Montebello High School in California... Mexican Flag

Subj: Montebello High School in California...   Montebello High School in California You will not see this heart-stopping photo on the front page of the NY Times, nor on the lead story of the major news networks. The protestors at Montebello High School took the American flag off the school's flag pole and hung it upside down while putting up the Mexican flag over it.  (*See pictures below*) I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington. The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil is already spreading on Internet forums and via e-mail. Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be 'redistributed' to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the 'fray'.. Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when its citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person at a time CAN make a difference.. One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one . . . If this ticks YOU off . . . PASS IT ON! Check all of your email inboxes from anywhere on the web. Try the new Email Toolbar now! Check all of your email inboxes from anywhere on the web. Try the new Email Toolbar now!

Do you trust City Leaders?

Iowa Guard ends urban war exercise amid outcry By WILLIAM PETROSKI • bpetroski@dmreg.com • February 24, 2009

The Iowa Army National Guard has dropped plans for urban warfare training in the western Iowa town of Arcadia after being deluged by nearly 100 e-mails and phone calls from gun-rights advocates nationwide.

The four-day event in April would have involved between 90 and 100 combat troops arriving in the Carroll County community in a convoy with a Blackhawk military helicopter flying overhead.

Troops would have gone door to door, asking the town's 443 residents about a suspected arms dealer and conducting searches of homes if property owners volunteered in advance to cooperate.

There was no opposition to the Guard's plans from city leaders. But gun-rights advocates were outraged, and news about the exercise became a hot topic nationally on radio talk shows and the Internet.

Arcadia Mayor Oran Kohorst said Monday he was disappointed the exercise had been canceled. He said he had not heard of a single objection from residents, and he said the City Council supported it. At least two guardsmen live in Arcadia, and many residents either have served in the military or have family members who have served in the armed forces, he said.
"This was completely blown out of proportion," Kohorst said. "They were going to come through and meet with the townspeople and just practice going in and out of their homes. They were never, ever going to confiscate guns or anything like that."

Talk show host Alex Jones of Austin, Texas, whose syndicated radio program is carried on about 60 stations, said he had received phone calls on and off the air from people in Arcadia and nearby towns who objected to the plans.
He said he believes oil companies, in concert with central banks, are creating a worldwide economic crisis to set up a world government.

"This is part of an acclimation for martial law," Jones said of the National Guard's plans.

Lt. Col. Gregory Hapgood Jr., the Iowa Guard's public affairs officer, said Monday that some urban warfare training will still be conducted, but it will be held at the armory in Carroll instead of in Arcadia.

Rather than holding a large company-sized exercise, the training will be in small groups at the platoon and squad level.
He said Guard officials changed their plans not because of the protests, but because the unit — Company A, 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry — has recently installed new leadership at the company and battalion level. Smaller unit training would be more beneficial, he said.

Company A is an infantry unit that served in Afghanistan for 13 months in 2004 and 2005, and it is expected to receive orders to return overseas within the next 24 months, Hapgood said.
One tactic used by infantry units is known as cordon and search. It involves creating layers of security in an area and then searching for weapons caches, explosive devices and bomb-making materials, and people of interest.

Hapgood said he considered the surge of e-mails and phone calls as a protest from outside of Iowa.

"We have been doing training in our communities for decades, so this is very routine business for us," Hapgood said. "We were quite surprised when we received e-mails from out of state criticizing the event. We have a responsibility to have our men and women ready to go into combat, and we are not going to change that."
Many of the e-mails were hostile, even threatening, Hapgood said.

One e-mail from a Texas resident said, "I am appalled the Iowa National Guard does not know what the Constitution of the United States says. ... How dare you?"

A man who described himself as a "Nevada citizen" wrote that it was good the exercise was called off: "It is possible that there would have been some dead Iowa Guardsmen."

Arcadia City Clerk Nancy Schmitz said she had 14 messages when she arrived at work Monday. All were apparently from listeners of Jones' show, she said.
"They all basically left the same message; they talked about it being like the Nazis and having the troops coming into our homes and confiscating weapons. It was very different from what was actually going to take place," Schmitz said.

She added she supported the training, calling it "a good opportunity to help out the troops."

How about Cops banging on your door?

Ex-Atlanta cops sentenced in deadly botched raid By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press Writer Kate Brumback, Associated Press Writer 23 mins ago   ATLANTA – Three former Atlanta police officers who each pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge in connection with the death of an elderly woman during a botched drug raid were sentenced Tuesday to federal prison.   Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler received sentences ranging from five years to 10. Kathryn Johnston, 92, was killed by police gunfire during the 2006 raid at her home.   Police used a "no-knock" warrant to enter Johnston's house to look for drugs. But prosecutors say officers found none and tried to cover up the mistake by planting baggies of marijuana.   U.S. District Judge Julie E. Carnes on Tuesday sentenced Smith to 10 years in federal prison. She sentenced Junnier to six years and Tesler to five.   Prosecutors earlier lowered their recommended sentences for Junnier and Smith. They asked for about 10 years for Smith and roughly five years for Junnier because they said the men cooperated with authorities. Tesler's recommended sentence was not lowered, and was about 10 years.   But the judge said Tuesday Tesler was a "minor participant overall" and lowered the sentence to five years. She said the government's recommendations were "unduly harsh." All the men will get three years supervised release after they serve their sentences.   The Rev. Market Hutchins, spokesman for Johnston's family, spoke by telephone to her niece and closest living relative, Sarah Dozier, 76, of Atlanta after the sentencing. "She certainly breathed a sigh of relief that there is nearly some resolution, particularly with regard to these officers," he said.   Hutchins said Dozier was sympathetic to the officers' families because she believes they were victims as well. "Her aspiration has always been justice and not a sense of revenge," he said.   The three men earlier had each pleaded guilty to the federal charge of violating Johnston's civil rights.   Smith and Junnier also pleaded guilty to state charges, including manslaughter. They are set to be sentenced on those charges next month. Under their plea agreements, their state sentences will be served concurrently with their federal punishment, said Buddy Parker, Junnier's lawyer.   Tesler was sentenced in May to four and a half years in prison on a state charge for lying to FBI agents, but that conviction was overturned on appeal last month. Johnston was killed by a barrage of bullets fired by officers who stormed into her home on Nov. 21, 2006, with a special "no-knock" warrant to search for drugs.   Tesler, who did not fire a shot, was in Johnston's back yard when plainclothes officers burst in through the front door. Johnston fired a single shot from a rusty revolver at the intruders, but hit no one, and officers fired 39 bullets, hitting the woman five or six times, prosecutors said.   Lawyers for Smith and Tesler said they had hoped for lesser sentences but praised the judge for weighing the facts in the case. "There are no winners in this case," said Smith's attorney, John Garland. "There are only losers."

Do you trust Wall Street Genius?

February 21, 2009 Madoff Never Made Supposed Investments By DIANA B. HENRIQUES The clients who trusted Bernard L. Madoff still do not know exactly what he did with their money. But they know what he did not do with it: He did not buy any of those blue-chip stocks and Treasury bills listed on their account statements over the last 13 years.   The court-appointed trustee who is winding down Mr. Madoff's business said on Friday that his team had searched records going back almost to 1993 and found no evidence that any securities were bought for investors during that time.   That pattern probably stretches back even further, according to the trustee, Irving Picard of the law firm of Baker Hostetler. But his team, operating in a crime scene "under the watchful eyes of the F.B.I.," simply has not yet been able to dig back any further in the Madoff archives, he said.   His report, delivered at an emotional public meeting of creditors on Friday, demolishes the theory that Mr. Madoff was an honest man driven into fraud by the relentless market strain of recent years. And it raises the question of how all those fake statements and trade confirmations were generated in the absence of any genuine trading.   Mr. Picard said his team now has "a pretty good idea" of how that happened, but his lawyer, David J. Sheehan, said they could not disclose any of those details because of the continuing criminal investigation into whether others participated in the crime with Mr. Madoff.   These fresh details about the case were laid out to an intent and diverse audience that filled a courthouse auditorium in Lower Manhattan. Sweaters and flannel shirts were crowded next to lawyerly suits and expensive ties. Customers detailed hardships they or family members were suffering because of the Madoff collapse, and many expressed anger at regulators who had not stopped Mr. Madoff and lawmakers who they say have failed to respond to the disastrous aftermath of his fraud.   "This is a human tragedy like any other tragedy, and we should be getting help from the government like any other victims," said one Madoff investor, who declined to give her name. "I lost my entire life savings that I worked for my entire life."   Mr. Madoff was charged with securities fraud on Dec. 11 after confessing to family members that his money-management business was a fraud whose losses could be as high as $50 billion. His bail terms confine him to his apartment under 24-hour surveillance until his case is resolved by a trial or, more likely, by a guilty plea.   Meanwhile, investigators with the United States attorney's office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission are trying to piece together what Mr. Madoff did in the suite where he managed clients' money, several floors below the legitimate stock-trading business that was the public face of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. That investigation has clearly made the trustee's task more difficult. The luxury homes that secure Mr. Madoff's $10 million bail cannot be touched by the trustee until the criminal case is resolved, and potentially helpful employees, facing questions from federal agents, have "lawyered up," Mr. Sheehan said.   Moreover, he said, many of Mr. Madoff's activities were in foreign countries, where the trustee must work with foreign regulators under different bankruptcy laws.   But claims requests have already come from 2,350 customers, claiming losses that Mr. Picard recalled as being "about $1 billion." That reflects money those customers thought they had, he cautioned, not the amount they are eligible to receive. Mr. Picard said his team had excellent records of the cash that entered and left the firm.   By law, customers can claim only the difference between the total amount they deposited over the years and the total amount they took out — regardless of whether those amounts were returned as outright withdrawals or as payments the customer thought were regular interest or dividends. That unyielding arithmetic is embedded in the law that governs the insurancelike protection program for brokerage account customers, called the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, he said.   Although customers who received substantially more from their Madoff account than they put in may be required to return the excess money — a step called a clawback — the trustee and his lawyer repeatedly tried to reassure the audience that it would not be practical for them to seek clawbacks of small amounts from customers of limited means. Customers with valid claims, however, can be assured of receiving repayment only up to $500,000 from the SIPC fund. Any additional money they are owed must come from dividing the assets the trustee can find — and he has found less than $1 billion so far.   Thus, an investor who put in $3 million and took out $2 million over the years would have a valid claim of $1 million. If the trustee raises enough cash to pay 10 percent of the total claims, that investor would eventually be given $600,000 — 10 percent of his original $1 million claim plus the insurance payment of $500,000.

SECRET Federal Appeals Court?

January 16, 2009 Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU   WASHINGTON — In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists.   The ruling came in a case involving an unidentified company's challenge to 2007 legislation that expanded the president's legal power to conduct wiretapping without warrants for intelligence purposes.   But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001.   Several legal experts cautioned that the ruling had limited application, since it dealt narrowly with the carrying out of a law that had been superseded by new legislation. But the ruling is still the first by an appeals court that says the Fourth Amendment's requirement for warrants does not apply to the foreign collection of intelligence involving Americans. That finding could have broad implications for United States national security law.   The court ruled that eavesdropping on Americans believed to be agents of a foreign power "possesses characteristics that qualify it for such an exception."   Bruce M. Selya, the chief judge of the review court, wrote in the opinion that "our decision recognizes that where the government has instituted several layers of serviceable safeguards to protect individuals against unwarranted harms and to minimize incidental intrusions, its efforts to protect national security should not be frustrated by the courts."   The three-judge court, which hears rare appeals from the full Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, addressed provisions of the Protect America Act, passed by Congress in 2007 amid the controversy over Mr. Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants. It found that the administration had put in place sufficient privacy safeguards to meet the constitutional standards of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Because of that, the company had to cooperate, the court said.   That finding bolstered the Bush administration's broader arguments on wiretapping without warrants, both critics and supporters said.   William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University who has criticized the administration's legal position on eavesdropping, said that while the ruling did not address Mr. Bush's surveillance without warrants directly, "it does bolster his case" by recognizing that eavesdropping for national security purposes did not always require warrants.   Coming in the final days of the Bush administration, the ruling was hailed by the administration and conservatives as a victory for an aggressive approach to counterterrorism. The Justice Department said in a statement that it was "pleased with this important ruling."   "It provides a very good result; it reaffirms the president's right to conduct warrantless searches," said David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who has served in Republican administrations.   Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the ruling "reinforces the significant, bipartisan political consensus" in favor of the president's broad assertions of wiretapping powers. But others were cautious about the significance of the ruling.   "I think this kind of maintains the status quo," said Scott Silliman, an expert on national security law at Duke University. "I don't think it is a surprise that the FISA court found that the legislation was constitutional. They are going to defer to Congress, especially since there was a lot of discussion when the law was passed about the ability of the government to compel providers."   The ruling is the latest legal chapter in a dispute dating back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when Mr. Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international communications of American citizens without the approval of Congress or the courts. After the agency's program was publicly disclosed in December 2005, critics said it violated a 1978 law. The White House initially opposed any new legislation to regulate surveillance, arguing that it would be an infringement of the president's powers.   But after the Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, the administration agreed to bring the N.S.A. program under the jurisdiction of the FISA court. In 2007, Congress passed the Protect America Act, which was replaced in 2008 by another surveillance law.   The case arose in 2007, when a telecommunications company refused to comply with the government's demands that it cooperate without warrants under the terms of the Protect America Act. The company was forced to comply, under threat of contempt, while it challenged the law in the FISA court, the opinion noted.   The company argued that the law violated the constitutional rights of its customers and that the act placed too much power and discretion in the hands of the executive branch. It also raised specific privacy problems, which the court ruling did not identify, that could occur under the surveillance directives it had received from the government.   In rejecting the company's complaint, the FISA appeals court found that the administration had so carefully carried out the Protect America Act that it was not in violation of the Fourth Amendment. It concluded that the procedures put in place under the law properly balanced the constitutional rights of American citizens and the national security interests of the government.   The company argued that "by placing discretion entirely in the hands of the executive branch without prior judicial involvement, the procedures cede to that branch overly broad power that invites abuse," the court wrote.   But, the court ruled, "this is little more than a lament about the risk that government officials will not operate in good faith.'   "That sort of risk exists even when a warrant is required," it said.   Scott Shane contributed reporting.   Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Prostitution - Was there any supervision at all?

Very simply a case of INCOMPETENT MANAGEMENT.   Posted on Thu, Jan. 15, 2009 Two Kansas Citians indicted for operating prostitution ring By SARA SHEPHERD and MARK MORRIS A Kansas City woman allegedly helped run a prostitution ring from her work computer while employed as a U.S. Department of Agriculture statistician, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday.   Laurie Lynn McConnell, 26, and John O. Miller, 36, also of Kansas City, allegedly recruited prostitutes, advertised their services, and took a $100 cut from each paid appointment, according to the federal charges.   All the while, McConnell — a former Blue Springs High School honor student — was working at the USDA office at 6501 Beacon Drive in Kansas City, using her government-issued laptop to manage prostitution businesses and correspond with clients, the indictment alleges.   "It's always disappointing when federal government employees misuse government resources," Michael W. Reap, a St. Louis federal prosecutor, said in a written statement. "However, it is deeply disturbing when those resources are utilized to commit a crime and exploit women."   Authorities filed the case in St. Louis because some of the prostitution and other alleged crimes occurred there.   McConnell and Miller each face federal charges of conspiring to use computers, cell phones and other electronic means to promote prostitution, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.   McConnell also faces a charge of enticement for allegedly persuading a woman to travel across state lines — from Tennessee to St. Louis — to engage in prostitution. A St. Louis grand jury returned the indictment in early December, but it remained sealed until authorities Wednesday arrested McConnell and Miller.   The two on Wednesday made their first appearance federal court in Kansas City, where Miller told a magistrate judge that he had two children, ages 4 and 11, who lived with their mother.   McConnell said she owned two vehicles that she shared with Miller. When asked about additional assets, McConnell said she had an engagement ring.   Both said they were unemployed.   McConnell worked as a statistician for the USDA's Risk Management Agency from August 2003 until April 2008, according to the indictment.   She graduated from the University of Central Missouri, where she made the Dean's List multiple semesters. At Blue Springs High, she sang with the Senior Chorus and received a college scholarship from a local service organization.   She showed academic potential in middle school, when she qualified for state recognition in the Duke University Talent Identification Program, a feat requiring seventh-graders to score as well or better than the average college-bound senior on the SAT or ACT.   If convicted of the federal charges, she and Miller could face up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000.   Beginning in 2005, the indictment alleges, they traveled between Kansas City and St. Louis to operate the prostitution businesses under the names Darc Phoenix and USA Honies.   McConnell used the nicknames "Hollie," "Selena" and "Sasha Lynne," while Miller went by "London," "B. McNasty" and "O'Bannon," according to the indictment.   Prosecutors contend that they recruited women from Tennessee, St. Louis and Kansas City to work as prostitutes in Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.   McConnell and Miller allegedly arranged to fly at least one woman from St. Louis to Kansas City, where Miller accompanied her to a Barry Road bank.   "The defendants charged the prostitutes a service fee of approximately $100 per appointment," the indictment alleges. "In exchange for the fee, the defendants agreed to place advertisements, answer phones and find and screen clients."   Though the indictment does not specify how much the alleged businesses charged for sex, it gives an example of one client paying $400.   The pair also established a series of PayPal accounts that allowed clients to pay for prostitution services online, the charges allege.   McConnell and Miller allegedly placed ads on Craigslist and in The Pitch in Kansas City and the Riverfront Times in St. Louis.   The charges gave no hint as to how authorities uncovered the alleged businesses, but prosecutors said that the USDA's Office of Inspector General and the Maryland Heights, Mo., Police Department contributed to the investigation.   According to the charges, authorities were closing in last summer. But on July 1, when investigators confronted McConnell, she told law enforcement agents that she was unable to pick out Miller from a selection of photographs.   Bond was set at $50,000 for Miller and $25,000 bond for McConnell. © 2009 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved

Military Commissions Act

This Act, promulgated under George W. Bush, is illegal, unconstitutional, and sickens normal Americans: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/commissions.html