"All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." - - - Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860 Whatever the evil (poison) is, it must be presented in a mix of something good, or good for you. Rat poison is like this, 99.5% of the ingredients are tasty and nutritious for the rat (otherwise, they wouldn't eat it, would they?).  Only .5% (1/2 percent) is deadly.

of News, Current Events & Comment for April 2005  December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 the URL for this page can be found by returning to the previous page (if a contributing editor, wishes recognition, they should so indicate with their submission) Best printing w/a black only printer is accomplished when your settings are for "black text and black lines"

To save on the amount of forced emails that consume MEGA bytes of HD space,  these pages are created for your convenience. Pictures can be saved by right clicking then follow the yellow brick road, and original of reports can be located by available links in the articles and saved as you would other web pages. I am reminded of Dad's special brownies.  It is the same truth.

Amendment I

Congress shall subjugate all forms of religious expression to the will of the State, particularly Christianity, and draw an absolute wall between personal religious beliefs and any and all public expressions thereof.  All manner of speech is to be carefully monitored, filtered and censored to ensure that nothing offensive to the ruling class is communicated to or from any individual or form of media.  The people will be allowed to assemble only when and where the State directs.  Government at all levels will be immune to petitions and lawsuits of any sort brought by citizens.

Amendment II

Citizen militias are forbidden.  The carrying of small arms, when permitted, will be closely regulated by the State, with licensing and registration of all firearms required.  At no time shall any weapon of military significance be possessed by citizens except when citizens are pressed into the service of America's standing armed forces.

Amendment III

By Executive Order, soldiers may be quartered in any house,  with or without consent of the owner and at any time following a declaration of martial law.

Amendment IV

Citizens may be stopped at any time and any place and be required to produce identification and a justification for their presence.  Citizens and their possessions, including vehicles and houses, may be searched at any time and in any manner, including secretly, with or without justification and without warrants.  A right to privacy is retained exclusively to the State and its agents and in no case possessed by any private citizen.

Amendment V

Citizens may be held indefinitely, with or without charges being made, upon the direction of government officials.  Citizens may be tried repeatedly for the same offense, both by differing jurisdictions and by way of differing charges, both simultaneously and at different times and places.  Citizens may be required to testify against themselves, save only in specified circumstances and during actual public trials.  The property of any citizen may be seized upon the direction of government officials, with no review by any tribunal and with or without compensation.

Amendment VI

At no time shall any citizen accused of a criminal offense be entitled to a hearing or a trial, either public or private, except when government officials shall so determine.  At trial, no citizen shall be entitled to a jury, except when allowed by the judge presiding.  Citizens may be held indefinitely without charges and without being informed of the nature and charge, if any, of accusations against themselves.  Citizens shall have no right to confront witnesses against themselves or to compel the attendance of witnesses in their favor.  When allowed by government officials to retain counsel, citizens may hire only certain preapproved attorneys and, when allowed by the presiding judge, be appointed only attorneys beholden to the State.

Amendment VII

In no suits at common law, civil or otherwise, shall any party be entitled to a jury, except as allowed by the judge presiding.  When allowed, juries may determine only those facts allowed them by the judge, who, in every case, shall be the sole arbiter of applicable law.  All facts determined by juries may be rejected or affirmed, either by the judge presiding or upon appeal.

Amendment VIII

Bail of any amount may be prescribed and may be denied altogether.  Fines may be imposed and punishments inflicted at the direction of government officials, legislatures and judges presiding over trials.  No fine or punishment so imposed shall be deemed excessive, cruel or unusual.  Certain citizens, designated by government officials and legislatures, may summarily be executed without formal proceeding, by way of either abortion or euthanasia.  Citizens placed in prisons and jails may not be protected from other inmates.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the government.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the states by the Constitution, nor granted to citizens, are reserved to the Federal government.

[If you do not recognize the parody of the "Bill of Rights", then you are sorely lacking in knowledge of history and current events.  This list is from  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/bill.htm, which is an article written by Edgar J. Steele.  Goto the link to see the whole article.  --  Tribble]
 
 

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the Lawyer three months to track down.  After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply  (actual letter): "Upon review of your letter adjoining your client's loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we m ust point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin."

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows (actual letter):

"Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased, by the U.S., from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application.

For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Isabella.!  The good queen, Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus' expedition.

Now the Pope, as I'm sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back, to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it and the FHA. I hope you find God's original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our dxxx loan?"

The loan was approved.
 
 

The Flat Earth Report

The uSA by the numbers  - # 1???
by Michael Ventura   February 23, 2005
contributing editor to   - Alan

    No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in: The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
  # The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
  # Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
  # "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
  # Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
  # "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
  # "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
  # Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
  # Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
  # The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
  # "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
  # Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
  # "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
  # Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004). The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
  # Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
  # The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
  # "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
  # "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
  # "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
  # The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
  # U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
  # Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
  # Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
  # Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
  # As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
  # Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
  # One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
  # "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
  # "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
  # Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
  # "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
  # "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).

    No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

    The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

Banks Sued for Banking - Fraudulent Tactics
National Press Release - April 15, 2005

Contact:  John R. Dempsey
 E-Mail: classaction_cpa@hotmail.com
http://www.freewebs.com/classaction/
contributing editor to   - Jeanne

[While this is happening in Canada, it should be happening in the uSA.  Some have fought this issue in different ways and at different levels.  This is a whole world problem and at the source of most financial woes on the planet.  --  Tribble]

New Westminster, B.C., April 15, 2005.  John Ruiz Dempsey BSCr, LL.B, a criminologist and forensic litigation specialist filed a class action suit on behalf of the People of Canada alleging that financial institutions are engaged in illegal creation of money. The complaint filed Friday April 15, 2005 in the Supreme Court of British Columbia at New Westminster, alleges that all financial institutions who are in the business of lending money have engaged in a deliberate scheme to defraud the borrowers by lending non-existent money which are illegally created by the financial institutions out of “thin air.” Dempsey claims that  creation of money out of nothing is ultra vires these defendants’ charter or granted corporate power and therefore void and all monies loaned under false pretence contravenes the Criminal Code.  The suit which is the first of its kind ever filed in Canada which could involve millions of Canadians alleges that the contracts entered into between the People (“the borrowers”) and the financial institutions were void or voidable and have no force and effect due to anticipated breach and for non-disclosure of material facts. Dempsey says the transactions constitutes counterfeiting and money laundering in that the source of money, if money was indeed advanced by the defendants and deposited into the borrowers’ accounts, could not be traced, nor could not be explained or accounted for.

The suit names Envision Credit Union (“Envision”), a credit union; Laurentian Bank of Canada (“Laurentian Bank”), Royal Bank of Canada (“Royal Bank”), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (“CIBC”), Bank of Montreal (“BOM”), TD Canada Trust (“Canada Trust”) and Canadian Payment Association (“CPA”) as civil conspirators. The plaintiff in the lawsuit is seeking recovery of money and property that was lost by way of confiscation through illegal “debt” collection and foreclosure. The Plaintiff is also seeking for the return of the equities which rightfully belongs to the People of Canada, now being held by the defendant financial institutions as constructive trustees without color of right.

At all material times, these defendant banks and all of them have no legal standing to lend any money to borrowers, because: 1) these banks and credit unions did not have the money to lend, and therefore they did not have any capacity to enter into a binding contract; 2)  the defendants did not have any cash reserve, they are not legally permitted to lend their depositor’s or member’s money without expressed written authorization form the depositors, and: 3)  the defendants have no tangible assets of their own to lend and all their “assets” are “paper assets” which are mainly in the form of “receivables” created by them out of “thin air,” derived out of loans whereas the monies loaned out were also created out of thin air. Other than bookkeeping and computer entries, no money or substance of any value was loaned by the defendants to the Plaintiff. In all of the loan transactions entered into between the Plaintiff and the Defendants, the financial institutions did not bring any equity to any of the transaction. All the equities were provided by the borrowers. The practices of the defendant financial institutions alleged in the complaint starkly contrast the practices of responsible and ethical money lenders who actually lend real, tangible, legal tender cash money. The complaint alleges that the loan transactions are fraudulent because no value was ever imparted by the defendants to the Plaintiff; these defendants did not risk anything, nor lost anything and never would have lost anything under any circumstances and therefore no lien has been perfected according to law and equity against the Plaintiff. The foreclosure proceedings which comes as a result of the borrower defaulting on such fraudulent loans were carried out in bad faith by the defendant banks and credit unions, and as such, these foreclosures were in every respect unlawful acts of conversion and unlawful seizure of property without due process of law which always results in the unjust enrichment of the defendants. The suit alleges that the defendants utilize fraudulent banking practices whereby they deceive customers into believing that they are actually receiving “credit” or money when in fact no actual money is being loaned to their customers. However, the complaint describes a practice whereby there is realistically no money other than ledger or computer entries being loaned to the borrowers. Rather than real money being received by the borrowers, “electronic” or “digitally created money”, created out of nothing, at no cost to the financial institutions are entered as “loans” into their customers’ accounts. The borrowers are then required to pay criminal interest rates for the money they never received. The suit alleges that the defendants effectively turn consumers into virtual debt slaves, forcing them to pay for something they never received, and then seizing their properties if they can no longer pay the banks with real money.

There is no law in Canada that could remotely suggest that the defendant financial institutions have the legal right to create money out of nothing. Dempsey says: “only God has the power to create anything out of nothing.” The class action suit, the first and the biggest of its kind in Canada is intended to give the justice system the opportunity to prove itself to the People of Canada who is really in control or whether they would continue to allow itself to be used by the banks as a tool in their unlawful and fraudulent banking practices which always ends in the enslavement of the people and confiscation of the people’s properties.

Two other class action suits were filed by John Ruiz Dempsey against the banks. The first one was filed by Dempsey on behalf of Ian Dennis Gravlin of Calgary, Alberta and Pavel Darmantchev of Kelowna, B.C. versus the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. This matter is set for case management conference hearing on April 26, 2005. The Plaintiffs expects a stiff opposition from the defendant’s law firm. Madam Justice Garson is the case management judge assigned to the case.

A second class action suit was filed against MBNA CANADA BANK on behalf of Pavel Darmantchev of Kelowna, B.C., Ian Dennis Gravlin of Calgary, Alberta and Dena Alden of Vancouver, B.C.
 
 

[Reportedly, the 3 cops  (or 3 of the cops) who cuffed and arrested the 5 year old girl were trainees (rookies).  Maybe this is how we are training cops these day, by ruffing up and cuffing 5 year old girls.  The videos can be downloaded from this site at
http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/common/kindergarten cops in office.mov
 http://www.tellme1st.net/rockyview/common/kindergarten cops in office.mov

The 1st video is of the classroom and the 2nd video is the Principles office and the arrest.  These are good sized files and may take a bit of time to download.  You needQuicktimeto be able to play these files.

The claim is that the girl was hitting the adults and being a danger to the other children.  The video shows the girl raising her hand to block what she no doubt momentarily believed was about to be a hand attacking her, but nothing shows the girl being bad enough to call the Gestapo or be cuffed or arrested.

In typical cop fashion, when they arrive, the girl is sitting quietly and the cop says "you have to calm down now".  Duh, she was, at that moment.

Gone are the days of the parents reprimanding the children, we have cops to do this for us.  --  Tribble]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/21/Tampabay/Video_caputures_girl_.shtml

 A video camera was rolling March 14 at Fairmount Park Elementary School in St. Petersburg, where a 5-year-old kindergartener's tantrum escalated to an arrest. The situation culminated in city police handcuffing the girl and placing her in the back of a cruiser. Her mother later was allowed to take her home.

The mother's attorney acquired the tape and released it this week to the St. Petersburg Times. It shows officers moving to handcuff the girl during a brief period when she was sitting quietly in a chair. It shows educators, including assistant principal Nicole Dibenedetto, taking pains for about 30 minutes to gain the girl's cooperation. Why does the tape exist? Because the girl's teacher was videotaping her classroom as a self-improvement tool to be viewed later. When the girl began to act out, educators kept the camera on. They also brought it to Dibenedetto's office to tape the girl's behavior there.

http://kutv.com/topstories/topstories_story_113095117.html

A 5-year-old girl was handcuffed by police after she tore papers off a bulletin board and punched an assistant principal in kindergarten class, according to a video released by a lawyer for the child's mother.

The 30-minute tape shows the child appearing to calm down before three officers pinned her arms behind her back and put on handcuffs as she screamed, "No!"

The camera was rolling March 14 as part of a classroom self-improvement exercise at Fairmount Park Elementary, attorney John Trevena said.

Trevena, who provided the tape to the media this week, said he got it from police.

"The image itself will be seared into people's minds when you have three police officers bending a child over a table and forcibly handcuffing her," said Trevena, who represents the girl's mother, Inga Akins.

Police spokesman Bill Proffitt said an investigation into the matter would be complete in about two weeks and the findings would be made public.

http://www.wesh.com/news/4407473/detail.html?rss=orl&psp=news

An attorney says he plans legal action against St. Petersburg police officers who handcuffed an unruly 5-year-old girl after she acted up in her kindergarten class.

Three police officers handcuffed a 5-year-old girl after she acted out in her kindergarten class.
More Images

A video camera was rolling March 14 as part of a classroom self-improvement exercise. The camera captured images of the girl tearing papers off a bulletin board, climbing on a table and punching an assistant principal before police were called to Fairmount Park Elementary.

Then it shows the child appearing to calm down before three officers approach, pin her arms behind her back and put on handcuffs as she screamed, "No!"

Largo lawyer John Trevena let the news media see the tape this week after he got it from police.

The attorney said it's incomprehensible that the police officers would bend a child over a table and forcibly handcuff her.

more at ---
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15434931&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=girl-of-5-arrested-for-school-tantrum-name_page.html
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050423/140/fgy44.html
 
 

Learn the Truth of the Creation of a GeoPolitical Land Called "Israel" & Who Influences Whom
(study things like the "Balfour-Declaration")

More great images are available at   http://www.rense.com/wtcsplshpage.htm
 
 

Terrorism "includes the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
(28 CFR 0.85(l)) [that is a lower case "L"]
http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c79c3da727553b4485e0df28262c9285&rgn=div8&view=text&node=28:1.0.1.1.1.27.1.1&idno=28

Pursuant to the ill named "Patriot Act" (passed since 9/11/2001), it is now against the law to knowingly give money to a terrorist organization.

I N S I G H T

Quotations Regarding Taxes
contributing editor to   - Bob

INSIGHT ON TAXATION

++ "Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets." --Ronald Reagan
++ "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." --Voltaire
++ "Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer." --Ludwig von Mises
++ "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." --Winston Churchill
++ "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery." --Calvin Coolidge
++ "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." --Vladimir Lenin
++ "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall
++ "If, from the more wretched parts of theold world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." --Thomas Paine
++ "That most delicious of all privileges -- spending other people's money." --John Randolph of Roanoke
++ "To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder." --Benjamin Disraeli
++ "Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." --Alan Greenspan
++ "A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny." --Calvin Coolidge
++ "Virtually everything is under federal control nowadays except the federal budget." --Hermn E. Talmadge
++ "Before we give you billions more, we want to know what you've done with the trillion you've got." --Les Aspin
++ "The current tax code is a daily mugging." --Ronald Reagan
++ "The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." --Mark Twain
++ "Income taxes have made more liars out of the American people than golf." --Will Rogers

UPRIGHT ON TAXATION

++ "Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision." --Dick Armey
++ "As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom." --Lyn Nofziger
++ "Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, 'What about the other 90 percent of the people?'" --Thomas Sowell
++ "The Declaration of Independence, the words that launched our nation -- 1,300 words. The Bible, the word of God -- 773,000 words. The Tax Code, the words of politicians -- 7,000,000 words -- and growing!" --Steve Forbes
++ "The government taxes you when you bring home a paycheck. It taxes you when you make a phone call. It taxes you when you turn on a light. It taxes you when you sell a stock. It taxes you when you fill you car with gas. It taxes you when you ride a plane. It taxes you when you get married. Then it taxes you when you die. This is taxual insanity and it must end." --J. C. Watts, Jr.
++ "Today the percentage of taxpayers who rely on professional tax preparers is at an all-time high. The 67 percent of tax filers who do not itemize may think they avoid compliance costs, which include nagging uncertainty about whether one has properly complied with a tax code about the meaning of which experts differ. But everyone pays the cost of the tax system's vast drag on the economy." --George Will
++ "Give me a break -- They say taxes are inevitable ... like death. At least death doesn't come every year." --John Stossel

Restore the foundations!
 
 

I am from the gubment,  & am here to help you - NOT

Woman's Identity Stolen by Police
http://officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=5&id=22852
http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=3190770

["...the ploy was legal because a change in Ohio's law the previous year aimed at curbing identity theft."  So, I guess the police may break the law to enforce the law.  Wait, that is what they do all the time.  At the fed level, they will even murder the children to save the children.  The real threat to the masses of people is not from others within their ranks, but rather from the very poeple they BLINDLY and WRONGLY trust to protect them.  The news is repleat with exploits of cops and other gobment agents expressing no remorse for what they do.  They justify it by claiming they are "the good guys".  With friends and GOOD GUYS like these, we surely do not need any more enemys or bad guys.  --  Tribble]

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Supporters of Ohio's identity theft law are livid that state liquor control agents gave a college student the driver's license and Social Security number of another woman so she could pose as a stripper for a sting.

Investigators and Miami County Prosecutor Gary Nasal came up with nothing more than misdemeanor charges in the 2003 vice operation targeting the Total Xposure strip bar near Troy in western Ohio.

Nasal said the ploy was legal because a change in Ohio's law the previous year aimed at curbing identity theft. The law allows police to use a person's identity within the context of an investigation, he said.

And the tactics were justified because authorities managed to close the club, Nasal said.

"I don't apologize for the investigation and the conduct," he told The Columbus Dispatch for a story Sunday. "The result speaks for itself."

That doesn't sit well with a number of people, including the Republican state representative who sponsored the legislation and David Dawson, the father of the woman whose identity was used.

"I don't know much about law, but I would say that's just baloney," said Dawson, who lives part time in Columbus.

Dawson said his daughter lives in Cincinnati, has never been a stripper and didn't want to comment.

According to court records, Troy police paid Michelle Szuhay $100 per night over three months to strip at the club in Troy, a city of about 22,000 north of Dayton.

Szuhay, then a 22-year-old criminal justice major at the University of Dayton, worked as an intern with the U.S. Marshals Service and in a security post with the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. She had also stripped before, Nasal said.

Reached at her home near Cleveland, Szuhay declined to comment.

Each night Szuhay danced, the state agents drank beer and watched from seats inside the club, ostensibly looking for violations of liquor laws at the same time. Troy police watched, too, through an Internet account they set up using the identity of a dead man.

"Watching her dance was quite different than the other girls," Troy Capt. Chuck Adams said. "She was doing some things I think she was ashamed of."

Police said Szuhay befriended the Total Xposure staff, drinking with them after hours while using the driver's license of Dawson's daughter. Nasal and police eventually charged Szuhay with perjury and obstruction of justice. The charges were dropped, but Nasal said they would be refiled.

Rep. Jim Hughes of Columbus said his 2002 bill was supposed to help law enforcement fight identity theft.

"It was not intended for that, I can tell you that," Hughes said.

Stripped of common sense
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050413/OPINION02/504130361

LET'S hope that Ohio liquor enforcement officials have learned their lesson after disclosure of a Miami County sting operation in which authorities stole a woman's identity as part of a campaign to close a strip club.

It's true: State liquor agents, in cooperation with a county prosecutor, actually appropriated the driver's license and Social Security number of a living resident of Ohio and gave them to another woman, who used them to pose as a stripper to gather evidence to close down a sleazy strip club in the city of Troy in 2003.

We could call the stripper an undercover agent without any cover, but the potential consequences for the victim of the identity theft were not funny at all.

Even less amusing is the claim by the county prosecutor, Gary Nasal, that the sting operation was legal under a state law he says allows authorities to assume the identity of anyone during an investigation.

While Mr. Nasal pointedly refuses to apologize - shutting down the strip club justified the means, he says; the rest was just "a screw-up" - the state lawmaker who sponsored the statute in question has a decidedly different take.

"It was not intended for that, I can tell you that," Rep. Jim Hughes, of Columbus, told the Columbus Dispatch.

The law actually was meant to aid financial institutions in the capture of identity thieves, not to allow law enforcement officers to engage in identity theft for their own purposes.

As Jeff Gamso, the Toledo lawyer who is legal director of the Ohio branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, put it, "Anybody who gave it a moment's thought would know [lawmakers] didn't mean that."

But the General Assembly can't legislate common sense, and it is now up to the Department of Public Safety, which oversees the agents, to investigate and punish the individuals responsible.

Police defend use of undercover stripper
by Jamie Friar
http://www.ktvotv3.com/Global/story.asp?S=3192585&nav=1LFsYVYF

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Authorities in Ohio are defending their use of an undercover stripper. Police paid Michelle Szuhay, a criminal justice major at the University of Dayton, 100 dollars a night to strip at the Total Xposure bar near Troy. Police even gave her new I-D, using the identity of another young woman. Undercover state liquor control agents observed the club while Szuhay stripped, looking for liquor violations. Troy Police Captain Chuck Adams says Szuhay's stripping wasn't like the other dancers. He says she seemed ashamed of what she was doing. Szuhay has refused comment on her nights as a stripper for the law.
 
 

He sat silent for years, keeping a secret Americans were dying to hear. Not able to talk, there were days he cried uncontrollably, days he pounded his fists on the table like a madman, wondering if he could have prevented so many people from dying the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. For years, he tossed and turned, cursing himself for letting Mohammad Atta and Abdul-azziz Alomari, two of the alleged 19 hijackers, slip through his fingers at 5:40 a.m. on 9-11.

There’s an old saying that “a moment can change a lifetime.” And the moment that changed U.S. Airways ticket agent Michael Tuohey’s life was when he says he was face to face with the two purported hijackers, one being Atta, the man the federal government claims was the ringleader of
the entire operation.

But there are major discrepancies to the story that have yet to be explained by federal authorities and are still perplexing to Tuohey. The following relates the unanswered questions that form the basis of the government’s explanation of what happened on that day.

Tuohey’s brief encounter took place at the U.S. Airways ticket and baggage check-in at the airport in Portland, Maine. Working the ticket counter as he did most every morning for 37 years, he remembered two clean-shaven Arab-looking businessmen with tickets in hand approaching his workstation, both looking elegant and wearing suits and ties.

He remembers they were running late for their flight as they presented prepaid, one-way tickets from Portland to Boston and then onto Los Angeles on Flight 11. Looking back, he recalls nothing unusual about the alleged hijackers, saying both appeared calm, and the younger Alomari acting happy-go-lucky.

“Not like you’d expect from someone knowing he is going to die,” recalls Tuohey, now retired and living near Portland. “There are certain things in my job you are trained to look for that red-flags danger. One is adult males with a one-way ticket paying in cash.

“If they had paid in cash, we probably would have run them through security, checked their bags, and they might have never gotten on the flight,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many nights I have seen their faces in my dreams and how many nights I second-guessed myself for not stopping
them.”

Asked why he waited so long to tell his story, which came to public attention on national television as well as in an article in The Portland Press-Herald he added: “No one really ever asked. However, looking back, I probably wasn’t ready to face the public since I had asked the FBI to keep my name out of the papers. Thank God they kept their word.”

Behind the emotions and the human interest Tuohey’s story evokes, there is an ulterior motive behind those now questioning him about his encounter with Atta and Alomari. Those now asking questions are hoping his eyewitness accounts and recollections help clear up a controversy brewing over the only airport surveillance photo ever released of Atta and Alomari.

The government claims the surveillance photo released in the Portland airport conclusively shows them walking through the security clearance gate about 100 yards away from where Tuohey checked the pair’s tickets and bags. Critics, however, contend that the government altered the photos since they were not a clear match of other independent mug shots released of Atta and Alomari.

These same critics claim Atta and Alomari never boarded the 19-seat airplane. This, they claim, is just another small piece of the larger 9-11 government conspiracy puzzle.

And now since Tuohey was one of the last to see the alleged hijackers before the controversial surveillance photos were taken, his words are being dissected and interpreted, perhaps misinterpreted, with the obvious goal of trying to establish if Atta and Alomari actually boarded Flight 11.

“I know about the conspiracy theories and about the surveillance camera shots released, but all I can tell you is what I saw. I’ll tell you what I told the FBI agents when I was interviewed on 9-11,” said Tuohey. “I believe the two men in front of me on 9-11 were Atta and Alomari. I have no reason to believe otherwise. They looked like the same two guys that were in the mug shots shown to me by the FBI agents the same morning.”

As for details, Tuohey is very precise about the appearance, demeanor and attitudes of the alleged hijackers even after four years when memories fade and prior visions become cloudy.

“You don’t forget something like this,” he added. “I remember looking into Atta’s eyes like it was yesterday. He spoke good English, and the other one never spoke. Looking back, they appeared to have rehearsed the proper way to act and the proper things to say. Atta appeared to
understand everything I said.

“When I asked how many bags they were checking in, Atta simply said ‘two.’ He then asked for a one-stop boarding pass, which means he wouldn’t be again checked at Logan if I gave it to him,” he said.

“It was customary back then to give one-stop boarding passes on connector flights, but I never did it, because I figured I worked for U.S. Airways and not for American, which was their connector flight,” Tuohey added. “When I didn’t give it to him, he became noticeably agitated. But he
stopped short of making a scene and hurriedly left in order to catch his flight.”
One of the major inconsistencies between Tuohey’s description of their appearance and the surveillance photo released was that the two men in the photo were dressed casually in shirts without suits and ties, and there was no white shawl over Alomari’s head.

“They left my workstation in suits and ties. I didn’t see them take their coats off,” recalls Tuohey. “Atta left carrying a small duffel bag and the other had a very small bag. I guess they could have placed the jackets, ties and shawl in Atta’s bag. I just don’t know.”

Asked if a surveillance camera was posted by his workstation, he said he was told by the FBI on 9-11 that the video camera had been out of order for several weeks and no other pictures were available.

“I had worked there a long time and never knew the cameras were broken until I was told by the agents,” said Tuohey, adding they were installed by airport officials and not U.S. Airways.

To shed light on Tuohey’s vivid recollections, an independent 9-11 researcher, who prefers to remain anonymous due to prior government harassment, added these important details after numerous interviews and countless hours of researching the two hijackers’ movements in and around
Portland prior to 9-11:

“Atta and Alomari were conveniently captured on video cameras at three different locations in Portland the night before 9-11. Yet none of the stills taken from those locations, Jetport Gas, the ATM machine and Wal-Mart, were clear enough, as posted on the FBI web site, to confirm that they were the same two men whose FBI mug shots were displayed prominently on the major networks for weeks along with the other 17 hijackers.

“The Portland Press Herald article that came out back in October of 2001, the first publication to print the now famous Atta and Alomari surveillance photo, was also too fuzzy to make the confirmation that they were the same two men.

“When I interviewed ‘Jerry,’ the attendant at Jetport Gas in early 2002 who saw the hijackers, he told me that the ‘second one could not have been the Alomari the FBI showed on TV because he was too tall.’ He also told me that ‘they spoke such poor English that I had to give them directions to Wal-Mart three times.’ This clearly contradicts Tuohey’s statements that Atta spoke perfect English.

“The eyewitness quoted in the original Portland Press Herald article, who put Atta and Alomari on the 19-seater to Logan, was Jane Eisenberg of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. I interviewed Ms. Eisenberg around the same time as Jerry, and she told me when asked if she could confirm if the two men she saw on the 19-seater were the same two men the FBI was displaying all over the major networks, ‘No, I cannot.’

“And remember, it was the FBI who told Tuohey the camera he worked under every day hadn’t worked for some time. They knew that, but a guy who worked directly under it every day didn’t know?

“Also, a friend of Tuohey’s, who took that flight to Boston, was quoted as saying, he recalled seeing the two leaving the plane in Boston in suit coats and ties.

“Like Tuohey mentioned, Alomari also wore a shawl of some type that is missing in the famous photo. Although he assumed they must have placed these articles of clothing in their carry-on bags, his friend on the plane didn’t mention them dressing up again on the flight.

It should be mentioned that the short distance between Tuohey’s workstation and the security check-in, the size of Alomari’s carry-on piece and the fact that they were running late for the flight, make it very suspicious that they would first take off their jackets and ties before boarding.

Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

Terry Nichols Implicates FBI Informant in Bombing
Amazing New Evidence Emerges in Oklahoma Bombing
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/NICHOLS_IMPLICATES.htm
By Pat Shannan

[It would be nice to have more supporting info for this story, but as is, time will tell the truth.  --  Tribble]

 A recent raid on the one-time home of Terry Nichols has uncovered more evidence implicating federal agents in the bombing of  Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

A source has told AFP that bomb components discovered at the former home of the OKC bombing accomplice have been  linked to a federal informant who investigators believe lied during the trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed after his conviction in the bombing.

There are now serious allegations that the FBI, using an informer as a conduit, supplied McVeigh and Nichols with the blasting  components the two used to construct explosive devices, one of which may have been employed in the tragic Oklahoma City  bombing.

Although there was much recent media hoopla surrounding the March 31 FBI raid on Nichols’s vacant home in Herington,  Kan., the entire story, which is not being told by the mainstream media, suggests evidence of federal government complicity in  events leading up to the OKC tragedy.

While the media reported that previously undiscovered explosives were found on the raid at Nichols’s home, adding further fuel  to widespread public belief that Nichols—and McVeigh—were solely responsible for the OKC bombing, there’s much more  to the story than meets the eye.

In fact, AFP has learned that Nichols himself apparently leaked the information about the previously undiscovered cache in his  Kansas home.

Why Nichols did so is the real story behind the story that the media seems to be keeping under wraps. Nichols’s apparent goal  in sharing this information was to provide information not only to bust the man who allegedly supplied the material, an FBI  informant named Roger Moore—Nichols being certain that Moore’s fingerprints would be on the material—but also to expose  the FBI’s role in supplying Moore the material in the first place.

Those familiar with the details of the case say Nichols has evidently come to conclude—as have many independent  investigators—that he (Nichols) and McVeigh were being manipulated prior to the bombing by federal authorities in what was  intended to be a “sting” the feds would use as “proof” of their skill in tackling domestic “terrorist threats” from “radical right  wing extremists.”

However, it is believed, the sting went awry, possibly manipulated by others outside the loop, and the bombing occurred.

Now, in prison for life, Nichols evidently hopes to expose the role that Moore and his live-in girlfriend, Karen Anderson,  played in the events.

Moore and Anderson gave testimony in the federal trial, helping to convict Nichols. But independent investigators have said all  along—contradicting the FBI’s reliance on Moore and Anderson—that their testimony was obviously perjured.

The problem for Nichols, though, is that the record has shown that Moore was an admitted FBI informant as long as a decade  ago and may be still protected.

Moore, a Royal, Ark. gun dealer, claimed to have been robbed by McVeigh and Nichols of some 66 guns, cash and gold coins  in November 1994. The FBI and federal prosecutors claimed that the proceeds were used to finance the OKC operation.

However, the defense team undermined that theory by producing a signed motel receipt proving McVeigh was in Akron, Ohio,  on the date in question. This did not keep either the prosecutors or the news media from repeating the robbery story. It is still widely believed.

Moore, who used the alias “Bob Miller,” according to Nichols, later changed his story and said that it definitely was not  McVeigh and Nichols who had robbed him, but

he apparently was attempting to plant the opposite impression at the time. Townspeople remembered Moore going from  barroom to barbershop the week of the alleged robbery, describing McVeigh and asking if anyone had seen him in the area.

At the time, Moore was a confidential informant for two FBI agents named Ross and Hayes, out of the Hot Springs office. The  two were the same agents who discovered the “stolen” guns in a sack behind the house trailer of Michael Fortier in Kingman, Ariz., a few days after the bombing.

Fortier was later implicated in the conspiracy and is serving a 20-year sentence.

AFP has learned that the FBI had the information as early as March 1. Agents had received this information purportedly from  the mouth of Nichols through an oft used informant named Gregory Scarpa, who is a convicted mobster serving a long stretch with Nichols in Florence, Colo.

At first, FBI officials scoffed at the idea, but then sent a polygraph expert to the prison on March 4. He concluded that Scarpa  was lying.

Scarpa then called private investigators he had worked with in the past and, during a seven-hour meeting on March 10, showed  a letter in Nichols’s handwriting attesting to his claim.

Not trusting the FBI, the investigators worked through a contact, who had high-level Homeland Security connections.

Then, on March 11, Scarpa provided the authorities with the address of the house and detailed descriptions of the location of  the explosives.

Nichols had allegedly told Scarpa that he hid this second cache 10 years ago to be used as a follow-up to the Oklahoma City  blast.

On March 31, the FBI finally made its move—calling in the Topeka bomb squad, evacuating the immediate neighborhood, and  cordoning off a three-block area.

They worked through the night and into the next day.

The FBI would not confirm that its agents found anything, but mainstream news organizations were told by Oklahoma City’s  FBI office that explosive devices were found. What little surfaced in a period of predictable news frenzy, was that the FBI was embarrassed for not having found this  material 10 years ago.
 
 

The spaces below are so you don't see the  answers until you have made your answer.

OK, relax, clear your mind and... begin.             WELL MAYBE NOT THAT CLEAR!
 

  1. What do you put in a toaster?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Answer: "bread."  If you said "toast," then give up now and go do something  else.   Try not to hurt yourself.
 

 2. Say "silk" five times.   Now spell "silk."  What do cows drink?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Answer: Cows drink water. If you said "milk," please do not attempt the next question.   .
 

3. If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a green house made from?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass.   If you said "green bricks," what are you still doing here reading these questions?????
 

4. It's twenty years ago, and a plane is flying at 20,000 feet over  Germany.   (If you will recall, Germany at the time was politically divided into West Germany and East Germany.)  Anyway, during the flight, TWO of the engines fail.   The pilot, realizing that the last remaining engine is also failing, decides on a crash landing procedure.   Unfortunately the engine fails before he has time and the plane fatally crashes smack in the middle of "no man's land" between East Germany and West Germany.   Where would you  bury the survivors?   East Germany or West Germany or in "no man's land"?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Answer: SURVIVORS?!!?  Why bury survivors.

If you said ANYTHING else, you are a real dunce and you must NEVER try to rescue anyone from a plane crash.   Your efforts would not be appreciated.
 

  5. Use a calculator, if you think it will help - You are driving a bus from London to Milford Haven in Wales.   In London, 17 people get on the bus.  In Reading, six people get off the bus and nine people get on.  In Swindon, two people get off and four get on. In Cardiff, 11 people get off and 16 people get on. In Swansea, three people get off and five people get on. In Carmathen, six people get off and three get on. You then arrive at  Milford Haven. What was the name of the bus driver?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Answer: Oh, for crying out loud!
 
 
 
 

CAn you not remember your own name?  Reemember - the driver was YOU!!

----
It is wise not to argue with an idiot, others may not be able to tell the difference.
 
 

Man arrested, cuffed after using $2 bills contributing editor to   - Dan

[Several VERY GOOD comments regarding this incident are available at these links.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/08/2213237&from=rss
http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/GDP/archive/article43C4628B19774E5DA3D6C7497E747C21.asp
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/08/2213237&from=rss
No matter how you look at this, it was wrong.  --  Tribble]

A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police.

According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case.

Bolesta told the Sun: "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed, to have all those people looking on, to be cuffed to a pole – and to know you haven't done anything wrong. And me, with a brother, Joe, who spent 33 years on the city police force. It was humiliating."

After Best Buy personnel reportedly told Bolesta he would not be charged for the installation of a stereo in his son's car, he received a call from the store saying it was in fact charging him the fee. As a means of protest, Bolesta decided to pay the $114 bill using 57 crisp, new $2 bills.

As the owner of Capital City Student Tours, the Baltimore resident has a hearty supply of the uncommon currency. He often gives the bills to students who take his tours for meal money.

"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'"

Bolesta explained what happened when he presented the bills to the cashier at Best Buy Feb. 20.

"She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' I said, 'If you don't, I'm leaving. I've tried to pay my bill twice. You don't want these bills, you can sue me.' So she took the money – like she's doing me a favor."

Bolesta says the cashier marked each bill with a pen. Other store employees began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"

"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."

According to the Sun report, the police arrest report noted one employee noticed some smearing of ink on the bills. That's when the cops were called. One officer reportedly noticed the bills ran in sequential order.

Said Bolesta: "I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank.' I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'

"Meanwhile, everybody's looking at me. I've lived here 18 years. I'm hoping my kids don't walk in and see this. And I'm saying, 'I can't believe you're doing this. I'm paying with legal American money.'"

Bolesta was taken to the lockup, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called.

"At this point," he says, "I'm a mass murderer."

Secret Service agent Leigh Turner eventually arrived and declared the bills legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."

Commenting on the incident, Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey told the Sun: "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."
 
 
 

[This is a story from 1998, but still worth the review.  --  Tribble]

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Even though government agencies tried their best to stop him, an 18-year-old will vote for the first time in the Nov. 3 election.

Last July, Joshua Hansen, 18, went to register to vote. A few days later he received a letter in the mail from Kathryn Ferguson, registrar of voters of Clark County, Nevada, rejecting his application.

Hansen had refused to supply a Social Security number on his application and Ferguson rejected him as a voter.

Hansen says he does not have a Social Security number, driver's license, or government issued ID card. He says that he never will. He also refuses to pay income tax.

He defends his stands on these issues based on his study of the U.S. Constitution and his religious beliefs. He says he is willing to pay any price and will not give in to government pressure.

Hansen takes his right to vote seriously. So seriously that he took Ferguson to court to prove his point. With the help of his uncle, attorney Joel F. Hansen, he got the court to order Ferguson to permit him to vote.

He belongs to the First Christian Fellowship of Eternal Sovereignty, which he says is a political religion based on Christianity and the Constitution which people of all denominations may join.

"It's a fellowship of anybody who's Christian who really exercises their Christian beliefs within politics," explained Hansen in a phone interview with WorldNetDaily.

"The Social Security number was much like the mark of the beast talked about in the book of Revelation. One of the main reasons is that it, I mean you can't buy or sell without it, it's hard to do a lot of business without it. Have you ever tried to get a job without one, or voting or anything? A lot of the stuff talked about in the prophecy had come to life and I said, 'I don't want one of those.'

"Everything around Social Security is a lie. I don't want any of the benefits from it and I don't want to pay for it. The system's going bankrupt. Anything I pay for I'll never see anyway. It's blatantly unlawful and unconstitutional," explained Hansen.

Living without a Social Security number is a challenge, but not a major problem for Hansen. He has no bank account, works only for family members who will pay him "under the table," refuses to get a driver's license, and won't pay taxes. Recently he started his own Internet consulting business.

He just finished high school this year and says he has very few friends who believe as he does. He belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"Because of my political beliefs," says Hansen, "I have a lot of trouble getting along at church with a lot of my fellow members." The members of his church believe in "The Articles of Faith," a portion of it reads "We believe in . . . obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law."

"They told me that the law said I had to have a number," explains Hansen. "I said, 'This is kind of stupid because all these numbers are obtained through the identification I already have.' When you get a driver's license or an ID card here, basically you show them your birth certificate, and to prove residency you write down on a little paper what your address is and sign something that says you're not lying, which is all you do on a voter registration thing."

Ferguson didn't like Hansen's logic. She rejected his application to vote. Hansen contacted many elected officials for help. Some responded and some didn't, but none were of much help so he decided to take it to court.

"The Constitution of Nevada establishes who can vote," explained Hansen. "If you're an idiot, you're insane, and if you don't have residency you can't vote. That's it."

Hansen filed a Writ of Mandamus in the Clark County District Court. The purpose was to have the court order Ferguson to register Hansen so he can vote.

Nevada law states that the "County Clerk shall require a person to submit official identification as proof of residence and identity, such as a driver's license or other official document before registering him."

Hansen presented a diploma from high school and a birth certificate, but Ferguson demanded a Social Security card, driver's license, or a state ID card.

Hansen does not have those items and in his petition to the court his attorney stated, "therefore, he presented alternative identification to the Registrar of Voters, but his right to register to vote was refused and denied by the county registrar of voters."

Hansen was more surprised than anyone when his petition was granted by the court. "I didn't think I'd win," he said. On Oct. 19, the court ordered Ferguson to register Hansen to vote, and he now plans to cast his first ballot on Nov. 3.

This may be just the first of many battles ahead for Hansen. He does drive a car, and does not plan to get a license.

"The government has no right to regulate who can and cannot drive unless they have proven themselves to be a danger to the community and have been convicted by 12 informed jurors," wrote Hansen in an e-mail message to WorldNetDaily.

"Assuming that everyone is already a danger and by telling us we must have a license to drive is known better as 'prior restraint' and according to the U.S. Supreme Court is unconstitutional."

Hansen also objects to the current law which will implement a national ID card on Oct. 1, 2000. He says that Congress passed the law using illegal immigration control as the excuse.

"The even more ironic twist is that most of the illegal immigrants coming here are filtering from Mexico trying to reap the socialist benefits offered by the federal government. Welfare, government schools, health care, social security, etc. If you want to stop illegal immigration bring back the American way of work hard and succeed as opposed to show up and leech off the tax payers," wrote Hansen.

He concluded his e-mail by saying, "There is nothing they can ever do to make me surrender my personal freedom, nothing. I don't know a lot of people who exercise freedom to the point of fanaticism I do. I will not pay federal income tax, I will not be marked my their unconstitutional anti-Christ numbers. I will not take any of their socialist benefits. I will not bow before any bureaucracy. I will not surrender my God-given freedom to those bastards for any reason."
 
 

The Flat Earth Report

The World in 7 Images
contributing editor to   - Jeanne

Swimming in China	Dining in Hawaii
Feeding time in India	Tanning in Mexico
Industrial wash in Texas	Pet Washing in Thailand
Typical in uSA

Martha's Way	Maxine's Way
Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent ice cream drips.	Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone, for Pete's sake! You are probably lying on the couch with your feet up eating it, anyway!
To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.	Buy Hungry Jack mashed potato mix, keep it in the pantry for up to a year.
When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the outside of the cake.	Go to the bakery! They'll even decorate it for you.
If you accidentally oversalt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant "fix-me-up."	If you oversalt a dish while you are cooking, that's too bad. Please recite with me the real woman's motto: "I made it and you will eat it and I don't care how bad it tastes!"
Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in the refrigerator and it will keep for weeks.	Celery?    Never heard of it!
Brush some beaten egg white over pie crust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.	The Mrs. Smith frozen pie directions do not include brushing egg whites over the crust so I don't.
Cure for headaches: take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.	Take a lime, mix it with tequila, chill and drink!
If you have a problem opening jars, try using latex dishwashing gloves. They give a non-slip grip that makes opening jars easy.	Go ask that very cute neighbor if he can open it for you.
Don't throw out all that leftover wine. Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.	Leftover wine???????????           HELLO !!!!!!!

"These things I believe: That government should butt out.
-- That freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away.
-- That individual freedom demands individual responsibility.
-- That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.
-- That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid.
-- That political parties have become close to meaningless.
-- That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.
-- That government should provide for the national defense and work to insure domestic tranquility.
-- That foreign trade should be fair rather than free.
-- That America should be wary of foreign entanglements.
-- That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-- That guns do more than protect us from criminals; more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government.
-- That states are te bulwark of our freedom.
-- That states should have the right to secede from the Union.
-- That once a year we should hang someone in government as an example to his fellows."
== Lyn Nofziger  http://www.lynnofziger.com
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

The Power to Tax Involves the Power to Destroy
Consumption tax won't go down easily with D.C. lobbyists
http://www.suntimes.com/index/will.html
BY GEORGE WILL  -  March 31, 2005
contributing editor to   - Bob

[The problem with "replacing" the income tax with ANY other tax is that nothing insures the income tax would not return.  Moreover, most people are not required to pay an income tax and NONE of the income tax goes to support anything in this country.  So, why do you want to support any new tax to augment or replace a tax that you are not required to pay or that does not support anything in this country?  --  Tribble]

The power to tax involves, as Chief Justice John Marshall said, the power to destroy. So does the power of tax reform, which is one reason Rep. John Linder, a Georgia Republican, has a 133-page bill to replace 55,000 pages of tax rules.

His bill would abolish the IRS and the many billions of tax forms it sends out and receives. He would erase the federal income tax system -- personal and corporate income taxes, the regressive payroll tax and self-employment tax, capital gains, gift and estate taxes, the alternative minimum tax and the earned income tax credit -- and replace all that with a 23 percent national sales tax on personal consumption. That would not only sensitize consumers to the cost of government with every purchase, it would destroy K Street.

''K Street'' is shorthand for Washington's lawyer-lobbyist complex. It exists to complicate and defend the tax code, a cornucopia from which the political class pours benefits on constituencies. By replacing the income tax -- Linder had better repeal the 16th Amendment, to make sure the income tax stays gone -- everyone and all businesses would pay their taxes through economic choices, and K Street's intellectual capital, which consists of knowing how to game the tax code, would be radically depreciated.

Under his bill, he says, all goods, imported and domestic, would be treated equally at the checkout counter, and all taxpayers -- including upward of 50 million foreign visitors annually -- would pay ''as much as they choose, when they choose, by how they choose to spend.'' His bill untaxes the poor by including an advanced monthly rebate, for every household, equal to the sales tax on consumption of essential goods and services, as calculated by the government, up to the annually adjusted poverty level.

The percentage of taxpayers who rely on professional tax preparers is at an all-time high. The 67 percent of tax filers who do not itemize may think they avoid compliance costs, which include nagging uncertainty about whether one has properly complied with a tax code about the meaning of which experts differ. But everyone pays the cost of the tax system's vast drag on the economy.

Linder says Americans spend 7 billion hours a year filling out IRS forms and at least that much calculating the tax implications of business decisions. Economic growth suffers because corporate boards waste huge amounts of time on such calculations rather than making economically rational allocations of resources. Corporations do not pay payroll and income taxes and compliance costs, they collect them from consumers through prices. So the 23 percent consumption tax would allow taxpayers to stop paying the huge embedded cost of corporate taxation. Linder says the director of the Congressional Budget Office told him it costs individuals and businesses about $500 billion to remit $2 trillion to Washington. And studies show that it costs the average small business $724 to collect and remit $100.

In 1945, corporations paid more than one-third of government's revenues. Now they pay 11 percent because corporations, especially multinationals, are voluntary taxpayers. In a world increasingly without borders that block capital movements, corporations pay where the burden is lowest. Linder says $6 trillion in offshore accounts would have an incentive to come home under his plan.

Furthermore, by ending payroll and corporate taxes, America would become the only nation selling goods with no tax component -- such as Europe's value added tax -- in their prices. With no taxes on capital and labor, multinationals would, Linder thinks, stampede to locate here.

Critics argue that ending the income tax, with its deductibility of charitable contributions, would depress giving. Linder says: Piffle. In 1980, when the top personal income tax rate was 70 percent, a huge incentive for giving, individual charitable contributions were $40.7 billion. In 1986, the top rate was reduced to 28 percent, and by 1988 charitable giving was $86.7 billion. The lesson, says Linder, is that we give more money when we have more money.

When Speaker J. Dennis Hastert published a book last year, he was startled that interviewers were most interested in talking about Linder's bill, which then had 54 co-sponsors. This year Hastert added Linder to the Ways and Means Committee. Linder cheerfully says his bill would reduce Ways and Means to ''a B committee'' by ending the political fun of making the tax code ever more baroque for the benefit of K Street's clients. Bliss.
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

Why D You Want a So So Security #?
Net Aids Theft of Sensitive ID Data
By Jonathan Krim  -  The Washington Post  -  Monday 4 April 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040405Z.shtml
contributing editor to   - Dan

[Revelation 13:15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

If it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck it must be a duck.  The same holds true for anything that looks like, acts like, is used like a thing which you must have to buy and sell.  It should be something to avoid.

It does not matter if it is a So So # or some other number (national ID??), mark or image, it can be co-opted (stolen) for someone else purposes or to cause you harm.

But, if it is used to control or needed for buying or selling, then if for not reason than practice, it should be avoided.  Whether the So So # is a fulfillment of Revelation 13:17 may not be relevant, so long as you avoid it, and similar things, as practice for avoiding anything that resembles Revelation 13:17.

Think about it, those without a So So # do not have to be much concerned with identity theft or credit fraud.  --  Tribble]

Critical Social Security numbers widely available.

     Want someone else's Social Security number?

    It's $35 at www.secret-info.com. It's $45 at Iinfosearch.com, where users can also sign up for a report containing an individual's credit-card charges, as well as an e-mail with other "tips, secrets & spy info!" The Web site Gum-shoes.com promises that "if the information is out there, our licensed investigators can find it."

    Although Social Security numbers are one of the most powerful pieces of personal information an identity thief can possess, they remain widely available and inexpensive despite public outcry and the threat of a congressional crackdown after breaches at large information brokers.

    Brokers such as ChoicePoint Inc. and LexisNexis have pledged to restrict the availability of such data after personal information on more than 175,000 people was purloined from the two firms by identity thieves posing as legitimate businessmen.

    So far, neither those moves nor revelations of a series of breaches at major banks and universities has curbed a multi-tiered and sometimes shadowy marketplace of selling and re-selling personal data that is vulnerable to similar fraud.

    A simple Internet search yields more than a dozen Web sites offering an array of personal data.

    Some are run by small data brokers and other re-sellers. Others are run by private investigators, many of whom have complained that recently announced restrictions on the availability of Social Security numbers would hurt their ability to assist law-enforcement, track down dead-beat dads or locate witnesses.

    Yet with only scant checks to verify whether someone requesting data is legitimate, several sites sell full Social Security numbers, potentially contributing to an epidemic of identity theft or fraud that touched about 10 million Americans in the past year.

    No law prohibits the sale of Social Security numbers, but privacy experts and some government agencies have warned for years that the number is over-used and under-protected.

    Inaugurated in 1936, the nine-digit number was intended to match citizens to the retirement money they would eventually receive. Over time, the number became essential for getting or verifying credit and for employment background checks.

    Eventually, it became so deeply linked to personal data throughout the economy that it became a de-facto national identifier.

    "For identity thieves, it's their magic key . . . that gets into every door," said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University law school professor who specializes in privacy law. Getting a number can make it possible for criminals to access to bank or credit-card accounts, establish credit to make purchases, or find someone they wish to harm.

    Nonetheless, some insurance companies still use the Social Security number as an individual's account number, printing it on identification cards, leaving people vulnerable if wallets are stolen or lost. Medical offices routinely request Social Security numbers, often when initial appointments are made, and many universities use it as a student identification number.

    According to a recent study commissioned by Unisys Corp., a technology consulting company, about half of large financial institutions use Social Security numbers to verify the identities of customers who call in for services. Some even use it to identify customers as part of the log-in process when they want to access accounts via the Internet.

    So vital are Social Security numbers in this sea of information that ChoicePoint warned investors in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its business could suffer if the rules on distribution of Social Security numbers were tightened.

    The mass breaches of data at ChoicePoint and LexisNexis forced the companies to be proactive.

    Executives of both firms told Congress last month that for many of their non-law-enforcement clients, Social Security numbers would be truncated so that only five digits would appear on reports.

    But plenty of sources of the information still exist. Using an intermediary, The Washington Post was able to obtain the full Social Security number of a reporter within 24 hours from two of three online providers the intermediary contacted.

    Not all of the providers advertise Social Security numbers, and those that do promise to verify that the buyer has a legitimate reason for seeking the number, such as to complete tax forms of an employee or to find someone involved in a court action.

    The intermediary, a security consultant who helped the Federal Trade Commission identify illegal data sales in 1999, told the providers he needed the number for tax purposes. Two providers accepted that reason without question or requests for documentation. A third provider refused to provide Social Security numbers.

    Robert Douglas, the intermediary, operates the consulting firm PrivacyToday.com. Douglas, who chose the method of acquiring the numbers on his own, said he used the pretext of tax preparation because that would be a common trick used by an identity thief at this time of year.

    Michael Leighton, a North Carolina private investigator who operates secret-info.com, acknowledged that he did not request further documentation from Douglas. But he said the company verifies that a requester is calling from a land-based phone line with a valid address. Douglas said he used a cell phone.

    "We get on average between 30 and 75 requests a week," Leighton said. "We maybe do less than 10" because others did not have a valid reason for seeking a Social Security number.

    Leighton declined to say whether he received the data directly from a large data broker, or from other re-sellers.

    The other site that provided the reporter's number, USRecordsearch.com, does not advertise that it sells the numbers. But with the same explanation for why he wanted the data, Douglas received the reporter's full number.

    A principal of the Florida-based company did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

    Under a law that took effect in 2001, non-public data from financial records cannot be sold or transferred without giving individuals a chance to opt out. There are several exceptions, however, including employment checks, for tax filing, or to process a financial transaction.

    But the system relies on the honesty of the person seeking data, and the diligence of the person selling it.

    "Until Congress understands about the re-sale market here, they are not going be able to get a handle on this problem," Douglas said.

    Bruce Hulme, chairman of the legislative committee of the National Council of Investigation & Security Services, the largest investigators' trade group, said he could not condone investigators who make a side business out of indiscriminately selling data.

     "They should pull those Web sites down," he said. "They better know the client."

    Still, Hulme said private investigators have generally proved to be more careful stewards of private data than are information brokers. His organization is beginning a lobbying campaign to ensure that any new laws don't cut off private investigators' access to data they say they need.

    Several members of Congress are sponsoring new privacy legislation, including bills that would ban the sale of Social Security numbers without individuals' permission.

    Private investigators are clearly worried. In Internet chat groups, they exchange information on which data brokers are still selling full Social Security numbers, while bemoaning how they are being punished for the security lapses of the brokers.

    For their part, ChoicePoint and LexisNexis say they are "re-credentialing" all non-government clients. At ChoicePoint, those who use the Internet to request information were greeted with a pop-up notice indicating that privileges might be restored after the certification process was complete.

    ChoicePoint declined to provide an executive for an interview. Spokeswoman Kristen McCaughan said the company plans to give full access only to government or law-enforcement agencies, banks and insurance companies. She declined to say how many of its customers, including private investigators, would end up with restricted access.

    McCaughan said the company sells data to fewer than 15 other brokers or re-sellers, and that their access will now be subject to stricter guidelines.

    A LexisNexis spokesman said clients downgraded to restricted access included law firms, media and private investigators.

    The financial services industry argues that it has steadily reduced its reliance on the Social Security number for several years, but that the number's use has benefits for consumers.

    Nessa Feddis, senior federal counsel of the American Bankers Association, said that with so many numbers consumers already must remember, using Social Security numbers to verify accounts makes sense.

    If a credit-card is lost or stolen, she said, a consumer can quickly report the missing card to a bank by knowing his or her Social Security number. If the only accepted identifier was a separate account number, she said, the person would have to wait until he or she could get to a credit-card statement at home.

    Privacy experts argue that at the very least, institutions should employ multiple test questions when people call in, rather than just the Social Security number. And they point out that if the number is compromised, it is hard to limit the damage because new numbers are almost never issued.

    "The current system has the worst of all worlds," Solove said. "Anyone can easily find it [the Social Security number] out . . . It's used everywhere, and it's really hard to change if it falls in the wrong hands. How could you come up with a worse system?"
 
 

State's Supreme Court curbs drug dogs after U.S. Supreme Court let the dogs out.  http://rexcurry.net/drugdogsmain.html contributing editor to   - Alan Florida's Supreme Court let stand restrictions on drug dogs, after the U.S. Supreme Court loosened leashes.  http://rexcurry.net/drugdogsmain.html  The nation's top court let cops take dogs fishing for drugs in Illinois v Caballes.  Florida allows other avenues for relief in Florida v Matheson  http://rexcurry.net/drugdogsflorida.pdf (3-3-05) and the very libertarian decision at  http://rexcurry.net/drugdogs2dca.pdf (the appellate case below).   I am the attorney who argued the original motion to suppress for Matheson.

Drug dogs are covers for lies.  Here's how -

* Many errors by drug dogs cause lawyers to wonder if police carry drugs to plant scents so that drug dogs will alert.  A news item supports such speculation http://rexcurry.net/drugdogsframe.html   Drug laws are wrong in the first place, and in the second place drug laws cause more wrongdoing by government during enforcement.

*  Cops ask to search cars for no reason at all.  If a driver refuses consent, then police have no grounds to search.  Without consent, cops need "probable cause" to search.  Cops create cause with canines by claiming that the dogs alerted, and that provides the excuse cops need to force a search.  That is why some court opinions have turned drug dogs into props for lies, because the dogs provide probable cause to search against drivers who refuse to consent to search.  Cops will lie and cue a dog or say that a dog alerted, even if the dog didn't.   In that sense, it doesn't matter whether dogs are well-trained, because dogs are often props for lies to violate constitutional rights.

* Cops ask to search cars for no reason at all because they know that most Americans are too meek to say "no" because government schools have conditioned civilians to submit to government and have taught nothing about constitutional rights.  When drivers say "no," then some cops tell drivers that further action is inevitable because radio dispatch "has a drug dog on the way over."  It is often a lie to induce consent. There is no dog on the way.

*  If a dog is or is not "on the way," cops add additional lies to make drivers think that there will be a long wait and that the driver must stay until a dog arrives.  Cops rely on driver ignorance of the fact that evidence will be suppressed if drivers are detained longer than it takes to complete the traffic stop (e.g. write the ticket). Drivers are induced to consent to search to avoid a long wait based on lies.

* If a dog is enroute, cops let drivers think that they are obliged to stay even when the cop has no reason to detain drivers any longer. The cop's rationalization is that drivers loiter roadside with cops for no apparent reason or because drivers enjoy waiting for dog sniffs. Cops take advantage of drivers who are too stupid (or too meek) to ask if they are free to go, so that drivers "consent" to unwarranted detention by not leaving.

*  Cops lie about how long it is taking to write a ticket or to obtain a radio response on a driver's license or tag check.  If a dog is actually on the way, the cops write tickets very slowly, until the dog arrives.

* If a dog alerts and nothing is found, then cops will never record that as an error, but will claim that the dog detected lingering odors of contraband that were recently present.  Cops will testify that dogs never make mistakes, never have and never will, and that apparent errors are skillful detections of lingering (residual) odors of contraband.

Government's attitude toward your liberty is like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It is a reminder of the police-state tactics in the infamous Goose Creek videotape of the government school in South Carolina where children were forced to the floor in handcuffs and terrorized by dogs and cops with guns drawn.  Nothing was found.  http://rexcurry.net/police-state.html

In other government schools, classes have been interrupted and the children were marched out and lined up to be harassed by a dog.  It is a wonder why the kids weren't instructed to robotically chant the pledge of allegiance during the ordeals (and with the original straight-arm salute).  A breed that is used often as drug dogs is the German Sheppard. The police state resembles the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis).

As an attorney, I am often consulted by people victimized in searches by dogs trained to smell drugs. A drug dog's skills are often overestimated because people anthropomorphize dogs. A humanlike quality that dogs have is that they are natural libertarians with no interest in the war on drugs.

I am the attorney who argued the original motion to suppress in Florida v. Gary Alan Matheson, that curbed drug dogs in Florida.  http://rexcurry.net/drugdogs2dca.pdf

Matheson's case included oral argument before Florida's Supreme Court and the public has a rare opportunity to view a video of the justices' questions and the arguments linked at  http://www.wfsu.org/gavel2gavel/archives/05-01.html#JAN10

The Matheson case points out the lack of credibility of drug dogs and their employers.

No one can question a dog about whether the cop is lying or mistaken, and it is usually a waste of time to ask a cop the same types of questions.

Drug dogs are like humans in that they must be taught to approach peaceful people and search them, so that humans can be arrested, handcuffed and imprisoned for decades under modern prohibition. That is not an easy trick to teach a dog. It's easier to teach humans.

All drug dogs are "playing a game," as are some humans who support modern prohibition. The dogs are taught using dog toys. The toys are hidden with drugs to trick the dog into a game of searching for its toy by associating it with drug odors. Many errors can happen. There is always the danger that the dog will alert on anything that resembles or smells like its toy (towels, tennis balls, car carpet, etc.).

Cabelles holds that cops can take dogs fishing.  Caballes involved a "legitimate" traffic stop for speeding (that turned into 12 years for pot).  Dog-fishing in parking lots or on sidewalks should still be opposed.  Random drug checkpoints have already been found unconstitutional by the Court.

Here are the totalitarian police-state possibilities that the U.S. Supreme Court opened up: Imagine uniformed law enforcement marching through your neighborhood with German Shepards on leashes sniffing anything and everything -your car and every car parked on the street, the air emanating from your home, you walking outside.  Imagine the same thing at your place of business or where you work, police marching German Shepards through the parking lot, car to car, for no reason other than a fishing expedition and entering any vehicle where there is an alleged alert.  Imagine the same thing in any shopping area or a downtown street area, a festival, a bar's parking lot, uniformed agents with German Shepards sniffing pedestrians and their bags and cars and anything and stopping anyone on an alleged alert and going through their purses, persons, cars, etc, right there.

Dogs are used for human lies. Police cannot search a car without probable cause or consent, and an easy way to claim probable cause is to claim that a dog alerted.  It doesn't matter whether a dog is accurate.  The dog is just present as cover-up to testalie in court. Dogs are perfect pets for perjury.  If contraband is found then the arrest will probably stand.   If nothing is found, the driver leaves shaken, but I know of no case where the driver even complained or sued.

Drug dogs turn simple traffic stops into fishing expeditions for drug busts. Driver's are asked for consent to search without any suspicion at all.  When drivers refuse consent, an officer threatens to bring a dog in order to intimidate drivers into consenting to avoid a wait.  Persistent refusal prompts cops to radio for a dog, and then claim that the dog alerted.

Any case that lacks a videotape of a dog's actions on the scene should result in  rejection of testimony that the dog alerted, or did so without cueing.

Drugs dogs often bark up the wrong tree. Motions to suppress should argue that the dog's training and history show false positives and problems that make the dog unreliable for searches. In Cabelles, Justices Souter and Ginsburg dissented, pointing to studies showing that drug dogs frequently return false positives (12.5-60% of the time, according to one study).

Moreso than in humans, the libertarianism of drug-dogs always resurfaces, and must be suppressed constantly by law enforcement retraining. Without constant retraining the dogs lose interest and stop performing accurately. Record-keeping is a must to know whether dogs are guessing, or seeing cues. Only with record keeping and independent testing can any judge draw any conclusion from the dogs game playing out on the street.

Dogs approximate humans in that they go along with the system to avoid disapproval from peers (teachers, school students, friends, etc., in the case of humans). Drug dogs do not want disapproval from their police handlers. Dogs play the game, and will try to guess and read cues, because they are searching for approval, not for drugs.

Dogs match humans in that if you influence them enough they will do anything -- like passing the 18th amendment. In modern prohibition, some dogs are slow learners as are some humans.  The government's war on drugs is a dog chasing its own tail.

Let's liberate drug dogs. Return them to protecting people from violence and theft, which is also the only proper purpose of law enforcement. Dogs should be man's best friend, not man's persecutor. Drug dogs are natural libertarians.

Rex Curry Attorney at Law in Tampa, FL. He can be reached via email at:  lawyer (at) rexcurry.net
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

The "I'm Offended" Germ Seems to have Infected Everyone
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin227.htm
By Pastor Chuck Baldwin, April 2, 2005
contributing editor to   - Alan

Never in my life have I witnessed a generation of people so easily offended. It's an epidemic! Furthermore, the "I'm offended" disease has infected virtually everyone without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, or political persuasion. Everyone, it seems, has come down with the malady.

In fact, some people seem to make their living at being offended. While we argue the varying degrees of victimization on the part of those who have suffered loss at the hands of violent criminals, one thing seems to be accepted without argument: no one has the right to offend anybody!

For example, Blacks are offended by the Confederate Flag. Whites are offended if someone suggests there might be inequities in court sentences for black people. Hispanics are offended if they are asked to speak English. Women are offended if someone suggests they are nature's nurturers. At the same time, men are offended if they are told it is their job to discipline their children.

Neither does one's religion insulate them from the "I'm offended" sickness. Evangelicals are offended at Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ" because Mel is a Roman Catholic. Catholics are offended when one (rightly) credits the founding of America by mostly Christian Protestants. Mormons are offended when people refuse to accept their doctrines into the mainstream of Christianity. Not to be outdone, Evangelicals are offended when Mormons do a better job at evangelizing than they do.

Furthermore, liberals and conservatives suffer equally from the "I'm offended" plague. Liberals are offended if anyone dares suggest that women do not have a constitutional right to kill their unborn babies. Meanwhile, conservatives are offended if anyone dares suggest that there is no constitutional right for a U.S. President to attack and kill people in other countries absent a Declaration of War from Congress and legitimate threat by that country against America.

Neither does age seem to make a difference. Elderly people are offended if someone says they drive too slow and need to get out of the passing lane. All the while, young people are offended if they are told their music is too loud and that normal people really don't want to see their underwear hanging out.

When it comes to politicians, the only time conservatives or liberals seem to get upset with misconduct or maleficence of those in office is when it is committed by the other party's leaders. In fact, the only time they are not offended is when it is their own leaders who are guilty.

It is also more than interesting that this writer has received "I'm offended" rebukes from both liberals and conservatives, whites and blacks, Mormons and Evangelicals, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, as well as national leaders from among the secular left and from the Religious Right. I guess you could say that while I'm not personally infected with the "I'm offended" virus, I appear to be a carrier.
 
 

Disclosure that the Chicago, Ill. Police department has apparently been "experimenting" with tiny microphones in unmarked police cars that can pick up nearby conversations on the street is yet another civil rights slap in the face in a city where law-abiding citizens have already been effectively stripped of their gun rights.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) today agreed with Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois that there is a genuine concern about Fourth Amendment violations if such conversations would be recorded without warrants.

"In Chicago," said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron, "they have already effectively trashed the Second Amendment and apparently figure that since they've gotten away with it, they can also trash the Fourth. Even the Chicago Sun Times properly alluded to the ‘Big Brother' aspect of this equipment.

"If thi were strictly monitored and specifically targeted at criminals engaged in criminal activity," Waldron continued, "then one might see some justification for having these microphones installed. However, the potential for abuse is overwhelming. If the police have already been ‘experimenting' with these microphones as the newspaper reported, we're wondering just what kinds of conversations may have already been recorded. We think any such recordings must be made public, and transcripts should be provided to every news agency in the city."

Waldron said the presence of microphones is a separate issue from the use of surveillance cameras mounted in patrol vehicles. Those cameras clearly were installed for officer safety and liability protection, and are widely used in law enforcement across the country.

"There is a far greater civil rights issue here," Waldron stated. "But that is probably of no concern to the City of Chicago. This is the sort of thing gun rights activists have long warned about Once government gets in the habit of trampling one civil right – firearms ownership – then it becomes that much easier to tread elsewhere. It is an insidious habit for any branch of government to nibble away at civil rights, because that kind of an appetite always grows, it never shrinks."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

Citizens Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 N.E. Tenth Place
Bellevue, WA  98005
 
 

I am from the gubment,  & am here to help you - NOT

Be Quiet, Do Not Say Anything and SHUTUP
What NOT to do - When Federal Agents Come Knocking
A Treatise Carl F. Worden
http://www.sierratimes.com/05/03/27/carlworden.htm
contributing editor to   - Dan

[George Gordon may have coined the phrase at the heading of this article.  Many sheeple just can not help going Baaaaaa, and they will spill their guts.  Some of us exhibit a lot of restraint and say very little, and some of us try to test the gubment agents by saying a few things to see what reactions we get.  But the message is still time tested, SHUTUP.  If you have not been following the Larken Rose case, and are interested, you may visit his websites to learn more.
larken@taxableincome.net
http://theft-by-deception.com/challenge.asp
http://www.861.info
http://www.theft-by-deception.com
    --  Tribble]

This treatise is in no way meant as a criticism of Larken Rose or his legal position on the Tax Code. But it is an excellent example of why a citizen of today should not cooperate in any way with law enforcement officers of any kind, and in particular, with federal agents. It doesn't matter if they are asking for your help as a possible witness or just for information -- or they consider you a suspect of some kind. Because so many people try to talk their way out of an initial law enforcement contact situation, they go to prison. Most cops will admit that 70% of the people in prison today wouldn't be there if they'd just kept their mouths shut.

Best example: Martha Stewart. Stewart was not convicted of stock trading fraud; she was convicted of lying to a federal investigator -- which is a federal crime.

How do you avoid such a charge? Don't talk to a federal investigator of any kind, for any reason, ever, on or off the record. It's always on the record. Worden's Rule 1: Stick your tongue between your teeth and bite down until the blood flows. Do not admit to anything. Especially, do not deny anything. Remain mute, no matter how long they try to drag the interview out. Even if an attorney representing you is present, say nothing unless in the privacy of his/her office.

They will show you evidence that you did something. You will be tempted beyond most human ability to resist to explain that evidence away. Don't do it. Don't agree to any kind of test, be it polygraph, blood test or even taking your fingerprints unless they force it upon you, but through it all, remain silent.

They will tell you somebody said something incriminating about you, or that you were somewhere or that they said you were doing something or did something. Remain silent. Do not admit to or deny anything. If they ask you how you're feeling, say nothing. If they ask you if it's raining and you know it is coming down like Noah's Flood, say nothing.

Worden's Rule 2: Force the law enforcement agents to work only with the evidence they have. Do not allow your attorney or yourself to provide them with any defense you plan to use if you are charged with a crime unless and until you are in court and testifying to a jury -- if that is necessary or wise at all. That way, they have to guess what defense you plan to use, which makes it much more difficult for a prosecutor to prepare the case they have against you.

Never speak to anyone, especially a cellmate in jail, about your case and how innocent or guilty you are. Remain absolutely silent on the matter, and especially during telephone conversations. Law enforcement officers largely depend on suspects to try to talk their way out of a situation so they don't have to spend time in jail. When they do talk, everything they say gives the law enforcement agent places to go, places to look, people to talk to, etc., and that additional input often is what lands the suspect in prison, guilty or not. Law enforcement agents will tell you they are only trying to eliminate you as a suspect. You will be tempted to help them. Don't do it. Stay absolutely silent no matter how guilty they will say it makes you look.

Wordens Rule 3: If you are charged with a crime, the only time it counts for you to offer an explanation is in front of the judge or jury hearing your case -- and in most cases like that, it is still better you don't testify at all because when you do you can be cross-examined by the prosecution.

Worden's Rule 4: Never allow your attorney or yourself to waive your right to a speedy trial. Prosecutors and investigators use the time you are waiting for trial to develop more evidence against you. By demanding your constitutional right to a speedy trial, you shorten the time they have to build a stronger case against you. You reduce the time a witness might be identified or located to testify against you. If they proceed with prosecuting you with the shoddy evidence they have and you are acquitted, they cannot try you again for the same crime, even if you walk out of the courthouse after an acquittal and admit to the press you did it!

Look at what happened to Scott Peterson. Not only did he talk to the Modesto cops, he allowed interviews with reporters that were later used to paint him a liar. Had Peterson remained absolutely silent, no matter how guilty it might have made him look, a lot of the "liar" evidence used to convict him would never have been made available to the prosecution and the jury. Getting back to the feds: The federal government made it a crime to merely lie to a federal investigator.

For that reason and that reason alone, don't talk to a federal investigator, ever, about anything. They enacted and enforce that law, so it is best for every citizen not to speak to a federal investigator about anything, ever. They can't charge you with lying to them if you haven't spoken to them.

Get it?

Now read Larken's article.
 

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