The Drug War and GPS tracking.

Police in Delaware may soon be unable to use global positioning systems (GPS) to keep tabs on a suspect unless they have a court-signed warrant, thanks to a recent ruling by a superior court judge who cited famed author George Orwell in her decision.Link

Judge allows Obama to order assassination.

On Dec. 7, the case before U.S. District Court Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., was described by him as presenting stark and perplexing questions: Can the president order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization? Bates dismissed the case, thereby greatly pleasing defendants President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta. The plaintiff was Nasser al-Aulaqi, acting on behalf of his son, Anwar al-Aulaqi, who could not bring the lawsuit himself because he is hiding in Yemen, having been placed on a kill list by Obama that is being implemented by Gates and Panetta.Link

How Many Documents Published?

Link

Owned..........

Charges called illegal............

Lawyers and media pundits in Nigeria are accusing the government of acting illegally by agreeing to settle criminal bribery charges against Dick Cheney out of court. Nigeria charged Cheney and applied for an Interpol arrest warrant earlier this month in connection with a $180-million bribery case. Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, reportedly agreed to pay $35 million to see the charges dropped. But Nigeria could see as much as $250 million from the deal, in "the form of a deal to free up Nigerian money that had been locked away in Swiss bank accounts," The Nation's John Nichols reports.Link

Iraq Wants the U.S. Out.

BAGHDAD—Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.Link

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Drug decriminalization pays off in Portugal.

These days, Casal Ventoso is an ordinary blue-collar community — mothers push baby strollers, men smoke outside cafes, buses chug up and down the cobbled main street.Link

Peace deal ‘impossible,’ ‘forbidden’.

Israel's foreign minister said Sunday a peace deal with the Palestinians is impossible under current conditions and that Israel should pursue a lesser deal instead — a concept the Palestinians swiftly rejected.Link

Napolitano: Pat-downs are here to stay.

Airline passengers should get used to invasive full body scans and enhanced pat-downs, the Homeland Security secretary suggested Sunday. CNN's Candy Crowley asked Janet Napolitano if she expected changes to the controversial Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening procedures in the near future. "Not for the foreseeable future," Napolitano replied. "You know we're always looking to improve systems and so forth, but the new technology, the pat-downs -- just objectively safer for our traveling public," she said.Link

WikiLeaks: DEA reach goes global.

WASHINGTON — The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organization whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, The New York Times reported.Link

Merry Christmas.............

Ron Paul on the Thom Hartmann Program.

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Indefinite detention................

The White House is preparing an Executive Order on indefinite detention that will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials. The draft order, a version of which was first considered nearly 18 months ago, is expected to be signed by President Obama early in the New Year. The order allows for the possibility that detainees from countries like Yemen might be released if circumstances there change. But the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.Link

 

A nearly $1.3T spending bill.

WASHINGTON – Democrats controlling the Senate abandoned on Thursday a huge catchall spending measure combining nearly $1.3 trillion worth of unfinished budget work, including $158 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Facing a midnight Saturday deadline when a stopgap funding measure expires, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would work with Republican leader Mitch McConnell to produce a bill to keep the federal government running into early next year. The 1,924-page bill collapsed of its own weight after an outcry from conservatives who complained it was stuffed with more than $8 billion in homestate pet projects known as earmarks.Link

Julian Assange freed on bail.......

Julian Assange, founder of secrets website WikiLeaks, was released on bail in London Thursday evening. Authorities had held the former hacker in Wandsworth prison since Dec. 7 when he was detained on sex assault charges. "It's great to smell the fresh air of London again," he told reporters as he left the jail. Assange thanked his supporters around the world, his lawyers and members of the press who were not "all taken in and considered to look deeper in their work.".Link

Bradley Manning's detention.

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime.Link

Fed ‘monopoly’ could be broken.

As the incoming chairman of the House monetary policy subcommittee, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will hold the bully pulpit when it comes to the nation's money woes. He's not wasting any time getting right to the heart of the matter. The libertarian-leaning conservative has long been a critic of the US Federal Reserve and central banking as a whole, but this may be a new one: speaking with CNBC recently, Paul said he views the Fed as a "monopoly" that could benefit from the introduction of competition. "We should start ending the Fed by allowing competition," he said. "I don't like the fact that they have monopoly control. It's a cartel: they print the money. The Constitution really doesn't give them that authority. The Constitution said that only gold and silver can be legal tender. I want to legalize competition and allow individual Americans to use gold and silver in competition, as money. Today if you do that, you can go to jail.Link

Ron Paul rides again................

The Revolution is here! Searching for leadership, congressional Republicans have finally turned to Ron Paul. Well, to chair the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, at least. But that does put Congress's leading critic of the Federal Reserve in charge of the panel that oversees the central bank. Ben Bernanke, beware. The 12-term libertarian-leaning congressman from Texas has written a book-length manifesto – titled simply End the Fed – calling for the Federal Reserve's abolition. He will likely call leading Austrian economists affiliated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute to Capitol Hill to testify alongside staid mainstream economists. Fortune magazine recently asked, "Will the Fed be able to survive Ron Paul?".Link

Respect.

During George W. Bush’s presidency, he was out of favor with the reigning neoconservatives who were alarmed at his anti-interventionism. He still gives many conservatives fits with comments like his praise for WikiLeaks.Link

Assange says Pentagon plans prosecution.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who angered Washington by releasing secret cables, said in a documentary on Sunday he faced prosecution by the United States and was disappointed with how Swedish justice had been abused. Assange has been remanded in custody in Britain after a European arrest warrant was issued by Sweden, which wants to question Assange about allegations made by two women of sexual crimes. He has denied the allegations. "I came to Sweden as a refugee publisher involved with an extraordinary publishing fight with the Pentagon, where people were being detained and there is an attempt to prosecute me for espionage," Assange said in an interview in the documentary, aired on Swedish public television.Link

Cause of Death in the U.S.

In a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers came to a surprising conclusion: hospitalizations for poisoning by prescription medication has increased by 65 percent from 1999 to 2006. The rates of unintentional poisoning– from prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers in the U.S. has surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of unintentional injury death.Link

”A new WikiLeaks”..............

The pressure on WikiLeaks is increasing. DN.se reveals that several key figures behind the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational or religious documents have resigned in protest against the controversial leader Julian Assange only to launch a new service for the so-called whistleblowers. The goal: to leak sensitive information to the public.Link

Dick.

Oilfield services company Halliburton is in negotiations with the Nigerian government to keep its former CEO, Dick Cheney, out of prison, according to a news report. Sources inside Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told GlobalPost this week that a settlement keeping the charges against Cheney out of court could cost as much as $500 million. Nigeria filed charges against Cheney this week in an investigation of alleged bribery estimated at $180 million. Prosecutors named both Halliburton and KBR in the charges, as well as three European oil and engineering companies -- Technip SA, EniSpa, and Saipem Construction.Link

US spying indictment imminent.

London lawyer, Mark Stephens, told Voice of Russia, the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service, that British officials will not allow him to meet with Julian Assange until the day before a Dec. 14 court hearing. "The one thing that is slightly frustrating is that we have another court hearing on December 14 and I’ve not been permitted a legal visit until December 13, which, of course, gives me less than 24 hours to prepare his case," Stephens said.Link

Parliament triples tuition fees....................

Tens of thousands of angry students rampaged through the streets of London on Thursday, smashing windows of the Supreme Court, pelting police at the Treasury with rocks, and setting fire to a Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square after parliament voted to triple university tuition fees.Link

Hackers strike to support WikiLeaks.

LONDON – Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange.Link

The Big Bank Theory

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‘Press Freedom Day’.

On the same day that British authorities arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on an Interpol warrant, the US State Department announced it would be hosting the United Nation's "World Press Freedom Day" next year.Link

Bush job approval rating higher.

George W. Bush’s job approval rating as president has spiked to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. That’s 1 point higher than President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a poll taken the same week. This is the first time Gallup asked Americans to retrospectively rate Bush’s job performance. And it was a stunning turnaround from his low point of 25 percent in November 2008. The 47 percent number is 13 points higher than the last Gallup poll taken before Bush left office in 2009 and the highest rating for him since before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Still, Bush’s 51 percent disapproval rating means he’s only one of two U.S. presidents in the past 50 years whose disapproval exceeds approval. The other is Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace 36 years ago and whose approval rating stands at 29 percent.Link

The Plot thickens.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – WikiLeaks has divulged a secret list compiled by Washington of key infrastructure sites around the world that could pose a critical danger to US security if they come under terrorist attack.Link

Newt gets Schooled...........

Ron Paul on Mancow.

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Ron Paul stands up for Julian Assange.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder should get the same protections as the media.Link

Dick.

The energy services company Dick Cheney ran prior to becoming Vice President of the United States was atop the tongue of liberals each time it was awarded a contract in Iraq. Now the company's name, Halliburton, is being spoken somewhere else: Nigeria. According to a story filed late Wednesday, Cheney will be indicted in a Nigerian bribery case as part of an investigation into an alleged $180 million bribery scandal. "Last week, Nigeria arrested at least 23 officials from companies including Halliburton, Saipem, Technip and a former subsidiary of Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG in connection with alleged illegal payments to Nigerian officials. Those detained were all freed on bail on Nov. 29," Bloomberg News' Elisha Bala-Gbogbo wrote.Link

$3.3 Trillion in Aid During Crisis.........

The Federal Reserve, under orders from Congress, plans today to identify recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid the central bank provided as it fought the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed intends to post the data on its website at midday in Washington to comply with a provision in July’s Dodd-Frank law overhauling financial regulation. The information spans six loan programs as well as currency swaps with other central banks, purchases of mortgage-backed securities and the rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc.Link

Ron Paul

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Feeling like a man.