Scoop’s Views

Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mishandled classified information dealing with the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program and the terrorist detainee interrogation program that is so sensitive it was never to leave the confines of the U.S. Justice Department’s Command Center, according to a 29-page report into his actions.

It seems Gonzales took information home, as well as kept it in places with no security, as well as in his office where several people not authorized to see the material came into contact with it, and perhaps did more with the information. Unfortunately, investigators couldn’t determine what those non-authorized persons did with the information, as it is so sensitive, the investigators could not question the people about the documents.

Tags: above the law, Alberto Gonzales, Command Center, conscious consideration, eyes-only, FOIA request, George W. Bush, illegal, illegal actions, Legal, National Security Agency, non-secure, NSA, NSA surveillance program, OAG, Office of the Attorney General, restrictive language. safeguarding classified materials, safe, simple-minded thinking, terrorist detainee interrogation program, terrorist surveillance program, top law enforcement official, top secret documents, U.S. Government, vault

There are at least a handful of people arguing the U.S. government needs to “do more” to regulate online pharmacies. Sure, that may be true, but right now, face the facts: most in Congress are older people who are technologically-challenged. In fact, look at legislation about most any aspect of life and you’ll see most of it is at least 10 or more years behind the times. I won’t even touch on the health care crisis in the U.S.

In a story on CNN.com, one woman cried to the cable news channel that she found her husband on their marriage bed, dead, in a pool of vomit. He allegedly died from what the woman — the widow — declares was an accidental overdose of drugs the now-dead husband received from an online pharmacy.

Tags: American Fork, anonymous, carisoprodol, Carmen Catizone, clinics, CNN.com, dead, death, depression, drugs, Elavil, European Medicines Agency, European Union, fitness, Health, husband, Illegal Drugs, Kareem Tannous, Long Island, Mental Health, Mood Disorders, Nancy Fitzpatrick, National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, online pharmacies, online pharmacy, pharmaceuticals, Prozac, Rusty Payne, Science and Technology, side effects, Soma, Sweden, Technology, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Utah, Valley Stream, Websites

Congress has approved a $300 billion funding measure to help people who are at risk of losing their homes due to foreclosure, and now, it seems, almost every media outlet in the country is busy touting the ways to stake claim to your chunk of change from that bailout.

To be in foreclosure means you haven’t paid your mortgage. Wow! What a concept. Most of the people in the current mortgage crisis are people who managed to get mortgages from lenders who offered sub-prime loans. The loans were given to people with a variety of options, but many people who never would have managed to get a mortgage from traditional lenders managed to buy a home. Great. Until the taxpayer-funded bailout.

Tags: afford, approved, bills, Congress, crisis, dream homes, emergency bailout, financial woes, fiscally-responsible, foreclosure rates, foreclosure risk, foreclosures, home affordability, homeowners, in foreclosure, lenders, lending institutions, loans, mortgage bailout, mortgage crisis, mortgage lenders, political correctness, politically correct, politicians, sub-prime, sub-prime mortgages, subprime, subprime mortgages, taxpayer bailout, taxpayer money, taxpayers, traditional mortgages

After giving up on lifesaving efforts, the lifeguards covered each of the girls’ bodies with a beach towel out of respect for the dead. The feet and ankles of both girls poked from under the beach towels, a testament to two young lives snuffed out.

Within feet of the girls’ bodies, folks went about sunbathing and other beach antics as normal, ignoring the two dead bodies.

Tags: Archbishop of Naples, beach towels, Brooklyn, Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, coffins, CPR, dead bodies, drugs, emergency room floor, emergency services, enforcement, Esmin Green, feet poking from under towel, girls, gun laws, Gypsy, killings, Kings County Hospital Center, La Repubblica, lifeguards, lifeless bodies, lifesaving efforts, mortuary, murders, Naples, ocean, Philadelphia, Photos, photos of dead girls and beachgoers, rising street crime, Roma emergency, safety, sea, Silvo Berlusconi, Society, swimming, teenagers, Torregaveta, waves

This past weekend, it seemed as though every news outlet in the nation was busy hammering on Philly yet again. This time it was over a recently released Census Bureau report, showing Philadelphia had the largest percentage population loss over the past seven (7) years than any other major city in the United States, including Detroit.

Looking at all major cities in the U.S., Philadelphia is estimated to have lost more residents since the last U.S. Census – from 2000 and 2007 – than any other city in the country, with the exception of New Orleans, which was devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, according to estimates recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tags: Arizona, Baltimore, Baltimore Maryland, Boston, Boston Massachusetts, brain drain, Chicago, Chicago Illinois, desert, Detroit, economic considerations, economy, Five Largest Cities in the U.S., gasoline costs, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, job losses, mortgage lending crisis, Motor City, Motown, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Philly, population, population centers, population losses, recession, Top 10 U.S. Cities, Top 25 U.S. Cities, Top 5 U.S. Cities, U.S. Census Bureau, urban centers

Senate is rewarding telecommunications providers for breaking the law
York Times is reporting that the United States Senate, by a vote of 69-28, approved a bill overhauling the rules covering secret government eavesdropping and granting immunity to telecommunications companies that aided in the wiretapping of Americans without warrants. Doing Chicago-style two-stepping, Barack Obama, who originally spoke harsh words against the illegal wiretaps, voted today in favor of granting immunity to the telecommunications companies. His former presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, stayed true to her original position and voted against the immunity.

Tags: Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, David Stout, domestic spying, due process rights, eavesdropping, Eric Lichtblau, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigations, federal courts, FISA, foreign, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, illegal wiretapping, immunity, intrusions, mismanagement, National Security Agency, No Such Agency, NSA, phone subscibers, re-election, Senate, senators, telecommunications companies, telecoms, terrorist attacks, terrorists

In the Prince George County jail, Ronnie White, 19, who was being held in solitary confinement at Prince George’s County Correctional Center the died of strangulation and asphyxiation — meaning someone strangled him to death — but he also had two broken bones in his neck, according to autopsy findings. When a person is in solitary confinement, access is restricted, and only a few guards have access to the prisoners. In this case, no one knows what happened. Supposedly.

A few hundred miles north, in Brooklyn, New York — the bastion of manners and friendliness, to be sure — a woman died on the floor of the Kings County Hospital emergency room on June 19, 2008, after she keeled over and fell out out of her chair, landing face down on the floor. She thrashed about on the floor for awhile, then became still, emergency room video shows. In this case, no one, including other patients and people in the emergency room, including what appears to be another woman who was siting across from the 49-year-old deceased woman, did anything to help the woman — even after she collapsed to the floor.

In Missouri Illinois, a young guy, named Nicholas Sheley, 28, is being sought as a “person of interest” in the murders of at least several people. Police are wondering if the murders are the work of a serial killer.

Tags: abuse, asphyxiation, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Brooklyn New York, chief executive, civil rights investigation, constitutional democracy, Corporal Richard Findley, correctional center, Cpl. Richard Findley, day in court, death, died, doctors, eight-grader, emergency room, ER, FBI, Jack Johnson, jail, killing others, lawsuits, Mental Health, murdered baby, neglect, nurses, patients, people sitting nearby, Prince George County, prison, prisoners, rampages, restricted access, Ronnie White, solitary confinement, stolen, strangulation, Texas, thrills, truck, U.S. Department of Justice

Just as the folks in Baytown, Texas about the alleged actions of a 14-year-old student at the town’s Cedar Bayou Junior High who allegedly murdered her newborn infant son immediately after birth, according to police reports. She allegedly killed her newborn son by stuffing toilet paper in her infant son’s throat after he had cried his first — and what would be his last — cries in life, according to police and media reports. After allegedly stuffing her newborn son’s mouth with toilet paper, the unidentified eight-grader then allegedly submerged her baby boy in the toilet, then flushed the toilet, drowning him, according to Baytown Police Lt. Eric Freed, who was quoted in several media outlets as saying.

The girl, who secretly gave birth in the junior high school bathroom, according to police reports, then, after the baby boy was born alive and cried, she allegedly killed her son in cold blood.

Tags: adolescents, bathroom, Baytown Texas, capital murder, Cedar Bayou Junior High School, charged as a juvenile, Colorado, Columbine, drownings, drug overdose, drugs, eight-graders, execution, fetus, flush head in toilet, full-term infants, full-term pregnancy, gagging, gamers, Gerald Yoakum, guns, illegal activities, illicit, killings, knives, movies, murders, not an accident, online gaming, PlayStation, police, Police Chief Roger Clifford, Police Lt. Eric Freed, preemie, premature infants, PSP, reasonable doubt, rescue, shootings, snipers, stabbings, students, suffocation, suicide, SWAT, teenagers, television, toilet paper, uterus, video games, violence

Eric DeShawn Floyd, the last of three suspects believed to have killed Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, has been captured, then handcuffed with the handcuffs formerly belonging to Sgt. Liczbinski. Floyd is now resting, most hopefully, uncomfortably in a cell here in Philadelphia.

Tags: AK-47, AK-74, cop killers, dilapidated house, Eric DeShawn Floyd, Eric Floyd, Germantown Masjid, girlfriend, Howard Cain, Levon Warner, Mayor, Michael Nutter, Muslim garb, Muslims, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Police, Philadelphia Police Department, police, robbery, Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, SKS, Stephen Liczbinski, Tariq El Shabazz, vacant house

Sky News television is reporting that British model Naomi Campbell has been arrested aboard a British Airways plane sitting at the gate at Heathrow Airport. The British model was led from the plane by police, then into the terminal, in handcuffs.

Tags: assault with a mobile phone, assaulting a police officer, catwalks, cell phone, community service, law enforcement, lingerie, maids, mobile phone assault, model, mop floors, Naomi Campbell, New York, runways, sanitation department, supermodel

McCain scored a point with me when he said that no emergency bailout should be made to the people who obtained these mortgages. His opponents, though, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have made comments in the recent past that some kind of “help” ought be made available to the people with these mortgages. My question to Clinton and Obama would be: “Why? Are you looking at rewarding bad and irresponsible behavior?”

Tags: airborne, allies, bad loans, bad mortgages, balloon payments, Barack Obama, Bear Stearns, Bill Clinton, candidates, Clinton, Colin Powell, combat veterans, doom and gloom, election 2008, emergency bailout, equity, financial institutions, foreign countries, George W. Bush, Green Berets, health care crisis, Henry Shelton, Hillary, Hillary Clinton, History, Hugh Shelton, impending disaster, Iraq, John McCain, Joint Chiefs of Staff, lending crisis, low interest rates, McCain, money, mortgage crisis, mortgage qualification, Obama, opponents, Peter Pace, positions, presidential campaign, respect, Secretary of State, solutions, Special Forces, special operations, speeches, Straight Talk, U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, White House

The attorney for former high-priced Washington, D.C.-based call girl, “Kristen”, seems to have forgotten something he may have learned in law school. Perhaps he didn’t learn it, which is why he’s flapping his gums so much, basically trying to intimidate newspapers and TV news stations.

It seems this attorney, Don D. Buchwald, is trying to say the media has “thrust” — interesting choice of words, especially given his client’s employment history — into the “public glare without her consent.”

Tags: Ashley Dupre, call girl, callgirl, Chris Peterson, copyrights, defamation, Don D. Buchwald, Eliot Spitzer, ex-call girl, ex-hooker, Facebook, FBI, general purpose public figure, Gertz vs. Robert Welch Inc, Heidi Fleiss, hooker, hooking, Internet, investigation, journalists, Kristen, lady of the evening, laws, lawsuits, libel, limited purpose public figure, Mafia, media outlets, Ms. Ashley Dupre, MySpace, New York, New York Governor, New York Times vs. Sullivan, News, newspapers, privacy, private public figure, prostitute, prostitution, prostitution illegal, prostitution laws, public figure, public official, recordings, slander, sloppy seconds, social networks, tape, television, Time vs. Firestone, TV, Washington DC