USAHitman | Conspiracy News |  |
- Federal court rules in favor of NSA bulk snooping, White House happy
- Cocaine Production Plummets After DEA Kicked Out of Bolivia
- Staten Island Stinks So Badly Today That People Are Calling the Cops
- Old Dixie Hwy to Become Barack Obama Hwy in Florida
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Posted: 28 Aug 2015 04:41 AM PDT
 Despite the opposition of the US public and lawmakers to NSA surveillance, the courts keep handing the Obama administration the license to snoop. A US appeals court just threw out a 2013 verdict against the NSA, to White House approval. The decision vindicates the government’s stance that NSA’s bulk surveillance programs are constitutional, the White House said Friday. Three judges at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the plaintiffs, Larry Klayman and Charles Strange, had no standing to file the original claim, since they could not prove the NSA actually collected any of their records. While Klayman and Strange objected that the NSA refused to provide the evidence, the judges said that was working as intended. “Plaintiffs complain that the government should not be allowed to avoid liability simply by keeping the material classified. But the government’s silence regarding the scope of bulk collection is a feature of the program, not a bug,” Judge Stephen F. Williams wrote. Klayman and Strange initially won their case before US District Court Judge Richard Leon in December 2013, challenging the NSA’s bulk collection program under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. The controversial section expired at the end of May, after a bipartisan group of lawmakers filibustered to prevent its extension. Within hours of the USA Freedom Act being signed into law, the Obama Administration petitioned to the FISA court to authorize the continuation of NSA’s bulk collections under Section 215, citing the new law’s provision allowing for a 180-day transition period. The court ruled in favor of the government, allowing the NSA to restart the program it had to shut down on May 31, and run it through November 2015. The NSA’s blanket phone record collection program was kept secret from the public until a contractor for the agency, Edward Snowden, disclosed it to the media in June 2013. The program involved capturing the metadata of millions of phone calls, such as call length and the numbers that were dialed. The program was originally ruled unlawful in the December 2013 case Klayman v. Obama. The US government has maintained that the program was authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to collect business records. Source The post Federal court rules in favor of NSA bulk snooping, White House happy appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.       |
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Posted: 27 Aug 2015 05:56 PM PDT
 After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was kicked out of Bolivia, the country was able to drastically reduce the amount of coca (cocaine) produced within its borders. According to data released by the United Nations, cocaine production in the country declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease.It was just seven years ago that the DEA left Bolivia — and only three years after that, progress was finally made. The strategy employed by the Bolivian government may be a surprise to many prohibitionists because it did not involve any strong-arm police state tactics. Instead, they worked to find alternative crops for farmers to grow that would actually make them more money. “Bolivia has adopted a policy based on dialogue, where coca cultivation is allowed in traditional areas alongside alternative development [in others],” Antonino de Leo, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s representative in Bolivia, told VICE News. “It’s not only about making money off a crop. In the old fashioned alternative development approach, we substitute one illicit crop for a licit crop. It’s about a more comprehensive approach that includes access to essential services like schools, hospitals, and roads in areas that traditionally have been hard to reach,” Leo added. There are unfortunately still harsh laws against drug trafficking in Bolivia, but these have been active since the height of the drug war and have had no effect on the recent decline in production. Bolivian president, Evo Morales — a former coca farmer himself — has been less heavy handed since the DEA left the country, a move that allowed the government to develop alternatives for the struggling farmers instead. The drug war is one of the most misunderstood subjects in mainstream political discourse, even among people who are sympathetic to the plight of responsible drug users. It is rare for someone to come out and say that all drugs should be legal, but in all honesty, this is the only logically consistent stance on the issue. To say that some drugs should be legal while others should not is still giving credence to the punishment paradigm and overlooking the external consequences of drug prohibition — or prohibition of any object, for that matter. As I explained in an earlier article, there are many external factors that are affected by the drug war that many people don’t take into account. That is because when you carry out acts of violence, even in the form of punishment, you then create a ripple effect that extends far beyond the bounds of the original circumstance to affect many innocent people down the line. The list in my previous article delves into those external factors to illustrate how drug users and non-users alike would be a lot better off if prohibition ended immediately. The list includes the following advantages of full legalization: (1) Reduce violent crimeSource The post Cocaine Production Plummets After DEA Kicked Out of Bolivia appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 27 Aug 2015 05:05 PM PDT
 New York City’s forgotten borough smelled very bad this morning. From St. George to Westerleigh to Dongan Hills, people are complaining about a stench that has been variously compared to fish, shit, garbage, and “some hoe.” Why? Nobody knows. That Staten Island Advance reports that both the NYPD and the FDNY received “multiple calls” about the smell this morning, but the source remains unknown. How bad would your neighborhood have to smell to prompt you to call the fire department about it? Must be pretty damn stinky. Source The post Staten Island Stinks So Badly Today That People Are Calling the Cops appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.    |
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Posted: 25 Aug 2015 05:45 PM PDT
 In the latest installment of “The Summer of Eliminating Any Semblance of Confederate History,” a Florida mayor proposed and succeeded in changing the “racist” Old Dixie highway to President Barack Obama Highway. In a Riviera Beach City Council meeting on Wednesday, council members voted in favor of Mayor Thomas Masters, who proposed the change to the highway on the claim that it still “invokes memories of racism and slavery in the Old South.” According to reports by local a NBC affiliate, the vote was closer than the mayor expected. Masters said he “got a little worried for a minute,” as some argued that Obama hasn’t done enough for race relations in America to deserve to have his name on the highway. “It makes you want to cry because it could be better than what is it,” said one resident speaking publicly at the meeting. Another local woman who has lived in the area since the 1960s and wished to remain anonymous, said the highway name and the history it evokes doesn’t bother her, and it’s not the changing of the highway’s name but who it is changing it for that should be in question. “What we do we have to show for Barack Obama on Old Dixie?” she asked. Despite the vocalized concerns of citizens and suggestions for naming it after someone else than the sitting president, the proposition was passed with a last minute addition of the word “President” in front of Barack Obama Highway, just in case it ever got mixed up with another Obama. Source The post Old Dixie Hwy to Become Barack Obama Hwy in Florida appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.   |
