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Gear

BLM eyeing land grab along Texas-Oklahoma border sez Republicans


Fox News
Wed, 23 Apr 2014 20:42 UTC
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© Foxnews
Texas officials are raising alarm that the Bureau of Land Management, on the heels of its dust-up with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, might be eyeing a massive land grab in northern Texas.

The under-the-radar issue has caught the attention of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who fired off a letter on Tuesday to BLM Director Neil Kornze saying the agency "appears to be threatening" the private property rights of "hard-working Texans."

"Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box," wrote Abbott, also a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

At issue are thousands of acres of land on the Texas side of the Red River, along the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Officials recently have raised concern that the BLM might be looking at claiming 90,000 acres of land as part of the public domain.
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Arrow Down

Supreme Court rejects hearing on military detention case

Lawrence Hurley
Reuters
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 11:27 UTC
U.S. Supreme Court
© Reuters/Gary CameronThe exterior of the U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington March 5, 2014.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Barack Obama's administration by declining to hear a challenge to a law that allows the U.S. military to indefinitely detain people believed to have helped al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The high court left intact a July 2013 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that journalists and others who said they could be detained under the law, did not have standing to sue.

The provision in question is part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which the U.S. Congress passes annually to authorize programs of the Defense Department.

It lets the government indefinitely detain people it deems to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces."

Journalists and activists whose work relates to overseas conflicts, including Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and an Icelandic spokeswoman for the Wikileaks website, said that the law could subject them to being locked up for exercising constitutionally protected rights. They also said the threat of enforcement violated their right to free speech.
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Sheriff

Supreme Court: Pennsylvania cops no longer need a warrant to search citizens' vehicles

Brett Hambright
Lancester Online
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
Justice Seamus McCaffery
© UnknownSupreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery
Pennsylvania police officers no longer need a warrant to search a citizen's vehicle, according to a recent state Supreme Court opinion.

The high court's opinion, released Tuesday, is being called a drastic change in citizens' rights and police powers.

Previously, citizens could refuse an officer's request to search a vehicle. In most cases, the officer would then need a warrant - signed by a judge - to conduct the search.

That's no longer the case, according to the opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.

The ruling, passed on a 4-2 vote, was made in regard to an appeal from a 2010 vehicle stop in Philadelphia.

Local police and legal professionals are calling the opinion "big news."

"This is a significant change in long-standing Pennsylvania criminal law, and it is a good one," Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman said Wednesday afternoon.

Under prior law, an officer who smells marijuana inside a car, for example, could only search the car with the driver's consent - or if illegal substances were in plain view
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Take 2

China defies Obama with rapid military buildup

David J. Lynch
Bloomberg News
Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:01 UTC
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A soldier jumps over a ring of fire during a tactical training mission.
President Barack Obama's trip to Asia this week will be dominated by a country he's not even visiting: China.

Each of the four nations on the president's itinerary is involved in territorial disputes with an increasingly assertive China. And years of military spending gains have boosted the capabilities of the People's Liberation Army faster than many defense analysts expected, casting a shadow over relations between China and its neighbors and sparking doubts about long-term prospects for the U.S. presence in the Pacific.

"There are growing concerns about what China is up to in the maritime space," said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There's a widely held view in the region that the U.S.-China relationship is tipping toward being much more confrontational."
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Eye 1

Hate Crime Reporting Act: Feds want to scour Net, media for 'hate speech'

Aaron Klein
World Net Daily
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 18:40 UTC
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If two Democratic lawmakers have their way, Barack Obama's Justice Department will submit a report for action against any Internet sites, broadcast, cable television or radio shows determined to be advocating or encouraging "violent acts."

This according to the text of a new bill from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 "would create an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes," stated a news release from Markey's office.

The one-page bill, reviewed by WND, calls for the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to "analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate."
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Dollars

Michelle Obama 2-day hotel stay in China cost $222K

Jeryl Bier
Weekly Standard
Tue, 29 Apr 2014 18:18 UTC
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Michelle Obama wrapped up her March visit to China with a stop in Chengdu, arriving on March 25 and departing for the United States on the following day. But that one leg of the trip alone required about 900 room nights, ranging from 21 rooms beginning on March 13 for the advance team to a peak of 144 rooms when the first lady herself was at the hotel.

The documents prepared in support of the stay estimated the cost at around 1,393,500 yuan (RMB), or $222,000 at current exchange rates:

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Megaphone

Oz to repeal 'hate speech laws'

James Allan
Quadrant.org.au
Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:14 UTC
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© Unknown
It would be better to see this vile obstacle to free speech scrapped entirely, but Abbott & Co's proposed changes are almost good enough. Fact is, not even Justice Bromberg could have found against Andrew Bolt under the proposed revisions

The Abbott government's announced plans to repeal sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, the so-called 'hate speech laws', are to be welcomed. Never make the perfect the enemy of the good. Sure, a repeal with no replacement would be better. But we're getting a repeal with a replacement that only covers those who 'intimidate', as in causing fear of physical harm, or 'vilify', as in inciting hatred against a person or group.

The first of those is fine. The second I don't much like, but it will be far, far better than what we have now. Better still, we have an explicit provision that jettisons the awful Justice Mordecai Bromberg reading of the existing law - that it is to be measured through the eyes of the self-perceived victim group. Now we have an explicit provision that the test of whether speech has intimidated or vilified is to be judged 'by the standards of an ordinary reasonable member of the Australian community, not by the standards of any particular group within the Australian community.'
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Eye 2

Big Brother is here: North Dakota to start first U.S. drone flights in May; New York to follow


RT
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 20:09 UTC
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© Courtesy Draganfly
Research drones will begin flying over North Dakota the week of May 5, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Monday. North Dakota is the first of six unmanned aerial systems (UAS) test sites to begin flight operations.

The first flights will take place over North Dakota State University's Carrington Research Center using a Draganflyer X4ES, the Associated Press reports. A second set of missions will fly over Sullys Hill National Game Preserve this summer. The mission will be run by the North Dakota Department of Commerce. None of the scheduled flights will be over private property.

The aim of these flights will be to show that UAS can check soil quality and the status of crops in precision agriculture research studies, according to an FAA press release. Precision agriculture is a farming management concept that involves fine-tuning the application of seed, fertilizer and pesticide on every square foot of a field to improve yields and reduce costs.
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USA

Feds who send arms against ranch families betray American values, reveal totalitarian regime in U.S.

Ben S. Carson
The Washington Times
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 17:59 UTC
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© Illustration on the Bundy case by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
The Bundy case in Nevada provides many insights into the state of our nation with respect to the relationship between the people and the government.

The Bundys appear to be honorable American citizens without adequate legal counsel to help resolve a federal land issue about which they disagree with the Bureau of Land Management. Without question, they violated some of the innumerable laws and regulations that continue to entangle every aspect of American life.

Their violations could certainly have been handled through a multitude of less brutal means than those employed by our federal government, which through the mouthpiece of Sen. Harry Reid emphasizes how important it is for the government to enforce its laws.

It is quite interesting to see, though, that the same bureaucrats refuse to enforce some of our federal border-protection laws and other domestic policies with which they disagree. Perhaps Mr. Reid's time could be better spent explaining why it is acceptable for the federal government to pick and choose which laws it wishes to enforce.
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Dollar Gold

Highest sustained taxation in U.S. history proposed to Congress by Obama

Terence P. Jeffrey
CNS News
Mon, 21 Apr 2014 16:43 UTC
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© Unknown
In the budget proposal he presented to Congress last month, President Barack Obama called for what would be the highest level of sustained taxation ever imposed on the American people, according to the analysis published last week by the Congressional Budget Office.

Under Obama's proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP.

America has never been subjected to a ten-year stretch of taxation at that level.

In the twelve fiscal years preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1930 through 1941), federal taxation averaged 5.3 percent of GDP.
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