Police thugs: A Rochester woman was arrested by police for filming them from her own property. Watch the video below and tell me if it doesn’t make your blood boil. The cops who did this should be fired.
Texas anti-groping bill against the TSA moves forward with changes. In related news, under pressure the head of the TSA agreed yesterday that it should modify its patdowns of children.
Unfortunately, the changes being introduced to the Texas bill will make it nothing more than a symbolic act. Similarly, the TSA’s so-called modification of its policy towards children really changes nothing, as they will continue to grope and violate the rights of everyone else.
The day of reckoning looms: The Congressional Budget Office today reported that unless something drastic is done, the national debt will exceed the size of the entire U.S. economy by 2021.
President Barack Obama’s complete list of historic firsts.
Take some time to look at the list closely, including the links that back up each “first.” You might remain skeptical of some of the stories, but the weight of numbers is surely suggestive of the kind of president Obama really is.
Big Brother rules! King County, Washington, has voted to require life vests for swimmers.
[The law] applies to people intertubing, rafting, using a surfboard, canoe or kayak. Swimmers or people wading more than 5 feet from shore or in water more than 4 feet deep would also have to wear life vests. The new ordinance does not apply to people at designated public beaches or for people who are skin diving.
Talk about intolerance: Atheists demand the removal of a sign honoring seven firefighters who died on 9/11 because it includes the word “heaven.”
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Theft by TSA employees of passenger valuables has become a nationwide problem.
According to TSA records, press reports, and court documents . . . some 500 TSA officers . . . have been fired or suspended for stealing from passenger luggage since the agency’s creation in November of 2001. The airports servicing New York City—John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty—harbor the most flagrant offenders, but virtually no city in the nation is safe from the TSA’s sticky fingers.
In 2009, a half dozen TSA agents at Miami International Airport were charged with grand theft after boosting an iPod, bottles of perfume, cameras, a GPS system, a Coach purse, and a Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook from passengers’ luggage. Travelers passing through the airport’s checkpoints reported as many as 1,500 items stolen, the majority of which were never recovered.
In May of this year alone, TSA agents were arrested on the suspicion of theft at airports in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
The legal store of stolen objects.
The National Speleological Society has responded in strong opposition [pdf] to the demand by the Center for Biological Diversity that all caves on public land be closed to protect bats.
Calling for blanket cave closures across the U.S. is unnecessary, unenforceable, and counterproductive. While cave closures on some federal lands have been implemented, particularly in the eastern U. S., there is no evidence that this action has done anything to contain [white nose syndrome] (WNS). Most people working on WNS understand that bat to bat transmission is overwhelmingly the primary method of transmission, and administrative closing of caves and mines does nothing to prevent that.
Busybodies forever at work: San Francisco’s Animal Control and Welfare Commission has recommended the city ban the sale of goldfish, tropical fish and guppies in its borders.
It’s all about power and control, not safety: The TSA has decided to block any further private companies from providing airport screening.
