Houston Area Liberty Campaign

TRENTON— Senator Michael J. Doherty (R-Hunterdon, Warren) and Senator James Beach (D-Camden) today announced they will present resolutions to the Senate and Assembly calling on the U.S. Congress to end TSA screening procedures requiring full body scans and pat downs at U.S. airports Their action comes in response to widespread concerns over privacy and radiation, as well as reports of inappropriate conduct by TSA agents during the screening process.

“The pursuit of security should not force Americans to surrender their civil liberties or basic human dignity at a TSA checkpoint,” said Doherty. “Subjecting law-abiding American citizens to naked body scans and full body pat downs is intolerable, humiliating, vulnerable to abuse, and is fast becoming a disincentive to travel. Particularly concerning to us is the fact that physical searches result in children being touched in private areas of the body. Terrorists hate America because of the freedoms upon which this great nation was built. By implementing these screening measures, the TSA has already handed a victory to those who seek to destroy our freedoms.”

For full press release, visit http://bit.ly/c0n2FL .

Origina music and lyrics by “Buck Howdy.”

Help You Make it to Your Flight

Take the ribbon from your hair
Shake it loose and let it fall
Leave your shoes right over there.
…Now…
GET UP AGAINST THE WALL!

I’ll run my hands inside your thighs,
Up your legs and out of sight
But you can trust the TSA
To help you make it to your flight.

We don’t profile that’d be wrong
Just ask the A.C.L.U.
We’d rather check your nooks & crannies
And every inch of you.

I’ve got no life except my job,
I don’t mind it, it’s alright,
I get to grope you legally
If you wanna take a flight 

This badge and uniform we wear
Well, it might look like a rent-a-cop
But your life is in our hands
We like it that way
‘Specially if you’re hot! 

It’s awful lonely being me
No girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife
So let me squeeze you
OOoo, right THERE!
If you wanna take a flight
You can trust the TSA
You’ll be in our dreams tonight!
Mmmm-hmmmm!

See also: http://floydreports.com/tsa-theme-song/?utm_source=Floyd+Reports&utm_campaign=db2699d1ae-FR_12_02_201012_4_2010&utm_medium=email

Back in May of this year, a male Wayne County (MI) airport cop and a female TSA worker both showed up at a Hartland Township, MI gas station to buy some booze in order to continue their little party. The two paid for the booze with a credit card but began arguing with the clerk for some reason.  The clerk then called 911. 

Then TSA worker Renee Zima flashed her TSA badge, said she was with the Department of Homeland Security, and stole two pieces of pizza, leaving the store with her airport cop boyfriend.   When the gas station clerk demanded payment for the two pieces of pizza that Zima nabbed, the felonious pair left the store and started to try to leave the gas station’s parking lot via their vehicle.  When the gas station clerk tried to read and write down the pair’s license plate number, the pair bent the license plate back in an effort to conceal the number. 

Both Zima and Richard Frederick, Zima’s manly man airport cop boyfriend, stood in front of the hatch of the vehicle to try to conceal the license plate number.  Zima then flipped the hatch of the vehicle up in further efforts to thwart the gas station clerk.

Then Frederick  hit the gas station clerk in the face with his fist.  Frederick claimed that he felt threatened by the “gang” of store employees who came out to confront him and Zima. (Check the video but the only gas station employee that confronted Frederick and Zima was the one clerk who Frederick punched in the face.  The other people in the video were people in the store at the time of the theft/assault and an off-duty Livingston County MI police officer who happened to be getting gas at the station.)

The pair then fled the scene in their vehicle, on US 23N, but were apprehended a short time later.  Only Frederick is facing a misdemeanor assault and battery charge for hitting the clerk.  Both the Wayne County Airport Authority and the TSA have started an investigation into the incident. Zima has been placed on administrative leave, and Frederick has entered rehab.

Addtional reading:
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/134213
http://www.copblock.org/1255/cop-tsa-agent-steal-assault-clerk/

Jay Stang, founding member of Oathkeepers and leader of the Houston chapter of WeWontFly.com, gave a magnificent speech at the Houston 2010 End the Fed rally.

Part 1

Part 2

Quantitative Easing, also known as QE2, involves the Federal Reserve printing 600 billion dollars by buying Treasury bonds from Goldman Sachs can be a little tough to understand for the layman. This brilliant cartoon does a great job explaining it for the rest of us. Viewer discretion advised: There is a little foul language.

[From the Cato Institute Blog]
Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:47 AM PDT

 By David Rittgers

Maryland Circuit Court Judge Emory A Pitt, Jr. has ruled that motorcyclist and Maryland Air National Guardsman Anthony Graber did not violate the Maryland wiretapping statute  when he recorded his traffic stop. The wiretap law does prohibit the recording of audio where there is (NOT) a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” but Judge Pitt found that a police officer performing a traffic stop has no such expectation of privacy.

“Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public,” the judge wrote. “When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation.”

 As I said in this op-ed, and as Clark Neily, Radley Balko and I pointed out in this video, Maryland police officers have used the “expectation of privacy” claim as a tool to deter anyone from recording on-duty police officers. In Anthony Graber’s case, a Maryland state trooper cut off Graber in an unmarked car and emerged from the driver’s side door in jeans and a gray pullover, gun drawn and badge not visible. It looked like a carjacking, and Graber was not charged for recording the encounter until he posted it on YouTube. The message to other Marylanders was clear: record the police, and you will face arrest and felony prosecution.

The prosecutor behind the case against Graber, Joseph Cassilly, spoke on a panel last week at Cato. He made clear that he disagreed with the structure of the Maryland wiretapping law, and was using the case to push the legislature toward a single-party consent wiretap statute. While I agree with a move to a single-party consent law, it is satisfying to see the charges against Anthony Graber reduced to the traffic violations that instigated the encounter in the first place.

Judge Dismisses Wiretapping Charges against Motorcyclist for Recording Traffic Stop is a post from http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/

[From Reason.com by Radley Balko, September 20, 2010, original article here]
Additional related reading:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/TheLaw/videotaping-cops-arrest/story?id=11179076
http://hurtyoubad.com/?p=7781
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=50153 
http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform
_immigrants-rights/fighting-police-abuse-community-ac  
http://www.aclu-md.org/aPress/Press2010/Graber_Factsheet.pdf 
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11861
http://www.freewebs.com/policemisconduct/ 
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/ 
http://www.law.suffolk.edu/highlights/stuorgs/lawreview/documents/Skehill
_Note_Final.pdf
http://www.lawcollective.org/article.php?id=94 
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/are-cameras-the-new-guns/ 
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.html
————————————————————————————————————————————
A guide to the technology for keeping government accountable

This summer the issue of recording on-duty police officers has received a great deal of media attention. Camera-wielding citizens were arrested in Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts under interpretations of state wiretapping laws, while others were arrested in New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Florida, and elsewhere based on vaguer charges related to obstructing or interfering with a police officer.

So far Massachusetts is the only state to explicitly uphold a conviction for recording on-duty cops, and Illinois and Massachusetts are the only states where it is clearly illegal. The Illinois law has yet to be considered by the state’s Supreme Court, while the Massachusetts law has yet to be upheld by a federal appeals court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently issued an opinion concluding that arrests for recording cops are based on a misreading of the state’s wiretapping statute, but that opinion isn’t binding on local prosecutors.

 
In the remaining 47 states, the law is clearer: It is generally legal to record the police, as long as you don’t physically interfere with them. You may be unfairly harassed, questioned, or even arrested, but it’s unlikely you will be charged, much less convicted. (These are general observations and should not be treated as legal advice.)

One reason this issue has heated up recently is that the democratization of technology has made it easier than ever for just about anyone to pull out a camera and quickly document an encounter with police. So what’s the best way to record cops? Here is a quick rundown of the technology that’s out there.

Continue reading original article here….