The winner will get the chance to meet up with Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, for a coffee break, which will last from 30 minutes to an hour. Bidding began at $50,000, and 52 bids have already been placed, with the highest offering currently standing at $180,000. The sum will surely grow even larger, as the auction at the Charitybuzz website does not end until May 14. The winner will get the chance to meet up with Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, for a coffee break, which will last from 30 minutes to an hour. Cook has put his time on the tender to raise money for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Cook isn’t the only celebrity to join the effort to support the human rights advocacy organization, which was founded in the US in 1968. The other items up for auction include a tour of the SpaceX Center in Los Angeles with founder Elon Musk – starting at $25,000 – and being a guest of film star William Shatner at the 2014 Hollywood Charity Horse Show and Gala dinner, starting at $5,000. Tim Cook has been with Apple since 1986. The 52-year-old was appointed the company’s CEO in August 2011, succeeding the company’s late co-founder and creative powerhouse Steve Jobs. … Read More
Government source: Bombing suspect traveled to Russia
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government officials say Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Russia last year and returned to the U.S. six months later.The 26-year-old Tsarnaev died in a police shootout overnight.The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they couldn’t publicly talk about an investigation in progress. One says that Tsarnaev traveled out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.Investigators believe that Tsarneaev and his brother Dzhokhar are responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon terrorist attack. Dzhokhar is still being sought. The ethnic Chechen brothers are from Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, an uncle said.One official said there are no known ties at this point to Chechen extremist groups.Continue Reading… … Read More
Supreme Court Rules Against Warrantless DUI Blood Tests
In divided ruling handed down today, the U.S. Supreme Court held
that Missouri police violated the 4th Amendment by obtaining a
warrantless and nonconsensual blood sample from a man suspected of
drunk driving. At issue in Missouri
v. McNeely was the question of whether or not the rapid
diminishment of alcohol in a suspect’s bloodstream should entitle
the police to enjoy a blanket emergency exception to the 4th
Amendment when it comes to seeking blood tests in drunk-driving
cases. Writing for a majority that also included Justices Antonin
Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan,
Justice Sonia Sotomayor held that the actions of the Missouri
police violated the Constitution and, more significantly, rejected
the government’s sweeping argument in favor of a blanket 4th
Amendment exception.
While “in some circumstances law enforcement officers may
conduct a search without a warrant to prevent the imminent
destruction of evidence,” Sotomayor wrote, “it does not follow that
we should depart from careful case-by-case assessment of exigency
and adopt the categorical rule proposed by the State and its amici.
In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can
reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn
without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the
Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so.”
In addition to Sotomayor’s majority opinion, Chief Justice John
Roberts filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part,
which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito, and
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a lone dissent.
Click below to watch me and Nick Gillespie discuss this case and
several other notable cases from the current Supreme Court
term.
TSA detains travelers for discussing sandwich
His lunch was “the bomb,” but the security process was not: Jason Michael Cruz was at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport last Thursday when the Transportation Security Administration came after him.A TSA officer had overheard the young man talk to a friend and describe a deli sandwich he bought as “the wrong kind of bomb.” Cruz was referring to a 12-inch sandwich that a local Astoria deli calls “The Bomb” – a slang term that indicates both the excellence of the sandwich and the ‘explosively’ jam-packed ingredients between the bread. The sandwich was fully packed with cold cuts, cheese and toppings, but a nearby TSA agent didn’t know the context of the conversation between Cruz and his friend, Matthew Okumoto.Cruz said he wanted to bring “The Bomb” aboard the plane in his carry-on luggage, which a TSA official interpreted as a discussion about an explosive device, the New York Post reports. Paranoid that the men planned to detonate an explosive weapon on their plane to Los Angeles, the official reported the conversation to her supervisor, Robert Haddock.Officers then detained the pair at a security checkpoint, subjected them to questioning in a holding area, called the airport police and caused the men to miss their flight.“The TSA clerk probably got a merit badge for her quick thinking in reporting the Scary Terroristy Threat to a supervisor, and that supervisor probably got promoted. Meanwhile, Cruz missed his flight,” writes Lisa Simeone, a blogger for the TSA News Blog.Meanwhile, TSA agents fail to discover explosives going through airport security. Last month, an undercover TSA agent successfully bypassed security at Newark Liberty National Airport with a mock bomb. To test the effectiveness of the security screening procedures, the agent went through two screenings with an improvised explosive device-like contraption in his pants.TSA never discovered the device. Instead, agents have stopped passengers for describing sandwiches, removed the legs of a double-amputee, laughed at nude images of airline passengers, stolen expensive jewelry from travelers and arrested a man for carrying a jar of peanut butter.Travelers wishing to avoid arrest should refrain from describing their lunch items as “the bomb” – even if they do provide an “explosion” of flavor. Speaking about contraptions at an airport may more quickly lead to an arrest than discretely bringing one. … Read More
Rare photos of John F. Kennedy emerge from ashes of 9/11
Rarely seen photos of John F. Kennedy, once feared to have been lost forever when the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11, form part of a striking exhibition opening Friday which aims to shed new light on the iconic US leader. The Newseum — a Washington museum dedicated to showcasing the…
Vid: Sequester Shocker: It Feels Like Nothing’s Changed
It’s been over a month since the automatic federal spending cuts
known as “the sequester” kicked in and Reason TV’s Kennedy reports
from the suddenly-mean streets of Washington, D.C.
Watch above or click on the link below for video, full text,
supporting links, downloadable versions, and more Reason TV
clips. View this article.
… Read More
Hillary’s first big test
Hillary Clinton made her first public speech since leaving the State Department last night, addressing the Vital Global Leadership Awards at the Kennedy Center. She did not say she is running for president in 2016. But this week at least she seems very much like she is. A super PAC staffed in part with former Clinton campaign aides is up and running and sending out press releases. Clinton made a show of support for gay marriage in an HRC video, and will make a whole host of speeches at venues across the country over the next few months. (She’s on the lucrative private speaking circuit as well.)There is a series of cliched caveats you have to get through when you write about this stuff: 2016 is a long ways away. Making predictions is an invitation to mockery in a few years time. At this point in 2006, the 2008 election was supposedly going to pit Mark Warner against George Allen.Continue Reading… … Read More
