Christianists to Pick Up Artists

Conservatives cite ‘neutrality’ memo as proof of military’s hostility to Christianity

A conservative group claims the United States Air Force violated religious freedom by advising officials not to discriminate against subordinates based on their religion. 

The Family Research Council on Tuesday released a report on religious freedom in the United States Armed Forces, which concluded the Obama administration was cracking down on Christianity. 

The report stated that high-level officers within the Air Force were cooperating with “anti-Christian activists” like attorney Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. As evidence, the report compiled a list of incidence which purportedly showed religious freedoms being violated.

Tasers kill. The police know this and keep on using them.  So I guess they're just letting the lawsuits pile up?

Edward Snowden: US officials are preventing me claiming asylum

Arizona being Arizona... APS seeks higher bills for new solar customers

The Cheney presidency was where the NSA spying started.  Before 9/11.  No surprise there...

We are not Trayvon Martin.

Republican pick up lines to woo women voters....

It will have so many uses...

I'm sure the military and the police will think about spying, tracking, and searching, but wouldn't it be cool if we could land one of these on the moon or Mars?

*edit note.... Ole Phat Stu has kindly reminded me there is NO ATMOSPHERE on the Moon and Mars, so no flying devices that need air to move...

*My astronomy prof would be embarrassed...

Ok then.

Report: Saudi Arabia Captures Israeli Vulture For Being Mossad Spy

Igor's revenge

Murray Waas reports on the website of the Atlantic that Alberto Gonzales is now telling investigators that he was being personally directed by President Bush when, as White House counsel, Gonzales made a much-discussed late-night visit in 2004 to the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, in order to get Ashcroft to certify that the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program was legal.

I guess Abu Gonzales didn't like being thrown under the bus...

Excellent FISA flowcharts

Explaining just how much we've lost.

Excellent overview of FISA

Part one, part two and part three excellently well explained by David Kris for Balkinization.

The ACLU. Facts and myths.

You might want to keep your cell phone in the fridge...

Or between some lead bars...

Post hijacked from Bruce Schneier from Schneier On Security:

A service called World Tracker lets you use data from cell phone towers and GPS systems to pinpoint anyone’s exact whereabouts, any time — as long as they’ve got their phone on them.

All you have to do is log on to the web site and enter the target phone number. The site sends a single text message to the phone that requires one response for confirmation. Once the response is sent, you are locked in to their location and can track them step-by-step. The response is only required the first time the phone is contacted, so you can imagine how easily it could be handled without the phone’s owner even knowing.

Once connected, the service shows you the exact location of the phone by the minute, conveniently pinpointed on a Google Map. So far, the service is only available in the UK, but the company has indicated plans to expand its service to other countries soon.

[...]

Dozens of programs are available that’ll turn any cell phone into a high-tech, long-range listening device. And the scariest part? They run virtually undetectable to the average eye.

Take, for example, Flexispy. The service promises to let you “catch cheating wives or cheating husbands” and even “bug meeting rooms.” Its tools use a phone’s microphone to let you hear essentially any conversations within earshot. Once the program is installed, all you have to do is dial a number to tap into the phone’s mic and hear everything going on. The phone won’t even ring, and its owner will have no idea you are virtually there at his side.

Restore FISA

Glenn Greenwald and Firedoglake have a petition. Sign it.

What hangs in the balance with the FISA bill

As explained by the inestimable Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors.

You know those rightwing twits down the street?

Avendon Carol of The Sideshow suggests:

...it might be worthwhile to have a bunch of these to leave on people's doors when they're out. Might make 'em think.

Click for bigger pic. It's almost too true to be funny.

How to destroy trust and alienate your children

By spying on them:

This company shows off the tools parents can use to spy on their children. You can get a keylogger that looks like just an extension to the USB keyboard. You can take their SIM card, transfer all the data to your computer, and then browse through all their calls and text messages using special software. You can install GPS in their shoes. You can use a handy little kit that easily and quickly detects the presence of semen on a surface.

It's not just about 'protecting' the children though, this stuff can be used against you as well. Good to know about it.

My daughter has a friend whose parents act like this. Of course her siblings and she use other teen's phones to make the illicit phone calls and use other people's computers to chat with creeps. And it is mainly because of the spying and the mistrust that they do it. Their parents also talk at their kids rather than with them, so in the end, more spy equipment will not help the parents connect.

Excellent overview of the warrantless spying on Americans

By the eye of Sauron. The blog Amygdala explains.



Benjamin Franklin (1706–90): Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Snuggly the Security Bear

Has teeth...
Via Steve Bates at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat, Mark Fiore explains what NSA can do now with the new FISA update.

Don't sign anything, Mr. Brown!

And don't do anything incriminating that can be used as blackmail while you are at Camp David!

PHILADELPHIA - The White House has confirmed that U.S. President George W. Bush will be meeting Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Camp David next week.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush and Brown "will focus on continuing to move forward on issues of shared interests and concerns." The meeting follows the installation of Brown as the new British Prime Minster last month.

He took over from Tony Blair who had pursued a close relationship with the US and had co-operated in every aspect of foreign policy issues. However Brown has indicated that he would not be an 'yes" man to the US and his main aim is to win back voters to the Labour fold.

With all that NSA spying, God knows what Bush and Cheney had on Blair....

Fred Thompson was a mole for Nixon

The Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON -- The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

[snip]

John Dean , Nixon's former White House counsel, who was a central witness at the hearings, said he believed that Baker and Thompson were anything but impartial players. "I knew that Thompson would be Baker's man, trying to protect Nixon," Dean said in an interview.

Down With Tyranny and Crooks and Liars has more on the wonderfulness of Fred Thompson.

But remember, he's all manly and stuff!

The government demanding that you spy on your neighbor is so American

And you get to shut up about it. Via Steve Bates, War and Piece reviews an anonymous report of one who suffers under an FBI gag order:

There've been 140,000 such gag orders in this country with almost no terrorism prosecutions to show for the abuses, and no probable cause established. That is just over one for every 30,000 Americans, man woman and child. Is the gag order so the FBI can avoid accountability? So the public is not the wiser for the abuses taking place? Where are the folks with honor inside the FBI raising concerns about the abuses? Is Congress going to mandate DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine to establish whether such abuses were committed intentionally or not in the next round?

Why we always will need checks and balances

Always.

The New York Times:

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

Chet at Vanity Press notes:

You know, there's something that most civilized democracies figured out a while ago: if you give the government and its various branches unlimited power with no oversight, then the government will abuse that power. Not might abuse it -- will abuse it.

Any creep with a digital camera

Can invade a woman's privacy without her even knowing:

...it's not only upset ex-boyfriends or other vengeful characters that are keeping prosecutors busy. Peeping Toms who film women secretly are also highly active. They use camera phones or tiny digital cameras to provide the sex-hungry Internet community with fresh voyeuristic material around the clock: footage of changing rooms, public toilets, swimming pools or tanning booths.

In 2004, Google listed about 4 million sites featuring the search words "upskirt" and "downblouse." Now the number has climbed to almost 8 million. Some links lead to popular websites like MyVideo, accessed by millions of people every day. "There are countless women out there who have no idea they're being presented nude or semi-naked on such Internet sites," says Maeser from Bavaria's Office of Criminal Investigation.

It's often difficult enough for the investigators to convict the perpetrators if they happen to catch them. But preventing the further circulation of such images is entirely impossible. If they appeal to Internet users, they're downloaded hundreds of times within just a few hours, and then traded and passed on. And so lawyer Tobias Strömer can only advise his clients to get used to the idea of featuring in a permanent online peep show: "This will never end for you," he says.

And it is so easy to do.

US behind explosions in Iran?

The Left Coaster:

For those concerned about a possible war with Iran should turn up their worry-dials two notches. This morning’s news has a couple dark clouds.

IED’s Inside Iran - If you have not been reading foreign press, you might have missed two explosions this past week in Iran. One of them killed 11 and injured 31 members of the Revolutionary Guard, and the other was near a school.

Although the devices were not IED’s like those found in Iraq, the explosions were in the area a group sponsored by the United States may be operating. The area in Iran is Sistan-Baluchestan near the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sy Hersh and a number of other reporters have said this is the area in which the MEK (or the mouthful name Mujahedin-e Khalq) have been operating.

This morning a Chinese newswire is reporting that the Iranians have evidence linking the attacks to the United States.

Then this (unconfirmed report) that a US spy plane was shot down by Iranians.

And then this: Iran holding third military maneuvers in four weeks.

For the NSA, FBI, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet

skippy the bush kangaroo likes "the government disclaimer that lambert puts at the bottom of all his emails":

(confidential to all us government personnel to whom this private letter is not addressed and who are reading it in the absence of a specific search warrant: you are violating the law and you are co-conspiring to subvert the constitution that you are sworn to defend.

you can either refuse to commit this crime, or you can expect to suffer criminal sanctions in the future, when constitutional government has been restored to the united states of america. i do not envy you for having to make this difficult choice, but i urge you to make it wisely.)