Techdirt.  So, even though the Department of Justice believes the DEA’s massive, secretive, wiretapping operation in California is probably illegal, they still want to use some of those wiretaps in their cases.

Here’s the detailed story of the DEA’s massive wiretapping dragnet.

Physicians Face Moral Dilemma In Conscription on War on Drugs.  Painkiller crackdown is putting doctors in a tight spot.

U.S. Marines Enter Ground Combat in Iraq to Defend Oil Fields

Airline pilots are being worked to death, says whistleblower

Barely Half of Student Loans Are Being Repaid

Can a Single Injection Save Soldiers Suffering From PTSD?

Why Socialism Always Fails

Two Thirds of Patients’ Hospital Debt Unpaid

Ghost galaxies are 99.96% dark matter

Why do sunbathers live longer than sun dodgers?

From the wonderful Jeffrey Tucker at FEE.  The chief goal of the politicians is to solidify and increase their power, not help their citizens.  They work to divide the citizens against each other, lest they unify against the bureaucrats getting rich off their labor.  Pretty honest, Disney.

American Conservative and Russia Today

Over $500 billion for 2017, ostensibly to deter “Russian aggression”.

Tech dirt.  When in doubt, make an arrest?

Institute for Justice.  Unsurprisingly, when cops see large amounts of cash, they’ll take it.  It’s just too easy for them to keep it once they’ve got it, even if no criminal charges are ever filed.

How terrorism is deforming the face of Europe, The Week

Relevant chunks: “But most frightening is the way Europe is changing after each attack. When security is threatened, liberty goes soon afterward. After the November attack in Paris, France’s own military deployed in French streets, acting as a semi-permanent guard to synagogues and other Jewish institutions. The former certainties of continental politics are also changing. The Schengen Agreement that allows Europeans free travel across EU borders, perhaps the most tangible way Europeans enjoy modern Europe’s peace, is now threatened by the upheaval from terrorism…

…Some attempts to deal with the problems caused by unassimilated migrants become a sick farce. After what seemed like a night of coordinated mass sexual assault on New Year’s Eve, Cologne Mayor Henrietta Recker, an advocate for the cause of refugee resettlement in Europe, advised women to “stick together in groups, don’t get split up, even if you’re in a party mood.” She also said that perhaps European women needed a “code of conduct” that indicates they are unavailable to be groped by strangers in the street. At the very moment when the defining feature of Western life — freedom to show one’s face in public — was temporarily occluded, a political leader was making a backhanded tribute to Sharia law, suggesting that unaccompanied or “frisky” women would meet danger.”

The Intercept.  

Yikes.  Daily Mail

The U.S. military bombed a humanitarian hospital last year in Afghanistan, killing 42 innocent people in the hospital.  Yet how much have you actually heard about it?  Now, how much have you heard about the Brussels attack?  The answer of why lies in what the political implications are of each attack.  Brussels elevates the Warfare State, no telling how many bombs will drop due to that attack.  The hospital attack, however, mars the image of endless war, it’s a strike against the Empire.  Activist Post