Why the U.S. Can't Punish North Korea

The FBI formally accused the isolated country of the Sony hack, but the White House is basically powerless to do anything to respond

By Adam Chandler

Kevork Djansezian/Reuters

On Friday, the FBI announced that it "now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible" for the Sony hacks that leaked a trove of private data, launched a thousand thinkpieces, and, following some threats, ultimately preempted the release of The Interview.

Speaking in a press conference later in the day, President Obama weighed in, characterizing Sony's decision to pull The Interview as "a mistake." He also said that the United States would "will respond proportionally, and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose."

 

So what does the president's very vague promise of retaliation mean for North Korea?

So what does this very vague promise of retaliation mean for North Korea? As Reuters points out, Washington may not have a lot of options. Despite decades of sanctions against the isolated communist regime, "the U.S. Treasury has so far directly sanctioned only 41 companies and entities and 22 individuals."

Compare that to Russia or Iran, whose economies have been laid low by a strenuous sanctions regime across several industries and against countless companies and individuals. Part of it is that North Korea doesn't have much of an economy to punish. According to CIA figures, the country ranks 198 out of 228 in gross domestic product with just 1.3 percent growth in 2012. Reuters also pointed to Pyongyang's aversion to traditional banks, saying that the country has "become expert in hiding its often criminal money-raising activities."

But there's much more to it than that. Scott Snyder, a Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Council for Foreign Relations, has his own take on l'affaire Sony.

He explained that part of why it's difficult to sanction and further isolate North Korea is that Pyongyang "isn't integrated with the rest of the world." That has made the country difficult to sanction or punish in the past as well. As Snyder reminds us, this isn't the first time we've had trouble with North Korea.

Historically, I think that North Korea has a record of having engaged in provocations that have international ramifications with relative impunity. So if we go back and look at the record of controversial provocations, we see the difficulty and the challenge of holding them to account. It goes back decades.

Those transgressions have included, at least recently, the holding of American hostages, the (alleged) sinking of a South Korean boat in 2010, along with the bombardment of a South Korean island.

Given that the United States has now named North Korea in the Sony hacks and given what's already happened, Snyder says we shouldn't expect much to come of it.

"All of these are examples of cases that have resulted in behavior or responses that are pretty exceptional compared to the way that other countries have been dealt with in similar circumstances," Snyder explains.

He adds that what makes this ordeal much more difficult to move away quietly from is Sony's decision to pull The Interview from theaters, a move that naturally begs a response from the United States.

"I do think that decision put the administration into a much more difficult circumstance," he said, adding that Sony's actions have created more pressure for the administration to respond. Essentially, Obama has to figure out a way to ensure The Interview cancellation hasn't convinced America's enemies that "these kinds of threats actually may be working."

Dick Cheney Should Be in Federal Prison, Not on Meet The Press

By Jon Queally

Journalist Glenn Greenwald did not mince words on Thursday when asked to respond to comments made by former vice president Dick Cheney when he appeared on NBC's Meet The Press last Sunday.

"The reason why Dick Cheney is able to go on 'Meet The Press' instead of being where he should be—which is in the dock at The Hague or in a federal prison—is because President Obama and his administration made the decision not to prosecute any of the people who implemented this torture regime despite the fact that it was illegal and criminal," Greenwald said in an interview with HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski.

In Sunday's interview with host Chuck Todd, Cheney claimed that CIA torture "worked" and announced he would "do it again in a minute" if given the opportunity.

As human rights advocates and international law experts have renewed their call for prosecutions against former Bush administration officials who ordered the CIA to torture detained terrorism suspects in the aftermath of 9/11, Greenwald said that whether tortured "worked" is irrelevant—"nobody should be interested in that"—and argued that much of the blame for the fact that Cheney still has the liberty to go on national television and brag about violating domestic and international laws should be placed at the feet of President Obama.

"When you send the signal, as the Obama administration did, that torture is not a crime that ought to be punished, it's just a policy dispute that you argue about on Sunday shows, of course it emboldens torturers like Dick Cheney to go around and say, 'What I did was absolutely right,'" Greenwald said.

Watch:

Analyst: We underestimated North Korea

By Dana Ford, CNN



(CNN) - As the United States gets ready to blame the Sony hack on North Korea, a troublesome question is emerging: Just what is North Korea capable of?

Experts say the nation has spent scarce resources on building up a unit called "Bureau 121" to carry out cyber-attacks.

North Korea has been blamed in the past for attacks in South Korea, but the Sony hack - if indeed North Korea is behind it - would seem to represent an escalation of tactics.

"I think we underestimated North Korea's cyber capabilities," said Victor Cha, director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University. "They certainly didn't evidence this sort of capability in the previous attacks."

Cha was referring to attacks on South Korean broadcasters and banks last year.

In March 2013, South Korean police said they were investigating a widespread computer outage that struck systems at leading television broadcasters and banks, prompting the military to step up its cyber-alert level.

The South Korean communications regulator reportedly linked the computer failures to hacking that used malicious code, or malware.

An investigation found that many of the malignant codes employed in the attacks were similar to ones used by the North previously, said Lee Seung-won, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Science.

North Korea denied responsibility.

A spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army labeled the allegations "groundless" and "a deliberate provocation to push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to an extreme phase," according to KCNA, the North Korean state news agency.

North Korea has similarly denied the massive hack of Sony Pictures, which has been forced to cancel next week's planned release of "The Interview," a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But KCNA applauded the attack.

"The hacking into the SONY Pictures might be a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK," it said, using the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "The hacking is so fatal that all the systems of the company have been paralyzed, causing the overall suspension of the work and supposedly a huge ensuing loss."

Experts point to several signs of North Korean involvement. They say there are similarities between the malware used in the Sony hack and previous attacks against South Korea. Both were written in Korean, an unusual language in the world of cyber crime.

"Unfortunately, it's a big win for North Korea. They were able to get Sony to shut down the picture. They got the U.S. government to admit that North Korea was the source of this and there's no action plan really, at least publicly no action plan, in response to it," said Cha. "I think from their perspective, in Pyongyang, they're probably popping the champagne corks."

CNN's Gregory Wallace, Brian Stelter, Evan Perez, K.J. Kwon and Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.

Tom Tomorrow's Yesteryear Coverage of Today's U.S. Senate Report on Bush-Era CIA Torture

By Brad Friedman

It's difficult to know where Rightwingers are now when it comes to the release of today's remarkable, horrifying, redacted 528-page executive summary [PDF] of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's 6,000-page report on Bush-era CIA torture.

"Torture never happened!," they used to say. Then, "Okay, it happened, but it wasn't torture!" Then, "Okay, torture happened, but it was necessary!" Now, "This report is just meant as a distraction from America's real problem: ObamaCare!"

You get the idea. So did legendary syndicated cartoonist and blogger Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins), and he's been covering it with brilliant, dead-on satire for years. With the release of the Senate report, almost a decade in the making, we're posting a few very-much-related Tom Tomorrow toons from over the years below, as self-selected by Perkins on Twitter today.

"It's not as if we've learned nothing in ten years," he tweeted. "In a 2004 cartoon, I still had to explain what 'waterboarding' was."

And, as he also made clear, none of what we are learning today is ultimately a surprise. "Presumably if the cartoonists knew about it, the White House did as well."

They did indeed, as a glance at these toons from over the years makes clear yet again...
2004
2005



2006

2009



2014

Woman visits Toys R Us, pays off everyone's layaway

By SUZAN CLARKE

‘Tis the season.

A woman is being hailed as a layaway angel after she went into a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Bellingham, Mass., on Wednesday and paid off every open layaway account -- giving about 150 customers with items on layaway an early Christmas present.

The generous donor paid $20,000 to wipe the entire layaway balance at that location, a spokeswoman for Toys ‘R’ Us confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.

“This incredible act of kindness is a true illustration of holiday giving at its best,” the company said in a statement.

The donor made the payment anonymously, but the Milford Daily News reported that she was a local resident who said she would sleep better at night knowing the accounts had been paid.

The newspaper reported that the store’s layaway customers were in tears when they heard the good news.

The holidays have inspired many others to do similar good deeds for total strangers.

Tom Gubitosi went to his local Walmart in Farmingdale, N.Y., on Wednesday, and gave $100 shopping sprees to about 200 children each. Gubitosi donated the money in honor of his late mother, who loved children, WABC TV reported.

Also on Wednesday, dozens of police officers in Cape Cod, Mass., treated 26 children to lunch and $200 gift cards for the annual "Shop with Cops" program.

Earlier this month, Houston Texans receiver Andre Johnson bought $16,266.26 worth of toys for 11 children in the care of Child Protective Services, ESPN reported. At Toys "R" Us, he gave them each 80 seconds to place what they could in shopping carts. He's been hosting shopping sprees for kids since 2007.

Last year, a Florida man used more than $21,000 of his own money to pay down layaway account balances at a Walmart in central Florida.

Greg Parady, who runs a financial planning company, told ABC News that his mother had struggled when he was growing up and he wanted to help others who may have had a similar experience.

“I was a layaway kid so it's nice to be able to help," he said.

 

ABC News’ Susanna Kim contributed to this report.

Tortured Logic

URGENT: Time Running Out to Stop Congress Roll Back of Wall Street Reform

	Republicans put a big and dangerous giveaway to Wall Street in the budget, despite protests from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and votes against it by many House Democrats. The Senate will soon vote on this spending bill. It's up to you and me to convince enough senators to take it out. The provision – written by Citibank lobbyists – allows Wall Street banks to gamble on high-risk derivatives – the exotic instruments that helped blow up the economy. Worse, they get to pocket any winnings with taxpayers guaranteeing any losses. They will make ever bigger bets. And we will be played once more as the saps. Please click here now to call your senator and tell him or her to stand up against this dangerous attempt to rig the rules for Wall Street – and against us. The link will connect you to one of your senator's offices. Tell the person who answers that you want the senator to support stripping the Wall Street gambit out of the budget bill. A vote could happen within the next few hours, so please make the call now. Here's a sample message: I’m a constituent. My name is… I’m calling about the giveaway to Wall Street in the funding bill before the Senate. I want the senator to vote to take out the provision (in Section 630) that allows big banks to gamble using high-risk derivatives. Please tell the senator that his constituents want him to vote against the budget unless this dangerous gift to Wall Street is removed. I will be following your vote on this. Let's stop this deal while there's still time.

	© 2014 Campaign for America's Future Inc. 1825 K Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006

Thanks, Dick Cheney, for Incriminating George W. Bush (and Other Conservative Reactions)

Posted by Rude One

Let us now praise infamous men. The desiccated husk of a demi-human that is named Dick Cheney, former Vice President of these here United States, dragged his decaying body and scent of rot into his home away from home, Fox "news" studios, to discuss the Senate's report on the CIA's program of torturing suspected terrorists.

He was speaking with Bret Baier, who obviously must worship mad Lovecraftian gods in order to be in the presence of such a barren soul with such black eyes and a mouth torn to shreds by the speaking of endless lies without vomiting endlessly. How many sacrifices have to be made at an altar covered in the blood of Iraqi children to keep Cheney alive? How many virgins, fresh for fucking and devouring, did Baier have to provide Cheney in order to secure the interview?

However, oddly, Cheney ought to be thanked for what he told Baier. When asked about President George W. Bush's awareness of the CIA's interrogation methods, which the report says he was kept in the dark about, Cheney responded, "He was in fact an integral part of the program. He had to approve it before we went forward with it...I think he knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program. There's no question... I think he knew certainly the techniques that we did discuss the techniques. There's nothing - there was no effort on our part to keep him from that. He was just as with the terrorist surveillance program. On the terrorist surveillance program, he had to personally sign off on that every 30 to 45 days. So the notion that the committee's trying to peddle it, somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren't being told or the President wasn't being told is just a flat-out lie." Cheney totally and without hesitation said that Bush committed war crimes.

Now, one way to look at Cheney's remarks is to say, as several people have, that the former VP threw Bush under the bus, a kind of "Fuck you, I'm not taking the fall." But it's more than that. It's the beginning of a legal defense. Cheney may be an entity of concentrated malice, but he's not stupid. With United Nations officials saying that there need to be prosecutions for the crimes described in the report, with the potential for other nations to want torturers and torture architects arrested, even if the likelihood of anything happening along those lines is slim to "America is awesome," Cheney knows that he might need a legal defense. And the only defense for a vice president is to point the finger at the president and say, "That's where the buck stops."

While some on the right, like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and, really, The American Conservative magazine (seriously), have honorably stood up and said that the torture program was an unmitigated wrong, most conservatives have gone nutzoid in defense of the CIA. For instance:

MSNBC's host with the inbred eyes, Joe Scarborough, tweeted, "Senate Intel Report investigators refused to interview the accused. Sounds like Rolling Stone's journalistic approach on their UVA story." And that'd be totally true if Rolling Stone had had access to a treasure trove of documents from the students accused of rape at the University of Virginia. But the magazine didn't review six million pages of emails, memos, and internal reports from the alleged rapists, things that in a court of law are often seen as more legitimate than the recollections of someone years after the fact. There's 6000 pages more we haven't seen of the torture report, with, it's reported, tens of thousands of footnotes. You can bet that many of them are not just interviews with the victims - they include internal interviews with the people involved, including by the CIA's inspector general.

The whole charge is bogus because, as Dianne Feinstein noted, while the report was being put together, the CIA was being investigated by the Justice Department for destroying evidence of torture. The agency couldn't compel anyone to testify to the committee because "CIA employees and contractors who would otherwise have been interviewed by the Committee staff were under potential legal jeopardy." And Joe Scarborough can go fuck himself with that Starbucks travel mug.

The rest of the conservative arguments against the report are equally bullshit filled. There's the "Who the fuck cares?" camp, who say things like, "Without a nation we have no values. And without torture, regardless of the latest politically correct views, we have no nation." (That's from Daily Caller tough guy David Lawrence.) There's the "It worked" argument, best exemplified by the desperate ass-covering of things like the website CIA Saved Lives, the Wall Street Journal editorial by former CIA directors, and torture-approver John Yoo.

Yoo is an especially skeevy cock knob about the report, which he calls "the Feinstein Report" (which will no doubt become the talking point). He wants to know what else would have worked to get information he claims stopped terrorist plots: "The Feinstein Report claims that the CIA would have captured all of these operatives anyway...Feinstein provides no reason to conclude, counter-factually, that the U.S. would have killed or captured these al Qaeda leaders without the high-quality intelligence from interrogations. The United States and its allies certainly had not done so before the interrogations started—it did not even know about many of them before 9/11. But we do know that armed with the intelligence from interrogations, the U.S. succeeded."

So his argument boils down to saying that burning down the house was the only way to get rid of the mice because we don't know if traps would have worked. In fact (and by "fact," the Rude Pundit means, "What happened"), we got all the intelligence we needed out of people like Abu Zubaydah before they were tortured, which proves the traps work, put the fucking gas can down.

There's two more arguments that the Rude Pundit will deal with tomorrow.

It would have been very simple to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo. Here’s how.

By Seth Morris

Seth Morris has been a deputy public defender in Alameda County, California, since 2008.

It is, we are told, very hard to get grand jurors to indict police officers — which supposedly explains why Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo walk free, despite the men they killed in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island. But as a public defender, I know exactly what it takes to get an indictment. I could get one in either case. In fact, I am ready and willing to fly to any town in this country to get an indictment in any case where a police officer kills an unarmed civilian.  It’s just not that hard.

I’d start by saying this. “A man, a member of our community, has been killed by another. Only a trial court can sort out what exactly happened and what defenses, if any, may apply. I believe in our trial system above all others in the world. I ask for an indictment so that all voices can be heard in a public courtroom with advocates for both sides in front of trial jurors from the community. This room is not the room to end this story. It’s where the story begins.”

I’d do it by asking the grand juries to apply the law to these men as the law demands it be applied — equally. I’d ask them to consider the recent fateful events as the work of ordinary humans, not police officers. I’d explain that the cases are too important to be settled in a secret grand jury room. The lives lost are too valuable to avoid a public trial.



I’d ask them not to consider the defenses the men may raise at trial, because these are irrelevant to the question of indictment. Judges routinely tell my clients — indigent, poor, often young men of color — that they will face trial because probable cause is an exceedingly low standard of proof. All it requires is a suspicion that a crime occurred and a suggestion that the defendant may be responsible for the crime.

Of course I’d present the facts, and exculpatory evidence if I had it. But the most important question is what suspicion is raised by the subject’s conduct, not what excuse he furnishes in his defense. I’d advise grand jurors to treat with caution any self-serving statements offered by someone who has killed another person. We indict on facts, not explanations. The “presumption of innocence”? It doesn’t apply. Affirmative defenses such as self-defense or “reasonable use of force”? Those are “better left to the jury,” just as my clients are most often told.

I’d share with them the stories of how often police officers lie and shade the truth to advance their positions: I’ve watched cops lie about minor, irrelevant details — fare evasion, driving without a seat belt, reaching for a waistband — when they know how important those details are for the district attorney’s case. I’d say how I’ve confronted police officers for lying or omitting facts from their reports or even pretending not to see or hear something captured by a chest-mounted camera when that thing is exculpatory to the person they arrest.

The prosecutors in these cases failed to share stories such as these because they don’t routinely have to confront police officers as part of their job. It’s also because they never wanted an indictment in the first place.

I practice in Oakland, Calif., a city plagued by violent crime. I do this work because I believe in a fair process for every person, even those charged with doing unspeakable things. I have represented hundreds of defendants — in robberies, rapes, carjackings, kidnappings and murders — during preliminary hearings, which, like grand juries, determine whether a person should stand trial. In my hearings, the district attorney charges the defendant first and then presents evidence pointing to probable cause. The judge in these hearings, almost always, orders the defendant to stand trial. When defendants do testify, they typically do it at trial, not before the grand jury (as Wilson did). And the district attorney tells the jurors that the defendant would say anything to go free.

So how is it that police shoot an unarmed boy in Ferguson and strangle an asthmatic man on Staten Island, and nobody found probable cause? The only explanation is that, rather than acting like prosecutors, these district attorneys acted like the officers’ attorneys. They did not push the grand juries to indict. In fact, they suggested that it would be okay not to indict. They presented mitigation.  

They didn’t cross-examine the killers. Remember, grand juries only see one lawyer – the prosecutor. There is no judge present and no adversary to the district attorney. When there is only one lawyer in the room, and that lawyer has asked for indictments in every other case he has presented, and he stands before you and tells you he wants you to do whatever you think is right, the outcome is almost preordained. Here’s what the right approach would have been:

Unarmed men were killed. Let’s have a trial.

Former St. Louis cop alleges racism on the force

Chris Hayes speaks with a former St. Louis police officer about the now-infamous testimony from Witness #40 and the "lack of integrity" he sees in the system.

Sony hacks continue: PlayStation hit by Lizard Squad attack

By Alice MacGregor, CloserStill Media

Hacker group, Lizard Squad, has claimed responsibility for shutting down the PlayStation Network over Sunday night, the second large scale cyber-attack on the Sony system in recent weeks.

Users had been experiencing issues with log in overnight and into this morning, greeted by an error message reading “Page Not Found! It’s not you. It’s the Internet’s fault.”

PSN support acknowledged the downtime and confirmed that it had been investigating the issue. However, no details were shared as to the nature or cause of the issue.

“Thanks for your patience as we investigate,” the Japanese firm shared at midnight last night.
The company has now tweeted that the issue has been fixed: "If you had difficulties signing into PlayStation Network, give it a try now."

Although apparently unrelated, the outage comes just weeks after the much larger cyber-attack to the tech giant’s film studios Sony Pictures, which leaked confidential corporate information and unreleased movies.

An outfit calling themselves Guardians of Peace released the private data, including details on employees’ and actors’ salaries and addresses. Princess Beatrice was one of its victims, whose pay details and home address was forwarded to media firms across the U.S.

Speculations suggested that the Sony Pictures hack was linked to North Korea over its reported filmatic mocking of the national leader Kim Kong-Un. The country has denied engineering the attack, however the North Korean National Defence Commission released an official statement saying that the cyber-theft had been a “righteous deed.”

The group claiming to have taken down PSN today, Lizard Squad, first appeared earlier this year with another high-profile DDOS, or distributed denial of service attack, on Xbox Live and World of Warcraft in August.

Lizard Squad shared a link to a White Hose petition calling for the Obama Administration to “Stop the infamous DDOS hackers, and fake bomb threat callers, called Lizard Squad” – which currently counts 7,598 signatures.

The hacker collective claimed that this attack was just a taste and a ‘small dose’ of what was to come over the Christmas period.

The Sad, Racist Death Of Mary Landrieu's Political Career

Posted By Rude One

Last night, Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, had her one and only debate with her Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy, a doctor with the face of a cartoon pervert who gets off on putting his penis in your mouth while you sleep, giggling, and running away on his tiptoes. Landrieu probably won, if for no other reason than she's better at it than Cassidy, who just didn't seem to try. But the conventional wisdom is "Who the fuck cares? She's gonna lose."

And everyone knows why she's gonna lose. It's "changing demographics in the Bayou State, the deterioration of the Democratic Party’s brand in the South and President Barack Obama’s dreadful unpopularity," as US News and World Report politely put it. But let's be honest here, shall we? It's because the whites in the South hate the nigger president, and anyone who helped him put his nigger hands all over the nice, white Lady Liberty is just a nigger-lover who needs to be proxy-lynched for the nigger president, who they can't vote out of office now.

Too harsh? Well, shit, Landrieu herself knows it. Her ads that targeted white voters talked about how she differs with Obama on issues like oil and gas drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline. The subtext, of course, is "Hey, crackers, I'm not the nigger president's ho." And her ads that target the black community? Well, let's just say that if they showed Landrieu on her knees, sucking off the president and giving a thumbs up, they'd be more subtle.

In other words, let's stop pretending that the completion of the Republican near-sweep of the South is about anything other than race. It isn't about government overreach, it isn't about economic policy, it isn't about the president acting as an emperor or some such shit. It's about showing Barack Obama that they can still call him "boy" by getting rid of all the white traitor Democrats they could.

At the debate, Cassidy repeated, endlessly, "Senator Landrieu supports Barack Obama 97 percent of the time," which was something her chief of staff said at a secretly recorded meeting with African American leaders. "Senator Landrieu represents Barack Obama. I represent you," Cassidy continued, blowing that racist dog whistle so hard that hounds in Texas started howling and getting out the rope.

Landrieu went out fighting over a scrap, accusing Cassidy of falsifying his time sheets when he was a doctor at LSU hospitals. In general, Cassidy bumbled, saying that he peeked at Landrieu's notes and offering that, racially, things are "better than they were under Jim Crow," which is not unlike saying that it's better to get kicked in the nuts than have your house burned down. Sure, you've got a point, but could we maybe work on not getting kicked in the nuts?

But, as ever, Landrieu hedged some of her even vaguely progressive beliefs (and she is most definitely moderate-right in the Democratic Party). She supports abortion rights called getting an abortion "immoral." She supports the Affordable Care Act, sure, but she has never been a fighter for it on the campaign trail. She has never made Cassidy say what specifically he would do to replace it or whether he would take health insurance away from people who got it under Obamacare.

That's what Landrieu should have been doing this last month. She should have been making a righteous case for the agenda that she has supported instead of trying to hide it from whites. There is no fucking way that whites who hate Obama are gonna vote for her. Trying to convince them is like touching a burning cross repeatedly and hoping it doesn't hurt this time. Instead, she should have tried to get the white progressive vote, which exists, and pushed even harder for the black vote, which could be overwhelming. Last time, 18% of whites voted for her. It will almost surely be less in this run-off.

And, frankly, considering how many times she stood up for Obama the last 6 years, the Democratic Party should have spent a fuck of a lot more coin on her campaign. They abandoned her, took their millions, and let her fall alone.

Mary Landrieu's long political career will die, then, having given in to the Republican racist narrative, even as she admitted that the narrative exists. She could have pushed beyond it, showed it as a lie. But she decided that it was better to try to convince idiots they're wrong than say what's right. She probably still would lose, but at least she'd lose with a bit of dignity by showing how dim, how devolved the GOP worldview is.

Shut the Fuck Up Already, Ben Carson

Hey, Ben Carson!

Posted by Rude One

Dr. Ben Carson, Fox "news" designated black man this election cycle, was probably a fine, fine neurosurgeon back when he was practicing. Hell, he might even be a great motivational speaker in the Joel Osteen/Tony Robbins "is he for real or is he punking us?" model.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. played him in a movie, which is just super. But now that he is apparently amping up his presence on the national stage ahead of a potential presidential run that will do nothing but enlarge the coffers of Carsonco, it's probably beyond time for people to tell him to just shut the fuck up already.

Stop fucking lecturing us in your smug, self-righteous way and go the fuck away, back into the prayer breakfast cubbyhole where you belong, paraded around by every white racist to demonstrate that they have black friends.

Yesterday, in a totally poorly-timed appearance, Carson was on CNN's Wolf, which does not involve various people having their throats ripped out by a raging, carnivorous animal, but is, actually, hosted by the bestubbled Wolf Blitzer. It was just before the announcement of the grand jury decision not to indict the cop who killed Eric Garner in Staten Island, and Blitzer was asking Carson about some stupid fucking thing that Charles Barkley said because apparently ex-basketball players and ex-surgeons are automatically criminal justice experts.

Carson said, "Well, I think it's true that the police are our friends. And I challenge people all the time, imagine living for 24 hours with no police. People would be walking into your house saying, hey, I think I like that television, I'm taking that. I mean, it would be total chaos."

No, really, he actually said that and acted like he made some kind of profound point, like a toddler proud of hitting the toilet when he pisses standing up. Is that really the choice? Irresponsible violence by cops or complete anarchy from having no cops? There's no in-between?

Chaos is something Carson fears a fuck of a lot. "We have to, at some point, get to a point where we actually trust the system or we're just going to have chaos all the time," he told Blitzer after explaining how he trusts "the people who have all the facts."

Later, talking about how the country has become more racist under Barack Obama, who just doesn't respect the rule of law, Carson explained, "Once we lose the rule of law and chaos ensues, you know, that is not going to be the kind of country that any of us wants to live in."

Seriously, this guy's opinions are so simple-minded that it's no wonder Fox loves him. Oh, and he thinks that Obama was wrong to talk out about Trayvon Martin because he should have trusted how things would play out in the justice system, which worked so awesomely then.

Blitzer should have answered each and every one of these statements with "Oh, fuck you. Shut the fuck up. Why are you still fucking talking? Who the fuck is listening to you? Fuck them, too."

Instead, Blitzer got to something real. He asked Carson about remarks he made where he compared the United States now to Nazi Germany because "you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe. And it's because of the p.c. police. It's because of politicians." So not being able to say "faggot" in public freely is as bad as rounding up and killing all the gays in Germany. Got it.

Using his own version of "Shut the fuck up" (and getting freakily jingoistic), Blitzer said, "So you've got to explain that, because when I heard the comparison of the United States of America, the greatest country in the world, the greatest country ever, to Nazi Germany, I said, 'What is he talking about?'"

Then, in an answer that should be the epitaph to whatever political ambitions he might have, Carson replied, "Well, see, what you were doing is allowing words to affect you more than listening to what was actually being said."

Now, you might actually perk up at that moment and wonder, "The fuck? You said the fucking words. We're not making this shit up."

Well, Carson will explain: "Nazi Germany experienced something horrible. The people in Nazi Germany largely did not believe in what Hitler was doing. But did they say anything? Of course. They kept their mouths shut. And there are some very important lessons to be learned there." And then, shit you not, Carson's example of what horrible things are going on now is that the IRS slightly delayed the approval of tax-exempt status for a few Tea Party groups.

Finally, we get to Carson's game. See, when it comes to Michael Brown and, one presumes, Eric Garner, unarmed men being murdered, Carson believes we need to knuckle under to the force of the law. But when it comes to things like being "free to express yourself" without consequence, well, the government is just jack-booted thugs.

Except don't focus on his words: "You are just focusing on the words Nazi Germany and completely missing the point of what is being said. And that's the problem right now. That's what p.c.-ism is all about. You may not say this word, regardless of what your point is, because if you say that word, you know, I go into a tizzy. We can do better than that."

At that point, Blitzer should have said, "I'm going to call you 'Uncle Tom' for the rest of this interview and I hope you don't focus on the words."

In the actual interview, Blitzer asked Carson if he stood by his saying that Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery, which, of course, Carson did: "What needs to be understood here is that the way this country was set up, the people -- we the people were set up at the pinnacle of power in this nation. The government is supposed to conform to our will. By taking the most important thing you have, your health and your health care, and turning that over to the government, you fundamentally shift the power, a huge chunk of it, from the people to the government. This is not the direction that we want to go in this nation."

Is Carson really that blind? Does he not understand that the only difference between him and Eric Garner is who they stand with on the corner and how they're dressed? Eric Garner didn't want to give in to authority. Carson claims that he doesn't want government taking away the power of the people.

Garner only had his corner to express his opinion that he was being mistreated by the law, which got him killed because the authority had to assert its power and could do so freely. Carson gets to go on national TV and say, essentially, the same thing without fear because he is protected by his conservative enablers and his own wealth. Put him in a t-shirt and shorts, surrounded by cops, and see who listens.

Blitzer then asked another variation on "Shut the fuck up." He pressed Carson, "You say that Obamacare is the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. Worse than the Great Depression of the 1920s? Worse than the Vietnam War? Worse than 9/11?"

Of course, Carson had not a goddamn thing to say other than "Well, Wolf, I think it's non-productive to get into is it worse than this and worse than that, or maybe it's better than this and better than that."

Scratch what was said above. Yeah, he's the perfect Republican candidate. 

Jon Stewart Makes Utter Mockery of All the Ridiculous Apologists for Eric Garner's Murder

"What the fuck are you talking about, Rand Paul?"

By Janet Allon

Thursday night, Jon Stewart did a hilarious round up of all the absurdly off-point commentary about the grand jury decision not to indict the cop who killed Eric Garner. There was Sean Hannity, saying that "as a martial arts student," he had the expertise to say that Garner was not placed in a "chokehold."

"Go on, sensei." Stewart retorted.

The coroner's report saying the Staten Island man died of compression of the windpipe and chest begs to differ with Hannity.

There was Rep. Peter King saying Garner's poor health killed him. Again, the coroner's report.

"He outweighed the cop by 150 pounds," Stewart mocked. "He was the abominable bro man."

There was Rudy Giuliani, apologist for cops everywhere.

"Fucking Giuliani," Stewart said.

Finally, there was Rand Paul's odd interpretation. The Kentucky Senator blamed cigarette taxes for Garner's death, (Garner was suspected of selling loose, illegal cigarettes.) “What the fuck are you talking about?” Stewart asked after playing footage of Paul’s comments. “I guess now we know what it takes for a senator from Kentucky to admit cigarettes can kill. I don’t know what to say. I appreciate the purity of your anti-tax dogma, but the cigarette tax is truly the least salient aspect of this case.” 

It's a fairly definitive smackdown. Watch:

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4 Truly Bizarre Right-wing Reactions to the Eric Garner Decision

By Janet Allon, AlterNet

Gretchen Carlson is very very worried. And Rand Paul puts forward a truly off-the-wall theory.

 

1. Fox's Gretchen Carlson

On Wednesday night, Stepford Fox News woman, Gretchen Carlson, was very concerned about the grand jury's decision not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking Eric Garner to death in Staten Island. She was concerned that it might "cause problems" and that anger about it might possibly even affect the previously scheduled annual "tree lighting ceremony" at Rockefeller Center. She hoped "nothing's going to happen in New York City today."

That really would be terrible. At least she has it all in perspective. Sadly, her fears came true. Something did happen. Hundreds of black and white New Yorkers marched and peacefully demonstrated. 83 were arrested. The Feds opened a civil right inquiry.  Mayor Bill De Blasio canceled his appearance at the tree lighting ceremony.

2. Rep. Peter King

Republican congressman Peter King of New York is not a doctor, and doesn't play one on TV, but he does think Eric Garner was responsible for his own death. After the grand jury decision not to indict the officer who choked Garner to death was announced, King said if Garner had been healthier, he would not have died.

"If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this," King told CNN's Wolf Blitzer during an interview. And despite the fact that Garner is clearly heard on the video of the incident repeatedly saying he couldn't breathe, King added that, "police had no reason to know that he was in serious condition."

According to King, people being arrested are always complaining about something: "'You're breaking my arm, you're choking me, you're doing this,' police hear this all the time," King, who is not a cop, (or a doctor) said.

Lest there were any doubts about where King's sympathies lie, he tweeted his praise for the grand jury's decision not to indict.

3. Rand Paul 

Rand Paul had a strange take on what caused the death of Eric Garner. But then again, Rand Paul is a really strange guy, who has somehow managed to convince even a few liberal people that he is not the whacko conspiracy theorist that he actually is.

On "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, Paul blamed taxes for Garner's death, because Garner was accused by cops of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. Paul said taxes were the "larger issue," yes, larger than the killing of a man.

Maybe this is not surprising, since in Paul's libertarian fantasy world, taxes and the government are always the problem.  But it is bizarre, and ought to give pause to anyone considering supporting this kook for higher office. Here's Paul:

Well you know I think it’s hard not to watch that video of him saying ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ and not be horrified by it. But I think there’s something bigger than the individual circumstances. Obviously, the individual circumstances are important.

But I think it is also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes so that driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, ‘hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.’ And for someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws.

It's almost as bad as thinking the tree lighting ceremony is the most important thing in the world. But then, Gretchen Carlson isn't running for president.

4. Bill O'Reilly

Oddly enough, Bill O'Reilly, in a surprise move, showed a modicum of compassion about the Garner case. "I will say, that upon seeing the video that you just saw, and hearing Mr. Garner say he could not breathe, I was extremely troubled," he told his viewers Wednesday night. "I would have loosened my grip. I desperately wish the officer would have done that."

But, O'Reilly added, it was a little bit Garner's fault.

"Yes, he should not have resisted, but all Americans, every one of us, should pity Mr. Garner and his family," he continued. "He did not deserve what happened to him. And I think Officer Pantaleo and every other American police officer — every one — would agree with me. He didn't deserve that."

But don't worry. All is still right with the world. O'Reilly still insists that white privilege does not exist, and police officers don't target blacks more than whites. In the next segment with Tavis Smiley, O'Reilly disagreed that there is an "epidemic" of police officers killing blacks.

Why Is America's Sense of Black Humanity So Skewed?

There is a real disconnect between what white people know and what black people know in this country.

By  Brittney Cooper

The failure of a St. Louis county grand jury to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown, created a maelstrom of protests last week. In more than 137 cities and on college campuses around the country, including Rutgers University where I teach, protesters walked out of classes, marched with signs, linked hands to stop traffic on interstate highways and train routes, staged a massive “die-in” to shut down the Galleria Mall in St. Louis, and chose to boycott Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the biggest shopping days of the year.

On Sunday, five players for the St. Louis Rams entered the field with their hands up, a silent and peaceful protest in solidarity with Michael Brown’s final act as he attempted to save his own life.

These protests have been met at best with a kind of studied indifference and at worst with a kind of unrighteous indignation that truly baffles the mind. For instance, Black Friday sales dropped an estimated 11 percent from last year’s totals. While some decrease in revenue had been predicted, double-digit decreases were not.

The New York Times coverage of the decline managed not to even consider the possibility that the massive, social media-driven boycott of Black Friday, through hashtags like #BlackoutBlackFriday and Rahiel Tesfamariam’s #NotOneCent, had contributed at all to the downward shift in sales.

Then on Sunday, after the protest by Rams players, the St. Louis Police Officers Association sent a letter demanding an apology and condemning the players’ peaceful protest as “tasteless, offensive, and inflammatory.”

Unfortunately, key players in this case, buttressed by a particularly clueless segment of white America, actually seemed to believe that a grand jury decision in favor of Darren Wilson would simply be accepted by black America. The outrage from the St. Louis Police Officers hearkens back to an era when black people were expected to willingly endure white people’s routine horrific acts and humiliations committed against them.

That this decision feels like a travesty worthy of literally stopping traffic in locales all over the country is an affective response that seems to escape white notice, an apparent casualty of the well-documented racial empathy gap, among white Americans. Though many white people do understand the racial magnitude of last week’s devastating decision—the sense it offers that black people, and in particular young black men, are simply sheep for the slaughter—far too many white people do not understand this.

Among those with more insidious and overt racial animus, the belief is that we should simply “lie down and take it.” Among well-meaning, reasonable white people, the view is more anodyne. These people implored us to wait for justice to take its course, for the evidence to be evaluated, the witnesses to testify, a decision to be made.

There is a real disconnect between what white people know and what black people know in this country. Philosophers and political theorists understand these as questions of “epistemology,” wherein they consider how social conditions shape our particular standpoint, and ability to apprehend the things that are supposed to be apparent to us. “How do we know what we know?” is one way we might ask the question.

It is deeply apparent to most black people that the legal proceedings in the grand jury deliberations were a farce. Whether we consider the deliberate incorrect instructions given to jurors by the prosecutor, or the refusal to challenge the incendiary and inhumane characterizations of Michael Brown as “it,” “demon” and “hulk,” black people know that a lie has been perpetrated.

Too many white people lie comfortably in bed each night with the illusion that justice was served, that the system worked, that the evidence vindicated the view they need to believe—that white men do not deliberately murder black boys for sport in this day and time and get away with it. 

Most well-meaning white people need to believe this. For me as both teacher of different kinds of epistemology and as a black person, I do not have the luxury of believing this. I do not have the luxury of stepping over the bodies of Eric Garner, John Crawford and Tamir Rice, leaving my unasked questions strewn alongside their lifeless bodies.

Part of the challenge of this moment is coming up with new frameworks of racial recognition. I am struck by the fact that it did not even occur to the New York Times writer to consider the potential of a protest that was front and center among most black people over the holiday weekend.

I am struck by the ways media, other than cable news outlets, participated in making black rage and black peaceful protest invisible. I am struck by the fact that the boycotts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which I participated in alongside family, friends and comrades, registered as merely incidental to the narrative, if they registered at all.

The invisibility of black rage, black pain and black humanity are all elements of the same problem. That problem is a framework problem. Because Darren Wilson did not use a racial slur to refer to Michael Brown, our current racial frameworks are inadequate for helping your average all-American white people think through the contours of this encounter.

That problem has plagued us since the beginning of this case; it dogged us throughout the Zimmerman trial, and it is helped along by the deep emotional dishonesty that characterizes race relations in the country.

Because of this framework problem, this epistemology problem, white people find black protests to be absolutely, utterly unreasonable, in light of the “evidence.” Many of these folks have never stopped to consider the fact that “reason,” and “evidence,” are not race-neutral concepts. What is a reasonable conclusion to draw for people who have never had the entirety of their lives shaped by a negative perception of skin tone, is an entirely unreasonable set of conclusions to draw for people who have.

For instance, to believe that Brown charged at Wilson in the midst of a hail of gunfire is to believe that black people are monsters, mythical superhuman creatures, who do not understand the physics of bullets, even as they rip through flesh.

To white people, who co-sign Wilson’s account of events, this seems like an entirely reasonable assertion, one helped along by a lifetime of media consumption that represents black masculinity as magical, monstrous and mythic.

That is the supreme irony of the police taking offense at the image of five black football players walking out on the field in a poise of surrender-as-protest. As long as those large, strong football players used their brawn to run a ball down the field, to entertain the mostly white spectators at the game, there are no problems.

That they might be human beings, with thoughts and feelings, with politics and connections to communities, with sentiments and spirits attuned to injustice, made them seem threatening, disrespectful and unruly. And frankly,  ungrateful. For so many black men, it is sports that saved them from a fate akin to Michael Brown’s. They are supposed to demonstrate their gratitude through silence.

Black bodies have been used in this country for labor, entertainment and sport. The symbolic import of the Rams protest matters as an assertion that those black men in those mythic, hyper-athletic black male bodies refused to accept an injustice done to a young man that many of us see as a little brother, or cousin or nephew.

Michael Brown was a human being to us, and more than that, a kid. Like Tamir Rice, the 12 year old shot in Cleveland for playing with a toy gun, black children are frequently perceived as being much older than they are. The police believed Tamir to be 20 and not 12.

That inability to see black people as human, as vulnerable, as children, as people worthy of protecting is an epistemology problem, a framework problem, a problem about how our experiences shape what we are and are not able to know. The limitations of our frameworks are helped along by willful ignorance and withholding of empathy.

So I continue to refuse to debate this issue with white people in my social circles because I recognize that the frameworks from which most of them work are frameworks that inherently foreclose recognition of black humanity and vulnerability. Those frameworks wield race-neutral notions of reason and evidence as a sword against unreasonable, heinous and racist acts.

Until white people are ready to relieve themselves of an all-consuming belief in a colorblind legal system, ready to recognize the violence at the core of the ideology of whiteness (which is, I hope you hear me saying, different from calling all white people violent), ready to adopt a new framework, we can’t talk. We can’t talk because y’all can’t hear me.

To remix the words of Trayvon Martin's mom, since you can’t hear us, we will make you feel us, through our protests, through our acts of civil disobedience, through our stoic faces that refuse you the comfort of our smiles. And in the words of Notorious B.I.G., “if you don’t know, now you know.”

Scam of the Day: PS4Jailbreaker dot com. More surveys for you, more money for them

By wololo · December 3, 2014

PS4Jailbreaker .com is a scam, they won’t “jailbreak” your PS4, they will just ask you to fill a survey for which they will get paid, and you won’t get anything in exchange. If you want the latest and greatest news about the possibility to hack your PS4, bookmark our “PS4 CFW for Dummies” page, which will have all the information needed, the day a hack is actually made public. Please share this information with your more gullible friends, who don’t know the difference between reputable scene websites, and stupid cash grab schemes.


It’s been a while since I last debunked one of those fake “Vita iso” or “PS4 iso” websites.
Yesterday one of these sites had the audacity of posting a link to their *** directly in the comments of my blog. So I decided I’d thank them, by calling them out publicly for their scammy website.

The website involved here is fake website ps4jailbreaker .com. PS4Jailbreaker .com is a scam website, put in place to make a quick buck on some fake download.



The site is an unoriginal and typical scam (I guess people still fall for these, so next time someone asks you if this is real, kindly point them to this article). PS4Jailbreaker .com pretend to offer a free jailbreak of your PS4, all you have to do is complete a survey to get your download. The surveys will take some of your precious time, and the owners of the site will get paid for each complete survey.

The chances of you actually getting your download at the end of the survey are slim at best. The possibility of you actually being able to “jailbreak” (hack) your PS4 with whatever you end up downloading, is 0.

It is not possible at the time of this writing to fully hack a PS4. When something looks too good to be true, it’s because it’s too good to be true. You can avoid scams such as PS4Jailbreaker .com by simply using this thing that us human beings call a brain: If there existed a method to hack the PS4 like these guys pretend to offer, all major scene websites would be talking about it, *before* you even realize the method exists. We have a community of thousands of people here, looking daily for all possible news related to hacking the PS4. It is statistically impossible that you could find out a “revolutionary” technique that we haven’t heard of.

The day a hack of the PS4 will exist, it will be on the front page of this website and other major scene websites. Heck, it will probably also be in the news of mainstream technology sites. So, don’t feel clever because you only just found out about the fake claims of PS4Jailbreaker .com, you’re actually on the verge of netting these guys $5 of your time, for nothing in return.

When a hack for the PS4 is truly available, it will be explained in details on our “PS4 CFW for dummies” page. That’s the page you need to bookmark for news on that.

Besides this very easy way to detect scam websites such as PS4Jailbreaker .com, you can also see that the techniques used on their website are fairly obvious: newly created website for the purpose of the product (the only people doing this are people selling a new hardware mod such as Sky3DS or trueblue.

When it comes to software hacks, you will usually hear about those on a hacker’s blog, twitter account, and here, before anyone thinks of even creating a dedicated websites. Hackers are too busy actually hacking, they usually won’t create a brand new website for one of their releases!)

Very typical of these websites too is the suspicious “did this hack work for you” vote system. Again, real hackers wouldn’t care about putting such a dumb thing in place.

Again, whenever a hack comes for the PS4, you’ll hear about it almost instantly on this site and other reputable sources. Don’t try and think you’re more clever than everybody else because you found an unvisited dark corner of the intertubes: most likely you’ll get mugged. This is the case with the scam on PS4Jailbreaker .com, a site that will basically steal your time to fulfill a survey, make money out of it, and leave you with nothing. Not dangerous per se, but definitely not worth your time.


(For the conspiracy theorists out there, feel free to actually try. You’ll give these guys the money from your survey, and will end up with nothing in exchange. That will be a great life lesson for you)

CALL OF DUTY: Advanced Warfare (Elders React: Gaming)

5 reasons you should never submit to a police search — even if you have nothing to hide

By Scott Morgan,  AlterNet

You should be prepared just in case police become suspicious of you.

This story first appeared at AlterNet.

Do you know what your rights are when a police officer asks to search you? If you’re like most people I’ve met in my eight years working to educate the public on this topic, then you probably don’t.

It’s a subject that a lot of people think they understand, but too often our perception of police power is distorted by fictional TV dramas, sensational media stories, silly urban myths, and the unfortunate fact that police themselves are legally allowed to lie to us.

It wouldn’t even be such a big deal, I suppose, if our laws all made sense and our public servants always treated us as citizens first and suspects second. But thanks to the War on Drugs, nothing is ever that easy. When something as stupid as stopping people from possessing marijuana came to be considered a critical law enforcement function, innocence ceased to protect people against police harassment. From the streets of the Bronx to the suburbs of the Nation’s Capital, you never have to look hard to find victims of the bias, incompetence, and corruption that the drug war delivers on a daily basis.

Whether or not you ever break the law, you should be prepared to protect yourself and your property just in case police become suspicious of you. Let’s take a look at one of the most commonly misunderstood legal situations a citizen can encounter: a police officer asking to search your belongings. Most people automatically give consent when police ask to perform a search. However, I recommend saying “no” to police searches, and here are some reasons why:

1. It’s your constitutional right.

The 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. Unless police have strong evidence (probable cause) to believe you’re involved in criminal activity, they need your permission to perform a search of you or your property.

You have the right to refuse random police searches anywhere and anytime, so long as you aren’t crossing a border checkpoint or entering a secure facility like an airport. Don’t be shy about standing up for your own privacy rights, especially when police are looking for evidence that could put you behind bars.

2. Refusing a search protects you if you end up in court.

It’s always possible that police might search you anyway when you refuse to give consent, but that’s no reason to say “yes” to the search. Basically, if there’s any chance of evidence being found, agreeing to a search is like committing legal suicide, because it kills your case before you even get to court.

If you refuse a search, however, the officer will have to prove in court that there was probable cause to do a warrantless search. This will give your lawyer a good chance to win your case, but this only works if you said “no” to the search.

3. Saying “no” can prevent a search altogether.

Data on police searches are interesting, but they don’t show how many searches didn’t happen because a citizen said no. A non-search is a non-event that goes unrecorded, giving rise to a widespread misconception that police will always search with or without permission.

I know refusing searches works because I’ve been collecting stories from real police encounters. The reality is that police routinely ask for permission to search when they have absolutely no evidence of an actual crime. If you remain calm and say no, there’s a good chance they’ll back down, because it’s a waste of time to do searches that won’t hold up in court anyway.

4. Searches can waste your time and damage your property.

Do you have time to sit around while police rifle through your belongings? Police often spend 30 minutes or more on vehicle searches and even longer searching homes. You certainly can’t count on officers to be careful with valuables or to put everything back where they found it. If you waive your 4th Amendment rights by agreeing to be searched, you will have few legal options if any property is damaged or missing after the search.

5. You never know what they’ll find.

Are you 100 percent certain there’s nothing illegal in your home or vehicle? You can never be too sure. A joint roach could stick to your shoe on the street and wind up on the floorboard. A careless acquaintance could have dropped a baggie behind the seat. Try telling a cop it isn’t yours, and they’ll just laugh and tell you to put your hands behind your back. If you agreed to the search, you can’t challenge the evidence. But if you’re innocent and you refused the search, your lawyer has a winnable case.

Remember that knowing your rights will help you protect yourself, but no amount of preparation can guarantee a good outcome in a bad situation. Your attitude and your choices before, during, and after the encounter will usually matter more than your knowledge of the law. Stay calm no matter what happens, and remember that you can always report misconduct after things settle down.

Finally, please don’t be shy about sharing this information with your friends and family.

Understanding and asserting your rights isn’t about getting away with anything, and it isn’t about disrespecting police either. These rights are the foundation of freedom in America, and they get weaker whenever we fail to exercise them.

Scott Morgan is Associate Director of FlexYourRights.org and co-creator of the film 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.

Darren Wilson Resigns From Ferguson Police Department

By Susie Madrak

 

This is anticlimatic, but it's going to help calm things down, I hope:

Darren Wilson has resigned from the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department in wake of fatal shooting of Michael Brown, his attorney said today.

Wilson's resignation comes five days after a grand jury investigating the Aug. 9 shooting declined to indict the police officer. He has been on administrative leave since the shooting.

One of his attorneys, Neil Bruntrager, said the resignation is effective immediately.

The killing of Brown, an unarmed 18 year old, on a Saturday afternoon in the St. Louis suburb, ignited protests there and around the country.

Since the grand jury decision handed up Monday not to indict Wilson, 28, there have been renewed demonstrations in every major city across the country, protesting the failure to charge him.

Bruntrager provided ABC News with a copy of Wilson's letter of resignation. It reads:

"I, Darren Wilson, hereby resign my commission as a police officer with the City of Ferguson effective immediately. I have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow. For obvious reasons, I wanted to wait until the grand jury made their decision before I officially made my decision to resign. It was my hope to continue in police work, but the safety of other police officers and the community are of paramount importance to me. It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal. I would like to thank all of my supporters and fellow officers throughout this process."

Though Wilson was cleared of criminal charges by the grand jury, the Justice Department is conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting as well as a separate probe of police department practices.

Wilson, who has been in seclusion since the fatal shooting, said this week in an interview with "Good Morning America" anchor George Stephanolpoulos that he had gotten married since the Aug.9 shooting and that he and his new wife are expecting a baby.

Wilson said in that interview that he wanted to spend his career with the police force, and hoped to one day be promoted to sergeant.

"I wanted to stay on the road for 30 years and then retire as sergeant and have a retirement," Wilson said. "That's all that I wanted."