By Emily Miller Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier seems to think that gun-control laws don’t apply to the liberal elite. The police chief helped Sen. Dianne Feinstein acquire “assault weapons,” which are illegal to possess in the District, for a news conference early this year to promote a ban on these firearms, then tried to cover up the police involvement. Now, a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals Chief Lanier’s shocking willingness to bend the rules for partisan and ideological purposes.
Author: mediahitman
China’s largest search engine Baidu – also known as the “Google of China” – has become the first service of its kind to accept the crypto-currency Bitcoin. Baidu said on Tuesday that its security division Jiasule began supporting the virtual currency on October 14. “Jiasule, as the innovator of the internet, has become the first cloud services vendor to support bitcoin, giving us richer payment methods and experience,
More than 90 percent of people living in European cities breathe dangerous air, according to a report by Europe’s environmental regulator. It causes 430,000 shortened lives every year and costs EU governments tens of billions in hospital admissions. The report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) reveals that despite a steady decline over the past ten years in the most harmful air pollutants such as carbon monoxide and lead
By BETSY MCCAUGHEY The bargain rushed through Congress on Wednesday night clobbers the U.S. Constitution. It shifts control over the debt ceiling from Congress to the president, in violation of Article 1, Section 8, and pushes the nation toward a slippery slope of allowing the president unlimited power to borrow. Article 1, Section 8, states that “Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; . .. To borrow Money on the credit of the United States … “
A US lab is working on an Android application which would enable troops to call in airstrikes and control drones via a smartphone. Dubbed the Android Terminal Assault Kit (ATAK), the map-based prototype app is said to be designed to “save lives.” With all the cutting-edge standalone technologies developed for the US military sector, one would hardly guess that the American SpecOp units are using small laptops for positioning targets and ordering air support on the ground.
Almost half a million deaths in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 were caused by war and occupation, according to new research. The figure is around four times bigger than most previous estimates. An estimated 460,000 deaths in Iraq from March 2003 to mid-2011 were caused by violence during the war with the US and the subsequent occupation by coalition forces, according to a statistical research published in PLOS (Public Library of Science) Medicine journal, an open access source.
A Moscow court has handed down a four year suspended sentence to a married couple for sharing about 30 films and cartoons on a torrent tracker. The case sets a precedent in Russia, sparking fears that torrent users could now be prosecuted as pirates. Andrey Lopukhov and his wife Nadezhda were found guilty on Wednesday of the charges of copyright infringement “by a group of individuals working in collusion” for illegally distributing the movies online from April 2007 to September 2008, Russian media reported.
When the old Sandy Hook Elementary School is demolished, building materials will be pulverized on site and metal will be taken away and melted down in an effort to eliminate nearly every trace of the building where a gunman killed 26 people last December. Contractors also will be required to sign confidentiality agreements and workers will guard the property’s perimeter to prevent onlookers from taking photographs or videos.
Going to the grocery store is about to get a lot more personal: one of the biggest names in food is preparing to launch “smart shelves” to gather intelligence on consumers and customize their shopping experience. Mondelēz International, the parent company of Kraft Foods, plans on having their space-age smart shelves rolled out on supermarket floors sometime in 2015. And if all goes as planned, soon after the multi-national corporation behind products such as Chips Ahoy, Oreo
Here is his statement: I apologize for the long email but, I need to address the fact that the facts and circumstances surrounding the shooting of Miriam Carey has not been vigorously challenged by the media and the general public. Now that we have the sworn affidavit filed in this case by the Metropolitan Police Department in federal court, we are more confident than ever that these police officers’ completely mishandled this simple “street encounter” and one or more of them should be criminally prosecuted for violating Miriam Carey’s civil rights. First, basic common sense tells you that things should…
Police in Florida have begun using surveillance methods to prevent prostitution by recording license plate information from cars that drive through areas frequented by sex workers and sending a letter to that individual’s home as a possible deterrent. Starting this week, the Sanford Police Department – perhaps best known for its involvement in the recent George Zimmerman case – will employ a “Dear John” initiative to stop suspect “Johns” from hiring prostitutes. Automated license plate readers on patrol cars will be used to record suspects’ vehicles, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, who was one of the first journalists to break the NSA surveillance story, is leaving the British newspaper for a “once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity.” “My partnership with the Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved,” Greenwald said in a statement after the news was broken by BuzzFeed. No concrete details were specified.
When over the weekend, a Xerox “glitch” shut down the EBT system, better known as foodstamps, for nearly the entire day across 17 states leaving millions without “funding” to pay for food leading to dramatic examples of the basest human behavior possible, some of the more conspiratorial elements saw this merely as a dress rehearsal for what may be coming in the immediate future.
Whistleblowers, rejoice! The Freedom of the Press Foundation is taking the helm of a secure document-submission service co-created by late computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, and wants to make it more accessible than ever. The foundation — launched less than a year ago “to crowd-source funding for cutting-edge, independent journalism and publishing outlets” lacking mainstream support — announced early Tuesday that it has taken charge of the DeadDrop project
by John Sexton A new estimate by an independent web analysis firm says public interest in Healthcare.gov is waning. According to the Washington Post “The number of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov Web site dropped 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13…” The site reportedly drew 9.4 million unique visitors in its first week of operation but in the 2nd week “the site attracted 4.1 million visitors, or less than half of what it garnered its first week.”
The Pentagon’s inspector general has found that Boeing repeatedly charged the United States military for “new” helicopter parts even as it installed used parts instead. Since 2008, Chicago-based Boeing, the military’s second-largest contractor, has overcharged the United States on four separate occasions, to the tune of $16.6 billion.
A new case of H7N9 has been reported in Zhejiang province, Zhejiang health authorities announced on Tuesday. The male patient, 35, surnamed Liu, first went to see a doctor in a rural clinic on October 8. He was being treated at a Shaoxing city hospital and remained in critical condition, according to a statement released by Zhejiang authorities.