“Reporters Without Borders”,  a watchdog organization headquartered in Paris, France and known by its French acronym, “RSF”, has published its annual “World Press Freedom Index”.

Liberty Blitzkrieg brings to our attention that in the great march FORWARD!, the US was a front runner in the stakes for greatest loss of press freedom in year over year results – slipping an impressive 13 slots  from #33 last year to #46 on the 2014 world ranking, after Romania but before Haiti.

There were some “non-surprises”, such as North Korea and Eritrea remaining at the back of the pack, but also some pleasant surprises with tiny Belize clocking in at an impressive #29, hanging out in the “free press” band with Australia at #28.

Clearly, much work remains to be done before the US can be satisfied that the people’s work is completed and it can comfortably hang in the 100’s with its pals in the middle east and Africa.  Maybe that will provide the necessary incentive to Dirty Harry in the Senate to get working on that innertubes kill switch.  In the meantime, those pesky bloggers keep bringing up stuff like Benghazi, or Warrantless Wiretaps, or the ever expanding use of technology to spy on and monitor its own citizens.

The 2014 World Press Freedom Index spotlights the negative impact of conflicts on freedom of information and its protagonists. The ranking of some countries has also been affected by a tendency to interpret national security needs in an overly broad and abusive manner to the detriment of the right to inform and be informed. This trend constitutes a growing threat worldwide and is even endangering freedom of information in countries regarded as democracies. Finland tops the index for the fourth year running, closely followed by Netherlands and Norway, like last year. At the other end of the index, the last three positions are again held by Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, three countries where freedom of information is non-existent.

The Alarming Case of Justin Carter, Facebook “Terrorist”

[…]  When speech is a crime, thought is a crime, because when punishing speech the authorities are actually punishing what they think — or want jurors to think — was meant by the speech. Even when acting in good faith, people misinterpret. Since no one reads minds, it is a good thing the First Amendment protects our speech.

Unfortunately the First Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, has been under siege recently. Otherwise any speech that does not represent a clear and present danger to other people’s safety would be protected.

Punishable speech is one area where liberty skates on thin of ice. Despite the obvious need for security, “terroristic threat” is another:

According to the indictment, Carter’s statement met two of the necessities required by state law: His words were uttered “with the intent to place the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury,” or uttered “with the intent to cause impairment or interruption of public communications, public transportation, public water, gas, or power supply or other public service.”

Too bad Justin couldn’t have loaned the authorities his sense of humor, because that would never pass the laugh test.  (read the entire article)

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In a recent Washington Post article author Mike Wise opines the winter Olympics are an international assembly of white people and compares the athletic contest to “the inside of a snow globe”.

Apparently the absence of black athletes is due to institutional racism.  Perhaps it’s time the Eric Holder DOJ rules of “disparate impact” are applied to Olympic athletics to insure more black people don skis, skates and snowboards equitably.

(I swear no bias toward curling implied)

Perhaps Olympic medals should be divided and shared;  after all, at some point, you’ve just got to reach the conclusion whitey has earned enough medals.   Heck, why go through all the pesky mathematical formulations to insure statistical representative appropriateness – perhaps the IOC could just appoint medals based on the same qualifications of Peace Prizes, or something.

The ridiculous diatribe actually published in the Washington Post is absurd beyond an imaginable magnitude; but what the heck, why let athletics out of the race-baiting equation.   (more…)

They could always name the target town “Ruby Ridge”.   It shouldn’t be hard to find a few friends willing to role-play the bad guys.    Rumor has it during a recent patriot movement strategy session they decided the new camo would be burka’s…  Wouldn’t that just throw a monkey wrench into the PC Posse Comitatus.

(Via Telegraph)  The US army has built a fake city designed to be used during combat training   exercises.   The 300 acre ‘town’ includes a five story embassy, a bank, a school, an   underground subway and train station, a mosque, a football stadium, and a   helicopter landing zone.

Perhaps this explains why Maryland was so sensitive to avoid any inquiry in the case of John Filippidis.    It certainly sounds like the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Hub is but a mere test venue for a larger federally linked data hub of the same information.

Were the feds using Maryland to establish the protocols ?   It sure seems that is a very strong possibility…… and, if so, the denial of the FOIA would make even more sense.

In Mr. Filippidis example the “hot list – target vehicles” appeared to be CCW holders.

WASHINGTON DC – The Department of Homeland Security is set to activate a national license plate tracking system that will be shared with law enforcement, allowing DHS officers to take photos of any license plate using their smartphone and upload it to a database which will include a “hot list” of “target vehicles”.

The details are included in a PDF attachment uploaded yesterday to the Federal Business Opportunities website under a solicitation entitled “National License Plate Recognition Database.” (more…)

“No my friend, you don’t sell this stuff to me.  You sell this to the people who don’t have self-respect and self-determination,  and they are weak,  and they love to be subjugated and to be dependent on the government.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbEV5xcoZiA

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Keith Judd, the convict who ran for President, became somewhat of a  celebrity after almost beating Obama in the 2012 West Virginia Democratic  Primary. What wasn’t reported, however, was that after Obama won the  presidential election, Judd filed a series of lawsuits detailing how Obama was  illegally placed on the 2012 presidential ballot. One lawsuit, filed on May 9,  2013, is scheduled to be heard before a federal court in the next few months.  (continue reading)

The Curious Case of Ms. Rahinah Ibrahim

The story around the detention of Rahinah Ibrahim is so astounding a person of normal cognitive capacity might be unable to actually comprehend it.    She was stopped, detained, searched, hand-cuffed and then placed on a no-fly list back in 2005.   She sued the U.S. government to find out why:

After seven years of litigation, two trips to a federal appeals court and $3.8 million worth of lawyer time, the public has finally learned why a wheelchair-bound Stanford University scholar was cuffed, detained and denied a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii: FBI human error. (link)

The Error:  An FBI agent/investigator named Kevin Kelly was investigating Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 when he mistakenly checked the wrong box on a terrorism form, erroneously placing Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list.   Kelly simply checked the wrong box on a generic administrative form.

What followed is almost nine years of *EXTREME* governmental denial, by some of the biggest well known names in DOJ, NSA, and Homeland Security.   They, on behalf of the U.S. government, used every national security avoidance argument, all of it, all.of.it, simply to cover-up a simple clerical mistake. (more…)

This one will be interesting to see if there is a follow-up.   The question I have is why would the pentagon destroy the pictures?   The court would, most likely, be on their side if they took a position of national security as reason for denial – so why destroy them?   Something not passing the sniff test…. 

WASHINGTON DC – Judicial Watch announced Monday that it received documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit showing that Admiral William McRaven ordered the immediate destruction of any photos of Osama bin Laden’s death within hours of a Judicial Watch FOIA request.

According to the Pentagon documents, McRaven sent his email on “Friday, May 13, 2011 5:09 PM.” The documents do not detail what documents, if any, were destroyed in response to the McRaven directive. The Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit seeking the documents was filed in the United States Court for the District of Columbia only hours earlier. Judicial Watch also announced the filing at a morning press conference. […]

The move by McRaven to purge the photos appears to have come, at least in part, in response to aggressive efforts by Judicial Watch to obtain images of the deceased bin Laden that President Obama, in a rewrite of federal open records law, had refused to disclose.

In addition to its May 2, 2011, FOIA request with the Pentagon Judicial Watch filed an identical request on May 3, 2011, with the CIA. When neither the Defense Department nor the CIA complied with the FOIA requests, Judicial Watch, in June 2011, filed FOIA lawsuits against both agencies. In the course of the litigation, the Pentagon claimed that it had “no records responsive to plaintiff’s request.”   (CONTINUE READING)

Apparently all of the random non-corrupt smidgens were identical…. Identically opposite to progressives.   What are the odds?   Go figure..

WASHINGTON DC – A Republican House committee chairman said the Internal Revenue Service targeted tax-exempt conservative groups for audits, widening the scope of GOP ire over the agency’s oversight of political activities.

House Democrats pushed back, saying Republicans were seeking to use the IRS controversy to score political points with their conservative base in an election year.

The IRS has been under scrutiny since an inspector general’s report last May found that the agency had targeted conservative groups for lengthy and heavy-handed review of their applications to become tax-exempt organizations under section 501(c) 4 of the tax code. The controversy led to significant management shakeups at the IRS and generated a slew of congressional investigations, some of which are still going on. (more…)