January 31, 2015

Harvard University Heats The World, Part 2



Al Gore (Harvard College. A.B. 1969) Is Angry That Harvard University Wastes Energy

"No challenge  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," said Obama in his State of the Union speech Tuesday [January 20, 2015].

Global warming be damned. What would Al Gore think? Or the White House? Harvard announced the highest amount of fund raising among colleges this year, beating out Stanford University for the top spot. Haven't seen who leads in wasting energy, helping to deplete the planet of its natural resources. Perhaps if you have surplus money you do not need to worry about such things. 1,700 to 2,000 of the one percent, who traveled to the World Economic Forum on climate change (Ahem!) in Davos, Switzerland arrived by their own private jet planes.




Thinking locally, Harvard University, in one building alone may have wasted scores of gallons of fuel oil this winter (2014-2015) alone. On a 15 degree Fahrenheit night between two heavy snowstorms in January 2015, this hall window was open as wide as possible.



It was on the fifth floor, drawing heat from all lower levels of the building on a windy cold night. One would think that the highest fund raising university, the most prestigious university in the United States would be able to learn from recent alerts about wasting energy, at least in one building alone.



Alas in this dumbed down nation, even the best and the brightest, the richest university in the nation, has no institutional memory from two weeks ago. Here is a previous entry on this blog about the same building, posted and sent on January 9, 2015, to university administrators and their sustainability devision.

http://enoughroom.blogspot.com/2015/01/harvard-university-heats-up-world.html



Once again those who wander the streets say thank you to Harvard University, especially to  Harvard University Housing experts, and the university sustainability team, for making Cambridge a warmer place when it is freezing cold. Not that the highly competitive and materialistic nature of Harvard University is genuinely warmer to humans. But that is another story for another time and place.



Harvard University campus police, building superintendents and graduate students can earn academic and economic credit, for harassing a 70-year-old man that they say is "crazy." What more do you need to know about Harvard University? No wonder Harvard is worshipped globally. It appears the university faculty teaches how to prey on vulnerable humans, how to exploit them. Is that why they get so much money, to encourage more of that behavior while preaching morality.



Wasting energy is a minor offense. But then Harvard University affiliates have superior standards and greater moral knowledge than ordinary humans. Harassing a vulnerable elder citizen and wasting energy has a higher meaning and effect, than ordinary civilians, unaffiliated with Harvard University, can understand. Campus police need to practice harassing elder citizens. It is what they will have to do when there are too many old people.



One of the topics listed on the university sustainability site is
http://green.harvard.edu/topics/energy-emissions

"Energy & Emissions Focused on reducing building energy use, improving the efficiency of our energy supply, and investing in renewable energy."

That sounds like what they do. Oh wait!
In case any logicians are reading this post, who may ask, "Why didn't you simply close the window?" Here is the answer. The window that is open is above the one you can see in this image. It is on the stairway. One must be at least 12 feet tall to reach the window to close it. I am not even six feet tall.

Who Is The Wall Street Wizard Hiding Behind New England's Soft Balls?



Patriots director of player research Ernie Adams, left, and head coach Bill Belichick watch the team do drills before a game in 2009.
Photo: AP

It appears that Mr. Adams is somewhat like a lawyer. He scrutinizes the rules to see what the team can get away with, as lawyers advise their clients. If there are no rules prohibiting an action, they will do it. It is how the White House and the Attorney General of the US interpret the Constitution. Even if there is a law about what they do, their guide is, "What are you gonna do about it?" A lawyer for the city of Cambridge, MA once admitted in public that he advised the city manager how to act based upon the likelihood of being sued. If it is unlikely an illegal action will bring a lawsuit, do it anyway. Perhaps that is what Adams does for the Patriots.

[From article]
In the media guide, Adams’ job description is: “researching special assignments for both the coaching staff and the personnel department.”
People who have worked with Adams describe him as a master of the NFL rulebook and a football historian.[. . .]
“He is the black ops of pro football analysis,” DeGuglielmo said. “He is undercover and out of sight.”
One of the few interviews Adams has done was in 2008 with the alumni magazine of Northwestern University, where he went.
“The truth is, I’ve always preferred to fly under the radar,” he said in the article. “I just don’t need a lot of notice. I love what I do, and that’s enough. And there’s a lot of stuff about being in the spotlight that I just don’t want. Let someone else worry about the media and the second-guessing and all the pressure.”
Adams grew up in Massachusetts and became obsessed with football, reading Vince Lombardi’s “Run to Daylight” multiple times and “Football Scouting Methods,” by a Navy assistant coach named Steve Belichick. During his senior year at Phillips Andover Academy, he met Bill Belichick, who had just entered the school. He found out Belichick was Steve’s son and a friendship was born.
[. . .]
When Belichick shows a new strategy like playing with eligible and ineligible receivers to confuse the defense during the playoffs, many believe Adams is behind it. He also gets the finger pointed at him when the Patriots stray from the rules. All those taped signals from the “Spygate” controversy? Belichick admitted they were going to Adams for analysis.

http://nypost.com/2015/01/30/the-belichick-crony-who-secretly-runs-black-ops-for-patriots/

Meet the ‘black ops’ man behind the Patriots’ success
By Brian Costello
January 30, 2015 | 5:38p
New York Post



What The White House Really Meant



One of several phrase translations

http://twitchy.com/2015/01/21/now-it-makes-more-sense-john-stossel-translates-obamas-sotu-speech/

NOW it makes more sense: John Stossel translates Obama’s #SOTU speech
Posted at 9:54 am on January 21, 2015
by Twitchy Staff

Dangers of Democracy and Islam





[From article]
The real problem is that hundreds of millions of Muslims reject our values. They do not believe all religions are equal. They do not believe in freedom of speech or the press to blaspheme the Prophet. Majorities in many Islamic countries believe adulterers, apostates, and converts to Christianity should be lashed, stoned and beheaded.
In surveys, the Muslim world not only rejects our presence and puppets, but also our culture and beliefs. In a free referendum they would vote to throw us out of the region and throw the Israelis into the sea.
For many in the Mideast collaboration with America is a betrayal. And our presence spawns more terrorists than our drones can kill.
This week Valls conceded there are "two Frances," adding, "A territorial, social, ethnic apartheid has spread across our country."
Have her five million Muslims become an indigestible minority that imperils the survival of France? Have France and Europe embraced a diversity more malignant than benign, possibly leading to a future like the recent past in Palestine, Cyprus, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Ukraine?
T. S. Eliot said, to defeat a religion, you need a religion.
We have no religion; we have an ideology -- secular democracy. But the Muslim world rejects secularism and will use democracy to free itself of us and establish regimes that please Allah.
In the struggle between democracy and Allah, we are children of a lesser God. "The term 'democracy,'" wrote Eliot, "does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike -- it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God ... you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin."
Germany used democracy to bring Hitler to power. Given free elections from Morocco to Mindanao, what kind of regimes would rise to power? Would not the Quran become the basis of law?
If Charlie Hebdo were a man, not a magazine, he would be torn to pieces in any Middle East nation into which he ventured. And what does a mindless West offer as the apotheosis of democracy?
Four million French marching under the banner "Je Suis Charlie."
Whom the gods would destroy ...

http://buchanan.org/blog/against-terrorism-but-for-what-15504

Against Terrorism — But for What?
Friday - January 23, 2015 at 3:07 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

January 30, 2015

Super Rich Planning Escapes In Case of Civil Unrest



Hideaway: Rich people are plotting to escape to remote parts of the world
[From article]
Super rich hedge fund managers are buying 'secret boltholes' where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed.
Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up.
With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.
Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/panicked-super-rich-buying-boltholes-5044084

Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up
Jan 26, 2015 12:14
By Alex Wellman

Nursing Homes Take Legal Control of Residents To Collect Fees



Photographs of the Palermos from the late 1960s. Mrs. Palermo, now 90, has been living at the nursing home since 2010. 
Credit Nina Bernstein/The New York Times
[From article]
Lillian Palermo tried to prepare for the worst possibilities of aging. An insurance executive with a Ph.D. in psychology and a love of ballroom dancing, she arranged for her power of attorney and health care proxy to go to her husband, Dino, eight years her junior, if she became incapacitated. And in her 80s, she did.
[. . .]
But one day last summer, after he disputed nursing home bills that had suddenly doubled Mrs. Palermo’s copays, and complained about inexperienced employees who dropped his wife on the floor, Mr. Palermo was shocked to find a six-page legal document waiting on her bed.
[. . .]
Hunter College researchers found more than 12 percent were brought by nursing homes. Some of these may have been prompted by family feuds, suspected embezzlement or just the absence of relatives to help secure Medicaid coverage. But lawyers and others versed in the guardianship process agree that nursing homes primarily use such petitions as a means of bill collection — a purpose never intended by the Legislature when it enacted the guardianship statute in 1993.
At least one judge has ruled that the tactic by nursing homes is an abuse of the law, but the petitions, even if they are ultimately unsuccessful, force families into costly legal ordeals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/nyregion/to-collect-debts-nursing-home-seizing-control-over-patients.html?_r=0

To Collect Debts, Nursing Homes Are Seizing Control Over Patients
By NINA BERNSTEIN
JAN. 25, 2015

Paterson NJ Student Attacks Teacher After Cell Phone Was Confiscated



Student Fights Teacher After Cell Phone Confiscated

[From article]
A ninth-grader at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson was arrested Friday and charged
with assaulting a teacher in a classroom.
The attack, captured on video, shows the teen slamming the 62-year-old educator to the floor in front of other students in an effort to get his cellphone back.
City school officials confirmed that criminal charges have been filed against the student, who has been suspended from school.
Someone in the classroom recorded the assault, which officials say took place at about 1 pm on Tuesday, and the video has been posted on YouTube.
[video was removed]
The 23-second video shows the 16-year-old with his arms wrapped around the teacher, knocking him into an empty desk. The student then wrestles the teacher across the front of the classroom before slamming him to the floor. The teen then reaches down and wrests something from the teacher before breaking away when someone in the classroom yelled: “Security.”
[. . .]
“What strikes me is that the teacher never even defended himself,” said Lee McNulty, a retired JFK teacher who has been vocal recently with criticism about violence and disorder in the high school. “That just shows how much teachers are afraid of losing their job.”
“It’s troubling that in our society today students think that inside a school they can put their hands on each other and teachers as well,” said Jonathan Hodges, a veteran school board member. “I went online trying to find this video and I found numerous videos of teachers being attacked by their students.”

http://www.northjersey.com/towns/paterson/paterson-freshman-charged-with-assault-after-classroom-attack-on-teacher-1.1239201

Paterson freshman charged with assault after classroom attack on teacher
JANUARY 23, 2015, 4:52 PM LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015, 11:27 PM
BY JOE MALINCONICO
PATERSON PRESS

Updated: Milwaukee Sheriff Defends Police Shooting of Black Gentleman in Oklahoma, NAACP Objects


Posted January 29, 2015 8:53 PM ET; Last updated January 30, 2015 5:12 PM ET


The officer’s body cam shows him shooting the suspect in the back, but David Clarke said there’s more to it than that. 
(Photo: ABC)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympleii/graphic-body-cam-video-shows-police-shooting-in-oklahoma#.fbd22dLwm

Fatal Police Shooting Captured In Graphic Video
Muskogee Officer Chansey McMillin shot and killed Terrance Walker on Jan. 17. Police released video of the shooting Friday.
posted on Jan. 25, 2015, at 1:36 a.m.
Jim Dalrymple II

Warning! Graphic Video!



* * *

[From article]
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke slammed the NAACP for saying police in Muskogee, Oklahoma, have adopted a “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude following the deadly shooting of a young black man last week, an incident filmed on body cam.
“This once proud organization that was a force for good has relegated itself into irrelevancy, and I challenge anybody to name the last significant accomplishment that the NAACP has achieved in the United States for people of color,” Clarke said during an interview with Fox & Friends. “This organization has become nothing more than a political propaganda entity for the left.”
Clarke, who has become a prominent figure in the gun world, urged the organization to “stay off the police” and lead a more meaningful discussion, namely why these incidents are happening and what can be done to prevent them.
“The number one cause of this is father-absent homes,” Clarke said. “So what are we going to do in terms of having more effective parenting, more role modeling, more engaged fathers in the lives of these young black men so that we don’t have this behavior.”
[. . .]
Clarke explained that Walker had repeatedly stalked and threatened his ex-girlfriend and on the day of the shooting, he waited for her outside of a church during a wedding. The pastor of the church finally called the police when the harassment escalated.
When the responding officer arrived, he asked to pat down Walker, for his own safety, after such time the suspect fled and the incident intensified. Before Walker was shot, he reached for something and turned back towards the officer before turning back around and continuing to flee.
A loaded handgun was found next to Walker after he was shot.

http://www.guns.com/2015/01/28/milwaukee-sheriff-blames-fatherless-homes-for-rise-in-police-shootings-video/

Milwaukee sheriff blames fatherless homes for rise in police shootings (VIDEO)
1/28/15

White House Cares Little About Terrorists



Eric Holder thinks (from left) Nidal Hasan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Richard Reid pose the same threat as common criminals.
Photo: AP (3)
[From article]
President Obama used his State of the Union address to urge Americans not to fear terrorists: “We lead best, when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents.”
But his words reached Americans when the Gallup Poll notes that 40 percent of Americans are very or somewhat worried that they will become a victim of terrorism — a higher percentage than when Obama took office in 2009.
They have reason for concern. From Day One, this administration has downplayed the terrorist threat from Islamic extremists. It declared the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 as “workplace violence.”
It pulled all US troops out of Iraq, allowing ISIS to move in and create a training ground for terrorists. Protracted negotiations with Iran have allowed that rogue nation to fortify and proliferate its nuclear facilities.
[. . .]
Obama and Holder have implemented the politically correct view of coping with terrorism by shifting to a weaker, criminal model of prevention — the kind that miserably failed during the Clinton administration, when Holder was the No. 2 official in the Justice Department. It was Holder who decided that terrorists should be read Miranda rights.
[. . .]
It took an act passed by a Democratic Congress withholding any federal funds to house the terrorists in New York that forced Holder to reverse his decision.
From his first day in office, Holder began reshaping the Justice Department’s attitude towards terrorism. That included hiring many attorneys who, during the Bush administration, had worked strenuously on a volunteer basis to help terrorist detainees in Guantanamo Bay escape justice and to severely weaken the comprehensive security measures that had been implemented by the federal government after the horrific events of 9/11.
[. . .]
Eric Holder has weakened national security.

http://nypost.com/2015/01/25/obamas-response-to-terror-a-shrug/

Obama’s response to terror: A shrug
By John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky
January 25, 2015 | 6:00am

Kentucky State Senator Exercises Elected Official Privilege After Bust For Drunk Driving



Kentucky State Sen. Brandon Smith (R)

[From article]
A Kentucky state senator is having no reservations about proclaiming his political privilege. In fact, he’s simply citing a section of the Kentucky constitution that claims politicians are in fact, above the law.
Sen. Brandon Smith (R) was charged with driving under the influence and wants the case dismissed citing that lawmakers are “privileged from arrest.”
His attempt to circumvent the hand of justice have thus far proven to be successful too. On Wednesday a judge delayed Smith’s arraignment after his attorney filed this request.
“(Smith) has raised a serious constitutional issue regarding his immunity in this case,” attorney Bill Johnson wrote.
[. . .]
The State Journal reports that according to the citation, Smith was stopped on Village Drive after he was seen driving 65 mph in a 45 mph zone on Leestown Road, near the intersection of Copperleaf Boulevard. The trooper described several failed field sobriety tests and said Smith blew a .088 on a preliminary breath test.
Once in the custody of police at the Franklin County Regional Jail, he refused an official breathalyzer. Under state law, refusing a breathalyzer is an automatic suspension of one’s license.
[. . .]
According to the Kentucky law, the senator could have also been caught breaking the following misdemeanor laws of pimping out prostitutes, possessed meth, stolen prescription drugs, used stolen credit cards, and received stolen goods and he would simply have to claim political immunity, and the charges are then rendered invalid. Seems legit.

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2015/01/23/senator-wants-dui-charges-dismissed-citing-lawmakers-privileged-arrest/

Senator Wants DUI Charges Dismissed Citing that Lawmakers are “Privileged from Arrest”
Posted on January 23, 2015
by Matt Agorist

Increasing Fraud in Vermont By Illegal Aliens Getting Licenses



Photo by Eric Boehm
IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS?: An investigation into potential immigration benefits fraud has Vermont’s transportation agency caught between enforcing state law and “respecting immigrants’ rights.”

[From article]
This month, investigators at the Agency of Transportation Department of Motor Vehicles revealed that 130 applications at the Bennington DMV office were filled out using false address information. When the applicants arrived in person to take their driver’s tests, investigators learned many of the migrants were from out of state. Some applicants said they paid $2,000 in New York City for help obtaining the cards.
In collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials at the Agency of Transportation are now looking into potential cases of document and benefits fraud.
[. . .]
a vehicle pulled in needing new wiper blades. It was out-of-state plates, I believe he said New York. The owner asked the well-dressed man driving what brought him up this way, and he said he had a carload of individuals going to the Newport office for driver’s licenses.”

http://watchdog.org/194789/migrant-rights-vermont-dmv/

‘Migrant rights’ advocate urges Vermont DMV not to investigate illegals
By Bruce Parker
January 23, 2015

IRS Refuses To Allow 94-Year-Old Veteran To File Tax Return, Says He's Dead



Siegfried Meinstein, 94, is reportedly trying to prove to the IRS that he is still alive. 
(COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER/COLUMBUS DISPATCH)
[From article]
There is a 94-year-old World War II vet in Ohio who just wants to pay his taxes but can't because the IRS says he’s dead.
Siegfried Meinstein has been unable to convince the IRS he is alive, living in an assisted living facility near Columbus, Ohio. The IRS has told the nonagenarian it can’t process his tax return because their records indicate he is deceased.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/01/25/4-year-old-vet-cant-file-tax-return-because-irs-says-dead/

94-year-old vet can't file tax return because IRS says he's dead
Published January 25, 2015

Chicago: Thirteen Shot, Two Dead




[From article]
Two men were killed and at least 11 other people were wounded in shootings across the city on Friday, according to police.
The fatal shootings happened within minutes of each other on the South Side, police said.
[. . .]
The violence in the city is so bad that the Chicago Sun Times has created an interactive map to track the violence.

http://www.breaking911.com/chicago-friday-13-people-shot-2-dead-4-shot-in-five-minute-period/

Grant
CHICAGO FRIDAY: 13 People Shot, 2 Dead — 4 Shot In Five Minute Period
By: Grant (Breaking911 Newsroom)

Gentleman, 19, Shot Dead By St. Louis, MO Police



Police said a 19-year-old man was shot and killed by an officer in north St. Louis around 9:45 p.m. Wednesday night.
Photo: KMOV

[From articles]
Police said a 19-year-old man was shot and killed by an officer in north St. Louis around 9:45 p.m. Wednesday night.
Authorities said the shooting occurred near the intersection of Cottage and Marcus. According to officers, a driver and passenger were inside a stolen red Chevrolet Monte Carlo that had been taken from south St. Louis on December 5, 2014.
Police said officers were doing hot-spot policing in north St. Louis when they noticed the stolen vehicle. The suspect vehicle made an illegal U-turn when the driver spotted officers, according to St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson. After the vehicle made the U-turn, officers attempted to follow, but not pursue the car.
Authorities spotted the car again a short time later, right before the vehicle hit a retaining wall along Cottage near the intersection of Marcus. The car then stalled.
Police said a passenger in the stolen car, Isaac Holmes, 19, got out of the vehicle and refused to drop an Intratec TEC-9 gun that contained 30 rounds. He was shot by two officers. Officers said the driver, who was not shot, is cooperating with police.

http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Man-shot-in-north-St-Louis-late-Wednesday-night-289394861.html

Teen shot, killed by officers had loaded gun, Dotson says; suspect ID'd
by KMOV.com Staff
Posted on January 21, 2015 at 10:28 PM
Updated Thursday, Jan 22 at 10:38 PM

                       

Sarah Palin Expresses Interest In 2016 Campaign



Sarah Palin speaking at a trade show this week in Las Vegas.
(John Locher/AP)
[From article]
“I am. As I said yesterday, I’m really interested in the opportunity to serve at some point,” Palin said Friday, as former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, a potential 2016 rival, looked on.
Palin’s comments, made in an interview in the lobby of the Marriott hotel here, came hours before she is scheduled to address a group of conservative activists at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a gathering hosted by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an immigration hard-liner.
Palin said, “It is a significant step, of course, for anyone to publicly announce that they’re interested. Who wouldn’t be interested? Who wouldn’t be interested when they have been blessed with opportunities to speak about what is important to this country and for this country?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/01/24/palin-say-shes-seriously-interested-in-2016-campaign/

Palin says she’s ‘seriously interested’ in 2016 campaign
By Robert Costa
January 24, 2015

Harvard Campus Police, Private, Abusive and Unaccountable; Business As Usual At The MA Executive Office of Public Safety



Charlie Baker, Governor of Massachusetts

2015 brings a new Governor for Massachusetts. But the bureaucracy lags behind and acts the same as under the previous Governor. Over the past 25 years a group of Harvard University campus police and their employees conducted a brutal campaign of surveillance and harassment. It continues in 2015. Never having had any positive response to previous complaints, I stopped complaining to city and state officials. It was a waste of my time, something encouraged by police over 44 years, wasting my time, that is. They all say, "He's crazy." and ignore my complaints. Legally these depraved police employees are abusing a disabled person, with police protection. It is how the Harvard University campus police thugs and their employees are able to cover up their abuses. "He's crazy." covers it all. Bullies love to prey on vulnerable citizens, especially white male citizens, who are not homosexual.

I live on property owned and operated by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. When I experienced criminal acts, my calls to the Cambridge police dispatchers were diverted to Harvard University campus police, who did not respond to my calls. When I was able to get through to Cambridge police they did respond and took my complaint. But the Harvard University campus police (HUPD) did not stop their abuses.





An undergraduate instructor of mine, who now teaches at Harvard Law School told me many years ago if I had any trouble I should call the Harvard University General Counsel. When I experienced the first act of police abuse I called to the Office of General Counsel. There was no positive response, no response at all. No reduction in the harassment by HUPD.

The enabling Mass General Law statute reveals that HUPD are special state police and have jurisdiction to enforce state laws on the property of Harvard University. I noticed how they act outside of their jurisdiction regularly. When I gathered evidence of health hazards over which the city of Cambridge has jurisdiction and not the HUPD, three HUPD officers stopped me and questioned me. When I explained to them that they were negligently trained they became sarcastic, asking me if I was going to train them. I've written many times about this problem and spoke to the city government and to the police in the city of Cambridge. It is a police problem which the city police enable by ceding jurisdiction to HUPD even when they do not have it.

It is unlikely the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety will change the way that HUPD operates. But I want them to stop harassing me. I am not charged with any crime. I have no notice of any allegations against me. But the HUPD freely harasses me and follows me. The last instance was on Thursday January 29, 2015.




At about 3:30 PM I called to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety MEOPS. The receptionist referred me to Lisa Morales, said to be an executive assistant. Her telephone greeting names Andrea Cabral as the Secretary of Public Safety. According to the state web pages Thomas G. Gatzunis, is the current Commissioner. I do not know the difference between the Secretary and the Commissioner. But on my last visit to the MEOPS it was explained to me that the MEOPS does not have jurisdiction over local police. But It does have jurisdiction over state police and the special (campus) state police. 



Thomas G. Gatzunis, Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Safety

Nonetheless Lisa Morales left a voice mail message telling me that the campus police are under the State office of Education. I left a voice mail for her that the state makes the HUPD special state police and thus they are under the MEOPS. The next day she called again stating in a voice mail that she may have someone to refer me to. Aha! The bureaucratic plot thickens.

I know a lot about giving citizens the run around. I've experienced it over many years in large institutions and government agencies.Often it is not intentional, but incompetence. I do not know what it is in this case. I stopped interacting with government as a result of their disinterest in addressing abuses by police. I do not participate in the lawless protests on state highways. I am not a supporter of the "black lives matter" movement which slanders police. But I do object to the abuses of police power for personal and for political purposes which is what the HUPD does regarding me.

I read one book about bureaucracy that explained that the best time to obtain redress and to seek changes is when there is a new administration, e.g., a new governor and his new team. Thus I will send this as a letter to the new commissioner. If there is a response, I will update this post at that time.

January 29, 2015

Suspicious Deaths Of Bankers Continue




[From article[
This is either the most interesting case of coincidental deaths or one of the most evil plots in modern history.
Western bankers are dropping dead all over the place - most of them youngish and in good health. There appear to be an unusual number of suicides and "unexplained" deaths.
Last year, 36 bankers died. There have been 3 already this year, including the latest - a Dutch financier who worked for Amro bank.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/01/who_is_killing_the_great_bankers_of_europe.html

January 25, 2015
Who is killing the great bankers of Europe?
By Rick Moran

Threesomes Alleged At Philadelphia Fire Department





[From article]
CBS 3 reports that the Office of the Philadelphia Inspector General is investigating as many as 12 firefighters for having sex on the job.
According to the report:
Among the allegations under investigation, a female member found engaging in sexual activity with two male members inside a vehicle and, sources confirm, sexual activity among the female member and male members at several firehouses around the city.
[. . .]
Disciplinary action is being considered, as well as “additional sensitivity training” to address the problem.

http://freebeacon.com/culture/philadelphia-fire-department-under-investigation-for-threesomes-in-fire-houses/

Philadelphia Fire Department Under Investigation for Threesomes in Fire Houses
Disciplinary action and ‘sensitivity training’ being considered
BY: Elizabeth Harrington Follow @LizWFB
January 28, 2015 1:09 pm

Police Say They Need Informants, But Don't Always Protect Them



This undated photo from a wanted poster shows Pedro Flores, left, and his twin brother, Margarito Flores. (U.S. Marshals Service)

[From article]
"As two of the most well-known cooperating witnesses in the country, the Flores brothers (and their families) will live the rest of their lives in danger of being killed in retribution," prosecutors wrote. "The barbarism of the cartels is legend, with a special place reserved for those who cooperate."
The concerns over possible attempts at retribution extend to the brothers' Chicago attorney, whose identity has been kept secret for safety reasons in an extraordinary step. It's unclear whether the attorney will even be in court Tuesday for the sentencing. Extra metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs are expected to add another layer of security at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
The Flores brothers' cooperation has already had real repercussions. Shortly after word got out that the brothers were in DEA custody, their father, Margarito Flores Sr., returned to Mexico against his sons' wishes and despite stern warnings from their government handlers, according to prosecutors.
Within days, the father was kidnapped and presumed to be murdered, the filing said. A note found at the scene of the kidnapping said his sons were next.
Some of the brothers' double-dealing was the stuff of movies. The Flores brothers met with cartel leaders in mountaintop compounds, captured conversations with Guzman's lieutenants with a voice recorder hidden in a coat pocket and even helped prosecutors by cutting deals with a rival faction of the cartel that would have meant certain death if discovered by either side, court records show.
"It was incredibly daring," said Joseph Lopez, a Chicago attorney who has represented many cartel clients. "These guys were allegedly able to get Chapo on tape talking about heroin. He trusted them that much."
The Flores brothers' sentencing marks the end of one of the more remarkable stories of Chicago's cut-throat drug underworld, where in a few short years the twins rose through the ranks of the Latin Kings street gang to eventually run a drug distribution ring that shipped thousands of pounds of narcotics to wholesale customers in New York, Washington, Cincinnati and other cities.
By the time they flipped in 2008 and agreed to dismantle their operation, the twins had reached "the highest echelons of the cartel world," prosecutors said.
[. . .]
Their main supplier was Guzman, whose vast operations included a fleet of 747 jets that had all the seats removed, the brothers said in sworn statements to a federal grand jury.
According to their statements, Guzman would load the planes with clothes and other goods and fly bogus "humanitarian" missions to South America. On the return trip to Mexico City, the brothers said, the planes would be packed with as much as 12,000 kilograms — about 14 tons — of cocaine that was unloaded and driven out of the airport with the help of corrupt officials.
The brothers said Guzman's various lieutenants helped the cartel coordinate shipments of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico using submarines, speedboats and amphibious vessels to avoid law enforcement at sea.
[. . .]
In all, the Flores twins pleaded guilty to distributing more than 64,500 kilograms of cocaine, an "almost incomprehensible quantity ... with resulting harm that is incalculable but without question horrific," prosecutors said.
Their testimony led to sweeping indictments in 2009 against 54 defendants, including Guzman, who remained a fugitive until his sensational arrest in Mexico last February. It's unclear whether he'll ever be extradited to face charges in the U.S., where he is also under indictment in New York and Texas.
[. . .]
At the same time they were cooperating against the cartel, the Flores twins also assisted in the dismantling of their organization in 2009, creating a highly unusual situation where the bosses were cooperating against underlings.

http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82637789/

Sentencing today for twins who flipped on 'El Chapo'
Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune
8:00 am, January 27, 2015

* * *


The case of Rachel Hoffman, who was murdered while on a sting as a confidential informant in Tallahassee, FL.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/brian-ross-investigates-rachel-hoffmans-murder-spurs-confidential/story?id=11288735

This Week on Brian Ross Investigates
July 30, 2010
By MEGAN CHUCHMACH

* * *


In exchange for leniency, untrained informants are sent out to perform dangerous police operations with few legal protections.
CREDIT LUKE SHUMAN
[From article]
On the evening of May 7, 2008, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Rachel Hoffman got into her silver Volvo sedan, put on calming jam-band music, and headed north to a public park in Tallahassee, Florida. A recent graduate of Florida State, she was dressed to blend into a crowd—bluejeans, green-and-white patterned T-shirt, black Reef flip-flops. On the passenger seat beside her was a handbag that contained thirteen thousand dollars in marked bills.
[. . .]
On the evening of May 7, 2008, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Rachel Hoffman got into her silver Volvo sedan, put on calming jam-band music, and headed north to a public park in Tallahassee, Florida. A recent graduate of Florida State, she was dressed to blend into a crowd—bluejeans, green-and-white patterned T-shirt, black Reef flip-flops. On the passenger seat beside her was a handbag that contained thirteen thousand dollars in marked bills.
Before she reached the Georgia-peach stands and Tupelo-honey venders on North Meridian Road, she texted her boyfriend. “I just got wired up,” she wrote at 6:34 P.M. “Wish me luck I’m on my way.”
“Good luck babe!” he replied. “Call me and let me know what’s up.”
“It’s about to go down,” she texted back.
Behind the park’s oaks and blooming crape myrtles, the sun was beginning to set. Young mothers were pushing strollers near the baseball diamonds; kids were running amok on the playground. As Hoffman spoke on her iPhone to the man she was on her way to meet, her voice was filtered through a wire that was hidden in her purse. “I’m pulling into the park with the tennis courts now,” she said, sounding casual.
Perhaps what put her at ease was the knowledge that nineteen law-enforcement agents were tracking her every move, and that a Drug Enforcement Administration surveillance plane was circling overhead. In any case, Rachel Hoffman, a tall, wide-eyed redhead, was by nature laid-back and trusting. She was not a trained narcotics operative. On her Facebook page you could see her dancing at music festivals with a big, goofy smile, and the faux profile she’d made for her cat (“Favorite music: cat stevens, straycat blues, pussycat dolls”).
A few weeks earlier, police officers had arrived at her apartment after someone complained about the smell of marijuana and voiced suspicion that she was selling drugs. When they asked if she had any illegal substances inside, Hoffman said yes and allowed them in to search. The cops seized slightly more than five ounces of pot and several Ecstasy and Valium pills, tucked beneath the cushions of her couch. Hoffman could face serious prison time for felony charges, including “possession of cannabis with intent to sell” and “maintaining a drug house.” The officer in charge, a sandy-haired vice cop named Ryan Pender, told her that she might be able to help herself if she provided “substantial assistance” to the city’s narcotics team.
[. . .]
Now she was on her way to conduct a major undercover deal for the Tallahassee Police Department, meeting two convicted felons alone in her car to buy two and a half ounces of cocaine, fifteen hundred Ecstasy pills, and a semi-automatic handgun.
[. . .]
Two days after Hoffman disappeared, her body was found in Perry, Florida, a small town some fifty miles southeast of Tallahassee, in a ravine overgrown with tangled vines. Draped in an improvised shroud made from her Grateful Dead sweatshirt and an orange-and-purple sleeping bag, Hoffman had been shot five times in the chest and head with the gun that the police had sent her to buy.
[. . .]
In legal parlance, she was a “coöperator,” one of thousands of people who, each year, help the police build cases against others, often in exchange for a promise of leniency in the criminal-justice system.
Informants are the foot soldiers in the government’s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty per cent of all drug cases in America involve them,
[. . .]
Often, deploying informants involves no paperwork and no institutional oversight, let alone lawyers, judges, or public scrutiny; their use is necessarily shrouded in secrecy.
[. . .]
Many have been given false assurances by the police, used without regard for their safety, and treated as disposable pawns of the criminal-justice system.
The recruitment of young informants often involves risks that are incommensurate with the charges that they are facing. And the costs of coöperating can be high.
[. . .]
Shelly’s death was connected to work she had done as a police informant. Just days before she was killed, cops had spotted Shelly and a friend smoking a blunt on the balcony of a Motel 6 in a Detroit suburb. When they raided the room, they found a sandwich bag with half an ounce of marijuana in the toilet tank. One of the officers threatened Shelly with prison—a particularly terrifying prospect for a transgender woman, who would be sent to a male facility—and then offered her a way out: she could set up her dealer, Qasim Raqib, and walk free that same day. She agreed.
[. . .]
When Rachel’s parents arrived at the headquarters of the Tallahassee Police Department, they immediately grew suspicious. “I remember noticing that they weren’t taking us to the missing-persons unit,” Margie recalled. “Instead it was like, ‘Come over here to Narcotics.’ ”
[. . .]
Rachel’s parents watched the coverage on the television in her apartment. It marked, for Irv Hoffman, the beginning of what he sometimes refers to as “the smearing”—the period following Rachel’s murder during which their daughter was portrayed in police statements and front-page news stories as, in his words, “this horrible drug-dealing monster.”
[. . .]
“The first stories tried to paint Rachel as a low-life druggie drug dealer.” Two months later, in a TV segment on Hoffman’s death, the ABC News correspondent Brian Ross interviewed Police Chief Jones. “I’m calling her a criminal,”
[. . .]
“You need to understand that if you speak out you’re opening Pandora’s box,” Hoffman recalled being told. “You’re going to be out of your comfort zone real quick, and some people are going to support you and other people are going to come out against you.
[. . .]
According to Mitchell McLean, an agent from a federally funded narcotics task force laid out Jeremy’s options, saying, “You can sit down with us and make a deal. Or you can go upstairs, get a lawyer, and get ready to be ass-rammed in prison.” Jeremy signed a contract to “make purchases of controlled substances from four individuals,” in return for which his charges would be reduced, “with a recommendation of no jail time.”
[. . .]
Before long, using a camera hidden in his baseball cap, Jeremy had set up at least five local drug suspects. But, according to his parents, he was told that he would need to keep going,
[. . .]
On December 29, 2008, Jeremy left the house after a snowstorm to buy some milk. He didn’t return. Reagan had paid an accomplice to bait or kidnap Jeremy and bring him to a nearby motor home, where he was waiting with a .22-calibre pistol. He shot Jeremy three times in the back of the head, then once, at close range, in the face.
[. . .]
result of an equally cynical and utilitarian calculation. “The cops, they get federal funding by the number of arrests they make—to get the money, you need the numbers,” he explained, alluding to, among other things, asset-forfeiture laws that allow police departments to keep a hefty portion of cash and other resources seized during drug busts. “It’s a commercial enterprise,” he went on, citing a view shared by many legal scholars and policy critics. “That’s how they pay for their vans, for their prosecutors—they get money from the war on drugs. They put zero dent in the supply. They just focus on small-town, small-time arrests.”
[. . .]
It’s little fish chasing other little fish, like Jeremy and his eight methadone pills. This argument is at the heart of a lawsuit that Jeremy’s parents decided to file last December.
[. . .]
California, he later learned, was one of the few states that had rules governing the use of teen-age informants, and prohibiting recruits younger than thirteen. Those rules had been devised after a seventeen-year-old named Chad MacDonald was brutally murdered and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend raped and shot in retaliation for Chad’s work as a low-level drug C.I., in 1998.
[. . .]
An internal-affairs investigation revealed that police officers had committed at least twenty-one violations of nine separate policies in Hoffman’s case. “I didn’t think it would be so many policies not being followed,” Chief Dennis Jones told the Tallahassee Democrat, which covered the case extensively. He admitted that it had been wrong to blame the victim, and expressed regret.
[. . .]
Many vice cops, in particular, argued that forbidding the use of juveniles as C.I.s would force them to turn a blind eye to young people committing adult crimes. More record keeping would only increase the risk of C.I.s’ identities being disclosed. The right-to-an-attorney clause, they contended, would make it far too cumbersome to catch and “flip” a drug suspect on the spot, effectively nullifying a valuable, real-time tactic for fighting crime.
[. . .]
“There’s no such thing as training an informant,” Brian Sallee, of B.B.S. Narcotics Enforcement Training and Consulting, told me. “You direct them what to do, and if they follow those directions that will make it safer for them. There’s always going to be a risk, but when things go bad it’s usually because they didn’t do as they were told to. They get themselves hurt, not the officers. The informants cause their own dilemma.”
[. . .]
The revised bill passed both chambers of the Florida legislature unanimously. On May 7, 2009, the anniversary of Hoffman’s murder, Governor Charlie Crist signed Rachel’s Law.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/03/the-throwaways

SEPTEMBER 3, 2012 ISSUE
The Throwaways
Police enlist young offenders as confidential informants. But the work is high-risk, largely unregulated, and sometimes fatal.
BY SARAH STILLMAN

* * *

http://abcnews.go.com/US/dangers-college-student-campus-police-drug-informant/story?id=28357345

The Dangers of a College Student Becoming a Campus Police Drug Informant
By GAIL DEUTSCH, STEPHANIE FUERTE, JONATHAN BALTHASER (@JonBalthaser) and LAUREN EFFRON (@leffron831)
Jan 23, 2015, 1:47 PM ET


World News Videos | ABC World News

Harvard's Outgoing Media Institute Director Speaks About Media




A visitor to Shorenstein, Neil Postman, explained in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that we are being drowned in information. Arianna Huffington, said in her book, Pigs at the Trough, "The public watchdogs have become little more than obedient lapdogs." Speaking at the ARCO Forum Walter Cronkhite said that when the corporations began paying millions to journalists they no longer focused on writing news. They were more interested in getting invited to dinner with other wealthy people. Today university professors and administrators earn millions too. Does that explain pervasive dumbing down of students?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/1/29/role-media-democracy-shorenstein/

Shorenstein Director Discusses the Future of Journalism
By CAROLINA I. PORTELA-BLANCO
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
January 29, 2015

City Hall Proposal For Civilian Police Review Board Brings Brawl in Chambers




[From article]
A public meeting at St. Louis City Hall about a bill proposing civilian oversight of police went about as well as one might expect. After months of protests punctuated by riots and destruction, the meeting erupted into a brawl.

http://twitchy.com/2015/01/28/brawl-erupts-at-ferguson-meeting-on-police-oversight-pics-video/

Brawl erupts at Ferguson meeting on police oversight [pics, video]
Posted at 10:00 pm on January 28, 2015
 by Twitchy Staff

Obama Must Want Harvard University To "Spread Its Wealth"




[From article]
The president undoubtedly Tweeted Harvard’s Dean of Donations this week to remind him that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” and that, while he doesn’t want to punish Harvard’s success, “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.”
[. . .]
It was, after all, a $37.5 billion record year for giving to America’s 4,800 colleges and universities, but $6.75 billion of that went to just 10 schools. In other words, the top two-tenths of one percent got 18 percent of the money.
You may ask why Barack Obama, of all of the Harvard grads, should be the one to alert the guardians of this Ivy League bastion to their opportunity to address historical inequality?
As a millionaire, living in a palace, with servants meeting his every need, security watching his every step, becking and calling limousines and luxury aircraft, vacationing in posh resorts, and golfing his days away — Barack Obama clearly has the prestige, and the leisure time, to petition the captains of Cambridge, Mass., to redress this lingering injustice.
However, you may contend, the donors to Harvard did not intend their wealth to be spread around so liberally.
Yes, but what is Harvard, if not an educational institution? Should that education stop after a few years of undergraduate work, a master’s or a doctorate? No, I say, let the learning continue for a lifetime, as Harvard teaches its wealthy capitalist alumni the vanity of greed and the surpassing value of selfless giving.
May Obama’s elite friends in academia experience the full blessing of his legacy of leveling.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/01/28/obama-calls-on-harvard-alma-mater-to-spread-around-1-5-billion-in-2014-donations-it-received/

Obama Calls On Harvard Alma Mater to ‘Spread Around’ $1.5 Billion in 2014 Donations It Received
January 28, 2015 - 7:59 am
Scott Ott

January 28, 2015

Attkisson Sues Justice Department




[From article]
A former CBS investigative reporter who has filed a $35 million lawsuit against the Obama administration for hacking will be among the witnesses at a hearing on President Obama's attorney general nominee.
Sharyl Attkisson has accused the Obama administration of breaking into her computer and phone after she reported stories that were critical of the administration, such as the events surrounding the 2012 attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the failed “Fast and Furious” operation. She told her story in the book Stonewalled.
She will testify during this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Loretta Lynch, Obama’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as attorney general, a testimony announced by panel Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Monday evening.
Also testifying will be Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of the Tea Party-aligned True the Vote, which was unfairly targeted by the IRS, she has said, when it attempted to seek tax-exempt status.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/230795-ex-cbs-reporter-irs-targeted-group-leader-to-testify-on-new-ag

Stonewalled author Attkisson to testify on Obama’s AG nominee
By Julian Hattem
01/26/15 07:09 PM EST

Islamic Court Established in Texas



Islamic Tribunal Website
That's what courts do, dispute resolution.

[From article]
An Islamic Tribunal using Sharia law in Texas has been confirmed by Breitbart Texas. The tribunal is operating as a non-profit organization in Dallas. One of the attorneys for the tribunal said participation and acceptance of the tribunal’s decisions are “voluntary.”
Breitbart Texas spoke with one of the “judges,” Dr. Taher El-badawi. He said the tribunal operates under Sharia law as a form of “non-binding dispute resolution.” El-badawi said their organization is “a tribunal, not arbitration.” A tribunal is defined by Meriam-Webster’s Dictionary as “a court or forum of justice.” The four Islamic attorneys call themselves “judges” not “arbitrators.”
El-badawi said the tribunal follows Sharia law to resolve civil disputes in family and business matters. He said they also resolve workplace disputes.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/01/27/hold-islamic-tribunal-confirmed-in-texas-its-voluntary-says-attorney/

ISLAMIC TRIBUNAL CONFIRMED IN TEXAS; ATTORNEY CLAIMS ‘IT’S VOLUNTARY’
by BOB PRICE
27 Jan 2015

Israel Clashes With Hezbollah On Lebanese Border



Israeli military vehicles are seen burning in the Shebaa farms an occupied area along the Israeli-Lebanese border near Ghajar village following a Hezbollah missile attack. 
Photo: Maruf Khatib/AFP/Getty Images
[From article]
Israel stood on the brink of all-out conflict with Hizbollah on Wednesday after launching air and ground strikes against the Lebanese Shia group in retaliation for an attack on a military convoy that killed two soldiers and injured seven others.
A Spanish member of a United Nations peacekeeping force was also killed in the border town of Ghajar, which straddles the frontier between Israel and Lebanon.
The incidents amounted to the most dangerous escalation on Israel's northern border since the last war in Lebanon in 2006.
Israel told the United Nations it would take "all necessary measures" to defend itself. "Israel will not stand by as Hizbollah targets Israelis," wrote Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, in a letter to the Security Council. "Israel will not accept any attacks on its territory and it will exercise its right to self-defence and take all necessary measures to protect its population."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11374208/Israel-strikes-targets-in-Lebanon.html

Israel on brink of new conflict with Hizbollah after two soldiers killed
Israeli air and ground forces attack targets in Lebanon for the first time since 2006
By Robert Tait, Jerusalem
5:02PM GMT 28 Jan 2015

Gov. Palin Has Common Sense, Loves America, Not a Speechifier



Gov. Palin is Not A Speechifier

Byron York appears to prefer a slick black con man who uses words as needed, lying and lying some more, to suit his needs solely for the moment. Palin may not be the most polished speaker but she admires the nation, and has lots of common sense. Two qualities which are lacking at the White House these days and in many other offices in and out of government. Truman used to call politicians like Obama speechifiers. He equates Palin to Donald Trump, who is a successful builder, not a speechifier.  But the focus as usual is on discrediting Palin.

[From article]
Palin should leave the field to those who are in possession of genuine political aspirations, and she should refrain from treating the Republican party as if it were a little more than a convenient vehicle for her private ambition. In the meantime, conservatives who are finally cottoning on to the ruse should recognize that this Iowa sojourn was not an aberration or a blip, but the foreordained culmination of a slow and unseemly descent into farce that began almost immediately after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. So Sarah Palin has become Amy Winehouse? Of course she has. How else exactly was this going to end?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/397238/sarah-palin-slips-self-parody-charles-c-w-cooke

JANUARY 26, 2015 6:09 PM
Sarah Palin Slips into Self-Parody
Her recent performance in Iowa should disqualify her from any role in the GOP going forward.
By Charles C. W. Cooke

Zimbabwe Resumes Threats Against White Farmers




[From article]
Most of Zimbabwe's white farmers were stripped of their land in often violent evictions that started in 2000. Now the remaining white farmers are on edge because of threats of new evictions linked to the country's long-running political turmoil.
[. . .]
However, human rights advocate and political analyst Gabriel Shumba said that linking the evictions to the Mujuru faction "is just political expediency by those seeking to evict them." Shumba said, "White farmers are caught up because they are in possession of an asset that is in demand."
[. . .]
There are fewer than 300 white farmers out of the original total of 4,500, according to the Commercial Farmers Union. The land eviction program that targeted white farmers starting in 2000 was defended by Mugabe as necessary to correct land imbalances dating from the era of white rule, though the upheaval was blamed for mismanagement of Zimbabwe's once rich agricultural economy.

http://news.yahoo.com/zimbabwes-white-farmers-face-threats-evictions-133521942.html

Zimbabwe's white farmers face threats of new evictions
By FARAI MUTSAKA
January 27, 2015

Updated (3): NFL Checks New England Patriot's Soft Balls, Eli Manning Questions Brady's Obsession With His Balls


Posted January 20, 2015 9:42 PM ET; Last updated January 28, 2015 8:08 PM ET


New York Post Tells It Like It Is

This report from Tampa shows that the quarterbacks preferred altered balls. But they did not have to be the ones doing the altering. Tom Brady at his press conference on Thursday January 22, 2015 said he did not do anything to the balls. But he stopped after he began saying  "I had nothing to do with . . ."

[From article]
Eli Manning, who comes from one of the sport’s most famous families and has played in the NFL for 11 seasons, said he’d never even heard of letting air out of a football — and finds Tom Brady’s preoccupation with his balls odd, to say the least.
“I’ve never worried really much about the inflation or the certain number of pounds of inflation,” Manning said to an audience at the New York Athletic Club last week. “I thought it was kind of strange that Brady knew he liked his ball at 12.5 pounds of pressure in the ball. … That’s the minimum number that you can have, that seemed kind of strange to me. … I’ve never heard about anybody deflating the football to their advantage, it’s the first I’m hearing about it.”

http://nypost.com/2015/01/27/eli-manning-strange-tom-brady-knows-so-much-about-his-balls/

Eli Manning: ‘Strange’ Tom Brady knows so much about his balls
By Howie Kussoy
January 27, 2015 | 12:15pm

* * *

[From article]
The major takeaway of the press conference is that, according to Brady, no one from the NFL has interviewed him. This is simply mindboggling. Because of the way footballs are handled pregame, the quarterback would be the most essential source of information in the event irregularities occur. Brady is thus the first person the NFL should have spoken with if the league really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened.
One now has to be suspicious that the league would rather not know at this point. Why? Because we are just ten days from the Super Bowl and there is very strong evidence of cheating. If the league quickly learns who is responsible, it would have to suspend the cheater(s) from the big game or be mercilessly ridiculed for turning a blind eye. The NFL obviously does not want to suspend star players or coaches from its showcase event.
[. . .]



If the NFL wanted to interview Tom Brady, it would have been done already. Football turns out to be a lot like politics: Officials avoid information because if they learn something bad has been done, they are expected to do something about it.
[. . .]
After the interception before halftime, the Colts sideline informed their general manager, who informed league officials. Based on the complaint, the refs re-examined all 24 balls at halftime. The Colts’ balls were all still within the specs, but 11 of the 12 Pats’ balls were under-inflated by up to two pounds per square inch – i.e., about 10.5 pounds. It was unseasonably mild for Foxboro, Mass., in January – about 51 degrees. Between that and the fact that the Colts’ footballs were unchanged, there seems to be no weather-related explanation for a drop in air pressure in the Pats’ footballs.
There are thus only two apparent possibilities, neither of which is good for the Pats: Either (a) the Pats supplied under-inflated balls and the refs did not competently examine them prior to the game; or (b) the Pats, who had control of their chosen footballs after the pregame examination by the refs, deflated the balls before or during the first-half.
[. . .]
Turns out that it is largely because of Tom Brady that the NFL changed its protocols in order to allow each team to supply game balls for its own use. It used to be that the home teams were responsible for supplying all the game balls. But nine years ago, Brady and Broncos star QB Peyton Manning successfully petitioned the competition committee to change the rules.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/397011/nfl-doesnt-want-know-how-deflate-gate-happened-andrew-c-mccarthy

The NFL Doesn’t Want to Know How Deflate-gate Happened
By Andrew C. McCarthy
January 22, 2015 7:53 PM
* * *

[From article]
"Rich and I talked about it. The footballs needed to be worked in,'' Johnson said. "In years past, you heard Troy Aikman, John Elway and Steve Young complain about the balls being slick. Phil Simms, all of them. And basically we agreed on that if the balls could be - if we could work them in, we'd work them in.''
But neither player had any access to the footballs prior to the game.
"I never saw the footballs, I never touched the footballs,'' Johnson said. "I never got to touch them until game time. The first possession is the first time I touched the ball.''
But leaving nothing to chance, Johnson made sure the balls were scuffed and ready well before the Dixie Chicks sang the national anthem.
Johnson said he paid two ballboys working for the NFL a total of $7,500 to make sure the footballs were scuffed and broken in before the Super Bowl and they obliged. Johnson first revealed the secret payment to the Tampa Bay Times in 2012, just prior to the 10-year reunion of the Bucs' Super Bowl championship team.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/bucs/bucs-qb-johnson-paid-to-have-footballs-altered-before-sb-37/2214490

Bucs QB Johnson paid to have footballs scuffed before SB 37
Rick Stroud, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 21, 2015 7:45am
* * *

[From article]
The Patriots and their integrity-challenged coach could be in deep trouble with the NFL once more after ESPN reported late Tuesday that 11 footballs confiscated from their 45-7 win over the Colts in the AFC title game last Sunday were found to be underinflated by two pounds of air (PSI) each.
ESPN described league officials as “disappointed, angry and distraught” at the findings.
The bombshell report — which the network attributed to anonymous sources — could mean the second major cheating scandal involving Belichick and the Patriots since Spygate in 2007, when they were caught taping the Jets’ defensive signals and fined $750,000 and docked a draft pick.
[. . .]
In addition, CBS Sports reported late Tuesday the Ravens suspected the special “K-Ball” kicking footballs were underinflated in their loss to the Patriots in Foxborough in the divisional round.

http://nypost.com/2015/01/20/nfl-probe-finds-11-of-12-patriots-footballs-were-under-inflated/

NFL says 11 of 12 Patriots footballs were underinflated: report
By Bart Hubbuch
New York Post
January 20, 2015 | 11:36pm

* * * http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2919111/Interception-caused-Indianapolis-Colts-look-inflated-footballs-AFC-championship-game-against-New-England-Patriots-NFL-says-investigation-underway.html

New England Patriots DID deflate footballs for their win over Colts: 'Eleven of 12 game balls were under inflated'
The NFL has said it is reviewing whether the New England Patriots manipulated footballs during their 45-7 home win over the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC championship game Sunday night
Colts linebacker D'Qwell Jackson's interception reportedly caused the Colts to look into what is being called 'Deflategate'
A Colts equipment staff member was handed the ball by Jackson and noticed it seemed under-inflated, according to one report
Both Colts coach Chuck Pagano and general manager Ryan Grigson were reportedly notified
Grigson reached out to NFL director of football operations Mike Kensil who spoke to on-field officials, according to the the report
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and ZOE SZATHMARY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 19:23 EST, 20 January 2015 | UPDATED: 09:31 EST, 21 January 2015



* * *

[From article]
Patriots head coach Bill Belichik said he did not know anything about the potential issue until Monday.
"We'll cooperate fully with whatever the league wants us to; whatever questions they have for us, whatever they want us to do," Belichik told reporters.
According to a report on the NFL's website, a ball was taken off the field and out of circulation during New England's 45-7 win over the visiting Colts that clinched a berth in the Feb. 1 Super Bowl.
Using a deflated ball is presumably done to help players increase their grip, which could have been an issue during Sunday's game that was played in rainy conditions.
According to the NFL report, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady dismissed the claims as "ridiculous" during his Monday morning appearance on Boston radio station WEEI-FM.
[. . .]
"I think I've heard it all at this point," said Brady, who threw three touchdowns in the win. "That's the last of my worries. I don't even respond to stuff like this."
The report also said that if the NFL confirms deflated footballs were used by New England to gain an advantage during the game, it could cost the team draft picks.
The Patriots are no stranger to controversy having been heavily fined by the NFL and docked a first-round draft pick in 2008 for videotaping an opposing team's defensive coaches' signals during a game.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/league-probing-patriots-possible-deflated-balls-161734516--nfl.html

League probing Patriots' possible use of deflated balls
Reuters
Frank Pingue
January 19, 2015

White House Campaigns in National Election of Israel Against Netanyahu



Why Does The White House Fear This Man?

Imagine what the mindless anti Israel league would say if Israeli politicians campaigned here against a Democrat.

[From article]
Just days after the Obama White House accused House Speaker John Boehner of “breaking protocol” by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, a team of up to five Obama campaign operatives has reportedly arrived in Israel to lead a campaign to defeat the Israeli Prime Minister in upcoming national elections scheduled for March 17.
The anti-Netanyahu, left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports a group called “One Voice,” reportedly funded by American donors, is paying for the Obama campaign team. That group is reportedly being led by Obama’s 2012 field director Jeremy Bird.
As Jerusalem Post columnist and putative Knesset candidate Caroline Glick reported on her Facebook page, “Obama won’t meet Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington when he addresses the Joint Houses of Congress in March because of Netanyahu’s visit’s proximity to the Israeli elections. And Obama, of course believes in protocol and propriety which is why he won’t get involved.” And yet, Glick adds, “He’s just sending his 2012 field campaign manager to Israel to run a campaign to defeat Netanyahu.”

http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/01/27/obama-campaign-team-arrives-israel-defeat-netanyahu-march-elections?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fmost-popular+%28Internal+-+Most+Popular+Content%29

Obama Campaign Team Arrives In Israel To Defeat Netanyahu In March Elections
by THOMAS ROSE
Breitbart

White House Shows Ignorance, Continues Broadcasting



Is this the founding politician?

It is not just college students who have no sense of history and who lack common sense. The White House thrives on clueless civilians.

[From article]
The world’s oldest college that has been in continuous existence is the University of Bologna. It was founded in 1088. It arose not out of government at all but through civil society — specifically mutual aid societies of foreign students who hired private scholars to teach them. About 80 years later, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa granted a charter to the by-then established institution.
[. . .]


University of Bologna, Italy, Founded in 1088

The University of Oxford is about the same age but its exact date of establishment is unclear. Evidence suggests that there was teaching going on in the institution that is now the University of Oxford as early as 1096. The government did not found Oxford. King Henry III eventually granted a royal charter to the 150-year-old or school in 1248.
[. . .]
He noted, sublimely and profoundly, that “laws only pass if politics, you know, uhhh, allows those laws to pass.”

http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/22/obama-says-politicians-invented-college-video/

Obama Says POLITICIANS INVENTED COLLEGE [VIDEO]
January 22, 2015

January 25, 2015

Six Shot At Boston Birthday Party



Scene of Party and Shootings


[From article]
Five men and one woman, all between the ages of 18 and 22, were shot when an argument spilled onto the street about 11:15 p.m., according to Boston Police Department spokeswoman Neva Coakley. The unidentified victims were all taken to area hospitals.
The fight erupted at a birthday party for a former resident of the Bromley-Heath housing project, which was taking place at the Anna M. Cole Community Center, according to Bill McGonagle, head of the Boston Housing Authority.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/01/gunfire_erupts_at_jp_party_six_wounded

Gunfire erupts at JP party, six wounded
Sunday, January 25, 2015
By: Jordan Graham
Boston Herald

Iowa Freedom Summit Attracts Heavyweight Conservative Pols, Businessmen and Candidates



Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

http://www.c-span.org/video/?323834-8/iowa-freedom-summit-governor-scott-walker
Scott Walker Speaks To Iowa Freedom Summit
January 24, 2015

Newt Gingrich
http://www.c-span.org/video/?323834-9/iowa-freedom-summit-newt-gingrich

Sarah Palin
http://www.c-span.org/video/?323834-14/iowa-freedom-summit-sarah-palin

Other Candidates and speakers, including but not limited to Donald Trump, Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson.
http://www.c-span.org/schedule/?date=2015-01-24