this is scary and i'm not quite sure

i want to visit the phoenix area at all (although i'd LOVE to see the american southwest).

shame on the dishonest and vengeful ones (i don't believe they are ALL like that by any means)


Phoenix cops raid the home of an online critic
J.D. Tuccille

Perhaps the best publicity a critic of the powers-that-be can ever get for his cause is to be the target of over-the-top official retaliation. That automatically validates what the critic is saying while at the same time massively expanding the audience for his message. So, in an odd way, Jeff Pataky owes a "thank you" to the Phoenix Police Department for raiding his home and hauling away computers and other material related to a Website and blog he maintains that focus attention on misdeeds involving the Phoenix PD.

Pataky's crusade against Phoenix cops apparently started as a personal vendetta in response to a since-dropped harassment prosecution resulting from a bitter divorce. Since then, though, his project has turned into a public service and he has apparently cultivated informants inside the department and broken stories about official misconduct. He told Carlos Miller of the Photography is Not a Crime blog, “We have about 50 to 100 retired and active cops who provide us information.”............

Phoenix police raid home of blogger whose writing is highly critical of them

Carlos Miller
In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

Maricopa County Judge Gary Donahoe signed the search warrant that allowed at least ten cops to raid his home in North Phoenix on March 12 while handcuffing his female roommate for three hours as they tore the place apart.................

bad phoenix cops

and the blog bad phoenix cops

a teeny tiny victory

but one i'll take and one i'm happy about. i don't think there is ANYTHING patriotic about the patriot act (personally)

(by the way, did you know EVERYONE who works for certain insurance companies or financial institutions as well as MOST of their agents {that sell certain products} MUST take a stupid-ass 'class' each year BECAUSE OF THE PATRIOT ACT? well no you didn't did you! the reason for that is something or other about funnelling money into terrorist countries or organizations. fine you say to yourselves. we should not be doing such things. oh, i agree with you 100% BUT MOST INSURANCE COMPANIES AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS had policies in place to prevent THAT AND MUCH MORE PRIOR AND IN SPITE OF the PATRIOT ACT)


Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provision
ACLU victorious as federal court declares Patriot Act provision a violation of the First Amendment

A federal appeals court ruling late Monday is the cause célèbre of the American Civil Liberties Union, as another provision of the Bush administration's Patriot Act falls to the judicial system.

Until the ruling, recipients of so-called "national security letters" were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.

recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing "The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSLNSL recipients," said the ACLU in a release.......

huh AND wtf???????????

the woman is a raving pile. do YOU want HER finger on the button? i sure as shite don't

HER frickin' first amendment rights? does she think she can STOP THE PRESSES? hey sarevil................THIS IS AMERICAN WE ALL HAVE FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS EVEN MOI

this COULD be funny, but it's not (cause it's REAL)

hey sarevil, GROW A SET. you ain't seen NOTHIN' yet

Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights

ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."..........

are you now or have you ever been?

what year is this?

i am no longer amazed at what happens in this country. our civil rights are slowly ebbing away. we're concentrating on money and oil and wars. we SHOULD be concentrating on feeding, housing, healing and education ALL of the people of the world.

we're a bunch of idiots

Progressive editor details new McCarthyism
-dave zweifel

The Progressive's Matt Rothschild, heir to the editorship of "Fighting Bob" La Follette's magazine, has been collecting examples of Americans suffering the consequences of speaking their minds after Sept. 11, 2001.
He's reported on many of them in The Progressive and on the magazine's Web site under the apt headline "McCarthyism Watch," because that's exactly what so much of the infringements on civil rights are -- a reincarnation of Joe McCarthy's trashing of our Constitution.
Rothschild has now assembled 82 examples -- barely half of his collection -- in a new book that will hit bookstores in early July and should give all Americans pause on just where their country is headed.
Titled "You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression," the book tells the tales of American citizens suffering everything from the loss of their jobs to being subjected to investigations and hassling by federal, state and local officials, all because they dared criticize what their own government was doing -- a right we are supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution...........