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Wednesday, October 01, 2014

"It's something to do."

"A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." - Anthony Robbins


Looks surprisingly excellent.


Nathan Fillion, still awesome.  The Playboy.Conversation: Nathan Fillion | Playboy: "Tell me about the most elaborate practical joke you’ve ever played. [Fillion’s Firefly costar] Alan Tudyk used to smoke. And he came to my house and pulled out his cigarettes on the porch and I handed him a lighter. It was one of those shocking lighters and it shocked the crap out of him. So we all had a good laugh. And I handed him another lighter. He said, “Boy, that was terrible.” I handed him another lighter and it was a shocking lighter too that just looked completely different from the first lighter. So that shocked him too. He refused to light a cigarette at my house after that. Just after we started Firefly, he was moving from New York and looking for a place to live. I said “Come to my house, I’m out of town. You can feed my cat while you look for a place to live, it will be perfect for everybody.” He goes, “Great.” I had left a pad of paper on the coffee table. The very last day of the two weeks, he said, “Ah, I’ll just write Nathan a little note. Just let him know everything went great.” The pen was a shocking pen. Two weeks it’s sitting there and he almost got away with not getting shocked. It was close!"


Town Wants to Ban Cameras After Cop’s Obama Rant Goes Viral - Reason.com: "Remember Richard Recine, the (now former) Helmetta, New Jersey, special officer caught on video declaring that he does not have to abide by the Constitution since "Obama decimated the friggin' Constitution"?  Helmetta officials were plenty embarrassed when the video went viral, and yet they chose to honor the spirit of Recine's rant by pushing for a ban on photography and video in public buildings. Under the proposed ordinance, citizens would need a permit to capture such moments of candor in the future, although public meetings would be exempt from the requirement. The ACLU says the ordinance may be unconstitutional. However, violators would still face up to $2,000 in fines and up to 90 days in jail. But it's OK, because officials are cracking down on photography for the sake of the children."


Vermont Cop Pulls Car Over for Nonexistent Traffic Violation, Tows It to Search for Evidence of Nonexistent Crime - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Trooper Lewis Hatch stopped Zullo, a 21-year-old resident of Rutland, on Route 7 in Wallingford around 3 p.m. on March 6, ostensibly because snow partially obscured the registration sticker on his rear license plate. But as the ACLU points out, that is not a traffic violation under Vermont law. In fact, the complaint says, "Mr. Zullo was perfectly obeying all applicable traffic laws when driving through Wallingford that day."

After detaining Zullo for an hour and unsuccessfully pressing him for permission to search the car, Hatch had it towed to the local state police barracks. In his application for a warrant to search the car, Hatch claimed to have smelled "the faint odor of burnt marijuana coming from within the vehicle." He also mentioned seeing an air freshener and eye drops in the car, and he reported that a drug-sniffing dog at the state police barracks "alerted twice on the trunk," then "climbed up on the hood." In Vermont, the ACLU argues, such evidence does not constitute probable cause to believe a search will reveal evidence of a crime, since possessing up to an ounce of marijuana is no longer a crime in that state, which last year made it a civil offense...

Hatch reported that he found a pipe and a grinder in Zullo's car, both containing "marijuana residue." (Did he find them in the trunk, to which the dog supposedly alerted? Hatch did not say.) Zullo was not charged with any offense, since there was none to charge him with. But he did not get his car back until about 10 p.m., seven hours after he was stopped. "To add insult to injury," says ACLU of Vermont Executive Director Allen Gilbert, "the state police made him pay $150 for the tow, as if the situation was his fault...

Hatch was dismayed that Zullo obstinately insisted the cops stay out of his car and that he bizarrely seemed to think he had a right to his own possessions. To Hatch's mind, people who want to avoid the inconvenience and indignity that Zullo suffered should simply cooperate by waiving their constitutional rights. Or to put it another way: If you don't want your car towed, do what I tell you."



White House Shrugs Off Dead Civilians in Syrian Strikes - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "The drone rules President Barack Obama has put into place require they can only be used if there is a "near certainty" that there will be no civilian casualties. (These rules are mere empty gestures, though. There have been civilian casualties from drone strikes anyway, regardless of policy). But the citizens of Syria and Iraq won't even get this lip service. This is an area of "active hostilities," which is what I guess we're calling undeclared wars at the moment. The drone assassination policy does not apply here, Yahoo News has been informed: The "near certainty" standard was intended to apply "only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time," [National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin] Hayden said in an email. "That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now."  

This dude gets it. 









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