NORML | St. Petersburg Times
FLORIDA–It is time for the Hernando County School Board to refocus superintendent Wendy Tellone’s curious fixation on testing students for drugs.

In the past two years Tellone and her staff have brought three proposals to the board that would randomly select certain groups of students to submit urine samples, which then are tested for a variety of drugs, including alcohol. After initially opposing the recommendation because it is fundamentally unfair and oppressive, the board eventually authorized the administration to pursue a $418,000 federal grant that would pay for a drug counselor to oversee the program.

At first, Tellone wanted to test all high school and middle school students who participated in any extracurricular activity or drove a motor vehicle on campus. Now she has cast a slightly smaller net in her exploitative fishing expedition: All high school students who are athletes, cheerleaders or drive on campus.

CNN demos hacking e-votes to tilt elections

FOX News Exposes Princeton / Diebold Vote-Reversal Story

Princeton scientists Hack Diebold - From Priceton.EDU

If someone looks like he could use a meal, be warned: Giving him a sandwich in a Las Vegas park could land you in jail.

The Las Vegas City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday that bans providing food or meals to the indigent for free or a nominal fee in parks.

The measure is an attempt to stop so-called “mobile soup kitchens” from operating in parks, where residents say they attract the homeless and render the city facilities unusable by families.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada called the ordinance blatantly unconstitutional, unenforceable and the latest attempt by the city to hide and harass the homeless instead of constructively addressing their plight.

“So the only people who get to eat are those who have enough money? Those who get (government) assistance can’t eat at your picnic?” asked ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein. “I’ve heard of some rather strange and extreme measures from other cities. I’ve never heard of something like this. It’s mind-boggling.”

Dave Eberhart | NewsMax.com
The last 25 years have seen a 1,300 percent increase in the number of paramilitary raids on American homes. The vast majority of these are to serve routine drug warrants, including for offenses as trivial as marijuana possession, according to a just-released study by the Cato Institute.

“These raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping,” writes Cato policy analyst Radley Balko, “usually by teams of heavily-armed paramilitary units dressed not as peace officers, but as soldiers.”

The use of hyper-militarized, heavily armed police units to carry out routine search warrants has become increasingly common since the 1980s, concludes Balko.

These raids leave a very small margin for error, the author writes. A wrong address, bad timing, or bad information can - and frequently does - bring tragedy. The information giving rise to these raids is typically collected from confidential informants, some of very dubious reliability.

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard testimony from Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel. When questioned by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on whether the President’s interpretation of the Hamdan case was right or wrong, Bradbury replied, “The President is always right.” Watch it:

Full transcript below:

Gail Gibson / Baltimore Sun | July 11 2006
A courtroom challenge to the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program would expose sensitive state secrets and should be thrown out, government lawyers told a federal judge yesterday.

In making that sweeping assertion, lawyers employed the state secrets doctrine, an obscure tool that has been used by the Bush administration in 22 other instances - more than any other presidency - to squelch cases touching on intelligence practices.

And it is virtually always a winning strategy, say legal scholars and attorneys who handle national security cases.

KRQE News 13 Albuquerque, NM
Undercover officers with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety that were out Saturday night trying to bust drunks leaving bars arrested three men for videotaping them.

The three men showed up in court Sunday morning with an attorney to fight the felony charges they are facing. Jacob Traub owns the Downtown Distillery, David Garcia and Lance Gomez both work for him.

One criminal complaint says an officer asked one of the men to stop videotaping for security reasons since he was working undercover. The complaint also says the man told the officer they were harassing the customers in the bar.

MSNBC
Thirteen anti-war activists were given citations Saturday for protesting outside the National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade.

An NSA security officer cited the activists for “entering into military facility for purposes prohibited by law” and ordered them to leave the area, protest organizers and an NSA spokesman said.

They were ordered to appear in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to be arraigned at a date to be announced.

Twenty-five people participated in the protest, but only 13 who refused to stop carrying signs were cited, said Max Obuszewski of the Pledge of Resistance — Baltimore, one of those cited. They carried a banner reading “NSA Crime Scene” and other signs protesting the agency’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | July 6 2006

A Dillon Montana man had his home raided by 40 FBI, BATF and Canadian law enforcement agents after handing out Alex Jones’ material to his local Sheriff which was subsequently deemed ’subversive’.

Richard Celata sells 80% completed firearms kits intended for purchasers who want to avoid having to register their weapons in government databases. The kits are completely legal in Montana.

Celata was politically active in disseminating the material of Alex Jones and others in his area, including handing out material to his local Sheriff.

JEFF BARNARD / AP | July 8 2006

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the U.S. Secret Service and state and local police protecting President Bush during a 2004 campaign appearance discriminated against protesters when they cleared the streets outside where the president was eating dinner.

The class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court contends that police acting on orders from the Secret Service used unreasonable force to move some 200 people peacefully protesting against the Iraq war in Jacksonville while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain standing on sidewalks.

The Truth Will Set You Free | New York Post

A Manhattan face-painter and balloon-animal maker said overzealous cops tackled him off his bike, shoved two guns to his head and threw him in the slammer for more than four hours - all because his misplaced balloon pump looked like a bomb.

Next thing you know, they’ll be frisking little old ladies in airports. Oh wait! They already do that!

Alexander “Sasha” Alhovsky said the takedown occurred in front of dozens of horrified children on Thursday at about 5.30 p.m. outside an Upper East Side playground.

“They thought I was a terrorist,” Alhovsky, 36, said yesterday.

The previous Sunday, Alhovsky said, he left a rainbow-striped balloon pump in a Starbucks on 66th Street and First Avenue - and a worker called cops.

(Read more…)

Rosa Brooks | LA Times
The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt the Bush administration a stinging rebuke, declaring in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld that military commissions for trying terrorist suspects violate both U.S. military law and the Geneva Convention.

But the real blockbuster in the Hamdan decision is the court’s holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda — a holding that makes high-ranking Bush administration officials potentially subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act.

Michael Hampton
The federal government wants to perform mental health screening on infants and get them started on drugs which they will take for their entire lives, if the drugs don’t kill them first. And you’re going to pay for it, whether you want to or not.

Already, children as young as 3, who wind up in the foster care system, are receiving psychiatric drugs for such disorders as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression, with over 60% of foster children in Texas, nearly two-thirds in Massachusetts, and 55% of foster children in Florida on as many as 16 different psychiatric drugs.

Pau; Craig Roberts | AntiWar.com
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision ruled that President Bush’s effort to railroad tortured Guantanamo Bay detainees in kangaroo courts “violates both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions.”

Better late than never, but it sure took a long time for the checks and balances to call a halt to the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of the executive.

Kirt Nimmo
Now that firebrand and apparent gatekeeper of the official version of nine eleven, Ward Churchill, is in the process of losing his job at the university of Colorado, another academic, Kevin Barrett, has come under the gun.

“A state lawmaker is calling on the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fire a part-time instructor who has spoken out on his beliefs that figures in the U.S. government, not al-Qaida, were behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” reports WFRV, a CBS affiliate.

Mike Ferner | CounterPunch
Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt

Yesterday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago’s south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, “OK, you’ve had your 15 minutes, it’s time to go.”

“Huh?”, I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about.

“You can’t be in here protesting,” Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt.

“Well, I’m not protesting, I’m having a cup of coffee,” I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists.

Andrew Wolfe | Nashua Telegraph
A city man is charged with violating state wiretap laws by recording a detective on his home security camera, while the detective was investigating the man’s sons.

Michael Gannon, 49, of 26 Morgan St., was arrested Tuesday night, after he brought a video to the police station to try to file a complaint against Detective Andrew Karlis, according to Gannon’s wife, Janet Gannon, and police reports filed in Nashua District Court.

David Lindorff | CounterPunch
Over the course of the past year, it has been discovered that President Bush, during his five years in office, has cancelled all or part of 750 laws of Congress, quietly and with the stroke of a pen. These so-called “signing statements” have been used to invalidate laws passed by Congress to do everything from require government reporting on the uses of the Patriot Act’s invasive provisions to banning torture and establishing a special investigator for corruption in Iraq.

The Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) is finally holding hearings into this issue, but don’t expect much from a that can’t even get worked up over the White House’s failure to send over key people to testify.

Paul Craig Roberts | LewRockwell
What explains the gullibility of Americans, a gullibility that has mired the US in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and which promises war with Iran, North Korea and a variety of other targets if neoconservatives continue to have their way?

Part of the explanation is that millions of conservatives are thrilled at the opportunity to display their patriotism and to show their support for their country. Bushs rhetoric is perfectly designed to appeal to this desire. “You are with us or against us” elicits a blind and unquestioning response from people determined to wear their patriotism on their sleeves. “You are with us or against us” vaccinates Americans against factual reality and guarantees public acceptance of administration propaganda.