Category: Crimes

Domestic Terrorism in Spokane

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I’m not sure why the press isn’t covering this, but someone planted a relatively sophisticated road-side bomb along the route of the Spokane Martin Luther King Day parade:

A backpack found along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. march in Spokane contained a bomb “capable of inflicting multiple casualties,” the FBI said Tuesday, describing the case as “domestic terrorism.”

The FBI said the Swiss Army-brand backpack was found about 9:25 a.m. PST on Monday on a bench at the northeast corner of North Washington Street and West Main Avenue in downtown Spokane.

In an interview on msnbc cable’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Spokesman-Review reporter Thomas Clouse said confidential sources told him that the device was equipped with a remote control detonator and contained shrapnel.

There are two things that are very concerning here:

  • The FBI is being very loquacious about this, and I don’t mean, “FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of people responsible for placing the device.” Considering how legendary the FBI is about keeping its cards close to its chest, this implies that they are very spooked by this.
  • Spokane is smack dab in the middle of any number of any number of white supremacist encampments, and has already seen Aryan Nation inspired bombings and robberies.

I think that the FBI has some intel indicating that more than one person has some sort of ongoing plans for a series of actions.

What is odd here is that Maddow seems to be the only national media figure who is paying any attention.

Assange Granted Bail

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Basically, the terms of his bail amount to house arrest:

Britain’s high court today granted bail to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is wanted in Sweden for questioning over allegations of rape.

Mr Justice Duncan Ouseley agreed with a decision by City of Westminister magistrates court earlier in the week to release Assange on strict conditions: £200,000 cash deposit, with a further £40,000 guaranteed in two sureties of £20,000, and strict conditions on his movement.

This is good news, but we are hearing more reports of the US looking for ways to indict him, this time by ginning up a conspiracy case:

Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.

Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.

Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

It should be noted that these activities, cultivating and providing a source a way to get his information to you, are staples in the diet of investigative journalism.

Any prosecution under these circumstances would be an full frontal assault on freedom of the press, which is profoundly disturbing to anyone who cares at all about the Constitution.

Unfortunately, I think that this sort of assault on the press, and by extension leaking, appears to be something that Barack Obama, who must have been the worst professor of Constitutional law ever, really would like to do.

His administration is more vociferously hostile toward leaks and leakers than Bush/Cheney ever was.

Of course, this is why this administration is allowing the leaker, PFC Bradley Manning to be tortured pre-trial, because they want to coerce an accusation against Assange.

Julian Assange Granted Bail

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We are all Julian Assange

But the Swedish prosecutors promptly appealed the decision, meaning that he spends at least another 48 hours in custody, which in his case means rather harsh isolation.

On the other hand, it appears that reports of a grand jury investigating an indictment under the 1917 espionage act may be baseless.

Truth be told, a good prosecutor can find an sitting already sitting grand jury, and Mr. Assange from a legal perspective is certainly a ham sandwich.

Were I a prosecutor, I would not begin any process until Assange were in Sweden, where extraditions appears to be more likely than in the UK.

Of course, while this is going on, the internet is still being roiled by attacks on both sides of the issue, with Anonymous emerging from 4chan to hit the financial and IT companies that cut Wikileaks off, and other hackers going after Wikileaks, in a game of dueling DDOS attacks.

Hanging over all this is Assange’s poison pill file, which has been distributed to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people, waiting for the decryption key that will be distributed if anything happens to him or Wikileaks by a dozen or so of his colleagues.

And then there is the absurdity that Amazon, after tossing Wikileaks from their servers, is now selling copies of the cables for the Kindles.

In the mean time, here are the crucial government secrets that we now know as a result of the cables:

Of course there is some truly sensitive and shocking information out there, specifically that, the DPRK (North Korea) was willing to take significant steps to  reassure the US and the ROK (South Korea) in exchange for an Eric Clapton concert in Pyongyang.

Merciful heavens, we can’t let the citizenry know about that.

The final word on this is Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg’s, “EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.“

IRS Investigates Chamber of Commerce for Tax Fraud

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The Internal Revenue Service is investigating whether or not, “the group mixed funds for charitable and noncharitable political purposes in violation of tax codes.”

It’s pretty clear that most of the 501(c)3s that are attached to lobbying groups have nothing to do with what should be educational purposes:

Cyrus Mehri, a Washington lawyer who brought the I.R.S. complaint on behalf of U.S. Chamber Watch, said in an interview that the chamber’s current political activities were, in effect, being underwritten with money intended for charitable work.

The complaint focuses on loans and grants totaling about $18 million that were made beginning in 2003 to a nonprofit affiliate, the National Chamber Foundation, by the Starr Foundation, a charity started by the founder of A.I.G. and now led by Maurice R. Greenberg, the insurer’s former chairman.

Lawyers for Chamber Watch said their research, based largely on public tax filings, found that none of the principal on some $12 million in loans had been paid back and that the money appeared to have been given to the chamber’s foundation for unrestricted use.

This actually strikes close to home for me, as I actually incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization, Arisia, and while I don’t regret doing so, it got the organization a lower postal rate in its early, pre everyone-has-email, days, which helped a lot.

That being said, it’s a group that basically holds a science fiction convention every year, and the fact that it was legal to register as a tax exempt educational organization, as opposed to a non-profit membership organization, a 501(c)7 where contributions are not tax deductible, still bothers me.

There is a lot of abuse in the tax exempt organization regulations, whether it is science fiction conventions generally, the Chamber of Commerce’s faux charity, or the various think tanks out there, and it really needs to be fixed.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

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First, I hear news that some guy flipped out and allegedly stabbed, Ahmed Sharif, a cabbie in New York because the drive was Muslim, and now we discover that this guy worked for a multicultural organization promoting peace and tolerance:

As you’ve seen in our earlier reports, we have what appears to be a straight-up hate crime, in which an NYC cabbie picks up a fare, passenger asks him if he’s Muslim and then stabs him in the neck. The NYPD says Michael Enright, 21, is going to be charged with 2nd degree attempted murder and a hate crime. (See the statement from the victim here.)

Only then things get a little weird. Enright is not who you’d expect. He’s a film student who’d recently been either volunteering for or employed by Intersection International, a multifaith and multicultural effort which seeks to promote justice and peace. And the group has very publicly come out in favor of the Cordoba House project, what opponents call the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Needless to say, that’s a bit difficult to figure.

This is just freaky, and I just don’t get it, though reports indicate that a significant amount of alcohol was involved.

But if you are talking about this tomorrow, note that the “New York cabbie” has a name, Ahmed Sharif, and remember his name.

No Prosecution for Photographing Unclothed Teens in Their Houses

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Because when a school does it, it’s OK:

Federal authorities announced Tuesday they will not prosecute administrators connected to a webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district.

Prosecutors and the FBI opened an inquiry following a February privacy lawsuit accusing Lower Merion School District officials of spying on students with webcams on the 2,300 district-issued MacBooks. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit claim the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students, including images of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed.”

Zane David Memeger, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said he found no criminal intent in the alleged surveillance.

I cannot understand how there isn’t a trial of someone involved in this.

I guess that the prosecutor decided that high school students have no right to privacy.

Earlier posts are here.

But Will They Roll on Bush and His Evil Minions&trade

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Polish prosecutors are considering charging the former Polish President and PM with war crimes for allowing the CIA to operate gulags in their country:

Polish prosecutors are considering bringing charges of war crimes against the country’s former prime minister and former president over allegations of secret CIA prisons.

Former president Aleksander Kwasniewski and former prime minister Leszek Miller, who held office between 2001 and 2004, may stand trial before the State Tribunal, a court specifically designed to try Poland’s top officials, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Wednesday (4 August).

The court’s prosecutor wants to ask the speaker of parliament to initiate the criminal procedure against the two men. The case would first have to go to a parliamentary committee and then to the lower house of parliament, which would decide whether or not to press charges, the news report says.

One hopes that eventually we find someone who is willing to sing on this, and the Shrub and the Smiler will end up in the dock.

It does seem that this is all beginning to unravel, and perhaps we are near a point where revelations breed further revelation.

I Can Haz Prosecushuns?

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So, now George W. Bush has explicitly stated that he authorized torture:

George W. Bush’s casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded — and would do it again — has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is “unequivocably torture”, said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

“As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War,” Irvine said. “Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life.”

Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn’t appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.

Here’s a baseball metaphor to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder: You are the umpires, Bush and Cheney are calling you a c*cks*ck*r.

You have no credibility when the worst of the criminals proclaim their crimes, and you do nothing.

This isn’t, “looking forward, not backward,” it’s moral cowardice, it’s being a criminal yourself, because by being an accessory to the cover-up you are an accessory to the crime.

What’s more, much like Ford’s pardon of Nixon, your insistence on denying the rule of law will encourage further law-breaking in the future.

About F%$#ing Time!!!!

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The Department of Justice has opened up a criminal investigation of BP’s oil spill.

I don’t know if laws were broken, but we have an environmental disaster, and eleven people died, so there should have been an investigation as soon as the fires were put out.

Of course, prosecuting wrong-doers is looking back and not forward, so I understand why Eric Holder was so loathe to look at BP’s actions.

In the Obama administration, prosecution for things that occurred in the past is generally reserved for whistle-blowers who reveal lawbreaking by Bush and His Evil Minions™.

Remember the Laptop Spycam Cased in Lower Merion, PA

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I’ve been kind of remiss in all of this, but the final analysis is that someone working at the Lower Merion school district) there took thousands of pictures of minors without any justification. (Background here)

Basically, the school supplied laptops took thousands of pictures of children to whom the computers were assigned, including some that involved children in a state of partial undress, and the school district’s information systems coordinator took the 5th when questioned.

As always, there are emails:

Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into “a little LMSD soap opera,” a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.

“I know, I love it,” she is quoted as having replied.

What’s more, the behavior is so egregious that the school district’s insurer is balking at covering legal fees:

A New York insurer that issued a $1 million liability policy to the Lower Merion School District is balking at the school board’s request that it cover any legal costs and payments associated with the civil rights lawsuit challenging the district’s secret laptop tracking program.

In a suit filed in federal district court in Philadelphia, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance Company contends that none of the seven claims made by Harriton High School sophomore Blake Robbins in his invasion of privacy lawsuit amount to “personal injury” as defined in the coverage that the district bought last year.

So, a vice principal got a copy of some of the pictures, of a kid eating Mike & Ikes candy, which she thought were drugs, the school district scrambled to buy insurance, and the behavior seems to have been egregious enough that the insurer is claiming, albeit indirectly, that the Lower Merion SD’s claim is fraud.

This is pretty much what an independent investigation of this cluster f%$# determined too.

What is abundantly clear is that the taking of these pictures constituted an invasion of privacy, that there was a reasonable expectation that this created what is technically child porn, and that a significant number of school staff, both in and out of the Information Systems department, knew that this was going on.

No prosecutions yet, but there should be.

Why I Read Joe Steffen’s Blog

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If you know nothing of Maryland Politics, you don’t know who Joe Steffen is.

He’s a Republican political operative, formerly Bob Ehrlich’s aide, who is currently on the outs with the party, who is also known by his nickname, the “Prince of Darkness.”

I think of him as Lee Atwater writ on a state wide basis.

That being said, he tends to be rather more chatty about the comings and goings of Republican party politics in the state (In fact, it was imprudent postings on a BBS that were traced back to him which got him fired by “Bad Hair Bob” some years back), and so, despite my profound disagreements with him on issues of policy, I read his blog and I hear a lot of good inside baseball.

Case in point, he outs Republican party stalwart David Nawrocki for sending campaign emails from his work account.

It seems like a minor thing, until you realize that Nawrocki works for the Social Security Administration, which makes his email a criminal violation of the Hatch act.

Oopsie.

This is why I blogroll people and subscribe to their RSS feeds. It’s not because I agree with them, but because they can teach me things.

New Analysis of Kent State Massacre Shows Order to Fire

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Or more precisely, it shows an order to prepare to fire, which explains why the guardsmen wheeled in unison to turn on the demonstrators before opening fire:

“That’s clear as a bell,” Owen said at one point as he and Allen replayed the phrase “Prepare to fire” on two large wall-mounted loudspeakers.

The two audio engineers didn’t add anything to the recording or fundamentally alter its contents. Instead, they boosted what was present to make it easier to hear. “It’s like putting on eyeglasses,” Owen said.

The order to prepare to fire is, according to the experts who analyzed the tape, “As clear as a bell,” and there is an an “F” sound heard immediately before firing started, which might be the order to fire.

Of interest is the fact that he first 3 gunshots are probably from 45 caliber pistols, and the remainder from M1s, which would be consistent with whoever was in charge giving the order to fire, and firing himself, as sidearms would not have been carried by the grunts.

The enhanced audio is below, and I can hear, with ordinary hearing, “Guard,” and “Prepare to fire,” quite clearly.

Breaking: Former Blackwater Executives Indicted

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Gary Jackson, the former president of the mercenary firm Blackwater*, the former general counsel, executive vice-president, and two other formerly employees on for crimes related to gun-running.

Here’s hoping that someone in this group sings to the prosecutors, and maybe takes Eric Prince down, and maybe he’ll sing to prosecutors.

Of course, if he has dirt, it will be on Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, and nothing will happen, because Obama and Holder don’t want to look back.

*Now Xe

Sounds Awfully Familiar

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So, Allee Bautsch, a fundraiser for Bobby Jindal, the Governor, and Village Idiot, of Louisiana gets mugged in New Orleans, and “source close to Bautsch tells Yahoo! News that they were politically motivated.”

Note that official sources have made no such claims, but a conservative blogger seems to have put words in the mouth of a NOPD spokesman.

In any case, the Times Picayune has some decent coverage which appears to make it clear that no political epithets were involved, it was a bunch of drunken assholes.

As an FYI to those living under rocks in the past year, the pic is not of Ms. Bautsch,* but of Ashley Todd.

*Whose name, for some reason, I keep spelling Bat-sh%$.

Militia Arrests in Michigan

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It appears that the Hutaree, a right wing Christofascist militia group, and it should be noted one so crazy that it gave other Christofascist militia groups the heebee jeebees, has been the subject of raids by the FBI and the DHS, and at least 7 members were arrested.

One interesting bit here is that the other militia groups in Michigan have been falling all over themselves to help the authorities.

The indictment has been unsealed, and among the accusations are that they were intending to “levy war” against the United States, by killing law enforcement officers:

According to federal authorities, the group had identified a Michigan law enforcement officer as a potential target. Their idea was to kill that officer and when law enforcement officials from around the country came to the area for the funeral, they would attack the procession with improvised explosive devices and “explosively formed projectiles.” They hoped the attack would serve as a “catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the government.”

A scouting mission was planned for April and, if someone had stumbled upon the mission, the Hutaree decided they could be killed, according to the indictment.

I expect to see more of this.

Someone Needs to Go to Jail for a Very Long Time

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Photo H/t boing boing

And I don’t mean a sysop.

The Lower Merion School District has issued laptops to its high school students, and someone has been activating the webcams to spy on children.

This came to a head, when Harriton High School Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko confronted sophomore Blake Robbins about his suspicious consumption of Mike & Ike candies, they look like pills.

What’s more that Mr. Robbins experience appears not to be unique:

If the allegations of spying prove to be true, Blake may not be the only victim. Other students claim they’ve seen their webcam go live while off school grounds and worry they’ve been spied on too.

“Occasionally a green light would go on, on your computer which would kind of give you the feeling that somebody’s watching you,” Harriton High School student Drew Scheier told NBC Philadelphia Thursday.

Subpoenas have been issued by the US Attorney, and the FBI is investigating the matter as a potential criminal act.

If anyone activated those cameras, there was a possibility that the children who had them might have been in front of the camera, and that they might have been a state of undress, which makes one of the charges something along the lines of soliciting child pr0n.

It doesn’t matter whether it was a pedophile looking for young bodies, or someone looking for funny pix for the office Christmas party, anyone involved in this, and anyone who knew of this and did not go to police, should go to jail.