Relatives of individuals who have died in police custody have called on Home Secretary Theresa May to involve them in a newly announced independent review.

The mother of Olaseni Lewis, a 23-year-old who died in a London psychiatric hospital after being restrained by police officers, said the review must include input from family members if it is to be anything more than an "exercise in public relations."

May will announce an independent probe into deaths and serious incidents in police custody on Thursday in a bid to restore public confidence in the police.

The review will look at events leading up to and following fatalities in police care, with particular focus on the use of restraint, suicides, and access to mental health facilities.

The number of suicides following release from police custody for 2013-2014 is at its highest in 10 years, with 68 people killing themselves within two days of leaving custody.

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.—Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"

Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting (see below) on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan. Why don't all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?

I wonder how many of Bob Dylan's fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor's conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray the innocent almost every time.

As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, "How the Law Was Lost". It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11, which "our representative government" used to construct a police state.

The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with The Tyranny of Good Intentions. We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin's show trials of the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave "Freedom and Democracy America" broken families and by far the highest incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The publisher's title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a "best seller." The book, had it been a best seller, would have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.

One of the French parliamentarians visiting Crimea has spoken his mind through fashion. Senator Yves Pozzo di Borgo from the center-right UDI party has acquired a T-shirt with Putin and Obama portraits, the caption saying: "Obama, you're a schmuck."

The senator, currently on a two-day visit to Crimea, was strolling along a picturesque quay when he reportedly came across an article of clothing that spoke for itself. Yves Pozzo di Borgo (who is also vice-president of the French-Russian Friendship Group of the Senate and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and OSCE) immediately snapped the T-shirt up and even tried it on, Lifenews reported.

Three people have been killed and seven others injured after a man opened fire at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. One of the deceased is the suspect, who turned the gun on himself.

According to witnesses the man opened fire some 20 minutes into the movie Train Wreck, which was being screened at the Grand Theatre in in Lafayette.

"He wasn't saying anything. I didn't hear anybody screaming either," a witness told The Advertiser, describing the shooter as "an older white man."


The shooter eventually turned the gun on himself, before authorities were able to approach him.

A woman was arrested this week and had her child taken from her after she called 9-1-1 to report that she was being attacked by her husband. When police arrived on the scene just after noon on Tuesday, they found a man attempting to strangle his wife in the presence of a small child.

The man was taken into police custody, but they did not stop there. They also attempted to place the child in government custody, and when the mother objected to them taking away her child, they arrested her as well.

As any caring mother would do, the woman attempted to prevent the police from stealing her baby, at which point they became violent with her, even using a stun gun on her.

The police said that the woman became "combative" and attempted to grab the officer's pepper spray, but she was fully within her rights trying to save her child from a government kidnapping. If the police would not have tried to take her child away, the situation would have likely ended with the abusive husband getting arrested, as it should have.

Now the concerned mother is facing felony charges of disarming a police officer, child neglect, as well as resisting arrest and obstructing.

Sanilac County Sheriff Gary Biniecki made a statement after the incident, saying that "This case is a reminder that this type of violent encounter can happen anywhere at any time. The situation could have had a tragic outcome and goes to show you how important having the right tools to do the job is, such as tasers."

The police say that the child was in danger, even after the father was subdued, but there is no proof or indication that the mother was unfit to take care of her child in any way.

Sadly, this child is now likely to become a ward of the state whose track record "fostering" children is horrifying.

Adverts that use sexually attractive people to plug a product may have the opposite of the intended effect and actually put customers off buying goods, a new study has shown.

Despite the advertising adage "sex sells," customers can be so distracted by the sexualized content of adverts that they fail to notice the products involved.

The study found that shoppers are less likely to remember adverts featuring sexually explicit content, violence or other non-family friendly material than more benign adverts.

Violence was also likely to make viewers tune out of the adverts. Adverts with violence are more likely to be forgotten and be received less favorably when compared with other brands the study found.

Ohio State University psychologist Professor Brad Bushman said the findings of their study were hugely relevant to advertising agencies.

"Our findings have tremendous applied significance, especially for advertisers.

"Sex and violence do not sell, and in fact they may even backfire by impairing memory, attitudes and buying intentions for advertised products. Advertisers should think twice about sponsoring violent and sexual programs, and about using these themes in their ads," he added.

Funds and property seized by Oklahoma law enforcement agencies have gone missing or have been used for personal or other improper purposes, state audit records reveal.

Among the violations were using seized money to pay on a prosecutor's student loans and allowing a prosecutor to live rent-free in a confiscated house for years, records show.

The cases were cited in a state commission hearing Tuesday in which authorities objected to new legislation aimed at curbing abuses of civil asset forfeiture by state and local law enforcement agencies. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, has spurred heated opposition from district attorneys and sheriffs.

Forfeiture involves law enforcement agencies seizing private property and money believed to have been used in drug trafficking or other crimes. After the assets are forfeited in court, authorities can keep the money or property even when the suspect is never convicted or charged.

A Kyrgyz schoolgirl received a 6-month-old Newfoundland puppy from the Russian President as a gift. She had asked him for the animal in an email during the annual Direct Line on April 16, 2015.

Dasha Yaitskaya said she wanted a dog of that exact breed. There were none in Kyrgyzstan, and it was impossible for her family to bring such a pooch from abroad.

"That's true! We received a letter addressed to the president from the girl, saying her family couldn't afford to buy the dog," the president's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Thursday.

The girl's parents weren't aware that their daughter had written to the president about her wish and were surprised to see the puppy. They nevertheless extended a warm welcome to the new family member.

In Latin America it's called "Trafico de personas". You know it as human trafficking.

It didn't use to be a widespread problem in Argentina. It existed, but after the 2001 collapse it increased significantly. Poverty, crime, government and police corruption all works to create an environment where slavery flourishes.

The same is happening in the US right now. Human trafficking is on the rise. Calls to U.S. trafficking hotline rise 26 percent led from last year by sex victims.

When people ask about the similarities between what happened in Argentina and Greece and what could happen in America, I explain that it's already happening. The difference is that in the case of the U.S. it's a slow, long process with few landmark moments but with very similar results. Poverty, social degradation and loss of standards of living just degrades everything around you until one day you wake up, look around and wonder what the heck happened.

Gun-toting citizens are showing up at military recruiting centers around the country, saying they plan to protect recruiters following last week's killing of four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The citizens, some of them private militia members, said they're supporting the recruiters, who by military directive are not armed.

"We're here to serve and protect," Clint Janney said Tuesday, wearing a Taurus 9mm handgun as he stood in a parking lot across from a recruiting center on the west side of Columbus. "What the government won't do, we will do."