A Military veteran living in Oregon, 36-year-old Corey Thompson, has been arrested and has had his firearms confiscated after defending his home from an intruder. … Read More
TSA ‘cannot justify’ cost, objectivity of screening
The Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program was instituted in 2004 and has long been criticized for allowing untrained officers to use race as an excuse to scrutinize travelers. The inspector general found there is no sufficient way to gauge the program’s effectiveness, and to boot, the program lacks financial foresight. “As a result, the TSA cannot ensure that passengers at United States airports are screened objectively, show that the program is cost-effective, or reasonably justify the program’s expansion,” the inspector general said in the report released Tuesday. It is illegal in the US to screen passengers based on their race, ethnicity or religion. The “behavioral detection program” was imagined as another method for the TSA to identify potential terrorists before they passed through an airport’s security gate. Agents would try to engage travellers in conversation, attempting to decipher non-verbal cues indicating nervousness or hesitancy to speak with the TSA. They currently do so, often by walking through a security line, but without any training on what behavior indicates that someone is a threat. Thirty TSA officers who worked in Boston’s Logan Airport complained to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts last year that the program was used to question Hispanics traveling to Florida and African-American men wearing backwards baseball hats. Those officers reported questioning the passengers based on demands from superiors in upper management, who hoped the closer inspection would yield arrests on outstanding warrants or immigration issues, among other charges. Law enforcement, acting on referrals from TSA officers, made 1,083 arrests in the first 4.5 years of the SPOT program. Not one of those arrests, according to Bloomberg News, was for terrorism-related charges. More than 2,800 TSA agents work in the SPOT program, which has so far cost American taxpayers $878 million. … Read More
North Carolina House passes background check requirement for welfare applicants
North Carolina House legislators have overwhelmingly approved a bill that will institute mandatory background checks for benefits recipients. The measure, passed by a 106-6 margin, comes just days after Texas lawmakers enacted a similar regulation. The North Carolina bill passed Thursday requires all social services employees to perform background checks to screen welfare and food stamp applicants with outstanding arrest warrants and other active violations. Social services employees would have to report applicants to law enforcement. The bill, proposed by Republican Dean Arp, now moves to the State Senate. Arp admitted that federal laws already prohibit those wanted on felony laws from receiving public assistance. Democrats in the House reportedly expressed concern that the measure would add stress on social services employees and unduly characterize the poor in a negative light. Earlier this week the Texas Senate passed a bill that will force drug tests on welfare recipients, who are provided with money for food, housing, and other basic needs. The current program spends about $90 million on 100,000 Texans annually, with the bill’s sponsor saying that the money “should not be used to support a drug habit.” As evidenced by the wide voting margin, North Carolina voters have embraced politicians who tend to believe in an anti-government, pro-religious philosophy. Since US President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, North Carolinian lawmakers have introduced restrictions on voting, limited the ability of unions to negotiate and attempted to impose an official state religion. Rallies and protests have frequently been organized to oppose those political aims. Just days before the North Carolina House approved welfare screening, hundreds of people demonstrated outside the legislative building against loosened regulations on charter schools and high-interest payday loans, among other issues. “We have the opportunity to build a progressive movement the likes of which has never been seen in the state,” MaryBe McMillan, a treasurer of the state AFL-CIO told the News Observer. “If we don’t build the movement, our state will become unrecognizable.” … Read More
Out of a newspaper strike dawned a new age in American letters
Last week, my colleague at Doubleday came by my office with an austere-looking 11-by-15-inch broadsheet. Good God! It was a facsimile edition of the first issue of The New York Review of Books, February 1, 1963. The advertising director and I sat there kvelling over this wondrously manifested printed object from another universe, with its Murderers Row of reviewers weighing in on many books that all these years later still matter, its old school book ads with their quaint frontal appeals to the reader’s higher cultural aspirations (“Pantheon: Outstanding Books from Abroad”; “The power of Thought is the magic of the Mind.” — the Lord Byron headline for Columbia University Press’s ad), its wittily punning heads (“Albee Damned” for Nicola Chiarmonte’s review of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”; “To the Whitehouse” for Dwight Macdonald’s review of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s “The Politics of Hope”). Byron had it right: There was a whole lost world of magical allure contained in those 48 pages of newsprint. So I closed my door, and let’s just say not a whole lot of work got done the rest of the afternoon.
Katt Williams Arrested Again
Katt Williams was arrested again last night … this time in Dunnigan, CA (about 40 miles from Sacramento) on an outstanding warrant.Yolo County Sheriffs deputies popped Williams at a gas station following a traffic stop, this according to KCRA. An arrest warrant for Williams had been issued on Thursday out of Sacramento County for a reckless driving incident last month.Read More…
Woman in Petraeus Scandal Got Medal for Being a Good Socialite
It seems you can get a medal for being an effective schmoozer. Gen. David Petraeus was the first to recommend that Jill Kelley receive the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s second-highest honor to a civilian, reports the Tampa Tribune. The award was approved by Adm. Mike Mullen, who was the … … Read More
