Justin Buist

If you’re a news savy person you already know what prompted this title: SCOTUS tells POTUS that he can’t use military courts for Gitmo detainees.

The decision doesn’t actually force the Executive branch to try people in a timely manner it would seem. Of course, I’m no legal expert and I haven’t even been able o digest the opinioins penned by the Justices in this case yet. It just says, if I’m reading things right, that the Executive branch must get permission from Congress to use military tribunals or just stick with the Federal justice system.

Not exactly a huge gain for the detainees.

Sure, going through the Federal justice system would provide them with a trial by jury, provided all the evidence against them, and require (or maybe it’s allow) their attendance to all hearings but it would not provide them a speedy trial as guaranteed by the 6th amendment.

Oh, it’s not because they have some special designation, it’s because the Federal government has previously pissed on the 6th amendment. While I’m sure there are many more cases than the one I’m about to get into this one is the most pertinent to me.

Kevin Mitnick

Mitnick, a US citizen, was held for 4 years before his trial — 8 months of which were in solitary confinement. His girlfriend (I presume ex-girlfriend at the time) convinced a judge that Mitnick could launch nuclear missles if he had access to a phone. By whistling into it.

In the end Mitnick was sentenced to 5 years prison, 4 already served.

His crime? Hacking into computer systems (usually using social techniques, not technological) to get source code to various software projects. Why? Just to see if he could do it. Damages? Disputable, but let me ask you this:

Did you know about Mitnick’s crime? Did they affect you? Were you worried about your day-to-day existence because of him, or any other computer cracker like him?

I’m guessing the answer is “No” to all of them.

Now, let’s compare this to Gitmo detainees and other folks associated with terrorism. I trust you’ve been made aware of this situation by the mainstream media and the government’s willingness to use it to extract as much fear out of you as possible to get their pet legislation enacted.

Yes, my bias is showing through. Sorry about that.

Mitnick got 5 years over a crime that didn’t affect the American people. The terrorists? 11 months.

The government attributes convictions it says are terrorism-related that have nothing to do with the Patriot Act. The “400 convictions” claim overstates actual number of convictions and omits a number of key facts related to these numbers. Only 39 of these individuals were convicted of crimes related to terrorism. The median sentence for these crimes was 11 months, which indicates the crime the government equated with terrorism was not serious.

Makes you wonder if the government at large is trying to protect us or just scare us.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Amish man arrested in OH for “selling” milk.

Long story short:

Amish man has milk producing cows.
Undercover cop asks Amish man for milk.
Amish man hesitates, then fills the man’s jug for him.
Undercover cop gives Amish man $2.
Amish man arrested for selling raw milk.

Maybe it’s just me, but when you’ve got enough spare manpower to begin conducting undercover investigations of the freaking Amish maybe it’s time to cut down on the number of employed police.

• Leave a comment... (2)

I would like to add, in addition to my last post, that monitoring financial activity is probably the best thing the government can do to get a handle on terrorist organizations.

I’m also not to worried about getting court orders to retreive said data — provided that it was international. Perhaps I haven’t thought about the issue enough, but that is my stance for right now.

You see, here in America we don’t really have any privacy when it comes to our finances. That is, no privacy from the government. Every year we have to tell them how much money we made, where we got it from, and in the event that you want to write some of it off as a deduction what you spent it on.

So, privacy is already gone. I’m not happy about it, but the intrusion level is already so high that it doesn’t matter one whit to me if the Federal government knows that I sent $200 to some charity over in another country. If you want to talk about getting rid of income tax then I’m game.

That data, unlike phone call records, is probably going to net you a much higher return on finding actual terrorists. Of course, if you match that data with calling records (which I don’t like) you can increase the odds that you’re going to get a real terrorist hit when you investigate them.

Or, perhaps more importantly, when you fail to match financial support behind what you think is a terrorist organization you’ll know enough to leave them alone and go after the bigger fish in the pond.

You can’t do anything in this world without money.

• Leave a comment... (0)

It seems that all the Republicans are up in arms about the NYT story with regards to monitoring SWIFT for terrorist related activities.

Michelle Malkin has weighed in:

The New York Times (proudly publishing all the secrets unfit to spill since 9/11) and their reckless anonymous sources (come out, come out, you cowards) tipped off terrorists to America’s efforts to track their financial activities.

Guess what? It isn’t the first time blabbermouth journalists have jeopardized terror financing investigations since September 11, according to the government.

I guess if we don’t want the terrorists to know we’re tracking them financially then we shouldn’t tell them we have programs that:

• Targets all individuals and institutions linked to global terrorism.
• Allows the Treasury Department to freeze U.S. assets and block U.S. transactions of any person or institution associated with terrorists or terrorist organizations.
• Identifies charitable organizations that secretly funnel money to al-Qaeda.
• States the President’s intent to punish those financial institutions at home and abroad that continue to provide resources and/or services to terrorist organizations.

Now, that’s not what the NYT published. That’s just a subset of the fancy new stuff we were doing and was published by the Whitehouse on September 24, 2001!

Of course, the NYT did tipoff the terrorists that we were monitoring the SWIFT network. Oh, did you think SWIFT was some secret agency? Hell no! They’ve got a freaking website. They publish their own magazine!

Apparently anybody that knows anything about international banking also knows that all that data goes over the SWIFT network.

Further, SWIFT provides a handy little page about what they do to combat illegal activities. It’s pretty easy to find, because they’ve got this button icon right on their front page:

Behind that icon you’ll find this:

2. Cooperation - SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF*), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities.

The FATF is an international body, created by the G8, devoted to stopping money laundering and funding of terrorist groups!

So, the Whitehouse says we’re going to monitor finances to catch terrorists on September 24, 2001 and on top of that the financial institution responsible for international wire transfers puts right on their front page a link to something that says they cooperate with law enforcement agencies but the NYT is responsible for endangering the program.

Nothing like a good two minute hate to excite the party members I guess.

• Leave a comment... (1)

I managed to get out this weekend for a wonderful range trip. It was a last minute type of thing, but it worked out quite well.

For one, I was ready to rock-and-roll. I packed up the truck full of enough guns and ammo to keep 5 men busy for 3-4 hours on some remote land. When those plans were cancelled I dialed up a buddy, who hit up another buddy, and we decended on a local range.

Whoa boy.

I got there first and started plinking with my “new” Henry .22LR lever action rifle. Damn that’s fun. However, I had multiple failures to extract. I hadn’t cleaned it yet, so I presume it is a dirty chamber. I had trouble getting the spent rounds out with my pocket knife for crying out loud. I can’t really blame the gun. I think I just need to clean it up.

I didn’t have a single problem with my 1911, aside from the magazine release sticking. I need to take it in for that. The only other problem I had with that, and any other handgun I shot, is that I can’t hit diddly with it.

Oh, to be sure I can punch holes in a paper plate at 7 yards rapidly. Quite suitable for self defense purposes but I had to hit the range with a guy that’s got excellent fine motor control skills and it shows with his handgunning.

You see, I had to talk him down into using the 7 yard pistol range instead of the 25 yard range. At 25 yards I can’t hit a paper plate. He can — and quite well.

When I got him to the 7 yard range he started shooting out the staple holding up the paper plates. My pistol, his pistol — it didn’t matter.

Bastard.

• Continue reading or Leave a comment... (0)

Well, it’s up on the floor of the Senate right now.

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) was up earlier with some photos. One was President Bush signing his name on a small flag which Lautenberg (and I) consider desecration of the flag. Next up with a picture of Kid Rock wearing a flag with a hole cut in the middle of it for his head.

His point: In neither case did the person intent to disrespect the country, but if left to Congress their actions might be illegal. It’s better just not to mess with the whole matter.

Might have been the smartest thing said on the floor all week!

WHOA! Orrin Hatch (R-UT) just got on the floor and told Dick Durbin (D-IL) that the amendment doesn’t change the Bill of Rights.

Bill Frist (R-TN) just compared destroying a flag (that you own) to spray painting a government building (that you don’t own). Idiot.

OK, final vote time. Durbin amendment didn’t get tacked on.
—–
Aye: 61
No: 33

Almost there… Picking up the final 6 votes shortly here. One more ‘No’ vote and it is dead.

DEAD! Ted Kennedy just brought the ‘No’ column up to 34!

Final vote:
Aye: 66
No: 34

• Leave a comment... (2)

This likely isn’t breaking news for anybody that reads a few blogs on my blogroll, but I’ll say something anyway. Rob Smith was also known as Acidman and I had been reading him for a few years.

His daughter, Sam, posted about his death on Rob’s own blog:

This is Sam. Rob has passed away. They found him at 2:00 this morning slumped over on the couch. He did not shoot himself and no pills or alcohol were found in the house. When I find out anything else I’ll let you know. Out of respect for my family please do not leave nasty comments.

I must say I wasn’t really surprised. You could see it in his posts over the final two weeks that something was wrong. His final post actually contained a malformed sentence and a misspelled word — something I hadn’t ever seen this guy do before.

Not even when he was boozing heavily.

Maybe it was the bottle that finally did him in, maybe it wasn’t. Franky, I don’t really care.

If I were a good writer I might feel inclined to pen a nice eulogy here for the guy. I’m not really capable of that — and in the end that would be a pointless act.

One only needs to go to his website and read his writings over the years to see what happened. Sure, it will take some time to do, but you’ll be entertained while reading it. I know I always was.

I hope that Rob’s writings survive, in some form or another, for years to come. They are essentially well penned diary entries of a common man with common problems in the final years of his life.

They serve as a good reminder what not to do at times. That, and to appreciate the simple things in life like good food, good company, and dogs that like to slobber all over your face.

• Leave a comment... (0)

…. sorta.

Gun collector indicted for making garage an armory

The indictment was released yesterday, nearly a year after authorities stumbled upon nearly 500 guns, 500 pounds of gunpowder and 100,000 rounds of ammunition in Raymond’s home after police officers escorted his disoriented wife to the house.

In New Jersey of all places! Nice!

Raymond has twice spent time in prison: in the early 1970s for performing illegal abortions, and later that decade for selling silencer-equipped submachine guns.

In many cases, convicted felons in New Jersey are not permitted to own guns. The state’s statute does not include the crimes for which Raymond was convicted, Bergen County Assistant Prosecutor Deepa Jacobs said.

Well, on the abortion thing I wish they’d give an exact date. I can’t help but wonder how close it was to Jan. 22, 1973.

I also find it rather ironic that the former is no longer a crime because the US Supreme Court can determine that abortion is covered by the 4th amendment, while they can’t find anything in the 2nd amendment about freely making, owning, and selling firearms.

Anyway, back to the show:

Of Raymond’s cache, the only weapons or ammunition banned under New Jersey law are the sawed-off shotgun and 61 large-capacity ammunition magazines, according to the indictment.

Hopefully they go easy on the guy — he’s 83 years old.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Court approves new dope-driving test

Apparently, in Michigan, you can get a DUI if any THC is found in your system. Which is, I think, about a week long period after you’ve smoked some marijuana.

Seems a might bit unreasonable to me.

• Leave a comment... (2)

A few weeks back I registered a new domain: MyJailSpace.com

I’ve got WordPress all installed and a few posts are already up. I’m going to see if I can get one of my brothers working on it with me. It’s been his goal for a couple of years now to find a way to make him a quasi-internet celebrity. This is right up his alley.

Here’s the deal: At least once a day I see a news story about some idiot on MySpace that gets themselves arrested because they published the evidence right there in public.

Anyone dumb enough to do that deserves to have a blog keeping track of it all.

• Leave a comment... (0)