There are the basic things you can do to protect your data and
your phone, like avoiding public Wi-Fi networks, enabling built-in tools
like "Find My iPhone," and using a good password. Both iOS and Android
phones offer options for turning off "location services,"
so apps can't track your coordinates. But in an age of cyberattacks
from renegade hackers, non-state actors, and government spies, it's not a
terrible idea to arm your phone with apps that provide encrypted
communication, anonymous browsing, and theft protection. Below, a tour
of some of the best ones out there.
TextSecure, like its name suggests, secures your text messages. It's the easiest to use open source end-to-end encrypted messaging
app out there. It can act as a full replacement for your default
texting app or a standalone Wi-Fi/data messaging app like WhatsApp—or
both. When messaging other TextSecure users, your messages are
automatically encrypted on the fly, though both parties need to have
TextSecure installed to benefit from its encrypted messaging. TextSecure
handles all of the necessary key exchanges in the background. The app
can be set to send messages only over the Internet or only SMS or to
just use whichever is available.
TextSecure has two modes: It can handle all of your text messages or
it can be used only for texts between TextSecure users. You might think
that there's no reason to use TextSecure as your default texting app
since the encrypted messaging only works with other TextSecure users.
However, there's another privacy benefit to using TextSecure: All of the
messages stored locally on your phone are kept in a password-protected
encrypted database. So if your phone is ever lost or stolen, your texts
can't be accessed by someone who otherwise compromises your phone.
WhatsApp recently integrated
TextSecure's code for encrypted messaging. So WhatsApp users are
already benefiting from TextSecure's work on messaging security. But to
best ensure your privacy, opt for TextSecure because it's fully open
source, with code that can be publicly audited.
RedPhone and its iOS equivalent Signal come from the makers of
TextSecure and boasts the same ease of use not commonly found in
encryption apps that aren't peddling snake oil. What TextSecure does for
texting, these apps do for phone calls. (You remember phone calls,
right?) Simply install the Android or iOS app and call a friend who also
has one of the apps and your calls will be automatically encrypted. The
apps are interoperable, so people who use RedPhone can call Signal
users and vice versa.
If you're worried that you won't know who of your friends has one of
these apps installed, don't worry, the developers have you covered. When
you first launch RedPhone or Signal, you'll be prompted to register
your phone in their database. That way, when you open your app, you'll
instantly see who in your phone's address book is using RedPhone or
Signal.
RedPhone comes with one feature boast over Signal. On Android, if you
try to place a regular phone call to someone whose number is registered
with either app, RedPhone will prompt you to ask if you want to upgrade
to an encrypted call. Signal doesn't have that same functionality,
presumably because Apple won't allow for the normal phone call user
experience to be interrupted.
If you pay any attention to the world of digital privacy, you've most
likely heard of Tor, the traffic routing software that makes it harder
(but not impossible) for your web browsing to be tracked. Orbot brings
Tor to Android. It allows other applications to connect to the Internet
through Tor, which can help anonymize your traffic and also circumvent
bans on websites that have been blocked by repressive governments.
Any app that can use specify proxy settings can route its traffic
through Orbot. That includes the default Twitter app, so that you can
tweet anonymously on the fly. But the most practical use case is
probably for your general web browsing. Orweb is a mobile web browser
that is built to work with Orbot out of the box.
ChatSecure is also made by The Guardian Project, the same
people who created Orweb. So naturally, you can run ChatSecure through
Orbot to get the same benefits of traffic anonymization and firewall
circumvention.
But you don't need Orbot to use ChatSecure (which is good for iOS
users who don't have access to Orbot). Even if it doesn't anonymize your
traffic through Tor, ChatSecure can still act as an encryption layer
for messages you're already using to talk to your friends like Facebook
chat. Using ChatSecure is a great middle ground to talk more securely
with friends who aren't ready to take the leap off of precipices like
Google or Facebook chat.
Prey is billed as an anti-theft tool. If your phone is lost or
stolen, your online Prey account lets you track your phone using its
GPS. It also lets you remotely lock your phone, sound a loud alarm, and
display a message on your phone to whomever is looking at it. While your
device is missing, Prey will send you email reports every five minutes
(less frequently, if you'd prefer) that include your phone's location
and a picture taken with your phone's camera, which might help you
identify where exactly it is or who took it.
If everything goes to hell, Prey is also your nuclear security
option. You can use it to remotely wipe your phone so that whoever stole
it can't access your personal files and settings. There are lots of
comparable anti-theft apps out there. But because you're giving
permission to an app to remotely access your camera and location, it's
important that you be able to trust that app. Because Prey's client software
is open source, independent coders can verify that the app isn't doing
anything it shouldn't be doing. Prey versions also exist for your
Windows, Mac, and Linux laptops.
Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are
living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population
living near poverty or below it.
All
too true. It always amazes me to see people on my TV singing the
praises of the growing new economy, and I think to myself: Don't you
know any normal people? Via Political Blindspot:
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance
that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million
Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80%
of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
That near poverty statistic is perhaps more startling than the 50
million Americans below the poverty line, because it translates to a
full 80% of the population struggling with joblessness, near-poverty or
reliance on government assistance to help make ends meet.
In September, the Associated Press pointed to survey data that told
of an increasingly widening gap between rich and poor, as well as the
loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs that used to provide
opportunities for the “Working Class” to explain an increasing trend
towards poverty in the U.S.
But the numbers of those below the poverty line does not merely
reflect the number of jobless Americans. Instead, according to a revised
census measure released Wednesday, the number – 3 million higher than
what the official government numbers imagine – are also due to
out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses.
The new measure is generally “considered more reliable by social
scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects
of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits,” according to
Hope Yen reporting for the Associated Press.
Some other findings revealed that food stamps helped 5 million people
barely reach above the poverty line. That means that the actual poverty
rate is even higher, as without such aid, poverty rate would rise from
16 percent to 17.6 percent.
Latino and Asian Americans saw an increase in poverty, rising to 27.8
percent and 16.7 percent respectively, from 25.8 percent and 11.8
percent under official government numbers. African-Americans, however,
saw a very small decrease, from 27.3 percent to 25.8 percent which the
study documents is due to government assistance programs.
Non-Hispanic
whites too rose from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent in poverty.
“The primary reason that poverty remains so high,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan economist said, “is that the
benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers
as they were in the quarter-century following the end of World War II.”
“Actor James Woods appears to have gone full crackpot on Twitter this
morning, blaming the shooting deaths of two NYPD officers on Al Sharpton
and Mayor Bill deBlasio. The series of tweets are from his verified
Twitter account @RealJamesWoods.
The 67 year old Ghost of Mississippi actor has called on police
officers to turn their backs on the mayor and “PigSharpton” with the
hashtag #BlueLivesMatter #TurnYourBacks on #RaceHucksters.”
A black teen was fatally shot by an officer on Tuesday night just two miles from Ferguson, Mo., police said.
Antonio Martin, 18, was shot
at a Mobil gas station in Berkeley, Mo., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reports. The alleged victim's mother, Toni Martin, spoke to The Dispatch
and confirmed that her son had been shot by police.
It was
originally reported that the shooting occurred early Wednesday. However,
according to The Associated Press, the incident actually took place late Tuesday:
County
police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schellman says a Berkeley police officer
was conducting a routine business check at a gas station around 11:15
p.m. Tuesday when he saw two men and approached them.
Schellman
says one of the men pulled a handgun and pointed it at the officer. The
officer fired several shots, striking and fatally wounding the man.
Schellman says that the second person fled and that the deceased man's
handgun has been recovered.
"At
this time, we cannot confirm the identity of the deceased subject. The
investigation is on-going and further details will be provided as the
investigation proceeds," the Facebook notice said.
The hashtag #AntonioMartin is trending on social media.
Those at the scene, along with The Dispatch, report approximately 60 to
100 people gathered around the gas station where the shooting took
place.
Livestreams at the scene
show residents verbally clashing with police. A woman identified as
Martin's mother could be heard sobbing "That's my baby!" on the feed.
Mother of Antonio Martin, 18, says her son shot and killed by police at Berkeley Mobil station. pic.twitter.com/yyArlrqZmM
— Valerie Schremp Hahn (@valeriehahn) December 24, 2014
The
gas station appears to have security cameras trained on the parking
lot, the Dispatch reported, so there may be a video of the incident.
CORRECTION:A
previous version of this story included an interview with a man
claiming to have been at the scene of the shooting and friends with the
deceased. As police have released statements saying the second person
involved in the incident has fled the scene, the source is now
suggesting he was never there.
HARRISBURG, PA - 'Tis the season to be . . . hoppy.
Consider it a holiday gift of sorts from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control
Board, which has made it officially legal to get a six-pack - or two -
delivered to your front door when ordering food.
The LCB, with little fanfare, issued an advisory opinion this month
clarifying that restaurants, grocery stores, pizza and sub shops, and
other outlets that serve food and beer can also deliver up to two
six-packs of beer.
This being Pennsylvania, which has some of the strictest alcohol
regulations in the country, there are catches. For instance, customers
ordering beer must pay by credit card over the phone, rather than
handing cash to the delivery person.
Still, Amy Christie is calling it progress.
"Overall, this is a great win," said Christie, executive director of the
Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association, which represents
bars, taverns, restaurants, and alcohol retailers. "I would say there
are a couple thousand places that could take advantage of this and use
it to improve their business."
Stacy Kriedeman, the LCB's spokeswoman, stressed that the change is not a
result of new laws but a legal opinion clarifying existing regulations.
Here's how it works: A business that sells malt-brewed beverages can
apply for a "transporter-for-hire" license, which costs about $1,000,
depending on the type of establishment. Anyone with that license can
transport up to 192 ounces - or just over two six-packs - of beer.
Kriedeman said the license has been around for a long time, and the
advisory opinion simply clarified that establishments selling food and
beer can take advantage of it. In fact, a customer could call a licensed
sub or pizza shop and just order beer, she said.
Most shoppers know that buying six-packs at bars, delis or restaurants -
as opposed to cases at beer distributors, which also deliver to
residences - usually involves a stiff markup.
Pete Gaeth, a Western Pennsylvania tavern owner whose letter to the LCB
sparked the advisory opinion, said he was initially interested in
delivering some of his establishment's long list of craft beers to
people out-of-state - but may now take advantage of doing so in-state as
well.
"That is definitely something we will be looking into," said Gaeth,
co-owner of Roff School Tavern and an investor in Voodoo Brewery, both
in Meadville.
Still, there are safety considerations. Topping the list is ensuring that minors don't take advantage of the change.
Craig Mosmen, co-owner of the Couch Tomato Café and the Tomato Bistro in
Manayunk, which sells artisan pizzas and craft beer, was unaware of the
legislation and said he doubted it would have much impact on his
business.
"Our takeout beer program hasn't really been a huge draw," Mosmen said.
"Most diners that are drawn to our beer list want to drink it here."
Delivering beer also poses liability issues, even if employees use a
mobile scanner to check licenses to avoid selling to minors. "When you
evaluate risk and reward, it doesn't seem like something that we would
be necessarily interested in offering," Mosmen said.
Industry officials counter that restaurants, bars, and other places that
sell alcohol have trained staff to seek proper identification and will
not serve (or in this case, hand over) beer to people who cannot verify
their age.
"You protect against [abuses] the exact same way you do inside your
establishment," said John Longacre, who owns three businesses, including
the South Philadelphia Tap Room.
Longacre, who is also president of the Philadelphia Tavern Owners
Association, said people in his industry have been asking for the change
for years - and said the real winner is the consumer.
"It's about convenience," said Longacre. "And it's a great way to make all sides happy."
In Washington, D.C., as in many cities undergoing extreme urban
makeovers, if you miss a week of moving about in certain neighborhoods,
you’ll miss a whole heck of a lot. Sad times for you if you’re a
landmark driver like I am, when even a short trip on familiar streets
can induce a fog of confusion. Buildings go down and buildings go up on
blocks so quickly, you can be a whole mile out of your way before you
realize you’ve been waiting to hook a left at a corner store that is no
more.
Besides creating in me a deep regret for not going to college to enjoy
what seems like an inevitably profitable career in real estate
development, gentrification has impressed me with its swiftness. I don’t
pretend or profess to understand the complete politics of it—I’m
certain that money is the bottom line and power is the impetus—but I
know the bastions of urban-conquer waste no time claiming an area as “up
and coming” and then following that up with epic levels of
condo-and-coffeehouse building.
What that essentially means: The people already living there are fittin’
to be economically priced out and residentially pushed out. That I’ve
learned. In the meantime, there’s a shift to accommodate the newcomers,
rarely an effort by the newcomers to adjust to the existing dynamic of a
community. The boundless, ceaseless imagination of privilege does it
again and again.
Georgia Avenue, the stretch of street that hugs the campus of Howard
University, used to be quintessential D.C., full of contagious energy
and all-black everything: barbershops and beauty salons, mom-and-pop
stores, insurance agencies, restaurants. But you know how it goes:
Powers discover that an area is gold, see its potential, put it in their
construction crosshairs and start plucking off anything, one by one,
that doesn’t fit into the blueprint for their new, improved iteration.
Anyone resilient or fortunate enough to remain needs to adjust in order to survive. Such is the case of Fish in the ’Hood,
a beloved institution for college students and local lovers of soulful
dining that, in 2012, was christened with a new storefront sign
indicative of the changing surroundings: Fish in the Neighborhood. A new name on a 15 year old restaurant is telltale, but there are more indicators that change is gonna come:
1. Neighborhood boundary lines will be strategically
reconfigured, and your new redistricted area will be outfitted with
catchy, cutesy names.
Sign for NoMa, a quirky name for North of Massachusetts Avenue, a newly renovated neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
Janelle Harris
2. Lighting will crop up. Y’all lived for years in
near-apocalyptic darkness as existing street lights went long
malfunctioning. Now the block is lit up like a night game at FedExField.
Magical.
Lighted street sign in Washington, D.C.
KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images
3. “Liquor stores” will be euphemistically renamed “wine and spirits shops.”
Wine and spirits shop in a gentrified area of D.C.
Janelle Harris
4. Cops will dutifully patrol your neighborhood in non-emergency situations. On foot, bike and vehicle patrols, sometimes even horses. No one has to call them. They’re already there.
Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Officer Tyrone Gross (left)
writes a warning ticket for a motorist who was talking on her cellphone.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
5. You find out that the way you’ve been living is no longer “current.”
Real estate ad banner for a mixed-use development
Janelle Harris
6. You get a store that stays open 24 hours. Up
until now, you had to scream your pump number and request for soda and
sunflower seeds through three layers of Plexiglas at the neighborhood
gas station. Now doors are allowed to stay open 24-7.
A 7-Eleven store
Janelle Harris
7. These show up, along with allocated lanes to ride them in the streets. It’s always a sign when people trust the community to borrow stuff and bring it back. (See also: Zipcar.)
Bike-sharing kiosk
Janelle Harris
8. Your block is equipped with speed bumps. Amazingly, they are much more effective than your disapproving scowl in slowing drivers down.
Speed bump
Janelle Harris
9. Parking starts getting real exclusive, and you’ll be
needing an advanced degree in urban planning to understand when and
where you can do it. Also, violations will become more expensive and more frequent.
11. White people will show up. At first a pioneering
few will forage the land, and once the signal goes up, that trickle
will become a full-on influx. I have seen folks who would have taken
terror steps through my neighborhood just a few months ago now
frolicking in it. At night.
Generic image
Thinkstock
Dressed up in prettier terms like “redevelopment” and “renewal,”
gentrification moves with the swiftness of a swarm of locusts and the
ferocity of a band of gangsters. It comes with community upgrades that,
in many cases, are long overdue. Not that they’re not good things. It’s
just that they come at the expense of people who aren’t intended to
enjoy them.
Writer and editor Janelle Harris resides in Washington, D.C., frequents Twitter and lives on Facebook.
If you need a good laugh, and I mean 'can't breathe, stomach hurts'
belly laugh, listen to the worst rendition of Oh Holy Night ever.
Warning, put all drinks down and take a few deep breaths first so you
don't suffocate from laughter. It starts out as sounding like a merely
poor rendition of the song, but just wait.
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 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."
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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 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 Journaleditorial 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.
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:
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.
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.
