VoteKansas.org

GILBERT, Ariz. | Police said Thursday that they think a former Marine with ties to neo-Nazi and Minutemen groups shot four people and then took his own life in a suburban Phoenix home.

Police believe Jason Todd Ready, 39, was the gunman in Wednesday's shootings in a home in Gilbert, ...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming's governor persuaded the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to postpone an announcement linking hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination, giving state officials - whom the EPA had privately briefed on the study - time to attempt to debunk the finding, an investigation by the Associated ...

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — Another former close aide to John Edwards testified Thursday about bungled efforts to keep the former presidential candidate's affair hidden from staff members, including an awkward encounter when his mistress showed up at a hotel weeks after her work filming Mr. Edwards had ended.

For months ...

CLEVELAND (AP) — Five men suspected of plotting to bomb an Ohio bridge were indicted Thursday on three counts each, including a new charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction to destroy property in interstate commerce.

The indictment was announced by U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach, who said ...

Greg Palast from the oil soaked heart of America, Houston TX. Greg Palast live DVD - Coming Soon.

ShareThis

CARSON, Calif. (AP) — The 14-year-old son of a federal agent was arrested Thursday in the shooting death of his father in their Southern California home, authorities said.

The boy was arrested at his home in Carson, which is 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Deputy ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — There was no single blow, stomp or strike to Robert Champion's bruised and battered body that killed him as he was pummeled by fellow Florida A&M University marching band members during a hazing ritual aboard a charter bus last fall.

Instead, his death was caused by multiple ...

GILBERT, Ariz. — Police on Thursday identified one of the five people killed in a shooting in a Phoenix suburb as a former Marine with ties to neo-Nazi and Minutemen groups.

Jason Todd Ready, 39, organized a militia in the Arizona desert with the goal of finding illegal immigrants and ...

Massachusetts engages in a sensitive analysis of abandonment and subjective reasonable expectation of privacy and concludes that a fleeing suspect who stashes a backpack under a bush in a neighbor’s yard really didn’t have one. (Alternatively, there were exigent circumstances.) Commonwealth v. Carnes, 2012 Mass. App. LEXIS 182 (May 2, 2012):

A search in the constitutional sense requires that the defendant must have had a subjective expectation of privacy in the item or place searched, and that such expectation must have been one that society recognizes as reasonable. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Pina, 406 Mass. 540, 544, cert. denied, 498 U.S. 832 (1990); Commonwealth v. Montanez, 410 Mass. 290, 301 (1991). "The defendant bears the burden of establishing both elements." Commonwealth v. Montanez, 410 Mass. at 301. Here, the judge's conclusion of abandonment requires us to consider whether the defendant manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the place searched, and in the contents of his backpack, which "could be considered objectively reasonable or legitimate." Commonwealth v. Straw, 422 Mass. 756, 759 (1996). More particularly, abandonment is a question of intent, which may be inferred from words, behavior, and other objective facts. See generally Commonwealth v. Paszko, 391 Mass. 164, 184 (1984).

Because we conclude that the defendant's actions in discarding the backpack in the back yard of his best friend suggest a subjective expectation of privacy, we focus on whether the defendant's subjective expectation of privacy "could be considered objectively reasonable or legitimate." Commonwealth v. Straw, 422 Mass. at 759. First, we consider that the defendant concealed his backpack outside, in a back yard in which "by law, he ... had no reasonable expectation of privacy." Id. at 761. He was neither the owner nor did he establish any right of control over the property. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 105 (1980) (defendant put drugs in friend's purse over which he had no control or right to exclude others); United States v. Hershenow, 680 F.2d 847, 855-856 (lst Cir. 1982) (defendant had "no legal interest or even access rights" to the storage barn where he directed another to hide a box of incriminating evidence). See also Commonwealth v. Williams, 453 Mass. at 207-209 ("defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the basement area [of her mother's apartment building] in which she had deposited some possessions"); United States v. Soto, 779 F. Supp. 2d 208, 219 (D. Mass. 2011) (defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in computer's hard drive left in vehicle defendant obtained by fraud and turned over to third party; hard drive deemed abandoned). Contrast Commonwealth v. Mubdi, 456 Mass. 385, 391-394 (2010), citing with approval Commonwealth v. Williams, supra.

. . .

In sum, the defendant's act of hiding his backpack in the bushes in his best friend's yard without establishing that he placed the backpack in someone else's control, while he was trying to avoid apprehension, and in particular, while he was in possession of a handgun, fails to evoke an expectation of privacy that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. See Commonwealth v. Carter, 424 Mass. 409, 412 (1997) (art. 14 "does not relieve a defendant who unlawfully intruded on someone else's reasonable expectation of privacy from establishing that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy himself"). The motion judge properly concluded that the backpack had been abandoned. See generally United States v. Morgan, 936 F.2d at 1570-1571, cited with approval in Commonwealth v. Straw, 422 Mass. at 760-761; United States v. Soto, 779 F. Supp. 2d at 219.

One could wish that all courts would do this analysis. Few would. Still, the defendant loses, but he can't complain he wasn't adequately heard.

John Yoo gets immunity under Ashcroft v. al-Kidd for the “Torture Memo.” Padilla v. Yoo, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 8934 (9th Cir. May 2, 2012):

After the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States, the government detained Jose Padilla, an American citizen, as an enemy combatant. Padilla alleges that he was held incommunicado in military detention, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and detained under harsh conditions of confinement, all in violation of his constitutional and statutory rights. In this lawsuit, plaintiffs Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, seek to hold defendant John Yoo, who was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 2001 to 2003, liable for damages they allege they suffered from these unlawful actions. Under recent Supreme Court law, however, we are compelled to conclude that, regardless of the legality of Padilla's detention and the wisdom of Yoo's judgments, at the time he acted the law was not "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he [wa]s doing violate[d]" the plaintiffs' rights. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore hold that Yoo must be granted qualified immunity, and accordingly reverse the decision of the district court.

As we explain below, we reach this conclusion for two reasons. First, although during Yoo's tenure at OLC the constitutional rights of convicted prisoners and persons subject to ordinary criminal process were, in many respects, clearly established, it was not "beyond debate" at that time that Padilla — who was not a convicted prisoner or criminal defendant, but a suspected terrorist designated an enemy combatant and confined to military detention by order of the President — was entitled to the same constitutional protections as an ordinary convicted prisoner or accused criminal. Id. Second, although it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla's alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03.

Quinnipiac University released three new "swing state" polls for Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and all show troubling signs for Obama. Most worrisome for Obama (and promising for conservatives) is that he is polling under 50% in all three states: 42% in Florida, 44% in Ohio, and 47% in Pennsylvania.

Despite multiple "official" visits, the power of incumbency, being against an opponent supposedly nobody likes, and having not been campaigned against yet, those numbers are incredibly weak. But dig into the numbers, and you find that it gets even worse for Obama as the pollsters weight the data to favor Obama in every possible way.

The poll shows Romney leads Obama by 44-43%, after figures are weighted. (In weighting, pollsters can alter the data to reflect what they believe the actual election turnout will be, so as to minimize the effect of skewed polling samples. This estimate can be quite subjective). Before weighting, Romney's lead was larger. So, how did the pollster weight the Florida data? The Republican sample was weighted to be only 28% despite being 36% in 2010 (a "Republican year") and 34% in 2008 (a "Democrat year").

The weighting also reflects the pollsters opinion that Democrat turnout will be 3% higher than Republican turnout, 3% points higher than it was in 2010 and equal to 2008. So even by weighting to Democrat-favorable 2008 turnout figures (unlikely to be repeated in 2012), Obama is still trailing.

In Ohio, it's more of the same, but even a lot worse. While the poll shows Obama winning by just 44-42%, those figures also reflect very favorable Obama assumptions. Once again, the polling sample is weighted to drop Republican turnout to a shockingly low 24% while it was 37% in 2010 and 31% in 2008. Meanwhile, the pollster kept Democrat turnout at 36%, exactly where it was in 2010 and only 3 points less than 2010.

So while turnout in 2010 saw Republicans at 37% to 36% for Democrats, this poll "weights" the turnout to be 36% for Democrats and 24% for Republicans. And even then, Obama's lead is just 2%. If you weight the Ohio numbers to actual 2010 turnout, Romney leads 48-42%. So, a lot of these polls reflect only how pollsters prefer to "weight them." But in any case, a weighted sample of 24% for Republicans is extremely low.

Pennsylvania is much of the same. While Republicans made up 37% of the electorate in both 2008 and 2010, the pollster once again weights the information so that Republican turnout is just 29%. The Democrat have a 7 point margin advantage in the weighted sample, equal to 2008 (and more than double the 3 point advantage of 2010). Here, Obama is still at only 47%, even though he scored 55% of the PA vote in 2008 (and even though a large chunk of the GOP has apparently moved out of the state according to the pollster).

Polling is as much subjective as it is objective. After collecting scientific data (polls) pollsters can then alter that data to reflect whatever turnout they expect. In all three swing state polls, the samples were weighted to favor Obama, and were very similar or even more generous than 2008 turnout. Even the weighted numbers show very good signs for the tea party, opponents of Obamacare, freedom lovers, and Romney, and very troubling signs for Obama.

3 New Swing State Polls Show Bad News for Obama originally appeared on About.com Conservative Politics: U.S. on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 08:39:11.

Permalink | Comment | Email this

Mormonism and Islam are among the fastest growing religions in America, while just over half of all Americans are unaffiliated with any denomination, according to a major census of the country's religious congregations published Wednesday.

The decennial census, released by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies in Chicago, ...

A strike force of federal, state and local agents and investigators, led by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, has charged 107 persons in seven cities with Medicare fraud involving more than $452 million in false billings, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday.

Mr. Holder, ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have joined forces to offer free online courses in a project aimed at attracting millions of online learners around the world, the universities announced Wednesday.

Beginning this fall, a variety of courses developed by faculty at both institutions will be ...

Universities are no longer turning a blind eye to what happens inside the fraternity house.

After horrific, firsthand accounts from students and multiple recent deaths, the long-accepted practice of hazing — both in Greek organizations and other university clubs — has been thrust into the spotlight, and a fierce, unprecedented ...

California could become the first state in the nation to require food producers to label all genetically modified products after activists this week capped a successful petition drive to get the measure on the state's November ballot.

More than 971,000 signatures from 58 counties - almost twice the legal requirement ...

GEORGIA

ATLANTA — An organ donation group says more than 100,000 people used a Facebook feature on its first day to declare they are donors.

The option was announced Tuesday by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to boost the number of potential organ donors. It allows Facebook users to add organ ...

DETROIT — Unions angry that Detroit is trying to put its financially battered books back in order by laying off hundreds of workers and imposing steep contract concessions on those who remain are considering an illegal strike.

Several Detroit municipal union leaders said striking has been one of several options ...