Month: December 2013

The trial, going on right now in federal court in San Francisco, involves claims by a former Stanford Ph.D. student that she was not allowed to fly in 2005 (except to go home to Malaysia) for reasons that the government won’t explain.

According to this NYT graphic (click for more detail), 99% of the names that are “nominated” end up on the master watch list. … In other words, the “Terrorist Screening Center” isn’t doing any “screening.”

one of the plaintiff’s witnesses—one of her daughters, who is an American citizen—had not been able to travel to the U.S. to testify because (wait for it) she had been put on the no-fly list

Source: Is the Government Tampering With Witnesses in No-Fly Trial? | Lowering the Bar

Sometimes a single story has a way of standing in for everything you need to know.  In the case of the up-arming, up-armoring, and militarization of police forces across the country, there is such a story.  Not the police, mind you, but the campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that is, a $500,000, 18-ton, mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle of a sort used in the Afghan War and, as Hunter Stuart of the Huffington Post reported, built to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs, and nuclear, biological, and chemical environments.”  Sounds like just the thing for bouts of binge drinking and post-football-game shenanigans.

Source: Tomgram: Chase Madar, The Criminalization of Everyday Life | TomDispatch