Feb 28, 2019

Marijuana legalization bills are advancing in several states

fromForbes:  Marijuana legalization advocates came into 2019 expecting it to be a huge year for cannabis, and lawmakers around the country are not disappointing them so far.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

No drugs, no crime and just pennies for school: how police use civil asset forfeiture

fromPulitzerCenter:  In the past two decades, the federal government took in $36.5 billion in assets police seized from the America people, many of whom never were charged with a crime or shown to have drugs.

Police State America

Political bias is destroying people’s faith in journalism

fromNYPost:  A war on liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not enough. Democrats go for the trifecta, as 44 vote for infanticide.

Media Bias on Parade

Apple's intensifying privacy & encryption stance worsening FBI struggles with lawbreakers 'going dark'

fromAppleInsider:  Because of Apple's and other companies' stances on end-to-end encryption, the U.S. government's trouble in intercepting online communications is only accelerating.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Additional Little Rock residents share stories of "unjustified" no-knock warrants

fromKATV:  Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump: "So as long as officers know that police involved shooting reviews that are meaningless rubber-stamps, they have no incentive to change their behavior."

Police State America

How Is abortion after birth not news?

fromLATimes:  A war on liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not enough. Democrats go for the trifecta, as 44 vote for infanticide.

The Government is Not Us

Juries Were Supposed To Be Able To Overturn Laws

by Clay Conrad.   History is clear. The law is unclear on exactly what a jury is. Juries can range from four to 12 members, depending on the state and case. In two states, criminal juries need not reach unanimous judgments. In some states, jurors can question witnesses. There have even been arguments for so-called professional jurors. Some believe   ... MORE

VIDEO: Jury Nullification, Jury Rights & Jury Independence

Robert Gebelhoff: How Powerful Should Our Juries Be?

Justice is a result, not just a process.  In 1986, Leroy Reed faced criminal charges he didn’t understand. A mentally disabled ex-convict from Milwaukee, Reed was charged with illegally possessing a firearm after his parole office discovered that he had purchased a .22-caliber pistol to go with a mail-order private detective course. While it was obvious  ... MORE

Patients In Pain, And A Doctor Who Must Limit Drugs

Gov't declares war on pain relief. Susan Kubicka-Welander, a short-order cook, went to her pain checkup appointment straight from the lunch-rush shift. “We were really busy,” she told Dr. Robert L. Wergin, trying to smile through deeply etched lines of exhaustion. “Thursdays, it’s Philly cheesesteaks.” Her back ached from a compression fracture;   ... MORE

It’s Far Past Time To Take Back Our Nation

by David J. D'Addabbo.   Obama and his global agenda allies are using the media as a propaganda machine to create the Illusion that stricter gun control will somehow protect the people. This is of course a lie proven over and over again by unarmed citizens getting slaughtered! Governments are unlawfully regulating away all of our rights, under color of   ... MORE

Jury Nullification Has Long History Of Righting Wrong Laws

by Frank Parlato.     Because justice is a result, not just a process. In 1215, when the Barons of England compelled King John to sign the Magna Carta, trial by jury was established. The King now had to seek permission through 12 citizens unanimous in their verdict before he could take anyone's freedom away. That’s why we have jury trials: To    ... MORE

Law Enforcement Ranks Terrorists Threats To America

by Zack Beauchamp. If you asked law enforcement professionals which extremist movements most threaten America, what would you expect them to say? If you expect their most common answer would be Islamic extremists, it turns out you'd be wrong — though not by much. In a 2014 survey, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism ... MORE

Kate Mather: Good News For Citizens! LAPD Urges Officers To Be Community Guardians, Not Warriors On Crime

Promoting peace officers rather than robocops.   For years, Los Angeles police officers have worked under the shadow of the department's dark past. The LAPD of the 1970s and '80s acted as a hard-charging, occupying force that raided poor neighborhoods and rounded up anyone in sight. Police stormed suspected crack houses, tearing down walls ... MORE

The Case Against Jury Nullification -- Rebutted

by Ilya Somin, Washington Post.    JUSTICE IS A RESULT, not just a process. In a recent post, co-blogger Orin Kerr offers a thoughtful critique of my and Glenn Reynolds’ recent defenses of jury nullification. Orin’s points have some validity.  But, on balance, I still think that jury nullification is likely to be more beneficial than harmful relative  ... MORE

Michigan City Makes The Citizens Pay For Police Brutality

The beatings will continue until revenue improves. One time tax hike needed to pay settlement. Think that since you “aren’t breaking any laws,” police brutality doesn’t affect you? Well, that’s certainly not the case in one Michigan city. Instead of violent cops paying for their own wrong-doings, the legal expenses associated with police brutality ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Government Is On The Warpath

Time for ‘We the People’ to circle the wagons.     In an age of overcriminalization, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do. Yet it used to be “we the people” telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the         ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - On Immigration

Rowan Lee: ACLU Releases App To Track & Record Police

What if citizens required justice? The ACLU has begun to roll out a new program through the form of an app that they call the Mobile Justice Crime Unit. Currently only a handful of states carry the program, as shown here with California’s service, but the app’s outreach is growing. The website is ultra-modern – achieving the  ... MORE      Available on iTunes 

Americans Get It: Record Low Confidence In Government

by Emily Swanson.     Is the sleeping giant waking up? Americans' confidence in all three branches of government is at or near record lows, according to a major survey that has measured attitudes on the subject for 40 years. The 2014 General Social Survey finds only 23 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the Supreme     ... MORE

An Innocent Frequent Flyer Detained 23 Hours By TSA

by Ronnie Polaneczky.      Apparently, working as a supervisor for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at Philadelphia International Airport comes with a perk:   You get to throw people in jail for no good reason and still keep your job. If that's not the case, why is Charles Kieser still employed by the TSA?  Vanderklok, 57, is a Philly architect   ... MORE

Radley Balko: The Flashbang Menace

Officer safety always trumps citizen safety. ProPublica has just published a long investigation of the use of flashbang grenades, an issue I’ve written about quite a bit, including here at The Watch. These are the incendiary devices intended to temporarily stun, blind and deafen everyone within range. They have some limited appropriate    ... MORE

The IRS Customer Service Will Be Extra Bad This Year

by Lori Mongomery.   Taxpayers will face the worst levels of service in more than a decade from the Internal Revenue Service this filing season, with as few as 43 percent of callers getting through to an agent and then only after waits of 30 minutes or more, according to a report released Wednesday. In her annual report to Congress, National    ... MORE

Wendy McElroy: The Brain Drain, Gain and Retain

On incentives, freedom and prosperity.       America is making emigration more difficult and expensive. Last year, for example, the cost of renouncing U.S. citizenship rose by over 400% from $450 to $2,350. Those who take the far more common step of simply and quietly leaving still remain vulnerable to a massive tax system that reaches      ... MORE

NYPD On "Strike" And Everybody Is Better Off!

by Michael Minkoff.   Citizens reap dividends from intra-government squabble. The NYPD Officer Union has called for a semi-limited “virtual work stoppage” to punish Mayor DeBlasio and other people who, according to the NYPD, haven’t been faithful or loyal enough to the cause of police officers. The result has been that most people would be just     ... MORE