By GottaLaff
Los Angeles surpassed its 100,000 count at their immigration rally, per CNN. Gutierrez was in D.C.:
Police arrested Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez at an immigration rally outside the White House on Saturday.
Several people interviewed said they had not been to a pro-immigration march since the massive protests in 2006, but that Arizona's law compelled them to come out.
By GottaLaff
(Jacquelyn Martin - AP)The Service Employees International Union was protesting what it calls Sodexo's unfair and illegal treatment of workers. Sodexo says the union was spreading misinformation.
By GottaLaff
Via AMERICABlog:
Choi and Pietrangelo have been arrested. [...] The crowd is applauding them. [...]
After delivering remarks, Dan and Capt. Pietrangelo handcuffed themselves to the fence in front of the White House. [...] Handcuffed to the fence in front of Barack Obama's White House to protest the President's failure to deliver on his promise to end DADT.
By GottaLaff
And now it's time for the next episode of...
As the Palin Spurns:
That's what Johnston told The Insider on Friday, where he appeared to give his response to Palin and Bristol's appearance on Oprah. He didn't say what the alleged charges were, but if we had to guess, we'd go with crimes of fashion...Join us again as Barbie McLipSchmutz reveals that it was Levi who actually carried her baby Trig Paxson Van Palin... so that she could fit into her hip waders when a photo op arose... However...dun-dun-dunnn... as it turns out Levi's baby bump was nothing more than one of his hockey sticks gone wrong.
By GottaLaff
An aircraft passenger was removed from a plane by counter-terrorism officers after uttering a hoax threat as it readied for take-off, it was reported tonight.
The unnamed white man was on an Emirates flight to Dubai taxiing at Heathrow when he made the comments, which were overheard by a fellow traveller.
Cabin crew were alerted and the pilot turned the jet around. Five armed officers boarded the aircraft and removed the man in handcuffs and a companion. More than one arrest was made, it was reported.
How utterly stupid can someone be to make a joke threat knowing how jumpy and on alert everyone is after Underpants Guy's crotch exploded?
And of course, this was costly since they had to turn around.
Not to mention the fear that must have rippled through the plane.
Oh, and there's those inconvenience and anger factors once everyone realized it was a hoax.
Brilliant move, unnamed white man. Pure comic genius. The Not Conan O'Brien show will contact you shortly, I'm sure.
H/t: DCPlod
By GottaLaff
A man was arrested for throwing tomatoes at Sarah Palin during her book signing on Monday at the Mall of America.The man allegedly threw two tomatoes from the second balcony, however did not come close to hitting Palin.
Bush. Shoe thrower. Redux.
Bloomington Police report that a Bloomington commander was struck in the face with one of the tomatoes and may face charges for assaulting a police officer. The suspect was booked at the Bloomington jail.It would be rude of me to point and laugh, despite my having just given a lecture on the humor of Mack Sennett, who was the official "creator" of slapstick comedy and directed Mabel Normand, who is credited with being the first to throw a pie in someone's face on film.
By GottaLaff
You want activism? Here's your activism:
Full story here.Seven citizens and healthcare providers who are fed up with the state of our healthcare and the healthcare debate were arrest at the downtown offices of Cigna today.
The sit-in is part of a national mobilization to end insurance abuse and build support for real reform – Medicare for All, a single-payer plan.
ChiSPAN, the Chicago Single-Payer Action Network, was key in organizing this sit-in and rally.
The mobilization involves civil disobedience at insurance company offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Philadelphia and other cities. Almost 700 people have already signed up to risk arrest at a health insurance company office, joining one of the largest campaigns of nonviolent civil disobedience since the civil rights movement. Many of these event are occurring next week on Thursday, October 15 in a dozen cities across the country. [...]
All the news coverage of the arrests:
Associated Press
By GottaLaff
I just heard Rachel Maddow mention this, so I had to share. She believes that this story is payback for Cheney's recent smackdown of Bush for the Scooter Libby non-pardon, and that it will be a big deal. And since we're into big deals here at TPC:
Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.
How sick is it that we consider that kind of BushCo thinking "par for the course"?
Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.
Probably because he couldn't pronounce Lackawanna.
A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests would be nearly unprecedented in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.
As if that would stop His Dickiness.
The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.
I seem to remember posting about this possibility back when. Nobody seemed to notice. But you know what they say: Good things come to those who wait.
In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.
That would be the same Justice Department that wrote up those spiffy little torture memos.
“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.
Of course it did, because that's what Boy Georgie's DoJ deemed. The United Deem of America. Deem and Deemer?
The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.
Ding!
The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests. [...]
Former officials in the administration said this debate was not as bitter as others during Mr. Bush’s first term. The discussions did not proceed far enough to put military units on alert.
See how they could all get along when they put their minds to it?
Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.
Reminder: Read The Dark Side by Jane Mayer. Learn all about Addington, His Dickiness, and their band of merry despots.
Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. [...]
Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, said an American president had not deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the Civil War.
That, of course, was when His Dickiness was just a young boy.
Senior military officials were never consulted, former officials said. Richard B. Myers, a retired general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview that he was unaware of the discussion. [...]
Despite this guidance, some Bush aides bristled at the prospect of troops descending on an American suburb to arrest terrorism suspects.
“What would it look like to have the American military go into an American town and knock on people’s door?” said a second former official in the debate.
Um, like Iraq?
Chief James L. Michel of the Lackawanna police agreed. “If we had tanks rolling down the streets of our city,” Chief Michel said, “we would have had pandemonium down here.”
Um, like Iraq?
By GottaLaff
Right wing extremism doesn't hold a candle to all those wacky left wingy violent episodes, though.Hal Turner, an intermittent Internet radio talk show host and blogger, was arrested today by FBI agents at his home in North Bergen, N.J., on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made Internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb.
Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed ‘outrage’ over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision [...] stating, among other things: ‘Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.’ The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.
[...] He was charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges with intent to retaliate against them for performing official duties in a criminal complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Chicago. [...]
‘We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period,’ said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who announced the charges with Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
By GottaLaff
Via DKos:
[...]Link Telephone communication between Tehran and the rest of Iran has been completely disconnected. This corresponds with the beginnings of the arrests of the opposition. It is suspected that this is being orchestrated by the son of Mojtaba Khamenei son of The Supreme Leader, Ali.
Pyknet: Mousavi has been place under house arrest. He was arrested on his way to Khamenei's house. All communication has been shut off. Khamenei has issued a statement claiming that HE that he is leading this coup to SAVE the Islamic Government (Nezam)Sianat az ara (Protectors of Votes) Iran' Election Commission, have called the result fraud and are calling for new election. [...]
peiknet.com is reporting;
Translation -Rafsanjani has resigned all duties in protest to Supreme Leader Khamenei's endorsement of Ahmadinejad as winner of yesterday's election.
Much more at Kos.
By GottaLaff
Iraqis standing up as we stand down:
They allegedly killed a "fellow American," not an Iraqi. I'd be curious to hear more details. This is awfully sketchy.Iraqi police have arrested five US men in connection with the killing of a fellow American last month.
An Iraqi spokesman called them security contractors, but the US embassy in Iraq has not confirmed who they are and says no charges have yet been laid.
If charged, they would be the first Americans to face Iraqi justice under a new joint security pact.
The arrests come at a time when Iraqi forces are assuming greater control of their own security. [...]
The new security agreement lays out the terms of the US withdrawal and sets guidelines for the conduct of US troops while they remain in Iraq.
It allows US soldiers to be tried in Iraqi courts, but only in cases of serious, premeditated crimes committed while off-base and off-duty.
However, private contractors, who were previously immune to prosecution in Iraq, are now wholly bound by Iraqi law.
By GottaLaff Federal agents have arrested the man who went to a St. George bank and allegedly made threats against President Barack Obama. Daniel James Murray was arrested at 7 p.m. Friday in Laughlin, Nev., by the U.S. Secret Service and Las Vegas police, said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service. Wiley said agents and police apprehended Murray in the parking lot of the Riverside Casino without incident.[...] The U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah filed a criminal complaint Thursday charging Murray with one count of threats against the president of the United States. According to a Secret Service affidavit filed with the complaint, Murray talked about the bad state of the economy as he opened a savings account at a Zions First National Bank branch in St. George on May 19 with an $85,000 check from a credit union. The affidavit says Murray returned May 27 to withdraw $12,698 in cash and became upset when a teller said he lacked the proper identification to complete the transaction. He allegedly said that "if I don't get this money, someone is going to die." After a bank manager agreed to allow the transaction, Murray allegedly said, "The banking system will fail and people will die," then later, "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States." [...] A former neighbor of Murray's, in Rexford, N.Y., where he lived with his parents said Murray appeared to be mentally ill. Leighann Nastasia said Murray used to walk down the street waving his arms, talking to himself. "He wore a cape," she said. Unfortunately, there's more where that came from. It's only somewhat comforting to know the president is well-protected. I can't help but worry...
Thankfully, this man has been arrested, as we knew he would be:
By GottaLaff
So will these arrests blow up in our faces now? How many more stories like this do you think will start to leak out?
The FBI agent with a high-profile role in yesterday's arrests of four men for plotting a terror attack in New York has a pretty interesting -- and controversial -- track record.Wait. What? Torture doesn't work? Huh?? Whaaa? ::slaps forehead:: If only we'd known earlier!
Special Agent Robert Fuller, whose name appears at the top of the federal criminal complaint in the case, had a hand in the FBI's failure to nab two of the 9/11 hijackers, had one of his informants set himself on fire in front of the White House, and was involved in misidentifying a Canadian man as a terrorist leading to his secret arrest and torture -- a case that is now the subject of a major lawsuit.
Fuller is listed as the lead agent in the arrests of four men yesterday who officials say were trying to blow up a couple of synagogues and shoot a military jet from the sky. But as in other cases of seemingly inept homegrown terrorists, the four suspects were supplied (inert) weapons from an FBI informant, and in coming weeks we'll learn more about how much that informant goaded the four suspects into carrying out the supposed acts of terrorism. The case is being prosecuted in the Southern District of New York. (James Margolin, an FBI spokesman said the agency declines to comment for this story, because Fuller is a potential witness in an ongoing prosecution.)
Fuller was involved in the earlier Canadian case as the man who interrogated a wounded Afghani teenager named Omar Khadr. (We've written extensively about Khadr's bizarre case here.) Under Fuller's interrogation, Khadr dubiously identified a Canadian citizen named Maher Arar as someone he had seen in Afghanistan. Arar was then shipped to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year. It's now been proven that Arar could not have been in Afghanistan when Khadr, under intense pressure from Fuller, said he saw him there. [...]
"Fuller very clearly has a questionable track record," Pither says. "Even if his claims about what Khadr said were true, there's no doubt that Khadr would have said anything. He is on the record as having said he would have said anything to get better treatment."
Fuller was also on the team that was tasked to track down two of the 9/11 hijackers in August, 2001, prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. [...]How reassuring to remember how much safer BushCo made us. And how comforting to have guys like Fuller on our team.
You can read more on the Arar case at: www.maherarar.ca or www.kerrypither.ca
By GottaLaff
Police Sgt. Bill Redman says 19 protesters were arrested Saturday on trespassing charges and four also faced a charge of resisting law enforcement.
What? Not honoring the officers who enforce the laws they say they cherish? Not respecting the men in uniform? Bucking authority? Why, I do believe these holier-than-thou rebels are turning into NeoHippies!
University spokesman Dennis Brown says none of those arrested were students.
Among those arrested was the Rev. Norman Weslin, founder of the Lambs of Christ abortion protest group. He also was among 21 people arrested during a similar protest Friday.
What next, tea tantrums?
By the way, just wondering: Were any of these arrestees confined to free speech zones?
You know you could pick up pretty much any magazine on the stands and get a pic of the Prez.
WYOMING, Ohio, May 11 (UPI) -- A photograph of U.S. President Barack Obama is at the center of an Ohio legal case in which two women were arrested, authorities say.
Police in Wyoming, Ohio, allege Marla Anderson, 24, struggled with her mother while attempting to take the photograph of the newest president from a Wyoming home, the Cincinnati Enquirer said Monday.
Anderson was arrested Friday following the alleged conflict and nearly 10 hours later, police detained 31-year-old Tamika Cornwell, who allegedly drove Anderson to the Wyoming home.
By GottaLaff
Five Democratic House members are arrested at a Darfur protest at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington.The five: Reps. Woolsey, McGovern, Edwards, Ellison, Lewis
Here are more details:
Snark aside, I hope this is resolved quickly and without further incident, and that they have a safe trip home.Humanitarian leaders and five U.S. lawmakers, including Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards, were led away in handcuffs Monday from the embassy after crossing a police line.
The activists are urging world leaders to take a stand against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's decision to expel 16 aid agencies from Darfur.
By GottaLaff
[F]ormer Republican state lawmaker, and KKK leader, David Duke, was arrested in Prague for denying the Holocaust. It's a crime punishable by three years in prison. [...] [I]t's understandable why the Czech Republic would have laws against Holocaust denial. Though I am waiting for the religious right to now come to the rescue of their poor soulmate. After all, he's a bigot being persecuted under hate speech laws. And you know how the religious right is all up in arms over European hate speech laws. Perhaps some intrepid reporter should ask the Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council how they feel about David Duke's arrest under hate speech laws.I'm having fantasies about the same thing happening to BushCo. Here are few more details:
The former leader of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), David Duke, arrested Friday afternoon in Prague, was released in the night and will be forced to leave the country during the day of Saturday, police said. [...]H/t: I forget which Commenter, but thank you!
David Duke, 59, was charged with supporting a movement to suppress human rights and fundamental freedoms. After his arrest in the restaurant ‘Black Eagle’ in the old Prague, he was interrogated for several hours.
Quoted Saturday by the agency CTK, the Czech lawyer of the former leader of the KKK, Klara Samkova, said she would make a complaint against the police in Prague.
By GottaLaff
I believe a report on this due to come out tonight. I may be wrong, but I thought I heard Rachel Maddow mention it (or was that a different report?). Per our Commenter HippieCyndi:
Apparently the Pentagon has been either monitoring or firing soldiers who are involved with right wing extreme elements quietly.Michael Savage may have to sue the Pentagon now.
A United States Marine is being held on $50,000 cash bail after airport officials found a gun, explosives and other weapons in his suitcase. U.S. Marine Justin Reed of Jacksonville, NC was stopped at Boston's Logan Airport shortly after 7 a.m. on Sunday - 04/19/09H/t: HippieCyndi
By GottaLaff
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
By GottaLaff
Beverly Hills police said an arrest warrant has been issued for actress Lindsay Lohan that stems from her 2007 conviction for drunken driving.The $50,000 warrant was issued by the Beverly Hills Superior Court, the police said in a statement issued on Friday. They declined to state the reason for the issuance of the warrant.
That was today's Quickie. Will you still respect me in the morning?
UPDATE via Tweet:
Police have arrived at Lindsay Lohan's home in Beverly Hills, CA to serve out an arrest warrant but she refuses to open the door - TMZ.
.jpg)
