If you can post bail on a non-felony charge, the likelihood is you will never go to jail. If you can't, you're in for months before trial

If you've ever been arrested for a misdemeanor offense, like jumping a turnstile, smoking a joint, or protesting a cause in a way the authorities would rather you didn't, then you'll know that your best chance of avoiding jail has less to do with what you've done than if you can make bail. It's no secret that the best-quality justice is generally reserved for those who can afford to pay for it, but the divergence is never more blatant than when it comes to America's complicated and discriminatory bail system.

In his recent state of the judiciary address, New York state's chief judge drew attention to the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. He pointed out that the system is stacked against people accused of misdemeanor offenses, who, unable to afford the bail terms, have to stay in jail before trial. On average, it takes at least three months (and more likely, six months to a year) for a misdemeanor case to reach trial in New York City, which is a long time to spend in a cell before you've been convicted of anything.

In 2010, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled "The Price of Freedom", which is awash with statistics and data on the bail system. The report makes a convincing case that an unintended consequences of our current system is that poverty, rather than the offense committed, dictates a defendant's fate. Here is one of the nuggets it contains:

"Among defendants arrested in 2008 on non-felony charges and given bail of $1,000 or less, only 13% of defendants were able to post bail at arraignment."

In other words, 87% of these defendants go to jail.

Shells containing white phosphorus were used to disperse Letpadaung protesters, causing burns, investigation finds

Activists in Burma have demanded action against officials who were responsible for the use of incendiary weapons against peaceful protesters at a copper mine, causing serious burns to dozens of people including Buddhist monks.

Lawyers and others who investigated the crackdown at the Letpadaung copper mine in November said President Thein Sein must share responsibility and ensure justice was achieved.

Launching a report on the incident, they said police used shells containing white phosphorus, an incendiary munition, to disperse the protesters. White phosphorus can be used legally in some battlefield conditions, but activists say it should not be deployed against civilians.

For first time, climate change makes list of the Government Accountability Office's biennial review of risks facing the US

The US government is exposed to high risk from climate change, and Barack Obama has not moved fast enough to manage those new dangers, the government auditor said on Thursday.

The report from the Government Accountability Office said the government had "significant" financial exposure to climate change.

The GAO review, conducted every two years at the start of a new Congress, lists government operations deemed at high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, or mismanagement.

This year was the first time climate change made the list. The GAO also for the first time raised concerns about the federal government's national weather satellite system, warning there were gaps in forecasting of extreme weather events.

"Climate change ... presents a significant financial risk to the federal government," the report said. "However, the federal government is not well positioned to address this financial exposure."

Detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and their defense attorneys are accusing both the United States government and Gitmo guards alike this week of infringing on the inmates' rights by conducting illegal surveillance.

Only days after lawyers representing alleged terrorists accused the government of spying on confidential inmate-attorney conversations by using hidden microphones placed in meeting rooms within the facility, the counsel for Yemen national Walid bin Attash said on Thursday that her client's private legal papers were improperly removed from his Gitmo prison cell when he attended a recent court hearing.

Bin Attash was appearing before the military court on Tuesday, attorney Cheryln Bormann claimed early Thursday, when his Gitmo cell was allegedly ransacked and legal documents were removed.

"The guard force was in fact seizing privileged communications," Bormann said, according to Bloomberg News.

During a heated moment amid Thursday morning's hearing, an unshackled bin Attash stood up in the court and spontaneously addressed Army Col. James Pohl, the military judge presiding over the case.

"In the name of God, there is an important thing for you," bin Attash said before being silenced by the judge.

Another layer has been added to Israel's 'Prisoner X' spy story, as new details shed light on Ben Zygier's dealings with Mossad. An Israeli lawyer says the man - who took his own life in a jail cell - did not seem like he was at risk of suicide.

Zygier's associations with Mossad are still cloudy, as media agencies report different accounts of his previous work with the organization.

According to Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida, Zygier reportedly took part in the 2010 killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mahbouh in Dubai and offered the government information about the operation in return for the United Arab Emirates' protection.

Australia's Fairfax Media reports that Australian security officials suspected Zygier may have been about to disclose Israeli intelligence operations - including the use of fraudulent Australian passports - to the Australian government or the media.

The Federal Aviation Administration official who heads the agency's drone division says the FAA has no interest in letting weaponized unmanned vehicles into US airspace anytime soon. But don't expect them to weigh in on privacy issues, either.
Jim Williams, the chief of the FAA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Office, spoke at a drone convention outside of Washington, DC this week and reassured his audience that the missile-equipped Predator and Reaper drones that have become a hallmark of America's foreign wars won't be allowed stateside anytime soon.

According to the Washington Times, Williams said existing rules already prohibit aircraft from using weapons, and speaking on behalf of the agency said, "[W]e don't have any plans of changing [those rules] for unmanned aircraft."

America's foreign drone program has accelerated drastically in recent years under the administration of President Barack Obama, with over 50 people, many unidentified, reportedly executed abroad by the aircraft in only the first two months of 2013. But while the use of those aircraft overseas to launch bloody strikes is out of the FAA's jurisdiction, Mr. Williams reassured some this week that Americans have no need to fear lethal US drones in domestic airspace.

"We currently have rules in the books that deal with releasing anything from an aircraft, period. Those rules are in place and that would prohibit weapons from being installed on a civil aircraft," Mr. Williams told the crowd in Tysons Corner, Virginia, where people from across the world have gathered this week to attend an event sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

As the nation spent the week debating the CIA assassination program, Obama lawyers exploit secrecy to shield it from all review

It is not news that the US government systematically abuses its secrecy powers to shield its actions from public scrutiny, democratic accountability, and judicial review. But sometimes that abuse is so extreme, so glaring, that it is worth taking note of, as it reveals its purported concern over national security to be a complete sham.

Such is the case with the Obama DOJ's behavior in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the CIA to compel a response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about Obama's CIA assassination program. That FOIA request seeks nothing sensitive, but rather only the most basic and benign information about the "targeted killing" program: such as "the putative legal basis for carrying out targeted killings; any restrictions on those who may be targeted; any civilian casualties; any geographic limits on the program; the number of targeted killings that the agency has carried out."

Everyone in the world knows that the CIA has a targeted killing program whereby it uses drones to bomb and shoot missiles at those it wants dead, including US citizens. This is all openly discussed in every media outlet.

Key Obama officials, including the president himself, not only make selective disclosures about this program but openly boast about its alleged successes. Leon Panetta, then the CIA Director, publicly said all the way back in 2009 when asked about the CIA drone program: "I think it does suffice to say that these operations have been very effective because they have been very precise." In 2010, Panetta, speaking to the Washington Post, hailed the CIA drone program in Pakistan as "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history". This is just a partial sample of Obama official boasts about this very program (for more, see pages 15 to 28 here).

A Canadian member of Parliament on Wednesday gave a animated speech to Parliament about the dangers of a zombie invasion from the United States turning into a "zombie apocalypse."

"I rise today to salute the Center for Disease Control and the Providence of Quebec for putting in place emergency measures to deal with the possibility of an invasion of zombies," Winnipeg MP Pat Martin announced. "I don't need to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that zombies don't recognize orders, and a zombie invasion in the United States could easily turn a continent-wide pandemic if it's not contained."

"So on behalf of concerned Canadians everywhere, Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the minister of foreign affairs, is he working with his American counterparts to develop an international zombie strategy so that a zombie invasion does not turn into a zombie apocalypse?" Martin asked as other members applauded.

Advocates are praising a newly revised version of New York's "Rape is Rape" bill that classifies any vaginal contact as "rape," bringing the legal definition of that form of sexual assault in line with the standards for forced anal and oral contact.

The change came shortly after Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) endorsed the bill on Tuesday, when Republican state Sen. Catharine Young (pictured) introduced a second version that removes the legal requirement of "penetration" for forced vaginal penetration to be considered "rape," and expands the conduct covered by the term to include forced oral and anal sex.

A New York Daily News story noted that the confusion about the last-minute changes surprised even rape survivor Lydia Cuomo, whose brutal sexual assault by an NYPD officer didn't result in his conviction of first degree rape charges because the prior definitions required prosecutors to prove a specific kind of penetration. Cuomo, who is not related to the governor, wants the definition of rape changed to include vaginal, oral or anal contact - which the bill now does.

The federal Institute of Medicine to much fanfare recently reported that "preliminary data" suggest that veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from the same disease - commonly called Gulf War Syndrome or Illness - that has plagued veterans of Desert Storm for over two decades. Meanwhile, an alarming but widely-ignored report by a federal panel of high-level scientists charged with advising the government on the disease accused the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs of covering up the true nature and cause of a profound systemic illness that medical scientists have traced to wartime exposures - including neurotoxins, depleted uranium, and microbes, among others.

The culprits, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses claims, are bureaucrats in the Veterans' Administration Office of Public Health, whose coordination of a robust strategic plan for Gulf War Illness (on which RAC had consulted) has "gutted" science, "focus," "energy," and budgetary resources (reduced from from $15 to $4.9 million for 20013). The Office has promulgated "fictions," the RAC asserts, that are "contrary to well-established science," resurrecting a discredited theory of the syndrome belied by decades of scientific research validated by the Institute of Medicine. That scientific research shows that Gulf War Syndrome or Illness is a real and profound multi-system illness appearing with an array of conditions.