UNC Prof Ignites 4th Amendment Debate After Being Pulled Over by Fire Truck

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Photo Credit: UNC GAZETTE/IVY DAWNED

Photo Credit: UNC GAZETTE/IVY DAWNED

When a North Carolina firefighter switched on the siren atop his Chapel Hill Fire Department truck to get a driver he suspected of being impaired to pull over, he probably didn’t expect to ignite a constitutional debate.

But that’s exactly what has happened. The woman Fire Lt. Gordon Shatley pulled over on his way back from a call was Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk, a professor at the University of North Carolina and former town council member who is arguing use of the fire truck and siren – which are not authorized for law enforcement actions – gave the color of government to what might otherwise have been a lawful citizen’s arrest. And although a lower court upheld Verkerk’s arrest, an appellate court remanded the case with instructions to consider whether it was an illegal search and seizure.

The incident occurred in May, 2011, and led to Verkerk’s arrest and eventual conviction by an Orange County District Court judge for driving while intoxicated. Verkerk, who teaches art history at UNC-Chapel Hill, claimed in her appeal that Shatley violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment when he used the lights and sirens on the fire truck he was driving to pull her over. When she sped away, he called police who later caught and charged her.

Lower court Judge Elaine Bushfan denied Verkerk’s motion claiming that Shatley had conducted a citizen’s arrest, but suspended her sentence and ordered the professor to spend 30 days in jail plus 18 months’ probation, pay a $1,000 fine, and perform 72 hours of community service.

That’s when Verkerk filed with the court of appeals and the three-member panel ordered Bushfan to consider anew the legality of Shatley stopping the driver. In particular, the appellate judges said it must be determined whether or not Shatley acted as a private citizen or as a governmental officer; if Shatley did act as a government officer, whether he followed Fourth Amendment criteria and had reasonable suspicion that a crime was being committed; and finally if the stop was unconstitutional, if that tainted evidence and the subsequent police traffic stop.

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Afghan Interpreter who Saved US Soldier Gets Long-Awaited Visa

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Photo Credit: MATT ZELLER

Photo Credit: MATT ZELLER

The Afghan interpreter credited with saving an Army intelligence officer only to become a target of the Taliban, has been granted a visa and could come to the United States as soon as next month.

Janis Shinwari, whose cause was embraced by Medal of Honor winner and U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer, along with more than 100,000 people who signed a petition at Change.org, saved Army Officer Matt Zeller in a 2008 firefight with insurgents, according to Zeller. The grateful Zeller has been aggressively lobbying for a visa for Shinwari for nearly two years, since Shinwari, 35, began getting death threats. On Monday, the pair spoke by phone after learning the State Department had finally processed the paperwork.

“Janis gave me the news a short while ago via Facebook chat — and then I called him,” Zeller told FoxNews.com. “It was very emotional. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him that happy. He started telling me about how excited he is and that he expects to have flights and housing arranged by IOM (the organization that handles that aspect of it) within 30-40 days.

“We started talking about how our kids (I have a daughter about the same age as his youngest) will grow up together and be friends,” Zeller added. “I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that in a few weeks I’ll be able to talk to him in person.

Shinwari applied to move to the U.S. in 2011 under a special immigration program begun in 2009 for people who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The program, designated to help interpreters and other allies from the Iraq war, expires at the end of this month absent an extension. The Afghan version would go away in September 2014 without a new law.

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CBO: Obamacare Individual Mandate Delay Would Save $35 Billion

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The House bill to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate would save $35 billion dollars, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis.

After the Obama administration revealed it would not enforce the employer mandate — a requirement that large companies provide their employees health insurance — until January 2015, the House quickly passed a measure that would not only codify that delay, but put off the individual mandate by one year as well.

The CBO found that just a one-year delay of the individual mandate would save $35 billion over ten years. But the basic cost structure of the Affordable Care Act would remain intact.

“I never thought I’d see the day when the White House, this president, came down on the side of big business, but left the American people out in the cold as far as this health care mandate is concerned,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said.

Cantor’s message carried over even to some in the President’s own party. The “Fairness for American Families Act” is one of many Republican-dominated efforts to delay certain aspects of Obamacare, but this time it received bipartisan support: 22 House Democrats bucked their own party and voted for the bill, which President Obama vowed to veto.

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Can Public Shaming Be Good Criminal Punishment?

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Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

For a few hours every day last week, a 58-year-old man in Cleveland with a gray goatee, a ratty AC/DC T-shirt, and a backwards hat wore a sign around his neck that clearly labeled him as an idiot. “I apologize to officer Simone & all police officers for being an idiot calling 911 threatening to kill you,” it read. “I’m sorry and it will never happen again.”

The man, Richard Dameron, didn’t wear the sign by choice: It was part of his punishment—along with 180 days in jail—ordered by municipal Judge Pinkey Carr.

The practice is called public shaming, and it’s the kind of creative punishment that is being ordered by judges around the country, from court-mandated dinners at Red Lobster to wearing a chicken suit on the side of a road. And it could actually work to not only cut down on low-level crime, but to help slash ballooning state and local budgets as well.

Jessica Eaglin, the counsel for the justice program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, sees public shaming as forward-looking compared with more retributive punishments. Forward-looking public shaming is more deterrence-based, says Eaglin, and can have an impact on an entire community instead of just one person. For low-level crimes in small towns, “that’s where the public shaming comes in,” Eaglin says. “It’s reflecting on your life, people are watching you, and that’s going to affect your behavior more than just paying a fine.”

Not everyone agrees. “This kind of public shaming has no record of efficacy in turning someone away from crime,” Peggy McGarry, director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, said in an e-mail. McGarry thinks this is especially true for small-town, low-level offenders…

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President Obama’s Over-the-Top Lobbying Push

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

President Barack Obama’s putting the full powers of the presidency on display — and on the line — in a way he’s never done before.

In the past, critics have argued that Obama’s priorities, from gun control to climate change, have suffered for his unwillingness to fully engage Congress and the American public with all of the tools of his office. The standard arc: Obama makes a speech or two, sends the issue to Capitol Hill and then keeps his distance. If it passes, he takes credit. If it fails, he blames Congress.

Not this time.

The reason is simple: The path to a win in Congress, if it exists at all, is through lawmakers who now say they’re likely to vote no.

Already, the White House has ceded ground on its original use-of-force authorization language, settling for the reality that only a more narrow version could possibly pass. The White House whip count is bad enough that senior administration officials won’t share it publicly to make the case that they could win in either the Senate or the House right now.

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Meghan McCain: ‘We’re Not All Crazy Rednecks’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Meghan McCain said she respects the Republican Party, but wants to make clear: Some GOPers are crazy rednecks. She’s just not one of them.

In an interview with Politico, she also tried to make clear that she’s not a voice for young Republicans.

“I don’t espouse myself to be the voice of young Republicans at all,” she said. “I never have, and people sometimes want to say I go around saying I’m the voice of young Republicans. That’s not true.”

She said she’s only trying to show the public that the party is home to many voices — and not all are radical and fringe.

“We’re not all crazy rednecks,” she said, to Politico, adding that the party could use more members akin to Sen. Marco Rubio, whom she described as “more on the pulse” of where the GOP should head. “I’m just frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to reason. … People within the Republican Party don’t have to listen to me. But at some point they will have to listen to facts, to trends. … We’re losing young voters, women voters and minority voters.”

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The GI Bill isn’t Good Enough for Veterans

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Early in his first term, President Barack Obama signed the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The new law provided much-needed reforms to the traditional GI Bill, such as simplified tuition rates, the ability to transfer entitlements to dependents and expanded access to higher education for many veterans.

Unfortunately, there are still a few kinks in the system that prevent veterans from taking full advantage of these benefits. Byzantine rules imposed by the bureaucracy are difficult to understand, making access difficult. For example, many benefits assume a four-year degree track, meaning veterans who graduate early often leave money on the table and that those who graduate late run out too quickly. Additionally, student veterans must rely on untrained school administrators for assistance, resulting in frequent delays. Finally, many veterans qualify for the GI Bill but have already completed their degrees, putting them in the unfortunate position of qualifying for educational benefits but unable to use them.

Adding to the frustration, and unlike most other benefits, many veterans were required to pay for their educational benefits before becoming qualified. For example, particularly for those covered by the traditional GI Bill, military members had to complete their service commitments honorably and pay up to $1,200 from their own paychecks in order to “buy in” and qualify for benefits. When these veterans are later denied full access to their benefits because of red tape or incomprehensible rules, the costs can run into the thousands of dollars.

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Obama Administration had Restrictions on NSA Reversed in 2011

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later.

“The government says, ‘We’re not targeting U.S. persons,’ ” said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “But then they never say, ‘We turn around and deliberately search for Americans’ records in what we took from the wire.’ That, to me, is not so different from targeting Americans at the outset.”

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Some See Biblical Visions of Doom in Syria Trouble

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Photo Credit: Florida Today

Photo Credit: Florida Today

The deadly violence percolating half a world away in Syria and the warnings of a possible U.S. attack have some people not only looking ahead to what might happen in the coming days — but also looking backward into ancient, apocalyptic prophecies in the pages of the Old Testament.

In recent weeks, some dire prophecies have turned up on websites, in book stores, as the subject of Bible studies and in sermons by some Christians and others who see a link between the old passages and modern-day events in Egypt, Libya and Syria.

“Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city, and will become a fallen ruin,” reads Isaiah 17, a passage some Christians say they believe details a horrific event that leaves the city uninhabitable and leads to worldwide tribulation and the second coming of Christ.

Damascus is the Syrian capital and one of the world’s oldest cities.

Another passage in Isaiah 19 deals with civil war in Egypt and the rise of a “fierce king.”

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Video: Benghazi Whistleblower: I’ve Been ‘Punished’ for Speaking Out

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punishedGregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified before Congress about the 9/11 attacks on an American diplomatic facility earlier this year, believes he has been “punished” for speaking out about the Obama administration’s response the night of the attack. He said he believes at least two of the Americans lost that night could have been saved if the United States had responded in time.

“I don’t know why I was punished,” Hicks said in an interview with ABC’s This Week. “I don’t know why I was shunted aside, put in a closet if you will.”

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