Homeland Security Increasingly Loaning Drones to Local Police

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Far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, a Predator drone was summoned into action last year to spy on a North Dakota farmer who allegedly refused to return a half-dozen of his neighbor’s cows that had strayed onto his pastures.

The farmer had become engaged in a standoff with the Grand Forks police SWAT team and the sheriff’s department. So the local authorities decided to call on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to deploy a multimillion-dollar, unarmed drone to surveil the farmer and his family.

The little-noticed August 2011 incident at the Lakota, N.D., ranch, which ended peacefully, was a watershed moment for Americans. It was one of the first known times an unmanned aerial vehicle owned by the U.S. government was used in local police work.

Since then, The Washington Guardian has confirmed, DHS and its Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency have deployed drones — originally bought to guard America’s borders — to assist local law enforcement and other federal agencies on several occasions.

The practice is raising questions inside and outside government about whether federal officials may be creating an ad-hoc, loan-a-drone program without formal rules for engagement, privacy protection or taxpayer reimbursements. The drones used by CBP can cost $15 million to $34 million each, and have hourly operational costs as well.

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Michael Jordan May Have Been a Portland Trail Blazer If This Player Hadn’t Told This Big Lie Before the NBA Draft

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The Portland Trail Blazers selected center Sam Bowie with the second overall pick of the 1984 NBA draft. One of the greatest players in NBA history was selected third — Michael Jordan.

However, Portland may have thought twice about passing on Jordan if they had known what Bowie was hiding in the days leading up to the draft.

Now, 17 years after he played in his final game, Bowie admits that he lied about how much pain he felt in the days before the NBA draft. And as a result, an unsuspecting Trail Blazers organization selected Bowie with the second overall pick. The Chicago Bulls ended up taking Jordan third and the rest is history.

Bowie admitted his big lie in the ESPN documentary “Going Big,” set to air on Dec. 20 on ESPNU. Yahoo! Sports was given a sneak peak at the documentary.

“I can still remember them taking a little mallet, and when they would hit me on my left tibia, and ‘I don’t feel anything’ I would tell ‘em. But deep down inside, it was hurting,” Bowie said.

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DeMint to Sit Out 2014 Elections at Heritage

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Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), the tea party leader who raised his profile taking on his party establishment in Senate primaries, will sit on the sidelines during the 2014 midterms when he becomes head of the Heritage Foundation.

“I am anxious to get away from the political angles, the partisan angles and focus on just the ideas,” DeMint told POLITICO on Tuesday. “Hopefully candidates will embrace these ideas. But part of what we have to do is convince Americans that the ideas are right.”

Asked if he would endorse candidates in primaries, DeMint flatly said: “No.”

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NYC Sexual Assault Suit Against Former IMF Head Strauss-Kahn Could End in Deal

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NEW YORK (AP) — A hotel housekeeper’s lawsuit against former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn may soon end without a jury ever saying who is right.

The maid, Nafissatou Diallo, is expected to be there, but Strauss-Kahn is not, when lawyers for both meet for a key court date at 2 p.m. (1900 GMT) Monday to update a judge on the status of settlement discussions.

If a deal is inked, it could be simply the product of a meeting of financial motives — getting compensated for an alleged wrong versus avoiding further legal expenses and the uncertainty of a trial. It might be fueled by legal calculus in a case with two key figures who could face uncomfortable questions on a witness stand, or by personal desires to move on. Or all of the above.

“There are a lot of factors that go into why someone settles a case when they do, and it really comes down to, in large part, the appetite that litigants have for being in litigation,” said Stuart Slotnick, a New York lawyer whose recent work includes representing American Apparel CEO Dov Charney in a sexual harassment case filed by an employee. “There are people whose lives are disrupted by virtue of the fact that they know they are being sued or are involved in litigation.”

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers acknowledged late last month there had been settlement talks, though they dismissed as “flatly false” a French newspaper report that Strauss-Kahn had agreed to pay $6 million. Diallo’s lawyers have declined to comment.

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What Soaking the Rich Gets Us: Deficits Forever

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Last week, the progressive think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) released their tax reform plan [pdf], supported by prominent left-wing budgeters and economists like Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. The net effect of this tax reform plan is a massive tax hike on “the rich” in order to fall far, far short of the revenue necessary to eliminate America’s deficit.

The CAP plan would eliminate deductions, close loopholes raise rates, implement new taxes, increase sales taxes, create new taxes… basically every form of a tax hike you can think of, all implemented on households with income above $250,000 per year.

What this gets, according to the Center for American Progress, is a tax system that barely raises Clinton-era levels of tax revenue, while the spending side of the ledger still projects to explode. CAP’s plan gets tax revenue of 20.3% of GDP, below the Clinton years’ high of 20.6% of GDP, with government spending projected to be significantly higher even under the most optimistic of situations. And by the 2030s, government spending is still projected to be over 25% of GDP in the most optimistic of scenarios. (You do not want to know what the pessimistic scenarios are. Something along the lines of an apocalypse.)

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Claim: Secret Camo Can Make American Soldiers Truly Invisible and the Photos Will Blow Your Mind! (+video)

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The Pentagon is betting big on a real life invisibility cloak for American solders, according to recent reports.

Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp, a Canadian company known for its innovative camo technology, is attempting to revolutionize the battlefield by providing true invisibility for soldiers. The special material being used is know as Quantum Stealth. The pictures posted on the company’s website of the fabric, which apparently bends light to create the effect, look as though they are straight out of a Harry Potter movie:

“There is no video yet of the technology in action since its development is considered highly secretive. However, Guy Cramer, CEO of Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp, told the Daily Mail that top military brass in the U.S. and Canada have seen it in action, and were amazed:

‘These groups now know that it works and does so without cameras, batteries, lights or mirrors…It is lightweight and quite inexpensive. Both the U.S. and Canadian military have confirmed that it also works against military IR scopes and Thermal Optics.’

In the same interview, Cramer imagines a group of battle tanks decked out with Quantum Stealth camouflage that could engage an enemy unit with no signs of their location except the sound of their engines and guns.

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Hillary Clinton: Iran ‘Exports Terrorism’ to Mexico

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(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 30, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran “exports terrorism” in a global fashion that “stretches from Mexico to Thailand.

“We already know very well that the Iranian regime already exports terrorism, not only to Israel’s doorstep, but across the world,” Clinton said. “If we had a map I could put up there, I could show you what we track and plot on that map.

“The evidence of terrorism, mostly, thankfully, plots foiled or unsuccessful, unfortunately, as in Bulgaria, some that succeeded,” Clinton said. “But those plots, those activities of Iran directly or through their agents, stretches from Mexico to Thailand.”

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California Pastor: Democrats ‘Adopted The Sins of Romans 1 As Their Platform’

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(CNSNews.com) – Evangelical pastor and author John MacArthur said that the Democratic Party has “adopted the sins of Romans 1 as their platform.”

“And as you know,” MacArthur told his Southern California congregation on Sept. 30, “I’m not one to talk about politics as such, but I was essentially amazed that one of the historic parties here in the United States adopted the sins of Romans 1 as their platform. This is a new day in our country. Parties which used to differ on economics now differ dramatically on issues that invade the realm of God’s law and morality.”

MacArthur is an author, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif., president of The Master’s College and Seminary, and a teacher at Grace to You media ministry.

“In an ideal situation, their platform would mean that the government passes out condoms so people can fornicate at will,” said MacArthur. “For those who happen to get pregnant in the process, the platform advocates that you kill the baby at the will of the mother, up and including the ninth month.”

“At the same time,” he said, “it advocates homosexual marriage, which is an oxymoron, an utter impossibility, and a gross violation of the law of God. And then, to add to that, the murder of abortion and then the platform originally leaving God out. All of that is Romans 1.”

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Smith and Epson: Congressman Urges Legislation to Renew Ban on Printer-Made Plastic Guns That Don’t Exist

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New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel is calling for legislation to renew the federal ban on plastic guns, according to his official congressional website.

“Recent reports have pointed to the new possibility of building guns at home using a 3-D printer,” Israel’s website states. “Right now, plastic guns are illegal under the Undetectable Firearms Act, but this law is set to expire next year.”

3-D printers, which have been available since the 1980s, take two-dimensional plans and convert them to three-dimensional objects, which are then usually made from plastic.

Homemade plastic firearms are difficult for airport X-ray machines to detect. They also cannot be registered or traced, because they lack identification numbers.

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Full-Court Press: Global Warming Hysteria Pushed by National Intelligence Council and Department of Defense?

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A new U.S. intelligence community report finds that climate change will fuel new conflicts and competition for resources in coming decades.

The federal National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2030” report issued Monday follows Defense Department analyses that have similarly called climate change an emerging security risk.

“Demand for food, water, and energy will grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50 percent respectively owing to an increase in the global population and the consumption patterns of an expanding middle class. Climate change will worsen the outlook for the availability of these critical resources,” the report states.

Elsewhere, it notes that climate change is among the factors that will drive conflict in some regions.

“[M]any developing and fragile states — such as in Sub-Saharan Africa — face increasing strains from resource constraints and climate change, pitting different tribal and ethnic groups against one another and accentuating the separation of various identities,” the report states.

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