Gaming the 4th Amendment/They Don't Give a Fuck About Your "Rights" - US border laptop searches: the other warrantless surveillance - Boing Boing:
"Documents released today as a result of the House v. Napolitano settlement document the systematic use of laptop searches at the US border to evade the need to get a warrant to read Americans' email. They way it worked: Homeland Security Investigations has someone they want the goods on, but don't think a judge would grant them a warrant. They put their victim on a travel advisory list, and the next time she crosses the border, the CBP seizes her laptop and phone and whatever other devices she's carrying and they get a copy of all of her data: no warrant required. They used this trick to seize the documents of David House, who worked to raise money and public support for Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), and eventually had to settle a lawsuit brought by House and the ACLU, a condition of which was the release of these documents."
"Testifying today at the first congressional hearing on marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington, Deputy Attorney General James Cole conceded that the Justice Department does not have a solid legal basis on which to challenge those states' new laws. "It would be a very challenging lawsuit to bring," Cole told the Senate Judiciary Committee, because repealing state penalties for growing, possessing, and selling marijuana does not create a "positive conflict" with the Controlled Substances Act. Cole argued that the feds might be on firmer ground if they tried to pre-empt state licensing and regulation of newly legal marijuana businesses. But if such litigation were successful, he said, it could make the situation worse by leaving the industry unregulated."
"What happens when a secret U.S. court allows the National Security Agency access to a massive pipeline of U.S. phone call metadata, along with strict rules on how the spy agency can use the information? The NSA promptly violated those rules — “since the earliest days” of the program’s 2006 inception — carrying out thousands of inquiries on phone numbers without any of the court-ordered screening designed to protect Americans from illegal government surveillance. The violations continued for three years, until they were uncovered by an internal review, and the NSA found itself fighting to keep the spy program alive."
Summing up Taylor Swift. Also she sometimes sings well. - Please Stop Looking Hot, Taylor Swift, You’re A Terrible Person And A Cancer - The Superficial:
"Taylor Swift is a petty and vindictive 23-year-old who young girls look up to as a role model, so naturally she teaches them to over-dramatize every interaction with men and stew in a jealous broth of hate for each and every break-up so they constantly act hysterically, if not bitchily at minimum. And yet her body is amazing and I just want to have lots and lots of sex with it until I’ve ignored her personality disorder for so long it’s now become a ticking time-bomb of emotion that will probably get a bunch of my shit broken, so clearly I have to vanish without a trace. Does that make a bad person? Because, in my defense, mysteries are romantic. “Oh, where could my boyfriend be? Time to sleuth!” I’m always hearing women say." 
If you incentivize keeping people locked up, guess what happens? - Worst bailout ever?: Corporate welfare meets community destruction - Salon.com:
"...a persistently falling crime rate has led to a slightly smaller prison population in 2012 for the third consecutive year. The United States still incarcerates more people than any country on Earth, but a for-profit prison industry seeking constant growth should be alarmed by the numbers — especially if the Justice Department really declares a cease-fire in the war on drugs. But what do we do with struggling yet politically powerful industries in America? We bail them out, of course!
And California is set to do just that for the private prison industry. Under a Supreme Court order to reduce the prison population, Gov. Jerry Brown has outlined a plan where he would transfer thousands of prisoners to the for-profit system and pay them hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars for the privilege...
It’s not like there isn’t low-hanging fruit here. Low-level nonviolent drug offenders, who need medical help rather than a “violent crime college” like an overcrowded prison, litter the state system. Because of three strikes — which mandates a life sentence after a third conviction — California has the oldest prison population in America (5,000 are over age 60), including thousands of ill or infirm inmates, costing the state billions and taking up space in prisons. California has a medical parole system that hardly ever gets used. Not even a quadriplegic costing the state $625,000 a year to house in prison, when hospice care would cost pennies on the dollar, can get released. And just bringing sanity to the parole system would reduce recidivism and get the population down. The ACLU has cited medical parole and other ideas that would comply with the release order in a responsible way...
But Gov. Brown’s plan for “releasing” the final 10,000 prisoners by the end of the year involves transferring them all to private prison facilities, including one lockup in the Mojave Desert and several others out of state. California would pay for the transfer and the upkeep, costing the state $730 million over the next two years, eating up nearly 70 percent of the state’s reserve fund, money that could go to education or healthcare. This enormous expense represents life support for a private prison industry seeing a future growth lag. But if California keeps dropping off its excess prisoners, for-profit prisons have their own stimulus package."
Fucked up. Thus funny.
They know what they did there.
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