N.O. police show off new crime-fighting equipment

by Walt Philbin, The Times-Picayune

Wednesday February 13, 2008, 6:28 AM

Eliot Kamenitz, The Times-PicayuneMayor Ray Nagin and NOPD Superintendent Warren Riley try out a pair of the NOPD's new M-4 rifles Tuesday at the Superdome. Money from the state also provided 600 bullet-proof vests.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley on Tuesday used the floor of the Superdome to display more than $1 million in new armament and other equipment, largely for use by the SWAT squad in emergency and riot situations, including a fully equipped mobile command post, two armored cars and modern assault rifles.

Nearly all of the equipment was financed from a $6.6 million state allocation to New Orleans police that was earmarked for crime-fighting items or strategies, Riley said.

The city officials said the new equipment reflected a determination by the Police Department to root out and arrest criminals and make New Orleans safer, as well as to help police handle any emergency situation encountered.

The money will also pay for 600 bullet-proof vests.

The 27- and 14-ton armored cars, costing about $380,000 and $270,000 respectively, will provide cover to officers in SWAT situations and help them safely evacuate citizens from dangerous situations, Riley said.

The vehicles, Lenco Bear and BearCat models, will also enable SWAT officers and negotiators to get closer to barricaded suspects.

The city's police have never had a "state-of-the-art" command post for SWAT and other situations, the city officials said. The assistant commander of the SWAT team, Lt. Dwayne Scheurermann, vouched for the equipment and said the two armored cars come with features that "are extraordinarily helpful to us," such as winches to help knock or drag down walls and other barricades.

Nagin used the occasion to welcome the NBA All-Star game to New Orleans, scheduled for Sunday night at the New Orleans Arena. He said the annual clash between West and East All-Stars has "had a little bit of a rough time in other cities, but we are looking forward to it and don't expect any problems."

Riley pointed out that after this weekend members of the NOPD will have worked 12- or 16-hour shifts for 23 days -- nearly half of the first 48 days of the year -- to provide security for public events on a national stage, including college football's BCS championship game and Mardi Gras.

"We had a little break after Mardi Gras, but will go into that mode again Friday," Riley said. He said there will be so many police this weekend in the Central Business District and French Quarter "it will look like Christmas down there."

Hunterdon County man must pay support for child not his

TRENTON, N.J. - Paternity doesn't count when it comes to a Hunterdon County man's bid to lower child support payments for a child that's not his. An appeals court upheld a lower court which denied the man's request in 2006 after he said he discovered he was not the father of the 10-year-old girl.

The appeals panel found the judge put the best interest of the child first. It's not clear whether the man would appeal to the state Supreme Court. The man is identified in court papers as W.S.Y. Jr. to protect the child's identity. The girl was born in 1997 and the man and his ex-wife divorced in 1999.

The man raised the issue of paternity in 2006 after he claimed his ex in 2003 started making statements that he wasn't the father.

The man claims a DNA test showed he wasn't.

This is absolutely fucking absurd and infuriating:

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

• Use Right - If you own something, you have the right to use it anyway you see fit, provided your use of it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others.
  
• Exclude Right - If you own something, you have the right to exclude others from using it.
  
• Abandon Right - If you own something, you have the right to cease being its owner.
  

When the RIAA sells you a compact disc and then tells you what you can do with it, they are violating your property rights (see above). When some asshole patents a method of swinging back and forth, he is violating your property rights. 

There was art before there was Intellectual Property: literature, paintings, drawings, sculptures, music, what have you. There was technology before there was Intellectual Property: mathematics, exploration, invention, biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, botany, military, medicine, etc.

Intellectual Property is just another form of protectionism similar to tariffs, quotas, subsidies, barriers to entry, and other special privileges. It's bullshit and it needs to end. The RIAA doesn't own me, it doesn't own my computer, it doesn't own my compact discs, my tape decks, my radio, my vocal cords, or my middle finger -- which is currently shooting the bird at those fucking douche-bags.  Don't let those assholes use the coercive force of government to strip you of your property rights.

Jones told committee members that on her fourth day in Baghdad some co-workers, who she described as Halliburton-KBR firefighters, invited her for a drink. "I took two sips from the drink and don't remember anything after that," she said. The next morning Jones woke up groggy and confused, and with a sore chest and blood between her legs. She reported the incident to KBR and was examined by an army doctor, who confirmed she had been repeatedly raped vaginally and anally.

The doctor took photographs, made notes, and handed all the evidence over to KBR personnel. "The KBR security then took me to a trailer and then locked me in a room with two armed guards outside my door," Jones testified. "I was imprisoned in the trailer for approximately a day. One of the guards finally had mercy and let me use a phone." Jones called her father in Texas, who called his representative in Congress, Republican Ted Poe. Poe contacted the State Department, who quickly sent personnel to rescue Jones and flew her back to Texas.

The rape was so brutal she is still undergoing reconstructive surgery, Jones said.

Jones tried to get her case resolved first through KBR channels, then through the US Department of Justice. When neither course seemed to work, she gave an interview with ABC television news. KBR has been silent on the matter, though according to ABC News the company circulated a memo among employees signed by company president and CEO Bill Utt saying that it "disputes portions of Ms. [Jamie Leigh] Jones' version and facts."

Jones said that she knows of at least 11 other women who were raped by US contractors in Iraq.

Jones' KBR contract however included a clause which prevents her from suing her employer, Poe said, which will likely force her into arbitration, which he described as "a privatized justice system with no public record, no discovery and no meaningful appeal." There are many laws that the Department of Justice (DOJ) "can enforce with respect to contractors who commit crimes abroad, but it chooses not to," Democrat Robert Scott said. The DOJ "seems to be taking action with respect to enforcement of criminal laws in Iraq only when it is forced to do something by embarrassing media coverage," he added.

"This is outrageous that we even have to be here today," said Conyers, adding that it shows "how far out of control the law enforcement system in Iraq is today." There are 180,000 civilian contractor employees in Iraq, including more than 21,000 Americans, Conyers said. While the DOJ says it is committed to law enforcement in Iraq, "they can't even give us one example of a prosecution where the victim was a civilian contractor employee in Iraq," Conyers added. Poe was equally caustic. The department's silence on the case "speaks volumes about the hidden crimes in Iraq," he said.

I think the Mainstream Media and the Republican Party are going to be in for a rude awakening when the people vote:




Ron Paul is closing in on $19 million for the 4th quarter. He now owns the all-time single day fundraising record and that was with average donations of $102. There is something there, and it's not a bunch of nuts. The real nuts are the people who keep voting for neocons and socialists and then call Dr. Paul "kooky". In fact, my guess is that after this short, terrible Fox News interview of Ron Paul, he's lost the nut vote to Huckabribe.

Who do you want stacking the Supreme Court, Hillary Clinton? John McCain? 
Who do you want picking the next chairman of the Fed? Obama? Giuliani?
Who do you want in the position to sign or veto the Federal Budget? Romney? Dodd?

 

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (NBC) -- When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge. 1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days. Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school. "Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

F-16s Respond to 'Hostile Takeover' Talk
June 13, 2007 - 2:56pm

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - F-16s intercepted a small plane after officials misinterpreted a phrase uttered by the pilot as his aircraft flew over military airspace: "hostile takeover." The pilot was talking about business, the plane's owner said. But a frantic air traffic controller couldn't confirm that because the pilot had turned off his radio, said Maj. Roger Yates of the Clay County Sheriff's Department. Within minutes, federal aviation authorities scrambled the fighter jets to intercept the plane Monday evening just outside of Oklahoma City and escort it to the Clay County airport near Mosby.

Once it was on the ground, more than a dozen armed federal agents and tactical deputies surrounded the plane. Federal authorities, who interviewed the pilot for two hours, said Tuesday that there was no threat to anyone and no charges would be filed. "People should be very careful in this heightened state of security about comments they make regarding airplanes and air traffic," said FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza. The plane's owner, Dr. Kenneth E. Mann, said the pilot was heading back to Kansas City after dropping him off in Oklahoma, where Mann regularly travels to provide treatment at several hospitals. Neither he nor authorities would identify the pilot.

Authorities said the pilot was flying over Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma on his way back to the Kansas City area when he notified the air traffic tower at the air base that he was entering the base's airspace. When asked what his destination was, the pilot said he preferred not to say because competitors could use such information to steal clients. He was not required to give a destination, Mann said. He said the pilot was concerned because he worked "in a hostile business environment."

The pilot was speaking about a "hostile takeover" of a company, Yates said.

Mann said FBI agents were at his home less than an hour after the incident.

"Mistakes happen," he said, "and in the times we live in after 9/11, it's better to overreact than not react at all."

As homes in New Orleans' flood-stricken zones inch toward habitability, a bureaucratic storm is brewing between state and federal relief agencies that could derail the city's recovery from Hurricane Katrina. The dispute over how $7.5 billion in federal aid is handed out is slowing disbursal to more than 120,000 homeowners whose houses were damaged or destroyed by the storm on August 29, 2005 and by subsequent flooding.

Officials from the state of Louisiana contend that a new federal requirement that aid checks be issued jointly to homeowners and their mortgage lenders could mean that money bypasses the owners -- many of whom lost their jobs as a result of Katrina -- and goes straight to paying their defaulted mortgage payments. A federal official said the government, in demanding a change in payout procedures, was relying on lenders to act fairly to New Orleans homeowners. "If banks simply grab this money as a way to compensate for their subprime losses, we would not consider that the moral thing to do," said Bruce Sullivan, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But state officials note that banks are feeling a pinch all over the nation because of a crisis in subprime mortgages and many would be likely to grab the Katrina cash. Meanwhile, Katrina victims grow older and angrier as their woes go unanswered amid endless government bickering.

Barbara Johnson, 79, has all but lost faith that the government will come through with the aid she needs to rebuild her mold-infested home on a nearly deserted block of 1940s bungalows in St. Bernard parish, so she turned to charity. "I am so grateful for the love of these groups that come in, because the city is not doing a 'blah blah' thing," Johnson said as college kids on spring vacation ripped out water-logged debris and piled it roof-high in her front yard.