News Sheriff's task force to search cars in Milwaukee for guns Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. announced Tuesday he has established a gun crime task force that will rely on so-called consent searches of cars in the city, a practice that has been restricted among
Milwaukee police. Consent searches, in which police get drivers' permission to search vehicles stopped for minor infractions, can turn up evidence of more serious crimes. Proponents say the tactic helps police find drugs and
guns. But critics say the practice invites abuse." (05/06/03)

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may03/139000.asp

News ScotRail to use DNA to track down people who spit at staff Ananova

"A rail company is using DNA technology to track down passengers who spit at staff.ScotRail employees have been given 'saliva recovery kits' in case they're victims of such attacks. The kits contain gloves, an evidence bag and two swabs so staff can submit samples of spit for testing. Strathclyde Police and British Transport Police are checking samples against the national DNA database." (05/08/03)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_778255.html?menu=news.quirkies

News Got ammo? Not without a license Queens Chronicle

The popular National Rifle Association defense 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people' leaves out a key technicality: it's the bullets that do the killing. This idea is at the heart of a new bill and resolution introduced last Friday by Councilman James Sanders (D-Laurelton) that seeks to make it harder for unlicensed rifle and shotgun owners to get ammunition. The Ammunition Control Act, co-sponsored by Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), would require shotgun and rifle owners to present detailed information about their weapon -- including make, model, manufacturer's name and serial number -- each time they purchase ammunition." (05/08/03)

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1865&dept_id=152958&newsid=7952178&PAG=461&rfi=9


News Storeowner shoots burglar Town Talk (LA)

"An Alexandria storeowner shot two burglars -- killing one of them -- early Tuesday when they entered the business through the ceiling, police said....[The storeowner] has not been charged with a crime. The store was closed at the time, but [he] was staying inside in an effort to deter break-ins." (05/07/03)

http://www.thetowntalk.com/html/15EC8CF0-6A45-48D3-802F-DFCB047E868C.shtml

News Warrants issued for pot houses to 'ensure safety' MAPINC/Airdrie Echo

"The City of Airdrie is taking steps in the wake of recent busts at local homes housing marijuana grow operations. Warrants have recently been executed on houses involved to ensure the integrity of the buildings, said Ed Funfer, Airdrie director of municipal enforcement. 'We want to make sure that they're safe,' Funfer said, adding that in marijuana grow houses, electrical bypasses are often part of the operations and, as such, could have a negative effect on a structure's overall safety." (05/06/03)

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n675/a12.html?397

News Wanted: top hackers as trackers Sydney Morning Herald

"Police are offering 20 computer nerds the opportunity to become highly paid spies working for the NSW counter-terrorist unit.... The computer spies - most likely university computer science graduates or highly skilled IT workers -- will be offered wages of between $60,000 and $103,000. The high wage offer to civilian employees is a first for the police service but seen as necessary by the Commissioner, Ken Moroney, to recruit the best computer specialists from the private sector." (05/09/03)

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/08/1052280377317.html

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Commentary Iraqi welcome for US turns to fury The Age (Australia)by Mark Baker

"This is the way the war ends: not with the jubilation of the liberated but with the whimpering of ragged children. 'Water! Water!' they cry, running from the roadside towards passing cars, thrusting their fingers towards their mouths in the salute of the thirsty.... In the early days, after the first battle of the war was won and the sporadic resistance subdued, many of Umm Qasr's residents came out of their mud-brick houses to welcome the invaders. Now they throw stones at the military." (05/95/03)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/04/1051987604147.html

Commentary The other 'f' word Counter Punch by Ben Tripp

"[T]here are three sacred lines with regard to American democracy that can never be crossed: the line between privilege and power, the line between Church and State, and the line between civilian and military leadership. Cross any of them, and you're at fascism's doorstep. Cross two, you're on the threshold with your hand on the doorknob." (05/08/03)

http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp05082003.html


Commentary Plywood at $86 Baltimore Sun by staff

"The Army fessed up yesterday and admitted that Halliburton Co. stands to make a lot more money out of the mess in Iraq than it had been letting on.
Halliburton had gotten a no-bid contract that supposedly was limited to extinguishing oil fires, but then Saddam Hussein's men inconveniently neglected to set many wells ablaze. No worry -- there were a few other paragraphs buried in that no-bid contract, paragraphs that talk about Halliburton's 'operation of facilities' and -- our favorite -- 'distribution of products.'" (05/08/03)

http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/bal-ed.cheney08may08,0,6472065.story?coll=bal%2Dpe%2Dopinion

Commentary Senator Santorum's Department of Sexual Security Village Voice by Mark Fiore

Cartoon. (05/08/03)
http://villagevoice.com/alertrd.php3?article=43957

Commentary 1984 is here! Free Inquiry Magazine by Nat Hentoff

"Throughout our history, the Bill of Rights has been often held in contempt by our government -- witness the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts; Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the mass jailing of opponents of his policies during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson’s near-extinction of the First Amendment during the First World War; the 'Red Scare' raids and deportations of the early 1920s; the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War; and the depredations of 'Tailgunner Joe' McCarthy. But the extent and depth of the subversion of civil liberties by the Bush administration is far more dangerous and will have much longer-lasting effects, because the war on terrorism is not going to have a definitive end for decades to come." (Spring 2003)

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hentoff_23_2.htm


Commentary Fascism anyone? Free Inquiry Magazine by Lawrence W. Britt

"For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.... Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power .... Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not." (Spring 2003)

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm

Commentary Bush's military defeat Counter Punch by Harvey Wasserman

"The 'victory' which has so enamored the US corporate media was an assault by a rich nation of 280 million people which spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined, against an impoverished, disunited nation 20 times smaller which has been ruled by a hated dictator installed by the US, subjected to international sanctions for 12 years, continually bombed through that time, and which was recently disarmed by United Nations weapons inspectors. Far a military triumph, its military conduct drew mocking derision from the major media outside the US." (05/02/03)

http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman05022003.html

Commentary Redefining democracy The American Prospect by Robert Kuttner

"So desperate were the U.S. forces after a week of looting and anarchy that they have been reduced to hiring members of Saddam's police force to keep order. Some 2,000 of the previous regime's hated police are already patrolling Baghdad's streets in their old uniforms. Imagine what signal that sends to ordinary, anti-Saddam Iraqis. Evidently it was Saddam's foreign policy that President Bush loathed, not Saddam's repression of citizens. Bush has compared Saddam to Hitler, but we didn't turn over the policing of postwar Berlin to the Gestapo. So much for winning hearts and minds." (05/02/03)

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/webfeatures/2003/04/kuttner-r-04-17.html

Commentary Remembering Joe McCarthy Whitehouse.org by staff

"THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, with America's vast, bloodthirsty force of bravely unquestioning military grunts entering the final days of its totally justified mission to effortlessly annihilate Iraqazoid trash like blowflies on a roadside armadillo carcass, I wanted to take a few minutes off from my demanding schedule of aircraft carrier campaign commercial shoots to commemorate the passing of our nation's greatest-ever patriot -- not counting me, of course." (satire) (05/02/03)

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2003/050203.asp

Commentary Pain The Libertarian Enterprise by William Stone III

"Letters to the editor, your Congressmen, the President. Protests, marches, political parties. T-shirts, coffee mugs, Web sites. Mailing campaigns, leaflets, fliers ...
We've tried and done them all, but in the end, what has it accomplished? Very damned little, I'm sorry to say. Every year the police state grows and every year the noose tightens a little bit more." (05/05/03)

http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe222-20030505-02.html

Commentary Making the world safe for mob rule Las Vegas Review Journal by Vin Suprinowicz

"Our sloppy spokesmen have been promising everyone our central government intends to allow and encourage 'democracy' in Iraq. Many of the 60 percent of that nation's populace who are long-oppressed Shiite Muslims are now responding quite predictably, and at an escalating volume, that they wish to take this opportunity to vote to create there not a secular regime on the American (or even the Turkish) model, but rather a fundamentalist 'Islamic republic' like that of neighboring Iran, where moaning mullahs and gibbering muftis would enforce the 7th century edicts of the Quran, ordering women caned for going about without their hair or ankles covered." (05/04/03)

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/May-04-Sun-2003/opinion/21225710.html

Commentary Despair: the terrorist's best recruiting officer Independent by Gilles Kepel

"Day in day out, two juxtaposed stories unfold on al-Jazeera or Abu Dhabi television. On the one hand, there are images of suicide attacks in Palestine, followed by scenes of Israeli repression, and of the burial of 'martyrs' watched by angry crowds of bearded youths and close shots of veiled female mourners. And on the other, images of Iraqi hostility towards American troops, scenes of armed retaliation and, again, burials where turbaned sheikhs chant defiant slogans against America, and followers praise Allah the Almighty, as well as close shots of spilled blood on the streets." (05/04/03)

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=402901

Commentary Reefer madness NY Daily News by Christian Red, T.J. Quinn and Michael O'Keefe

"[A]s Americans grow more tolerant of marijuana, the sports world is heading in the opposite direction. Athletes caught smoking pot are not simply petty offenders, as the laws in most states define them. They are also disgraced role models, marketing liabilities and now, according to a burgeoning group of anti-doping advocates, they're cheaters as well. Many experts believe marijuana can enhance performance and are pushing to extend pot testing to all sports, not just the handful that screen for it now." (05/03/03)

http://www.nydailynews.com/05-04-2003/sports/more_sports/story/80538p-73937c.html

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News Small town, big guns KLAS TV News

"It's just a small dot on the map but a town in Utah has a law on the books that is making people take notice. The Virgin River flows 154 miles through Nevada and Arizona. On its way through Utah, it cuts through the town of Virgin. It's not a big place -- only about four miles long. The town's 420 residents are a mix of working class and retired people who like to fish and hunt. The local gun range is a popular spot. The residents here have something to make sure their firearms are never taken away, ordinance 2000-06-15. There is a law on the town books that requires every resident of Virgin to bear arms. The head of every household must own some sort of weapon." (05/02/03)

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1259647&nav=168XFaTI

News New drug laws won't slow border traffic MAPINC/ Ottawa Sun

"U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci suggested yesterday that Canada's plan to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana may not lead to border friction if the change includes tough penalties for criminal trafficking and cultivation. Contrary to recent warnings by other U.S. officials, including U.S. drug czar John Walters, Mr. Cellucci said people will have to "wait and see" whether such a law would lead to congestion and other problems at the Canada-U.S. border." (05/03/03)

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n649/a03.html?397

News Pro-Gun Group Prompts Arrest Of One Of It's Own At National Convention Sierra Times

"Leaders of a pro-second amendment, liberty activist group are outraged over the arrest of a member of their group, who is also a paid member of the well-known second amendment group that had him arrested for passing out flyers outside a gun show last Sunday.The National Rifle Association apparently had one of its members, a pro-gun activist, arrested at its national convention on, April 27, 2003 in Orlando, Florida for handing out pro-gun freedom literature from an organization known as the Free State Project, Inc." (05/03/03)

http://www.sierratimes.com/03/05/05/article_fsp_nra.htm

News Health workers save their hospital Ananova

"Workers from a Romanian psychiatric hospital have saved it from being closed down by using their own wages for repairing and sanitising the buildings. The 50-strong staff were told the hospital was to shut because of its poor condition and lack of money for repair works." (05/04/03)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_776790.html?menu=news.quirkies

News U.S. says Canada cares too much about liberties Ottawa Citizen

"The United States says the lack of funding for police
and restrictive privacy legislation in Canada are
frustrating probes of political extremists.The comments in an annual report on international terrorism were the latest critical remarks from the U.S. apparently aimed at prodding Canada to bring its security measures in line." (05/01/03)

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=78a2260b-4770-4682-be60-e6fe1d3b8144

News SARS Virus found to survive for weeks outside human body Sydney Morning Herald

"New research into the deadly SARS virus shows that it is more resilient than first thought and can survive for weeks outside the human body. The research, published by the Geneva-based World Health Organisation, suggests that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome -- a flu-like epidemic that has killed at least 449 people worldwide -- might be able to be spread through contact with contaminated objects and not just through direct contact with an infected person." (05/05/03)

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/05/1051987637923.html