[T]he US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have crossed a line -- in the midst of nabbing counterfeiters this weekend, the government organization seized the domains of a torrent meta-tracker and a trio of music sites. Today, the picture above is the only thing you'll see if you go to Torrent-Finder.com, RapGodFathers.com, Dajaz1.com or OnSmash.com, as the ICANN domain registration for the four are now in the ICE's possession, presumably on suspicion of piracy.Copyright enforcement. Seriously? You're confiscating web sites -- without prior warning, without presentation of a warrant, without even Congressional mandate (the bill to provide that mandate has not yet passed Congress, and may not, based on the negative reaction of some Congressmen to ICE's heavy-handed power grab).
A retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.Long story short...
“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.
Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach. “I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”
I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”Ah, but don't worry, Mr. Sawyer. Il Duce feels your pain.
The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”
Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.
President Obama said today he sympathizes with passenger complaints about aggressive body pat-downs at airports, but his counter-terrorism aides say they are necessary to guard against hidden explosives.Uh, no, Mr. President. It is NOT a huge inconvenience for ALL of us. You traipse all over the world in the opulence that is Air Force One. And even those members of Congress who make a big show of flying commercial (hey, how 'bout that? [/sarcasm]) manage to skip the humiliation reserved for the rest of us (hat tip: Ye Olde Journalist).
Balancing privacy and security is a "tough situation," Obama told reporters at a news conference following the NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
"One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes a huge inconvenience for all of us," Obama said.
No airport pat-down for the incoming House speaker.Yeah. The same rules apply to other congressional leaders. Because, after all, only we mundanes should be humiliated, NOT the elites who rule us.
On Friday, the GOP's John Boehner was guided past the metal detectors and hand inspections given to other passengers on his flight home to Ohio.
Boehner's spokesman Michael Steel said his boss followed procedures set by Capitol Police and the Transportation Security Administration. Steel said the same rules apply to other congressional leaders.
Solution to issue of full-body scanners at airports: A booth you step into that will detonate any explosive device you may have hidden on or in your body. The explosion is contained within the booth. Win-Win? No profiling and will eliminate long and expensive trials. Hmmmm: In the airport you hear a muffled explosion. Later an announcement, "Attention, standby passengers! Seats now available on flight number...Priceless.
Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency? Obama has looked to many models of leadership, including FDR and Abraham Lincoln, two transformative presidents who governed during times of upheaval. But what’s lost in those historical comparisons is that both men ran slim bureaucracies rooted in relative simplicity. Neither had secretaries of education, transportation, health and human services, veterans’ affairs, energy, or homeland security, nor czars for pollution or drug abuse, nor televisions in the West Wing constantly tuned to yammering pundits. They had bigger issues to grapple with, but far less managing to do. “Lincoln had time to think,” says Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. “That kind of downtime just doesn’t exist anymore.”One of the benefits of being old like me is that you've personally experienced things that younger folk might perhaps be unaware of. See, I remember having heard this same line of hooey before.
A January 13, 1980 Washington Post article made a similar conclusion about the beleaguered Carter administration: "Voters have lowered their expectations of what any president can accomplish; they have accepted the notion that this country may never again have heroic, larger-than-life leadership in the White House."So...the Presidency was too big for one person in 1980. And the Presidency is too big for one person in 2010. But this idea was never pushed in the later 80's, in the 90's, or in the 00's. Why 1980? Why 2010?
Post writer Walter Shapiro went on to describe how, "Some voters have entirely discarded textbook notions about presidential greatness and believe that Carter is doing as good a job as anyone could in facing new and difficult problems and in coping with an independent and restive Congress." He actually lamented the fact that "a sizable segment of the electorate...still applies traditional standards in assessing Carter's performance in office."
Later that same year, in a Christian Science Monitor story entitled "Carter and the Eroding Presidency," writer Richard J. Cattani cited Stephen Wayne of George Washington University, who claimed: "There's something institutional about the decline." Cattani noted how "Wayne and others...see a weakening of the presidency since Vietnam and Watergate that makes it difficult for officeholders to fulfill expectations."
The TSA’s invasive new screening measures include officers literally putting their hands down people’s pants if they are wearing baggy clothing in a shocking new elevation of groping procedures that have stoked a nationwide revolt against privacy-busting airport security measures.This is sick. Read on, if you can.
Forget John Tyner’s “don’t touch my junk” experience at the hands of TSA goons in San Diego recently, another victim of Big Sis was told by TSA officials that it was now policy to go even further when dealing with people wearing loose pants or shorts.
Stone [noted] how the TSA thug directly patted down his testicles, penis and backside while his hand was inside Stone’s pants. Stone was initially embarrassed to reveal the full scope of the groping but related the details of what amounted to nothing less than outright sexual molestation.You got that right, Joel!
A 54-year-old Missouri City man experienced similar treatment when he was going through security at Fort Lauderdale Airport.
Thomas Mollman was subject to a groping by a TSA officer that was tantamount to sexual molestation.
“I was wearing shorts at the time – between the underwear, right on the skin, all the way around the back, all the way around my front, 360 degrees, touched inappropriately,” he said.
“This was an assault. This was no different than a sexual assault,” said KTRK Legal Analyst Joel Androphy.
The New York Times has just reported on a new trend towards what's sometimes known as soap-dodging. Among those who have cut down on daily showers, baths or hair-washing were a woman who swipes a sliced lemon under her armpits instead of deodorant, another who uses baby wipes to freshen up after her lunchtime runs, and a salesman who shampoos only once a month and gave up anti-perspirant for three years.Why in the name of sanity is this happening? It's partly as an extension of the "save the planet" mentality we're badgered with relentlessly by leftards.
There are, of course, environmental benefits. In a bid to reduce his carbon footprint to the absolute minimum, environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy, 51, limits his showers to about twice a week.Apparently it's not enough for leftards to offend us with their demands on our wealth and freedoms. Now we have to put up with BO in the name of Save the Earth.
The Town Council unanimously approved an ordinance requiring residents to recycle their trash.The "town council" in question is that of Mt. Airy, located in.......Frederick County, Maryland.
On Monday, Councilwoman Wendi Peters spoke for the Town's Sanitation and Recycling Commission, which recommended the town pass the ordinance.
The ordinance penalizes residents with a $100 fine for repeatedly or willfully not recycling, according to discussion among council members.
