FLE

Isn't Self-Defense Common Sense? Under the Second Amendment, Barack Obama says, "There is an individual right to bear arms, but it is subject to common-sense regulation, just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation." The leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination thus seems to be on the same wavelength as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which in a decision last March said "the protections of the Second Amendment are subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment." But there is a crucial difference between these superficially similar formulations: The appeals court meant what it said, and Obama doesn't. Although the Illinois senator has learned to pay lip service to the Second Amendment, the details of his past and present positions on gun control suggest he neither understands nor respects the right to keep and bear arms. Obama evidently considers that de facto prohibition a "common-sense regulation," since he recently cited Washington's law as an example of constitutionally permissible gun control. "The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can't initiate gun safety laws to deal with gangbangers and random shootings on the street isn't borne out by our Constitution," he said. The D.C. gun law, passed in 1975, isn't really about gangbangers, which it has not exactly disarmed, or random shootings on the street, which it has not noticeably curbed. In effect if not intent, it is about disarming law-abiding residents who might want to protect themselves from gangbangers and other violent criminals....
New Ariz. Law Pressures Migrants to Move Parents are pulling students out of school. Construction workers are abandoning their jobs. Families are hastily moving out of apartments. Two months after Arizona enacted a law punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants, the law is already achieving one of its goals: Scores of immigrants are fleeing to other states or back to their Latin American homelands. Gaby Espinoza, who has been unemployed since November, is among those affected. She gave up looking for a job because of the law and may have to return to Mexico. Espinoza's husband works here legally, but the law means that employers must ask her for papers, and she faces the daily fear of being deported. The law suspends or revokes the business licenses of violators and was intended to reduce the economic incentive for immigrants to sneak across the border. Illegal immigrants account for an estimated one in 10 workers in Arizona, which is the nation's busiest gateway for illegal immigration. Business groups have challenged the law. While awaiting a ruling, prosecutors agreed to hold off bringing cases to court until at least March 1....
Fence to nowhere The sophisticated mix of radar, satellites, sensors and computers is supposed to help the U.S. Border Patrol nab illegal immigrants and smugglers. But it's way over budget, way behind schedule - and doesn't work. The first segment of the virtual fence was a 28-mile stretch along the Arizona-Mexico border near Sasabe. In tests last year, radar systems were triggered by rain, images were fuzzy and the software couldn't process the large amounts of sensor data. The $20 million project was such a shambles that the government gave Boeing another $65 million in December to fix the glitches. Throwing good money after bad is rarely a stumbling block in government contracting. Last week, Richard M. Stana of the U.S. Government Accountability Office told Congress that much of the equipment will have to be replaced at taxpayers' additional expense. The first phase of the virtual fence, a 100-mile section ending in El Paso, was supposed to be deployed at the end of 2008 but is now expected to take another three years. More than a year ago the GAO warned that the border-fence project was at high risk for trouble for a host of reasons, including fuzzy planning, questionable accountability and an extremely ambitious schedule that related projects occurring simultaneously. So is Boeing in the doghouse? Hardly. In January, the company was awarded $733 million to "execute tactical infrastructure projects" related to border security, according to the GAO....
Prosecution rests in trial of agent charged in migrant's death Prosecutors trying to prove that a U.S. Border Patrol agent wasn't justified when he fatally shot an illegal immigrant early last year have rested their case. Filling out the case Friday were two of Agent Nicholas Corbett's co-workers and the supervisor of the firearms training unit for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, who testified that it would be unreasonable and negligent for an officer to come up behind a suspect and shoot him while he was surrendering. That's the scenario outlined in earlier testimony by two brothers of the dead man, 22-year-old Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera, who were with him the day Corbett tried to detain them and the fatal shot was fired. Special prosecutor Grant Woods wants jurors hearing the charges against Corbett to convict him of either second-degree murder, negligent homicide or manslaughter for the shooting. Corbett's lawyers say he was acting in self-defense and that Dominguez was getting ready to hurl a rock at the agent's head when he fired. They'll begin calling witnesses to support their case Monday....
Life goes on in Palomas despite cartel violence Palomas has been the recent subject of unwanted attention due to increasingly brazen drug-related violence in the small town that borders the village of Columbus. In the latest incident Wednesday, two men were shot to death by masked men at a Palomas gas station, a few steps from the port of entry into the United States. It was at least the third straight week in which shootings have been reported in Palomas, possibly part of a turf war between rival drug gangs. The attacks have residents on both sides of the border questioning their safety and wondering if the violence will spill over into the United States, something that U.S. officials are moving to prevent. Wednesday's shooting — which could be heard by U.S. border officials at the port of entry — prompted Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos to close the road to the port of entry. The U.S. Border Patrol has responded by stepping up patrols along the border. "The arrogance that we're seeing in the cartels, the changing of the guard is what we're seeing in Palomas," said Chris Mangusing, special operation supervisor for the Deming area. "Yes, we've increased our presence around the (port of entry)."....
FBI joins investigation into attack on home of UC Santa Cruz researcher The FBI is investigating whether there is any connection between militant animal rights activists in Southern California and the weekend attack on the home of a University of California - Santa Cruz researcher, a spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday. "The reason we said we'd look into it is to see if there's a possible link to domestic terrorism," said Patti Hanson, an FBI public affairs specialist in San Francisco. A demonstration by six masked protesters in front of a UCSC scientist's Westside home Sunday afternoon turned violent when the group pounded on the door and were confronted by the researcher's husband, police reported. The incident bears a striking resemblance to recent attacks on University of California - Los Angeles researchers that were linked to three animal rights groups. Los Angeles County court documents filed last week state that 'masked persons ... trespass onto the property of an employee... They attempt to terrorize the employee and family members by banging on the front door and shouting threats and obscenities through bullhorns ..."....
Surveillance system raises privacy concerns The Homeland Security Department is testing technology that would allow its agents to use cellphones or e-mail devices to covertly share live video of possible terrorists over a law enforcement network. The idea is prompting concern from privacy advocates. Department officials call the security surveillance system RealEyes because it instantly broadcasts images to anyone connected to the system. It can stream the video across the country to computers and give the law enforcement agencies a front-row view of what's going on in real time. If it passes a privacy test, the technology could allow air marshals, border officers or Secret Service agents to videotape surreptitiously in airports, at border crossings and anywhere else where there's a possible threat. The technology is raising privacy worries. Melissa Ngo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an electronic-privacy watchdog, says the department should proceed cautiously because the government has a post-9/11 record of "expansions into surveillance when there's no credible threat." Brian Geoghegan of Reality Mobile, which is developing the technology, says FBI agents tested the system at the Super Bowl in Detroit in 2006. Concerned that protesters might try to disrupt the event, agents filmed people in the lobby of a hotel where some of the football players were staying....
Bush Moves to Shield Telecommunications Firms President Bush said last week that telecommunications companies that helped government wiretapping efforts need protection from "class-action plaintiff attorneys" who see a "financial gravy train" ahead. Democrats and privacy groups responded by accusing the Bush administration of trying to shut down the lawsuits to hide evidence of illegal acts. But in the bitter Washington dispute over whether to give the companies legal immunity, there is one thing on which both sides agree: If the lawsuits go forward, sensitive details about the scope and methods of the Bush administration's surveillance efforts could be divulged for the first time. Nearly 40 lawsuits, consolidated into five groups, are pending before a San Francisco judge. The various plaintiffs, a mix of nonprofit civil liberties advocates and private attorneys, are seeking to prove that the Bush administration engaged in illegal massive surveillance of Americans' e-mails and phone calls after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and to show that major phone companies illegally aided the surveillance, including the disclosure of customers' call records....