Photo Credit: Getty ImagesA 40-year-old psychiatric patient who allegedly stalked CNN’s Anderson Cooper for five years, including making unsolicited calls and trying to kick down the front door, has been charged.
Convicted felon Alex Hausner, from Queens, faced court last night accused of making unwelcome phone calls and trying four times to see Cooper.
Last month, the ‘gay, Jewish white supremacist’ allegedly attempted to kick down the front door of the anchor’s four-story West Village residence which he shares with boyfriend Benjamin Maisani.
According to court papers obtained by the New York Post, security cameras captured Hausner’s vicious attempted break-in.
‘I swear to f–king God, don’t insult me. I’m going to f–k you up!’ he can be heard screaming while kicking the door to Cooper’s $4.3 million converted firehouse.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-29 01:39:492016-04-11 11:18:11‘Gay, Jewish White Supremacist’ Charged with Stalking Anderson Cooper for Five Years
Photo Credit: WNDA key distinction between the U.S. and other nations, even relatively free nations, long has been American restrictions on domestic use of the military, for police actions, law enforcement and keeping things under control.
However, when the local police officer or sheriff’s deputy is equipped with night vision goggles, laser-scope rifles, electronic eavesdropping equipment and body armor and comes up a citizen’s driveway in a military-type personnel carrier with shielded windows and oversize wheels, the prohibitions seem to lose some of their teeth…
Since 1878, with the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act, it has long been an established legal principle that the federal government is not allowed to use the military to enforce federal or state laws.
In recent years, the law has been modified to allow the president to deploy federal troops to enforce the law. Two of the most notable cases are President Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to send federal troops into Little Rock, Ark., to enforce desegregation and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
However, while American armed forces may be limited in their ability to enforce the law, the act is essentially being circumvented by militarizing local enforcement, equipping it with some of the same equipment, training and tactics used in war zones.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-29 01:39:402016-04-11 11:18:11Militarization of Local Law Enforcement Circumventing Posse Comitatus Act
Photo Credit: AlamyEarthquakes may contribute to global warming by releasing greenhouse gas from the ocean floor, a study suggests.
Scientists uncovered evidence that a large earthquake in 1945 released more than seven million cubic metres of methane into the North Arabian Sea.
The discovery exposes a natural source of greenhouse gas emissions that has not been considered before, they claim.
As a greenhouse gas, methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but less abundant in the atmosphere.
Enormous quantities of methane are locked in icy structures called hydrates on the floors of the continental shelves surrounding the Earth’s land masses.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-29 01:37:212016-04-11 11:18:11Uh oh: Study Now Says Earthquakes are Causing Global Warming
Photo Credit: AlamyIt is a noise that only two per cent of people can hear, but this low droning sound would be enough to drive anyone mad.
Scientists have been left baffled because they can’t figure out what causes a phenomenon called The Hum, or why it affects so few people.
Sufferers have identified common factors: the humming is only heard indoors, it is a low, rumbling noise, it is louder at night, and is more common in more rural areas, reported The Huffington Post.
In the UK, the noise has been heard in Leeds, Bristol, and Largs, Scotland, but has been reported as far as Taos, New Mexico, and Bondi Beach in Sydney.
A 2003 study by acoustical consultant Geoff Leventhall, from Surrey, shows that one in 50 people who live in a Hum-prone place hear the noise, and that most of these people are aged between 55 and 70.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-29 01:37:182016-04-11 11:18:12Can You Hear The Hum? How 1 in 50 Across the World are Affected by Low Droning Noise Which Scientists Can’t Explain (+video)
Photo Credit: PAThe meal has been made from 3,000 strips of artificial beef, each the size of a grain of rice.
Scientists are hoping the development will meet the growing worldwide demand for beef, lamb, pork and chicken. It is the brainchild of Mark Post, a medical physiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
“Right now, we are using 70 per cent of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock. You are going to need alternatives,” said Professor Post. “If we don’t do anything, meat will become a luxury food and will become very expensive.
“Eventually, my vision is that you have a limited herd of donor animals which you keep in stock in the world. You basically kill animals and take all the stem cells from them, so you would still need animals for this technology,” the professor told the Independent on Sunday.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-29 01:34:582016-04-11 11:18:12Five Ounce, $375,000 Artificial Hamburger to be Eaten in London Next Week
Photo Credit: APAimages/Rex FeaturesRand Paul targets Egypt aid
By Julian Pecquet. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) plans to use next week’s vote on transportation spending to end aid to Egypt following the ouster of the country’s freely elected president.
Paul’s amendment comes as a growing number of senators are rebelling against the White House’s decision not to call Mohamed Morsi’s ouster a military coup, a declaration that would automatically freeze the $1.5 billion in mostly military aid the U.S. provides every year.
The foreign aid skeptic proposes spending the money on the country’s crumbling bridges instead, an issue that has bipartisan appeal.
“It is no secret that our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling at an increasing rate, many of which are in critical stages of disrepair,” Paul said in introducing the amendment.
“Instead of sending taxpayer money to countries that are ineligible to receive our aid, like Egypt, we should be directing that money to these pressing domestic needs.” Read more from this story HERE.
Morsi supporters pledge to stand firm after massacre
By Patrick Kingsley. Supporters of the overthrown Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi have pledged to maintain their weeks-old sit-in in east Cairo, despite the massacre of scores of their comrades by state officials on Saturday.
At least 65 pro-Morsi protesters were shot dead during an eight-hour attack by police officers and armed men dressed in civilian clothes. An ambulance official said the death toll was 72; the Muslim Brotherhood said 66 had died and a further 61 were braindead in hospital.
“No one’s going anywhere,” said Abdel-Rahman Daour, one of several spokespeople at the sit-in outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. “We either have freedom or we die. We’re not going to live in a country without freedom.”
Tens of thousands of Morsi supporters have camped outside the mosque since late June when the president’s overthrow began to seem likely. Egypt’s interior minister has made it clear that he intends to clear Rabaa as soon as possible, and Saturday’s massacre in a nearby street was considered an attempt to intimidate the protesters.
On Friday hundreds of thousands of anti-Morsi protesters turned out in support of a call by Egypt’s army chief, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, for a crackdown on what he called terrorists – a move sceptics saw as a veiled threat to protesters at Rabaa. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-29 01:05:522016-04-11 11:18:12Rand Paul: Use Egypt’s Foreign Aid to Rebuild our Crumbling Bridges Here at Home
Photo Credit: APInfuriated by what they see as the long arm of Washington reaching into their business, states are increasingly telling the feds: Keep out!
Bills that would negate a variety of federal laws have popped up this year in the vast majority of states – with the amount of anti-federal legislation sharply on the rise during the Obama administration, according to experts.
The “nullification” trend in recent years has largely focused on three areas: gun control; health care; and national standards for driver’s licenses. It’s touched off fierce fights within the states, and between the states and the feds, as well as raising questions and court battles about whether any of it is legal.
In at least 37 states legislation has been introduced that in some way guts federal gun regulations, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The bills were signed into law this spring in two states, Kansas and Alaska, and in two more lawmakers hope to override a governor’s veto. Twenty states since 2010 have passed laws that either opt out of or challenge mandatory parts of Obamacare, the National Conference of State Legislatures says. And half the states have OK’d measures aimed knocking back the Real ID Act of 2005, which dictates Washington’s requirements for issuing driver’s licenses.
…In fact, the state-level anger at the nation’s capital has reached such a fever pitch that many of the bills do not even address specific federal laws, but rather amount to what is in effect “preemptive” nullification, wiping out, for instance, any federal law that may exist in the future that the states determine violates gun rights. The flurry of such efforts was spurred by fear on the part of states that in the wake of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., that Congress would pass restrictive gun control legislation.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-28 03:48:232016-04-11 11:18:12Rising State Anger Against Feds Results in Dozens of Nullification Efforts Across US
Photo Credit: DVIDSHUBThe military is a specialized community. Commanders have unique control over their soldiers’ lives and for good reason—they are responsible for the health, welfare, and combat readiness of their units. A commander’s raison d’être is good order and discipline within his or her unit, whether on a ship, in a combat zone, or in garrison; and a commanders’ purview extends to preferring charges to initiate the courts-martial process when a soldier has been accused of a crime. However, a move is afoot led by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to remove commanders from that role in the military justice system when allegations of sexual assault and rape exist.
Senator Gillibrand is widely quoted as saying, “Commanders aren’t objective. Commanders may have different training, different perspectives. They may or may not want women in the armed forces. They may not understand what sexual assault is, or what constitutes rape. They may not agree, what is a rape or not a rape.” Similarly, Senator McCaskill claims that removing commanders from the process will result in “more and better prosecutions.”
Senators Gillibrand and McCaskill’s position not only casts doubt on the judgment of the very officers to whom we entrust the lives of our young soldiers in the most stressful and life-threatening of situations, but it also betrays a fundamentally poor understanding of the military justice system. In general terms, when there is an alleged sexual assault in the military, it is investigated by Criminal Investigations Division (CID) or an independent investigating officer or both.
A Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer then looks at that independent investigation to ensure that it is thorough and sufficient. Based on the investigation, a JAG officer, again independent, advises the commander regarding whether to bring forward the charges or not. Well over 95% of the time, the commander follows the JAG officer’s recommendation. In recent years, the Army has added Special Victim Prosecutors (SVPs) into the mix. SVPs are JAG officers who specialize in prosecuting sexual assaults, and as part of their education must go through an internship with civilian SVPs in a major metropolitan district attorney’s office.
Critics like Senators Gillibrand and McCaskill, who often cite a “low” conviction rate as evidence that the system does not work and that the military is not taking sexual assault seriously, have turned reality on its head. Military SVP’s will tell you that “low” conviction rates are a direct consequence of taking the very hardest cases to trial, cases that their civilian counterparts would never touch. Most are classic “he-said, she-said” cases that involve intoxication by both parties and actions and words by the accuser that strongly indicate consent. This sort of evidence rarely will produce a conviction. Indisputably, the military, like the U.S. culture as a whole, has room to improve in creating an environment free from sexual harassment and assault. However, diluting a commander’s authority within his or her unit is not the solution for this issue and will compromise what a commander does best—command.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-28 03:45:102016-04-11 11:18:12Sex Crimes in the Military: A Response to Senator McCaskill and her Conservative Supporters
Photo Credit: Fox News By Chris Stirewalt. It may come as some unwelcome news to the families of the nearly 60,000 Americans who died in the Vietnam War that the whole thing was just a misunderstanding.
That was the impression President Obama gave on Thursday when he spoke to the press after his meeting with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. Sang brought Obama a copy of a letter sent to President Harry Truman from Ho Chi Minh in which the communist dictator spoke hopefully of cooperation with the United States.
Obama, striking a wistful tone, observed that it may have taken 67 years, but the United States and Vietnam were finally enjoying the relationship that Ho once wrote of. After all, Obama said, Ho had been “inspired by the words of Thomas Jefferson.”
The message here was that if only we might have bridged our differences then – if only Ho and Truman could have done what Obama and Sang did this week, so much unpleasantness might have been avoided.
While Jefferson did get pretty fired up about “the blood of tyrants,” it’s hard to see how the Sage of Monticello inspired the murderous career of the Vietnamese dictator. Ho famously slaughtered his opponents, including the infamous butchery of peasant farmers who resisted his brutal taxation in the early days of Ho’s regime. Not particularly Jeffersonian.
By Silvio Canto, Jr. First, it is true that we have diplomatic relations with Vietnam. We are doing business with them. We may be allies in the region. Vietnam is obviously looking for foreigners to invest and use their cheap labor. Their current leadership would rather see more “Made in Vietnam” stuff at WalMart than any discussion of Ho’s ideas!
Second, every despot in the world, including Castro in Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela, has quoted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They do it to enhance their arguments while they practice the exact opposite of what those wonderful men stood for.
Third, and most important, doesn’t President Obama understand that 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam?
And millions living served there? Some are disabled veterans! Some still live with the memory of watching their buddy killed in action.
Didn’t it occur to President Obama that such a remark might hit a few people the wrong way? Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-28 03:44:212016-04-11 11:18:12Obama Says Vietnamese Mass Murderer Ho Chi Minh Inspired by Founding Fathers – UPDATED
Photo Credit: APThe US has told the Russian government that it will not seek the death penalty for Edward Snowden should he be extradited, in an attempt to prevent Moscow from granting asylum to the former National Security Agency contractor.
In a letter sent this week, US attorney general Eric Holder told his Russian counterpart that the charges faced by Snowden do not carry the death penalty. Holder added that the US “would not seek the death penalty even if Mr Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes”.
Holder said he had sent the letter, addressed to Alexander Vladimirovich, Russia’s minister of justice, in response to reports that Snowden had applied for temporary asylum in Russia “on the grounds that if he were returned to the United States, he would be tortured and would face the death penalty”.
“These claims are entirely without merit,” Holder said. In addition to his assurance that Snowden would not face capital punishment, the attorney general wrote: “Torture is unlawful in the United States.”
In the letter, released by the US Department of Justice on Friday, Holder added: “We believe that these assurances eliminate these asserted grounds for Mr Snowden’s claim that he should be treated as a refugee or granted asylum, temporary or otherwise.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-28 03:41:462016-04-11 11:18:13Snowden Claims US Will Use Torture or Worse if He is Returned but Holder Promises Not to Execute Him