Privileged member of the tax-consuming class, in other words, a bum, struts around homeless camp dishing out insults to a man actually helping people. Daily Beast

The Intercept.  In 2014, NYC paid out $215 million in settlements to the victims of the NYPD.  The department is sued around 4,000 times every year.  Open Data Projects are a crucial tool in the fight for accountability, and the information they expose has led to more accountability from the cops.  But police are costing cities millions of dollars in settlements and court costs each year, which means something is lacking.  How about a massive database, searchable by the public, that lists the discipline/employment histories of current and prospective police officers?  The city could then choose a policy of not hiring a cop with a history of beating down innocent citizens, which might save the city money and send a signal to other, short fused cops.

Reason. 83.9% of the 1,488,707 drug-related arrests in 2015 were for simple possession.  “Larceny-theft” came in second place at 1,160,390, followed by drunk driving at 1,089,171.  The lesson is that Prohibition induces a crime wave by introducing the element of violence in a normally peaceful, and profitable, trade.  As law enforcement gains more power and wealth to fight this artificial spike in crime, thousands of jobs are created that now depend on the continuation of that crime wave.  This is why law enforcement supports Prohibition: it’s the excuse for all the cushy, unionized jobs, the warzone goodies, the hi-tech surveillance gear, and the employment of trigger-happy goons.

People are fed up with tough-talking DAs who carve a wide path of abuse and scandal.  Tough-guy types who cozy up to police departments, refuse to prosecute bad cops, put the innocent behind bars, and generally abuse their authority are being voted out of office.

23 secret legal opinions define limits of the power of the Surveillance State.  The ACLU wants them made public.

New report out of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology shows that 117 million American adults have their image in a law enforcement facial recognition database.

Cop threatens man with arrest for taking video of an arrest. Remember, only bad cops resent being filmed.

The threat of out-of-control facial recognition tech is very real, and very close.

US plunges into war with Yemen

How many unsuspecting US civilians will bleed and die from terrorism fueled by the atrocities committed by the US-backed Saudis in Yemen at this very moment?

The bombs, jets, guidance systems, and strategy are being provided by the US military.  All the hard stuff is taken care of, all the Saudis have to do is pull the trigger.  Which they do, a lot.  This includes the recent attack on a Yemen funeral, where 140 mourners were killed, which has now been dubbed a ‘deliberate error‘, according to the British minister to the Mid East.

The survivors, the families of the victims, know who’s arming their tormentors, and they won’t forget.  Those who arm the Saudi’s, however, will be tucked away, forever safe from retribution.  American civilians, soft targets, have been, and will be again, the human shields of the inveterate interventionists who drag this country into endless war.

First post in months, so there’s much to comment on.  One of the bigger things that has bothered me these past months is the auto-demonization of Russia in regards to hacking, “aggression”, and the like.  Clinton and her fawning media have attempted to divert attention away from the content of the revelations to focus on Russia as the culprit, for obvious reasons.  And while there isn’t proof of Russia’s hand in the hacking, why would it be such a bad thing?  Clinton is charging Russia with interfering in US elections…by exposing Clinton’s interference with US elections.  The hacking was, as Putin himself said, a public service.  What does it say about the level of corruption within the US political class that US citizens need a foreign government to expose that corruption?

The identity of whoever hacked the DNC and the Clinton campaign matters far less than what that hack exposed.

Reason‘s Anthony Fisher lists the top-10 revelations from the Clinton camp emails.  Among these is the hilarious/frightening nugget that State dept. officials ridiculously referred to themselves as the “Shadow Government”, and plotted, unsuccessfully, to control the release of Clinton documents.  Another revealing nugget is that in 2014, Clinton said that she was against marijuana legalization “in all senses of the word”.  Also, Dem officials apparently fretted over a job-killing $15 minimum wage.  Of course, they supported it anyway.  Last on his list is the not-insignificant fact that the White House knew long ago that Hillary was using a private server, and Obama himself used a pseudonym when communicating with Clinton.

The lesson, it seems, is that people reveal their true selves in private, when they believe no one of consequence is watching.  The Political Class takes its mask off, reveals its true intentions, when it believes the public isn’t listening in.  THIS is the reason we need Snowden, Assange, “Guccifer”, and the faceless whistleblowers and hackers who expose that Political Class.