This past week Hillary Clinton was caught jeopardizing security for the entire State Department so that she could avoid FOIA laws
Labels: Hillary Clinton Corruption
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Labels: Hillary Clinton Corruption
. . . Two high-ranking New York Police Department officials and a police sergeant who oversaw gun license applications were among the latest arrests in a case that has cast a cloud over the nation's largest municipal police force.
A businessman who contributed heavily to the election campaign of Mayor Bill de Blasio already has pleaded guilty in the case. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged the head of the correction officers' union with taking kickbacks. De Blasio, a Democrat, hasn't been implicated in any wrongdoing.
A criminal complaint accompanying the latest charges described how Brooklyn businessman Jeremy Reichberg exploited his connections within the police department to arrange arrests, speed up gun application processing, make tickets disappear, obtain police escorts for him and his friends, get assistance from uniformed personnel to resolve personal disputes and boost security at religious sites and events. . . .
Labels: Corruption
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When will politicians finally recognize that they can’t protect all the possible shooting targets?
Possibly the largest mass public shooting in US history occurred early on Sunday morning, leaving 50 dead. On Friday, also in Orlando, singer Christina Grimmie was murdered after a concert.
Both of these shootings had something in common: They both occurred in places where private citizens were banned from carrying permitted concealed handguns.
With the exception of Donald Trump, over the last few days politicians have talked about everything but gun-free zones. Hillary Clinton and President Obama have been talking background checks on the private transfers of guns or banning people who are on the “no-fly lists” from buying guns.
But not one of the mass shootings since at least 2000, including Sunday’s, would’ve been stopped by these laws. Nor would renewing the federal “assault weapons” ban solve the problem; even research paid for by Bill Clinton’s administration found no evidence the ban reduced any type of crime.
Just a couple of months ago, a young ISIS sympathizer planned a shooting at one of the largest churches in Detroit. An FBI wire recorded him explaining why he had picked the church as a target: “It’s easy, and a lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church. Plus it would make the news.”
Police are probably the single most important factor in stopping crime, but stopping a mass public shooting is an extremely dangerous proposition for officers and security guards alike. Attackers will generally first shoot any uniformed guards or officers who are present. During the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last year, the first person killed was the guard who was protecting the magazine’s offices.. . .
Labels: op-ed
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Labels: Radio
A federal judge on Monday [Jan 7, 2014] overturned Chicago's ban on the sale and transfer of firearms, ruling that the city's ordinances aimed at reducing gun violence are unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang said in his ruling that while the government has a duty to protect its citizens, it's also obligated to protect constitutional rights, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. However, Chang said he would temporarily stay the effects of his ruling, meaning the ordinances can stand while the city decides whether to appeal. . . .Now Cook County, like Seattle, has a tax on ammunition. From the Illinois Business Daily (May 30, 2016):
A per-bullet tax on ammunition set to take effect in June in Cook County is expected to provide over $300,000 in new revenue a year, but the tax faces serious opposition at the state level.
“The gun tax is nothing more than a modern day poll tax against the poor,” John Boch, executive director of the pro-gun Guns Save Life group told Illinois Business Daily in an email. “Gun control is racist, classist and sexist--we don't support those things.”
The latest tax is part of a $4.5 billion budget approved last November for the county, which includes roughly $500 million in new spending funded primarily by various sales tax increases, including the ammo tax.
A bill currently in the Illinois General Assembly, however, could stop those ammunition tax increases and even possibly roll back previous ones. House Bill 4348 would take away the power for local governments to impose sales tax increases on weapons and ammunition, stating that cities and home rule communities “may not impose any tax, fee or other assessment other than the normal sales tax rate for goods, on any firearms, firearm attachments or firearm ammunition.” Boch said he hoped the bill would preempt any legal action the group might take against the new taxes. . . .Besides the famous McDonald case, other Court cases that have cut back on Chicago's gun laws are: Ezell v. City of Chicago (7th Cir. 2011) (right to arms would be meaningless without right to “maintain proficiency” by “training and practice” at a shooting range); Illinois Ass’n of Firearms Retailers v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill. 2014) (right to arms includes “the right to acquire a firearm” so city ban on all gun stores is void). So the courts struck down the bans, but the question is how many shooting ranges or gun stores there are in Chicago. It looks like there are currently no shooting ranges in Chicago. Try Googling "'shooting ranges' Chicago." As of January this year there was one attempt at "pitching plans to open the city's only gun store and gun range," but nothing has happened so far.
Labels: Chicago
. . . A Globe review of 323 criminals released in New England from 2008 to 2012 found that as many as 30 percent committed new offenses, including rape, attempted murder, and child molestation — a rate that is markedly higher than Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have suggested to Congress in the past.
The names of these criminals have never before been made public and are coming to light now only because the Globe sued the federal government for the list of criminals immigration authorities returned to neighborhoods across the country. A judge ordered the names released in 2013, and the Globe then undertook the work that the federal government didn’t, scouring court records to find out how many released criminals reoffended.
The Globe has also published, in conjunction with this story, a searchable database of the thousands of names that were disclosed to the news organization, so that crime victims, law enforcement officials, and managers of sex offender registries — who are often unaware of these releases — can find out if the criminals may still be in the United States. . . .
Labels: IllegalAliens
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