police strike to protest militarization

Disaffected members of the Piedras Negras police force in the Mexican border state of Coahuila returned to work April 22, after staging an overnight work stoppage. Some 50 officers assigned to the graveyard shift conducted the protest to express opposition to the new policies of a retired colonel, Arturo Navarro López, who assumed command of [...]

New Reports from DoD

The DoD Chemical and Biological Defense Program (CBDP) and Defense Science Board (DSB) have recently released a number of interesting reports: The CBDP 2009 Annual Report to Congress discusses DoD’s progress in protecting the nation and its allies from WMD threats. Previous versions of the report can be found here. Several DSB Task Forces released [...]

SPLC Report Finds Low-Income Latinos in South Targeted for Abuse, Discrimination

The Southern Poverty Law Center has produced a report detailing the hardships and discrimination faced by Latinos in the southern region of the United States. The full report can be accessed by clicking here. Further information regarding the report can be learned here. “Low-income Latino immigrants in the South are routinely the targets of wage [...]

California Deputies Plead Guilty in Beating of Firefighter

Apr. 24–NORWALK — Two off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff‘s deputies who beat up an off-duty firefighter in Pomona nearly two years ago entered guilty pleas Thursday, officials said. Deputy Joshua Titel, 32, entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor count of assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, Los Angeles County [...]

Teens use cannabis for relief, not recreation

WASHINGTON: A third of teens who smoke cannabis regularly use it as medication, rather than as a means of getting high, claims a new study. Joan Bottorff worked with researchers from the University of British Columbia, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, to conduct in-depth interviews with 63 cannabis-using adolescents. Of these, 20 [...]

Czech art: shoot your lawmaker in the face

PRAGUE (AFP) – Two artists have offered Czechs angered by politics the chance to take revenge on their lawmakers by shooting them literally in the face, by turning their photos into air gun targets. Tomas Cap and Michal Kraus have displayed the portraits of 200 lower-house deputies in plastic boxes on the wall of a [...]

More bilingual deputies in Riverside County, fewer in San Bernardino County

The percentage of sworn deputies who are bilingual has climbed in Riverside County and dropped slightly in San Bernardino County compared to six years ago, according to data from the sheriff’s departments. In 2003, 1.5 percent of deputies in the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department were bilingual. Today that number is 12.5 percent. In the San [...]

Sheriff murders another via high-speed chase

PHELAN, Calif. —  Investigators say a woman who jumped from her husband’s pickup truck while fleeing sheriff’s deputies in the Mojave Desert was apparently killed when she was run over by the pickup and a squad car. San Bernardino County sheriff‘s investigators say 46-year-old Elisa Cedeno’s body was found Monday seven hours after her 49-year-old husband [...]

Mexican Drug War: Soldiers vs. Soldiers

The most offensive casualties the Mexican Army has suffered in the war on drug trafficking aren’t the result of confrontations with hitmen.  Rather, they’re executions carried out by ex-brothers-in-arms, trained by the Mexican National Defense Ministry, who have joined the ranks of organized crime, or by cells protected by high-ranking officials.  In less than four [...]

Religious lyrics bring school more trouble

Attorneys are seeking to halt teaching of a song they call a “blatantly sectarian and proselytizing religious song” to third-graders at The Webster School of St. Augustine, FL, until the case can go to court. This is the second time in less than a month that attorneys asked the United States District Court in Jacksonville [...]

Arrests of U.S. border agents on the rise

WASHINGTON — A rising number of U.S. border enforcement officers are being arrested on corruption charges as Mexican drug cartels look to bribes as a way to get around tougher enforcement, border officials say. Investigators arrested 21 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers on corruption charges in the fiscal year that ended last September, up [...]

US suicidal veterans surpassing KIAs

At least 13 American soldiers have committed suicide in March as post traumatic syndrome is increasing suicide tendency among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The latest figure has brought to 56 the number of US soldiers’ suicide cases in 2009, according to figures released by the US Army, a press TV correspond reported on Monday. [...]

EU nations eye prosecution of Bush officials

European officials and lawyers seek to criminalize former US officials over torture charges amid the reluctance of President Barack Obama. A number of European authorities and human rights groups have expressed dissatisfaction with Obama’s failure to press charges against ex-CIA authorities who sanctioned or administered the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ to terror suspects, saying that [...]

Pfizer to pay Nigeria $75m over drug trial

Pfizer Incorporated has reached a broad agreement to pay millions of dollars to Nigeria‘s Kano State in a bid to settle a drugs testing scandal out of court. Sources close to the negotiations said the total payments — including those to the children, their families, the government and the government’s attorneys — would sum up [...]

This is a hate-free city: Minutemen founder persona non grata

Monday, April 20 2009 CLAREMONT, California– Despite the right wing’s efforts at deception and obfuscation, pro-immigrant, pro-human rights, anti-racist, and community activists organized strong opposition to the arrival of anti-immigrant extremist Jim Gilchrist to our neighborhood. A group called the Mountain View Republican Club invited Gilchrist to speak at an upscale Italian restaurant, but once [...]

City to pay $200,000 to former officer under lawsuit settlement

BARSTOW • The city will pay out $200,000 to a former Barstow Police Department officer under the terms of a lawsuit settlement soon to be finalized. Attorney Marla Brown, representing former Officer Pete Holm, now employed with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said they got notice via email April 13 from one of the [...]

Congressman Lewis paid $30,000 in legal defense fees in March

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, paid more than $30,000 in March to a law firm defending him in a federal probe into his alleged ties with lobbyists and defense contractors, campaign records shows. It brings the total of what Lewis has spent on legal fees since the investigation kicked off in 2006 to nearly $1.2 million. [...]

Making Babies for the Führer

Here’s a new one, even by Hatewatch’s jaded standards: According to newspaper and television news accounts of this week’s Southern California law enforcement dragnet of the Inland Empire Skinheads, two female gang members were placed under arrest in hospital maternity wards. They were having labor induced to ensure their babies were born on April 20 [...]

Humboldt cities take on military recruiting — and U.S.

ARCATA – David was sitting in a coffee shop when he first got the idea to take on Goliath. The “David” in this story has a last name of Meserve. The “Goliath” is less metaphorically known as the United States government. And the tale revolves around a first-of-its-kind effort by two small Humboldt County cities [...]

DOJ Prosecuted Texas Sheriff in 1983 For Waterboarding Prisoners

In 1983, the Department of Justice prosecuted a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies for waterboarding prisoners to get them to confess to crimes. The deputies were sentenced to four years in prison and Parker pleaded guilty to extortion and federal civil rights violations and received a 10-year sentence. Parker admitted that he had [...]

ROBERT F. KENNEDY URGED LIFTING TRAVEL BAN TO CUBA IN 1963

Washington D.C. April 23, 2009 – Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to lift the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba in December 1963, according to declassified records re-posted today by the National Security Archive. In a December 12, 1963, memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Kennedy urged a quick decision “to withdraw [...]

Pentagon Moves to Shut Down ‘Mullah FM’

Those of you hoping to tune into your favorite Taliban DJ are going to have to find something else on the dial. The Department of Defense, the Wall Street Journal reports, is launching a new covert war against the Taliban’s communications infrastructure in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pentagon planners are reportedly working to jam some of [...]

FAA drops plan to make bird-strike data secret

Government officials promised Wednesday to stop a proposal by the Federal Aviation Administration to restrict access to a key database containing records of aircraft-wildlife strikes. The Washington Post reported that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the paper in an interview the database would remain public. The FAA is part of the Department of Transportation. LaHood told [...]

US DHS: Domestic Terrorism Newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 4, 2006

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New guidance from Justice on processing FOIA requests

The Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy issued new guidance Friday further implementing the attorney general’s memo that gives direction to federal agencies regarding the Freedom of Information Act. The guidance applies to all federal agencies and stresses “that the FOIA is to be administered with the presumption of openness.” It also says the “combined [...]

Guard convicted in boy’s beating at juvenile hall

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former guard has been convicted of child abuse for letting five minors beat a boy she wrongly believed had taken her cell phone at a Los Angeles juvenile hall. Deputy District Attorney Natalie Adomian said Tuesday that jurors deliberated for two hours before convicting Diane Buchanan on Friday of three [...]

View San Bernardino Police Chief-designate Keith Kilmer’s resume

Here’s a copy of City Hall’s press release on incoming San Bernardino Police Chief Keith Kilmer’s appointment. The announcement includes a copy of Kilmer’s resume and his employment offer. SB Now readers may remember that current Police Chief Michael Billdt’s resume was not made public until September of last year. The release confirmed that Billdt [...]

Bullies bearing badges

Law enforcers in Dallas and Ft. Worth recently made the North Texas Metroplex proud with their high profile high idiocy high jinx in a span of 14 days.