What Is the DEA Smoking?

The Drug Enforcement Administration is in an optimistic mood. A new DEA report insists that the antidrug campaigns Washington has undertaken with Colombia and Mexico in recent years have dramatically slowed the flow of cocaine into the United States. The DEA's principal piece of evidence is that average street prices for the drug have soared over the past twenty-one months from $96.61 per gram to $182.73, which suggests "that we are placing significant stress on the drug delivery system." There's just one problem with the DEA's proclamation of success. We've heard it all before. Many, many times before. For example, in November 2005, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy asserted that a 19 percent increase in cocaine prices since February indicated a growing retail shortage, thus validating Washington's multibillion dollar Plan Colombia, designed to stanch the torrent of drugs coming from the Andean region of South America. "These numbers confirm that the levels of interdiction, the levels of eradication, have reduced the availability of cocaine in the United States," White House drug czar John P. Walters boasted. "The policy is working." And what was the sky-high street price of cocaine that justified such optimism? $170 per gram. Adjusted for inflation, that price was actually higher than the latest price spike to just under $183. Yet clearly that earlier alleged supply-side victory in the drug war was short lived. According to the DEA's own statistics in the December 2008 report, cocaine prices had declined to a mere $96 per gram by January 2007....

FBI Agent Who Dated Actress is Charged With Illegally Accessing FBI Computer

FBI agent Mark Rossini, whose name surfaced in New York gossip columns for dating actress Linda Fiorentino, has been charged with illegally accessing an FBI computer for personal use. Rossini, who resigned Friday, was charged with five misdemeanor counts in a criminal Information filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington. In many instances, when a criminal Information is filed, the defendant ends up pleading guilty. Rossini had been based in Washington but later transferred to New York, where press reports had him dining with Fiorentino at Elaine’s, a well known uptown restaurant. Del Quentin Wilber of The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Linda Fiorentino has ties to Anthony Pellicano, the controversial Los Angeles private investigator, who was convicted in May of using illegal wiretaps and rogue cops to dig up info for famous clients. The Post said that Pellicano’s attorneys in a court filing in March 2007 referenced an FBI report that raised questions about a certain FBI agent’s credibility. The lawyers said the prosecution should have turned over the report during discovery. Rossini was the source of that document, the Post reported, attributing that to “one law enforcement official.”....

Mexican drug smugglers spray bullets, but U.S. officers dare not return fire

A team of Mexican drug smugglers unloaded $1 million worth of drugs across the U.S. border, spraying bullets at U.S. Border Patrol agents with automatic weapons, but the agents dared not return fire – as one official said they fear losing their jobs or ending up behind bars like agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. This time drug smugglers wore military clothing and fired "military type" automatic weapons at U.S. Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel in Tuscon, Ariz., on Dec. 1. The brazen smugglers backed a flatbed tow truck into an 18-foot border fence and unloaded two pickup trucks packed with marijuana into the U.S. as National Guard and U.S. predator surveillance cameras recorded their efforts, and Border Patrol agents were immediately dispatched to the scene. When the agents attempted to stop the pickup trucks, a Chevrolet Avalanche and a Ford F150, the smugglers began driving back toward Mexico. However, U.S. authorities deflated the truck tires before the smugglers could make it to the other side, the Laguna Journal reported. Just then, another vehicle was spotted in Mexico, and a sniper began firing an automatic weapon at the U.S. agents. But agents did not fire back. Many witnesses, including U.S. scientists working in Arizona, report seeing heavily armed illegal aliens crossing border fences in the area. When U.S. agents arrive on the scene, smugglers often pelt them with rocks, strike them with vehicles or fire weapons at them – and agents sometimes face penalties for firing back....

Washington DC Enacts Tough Gun-Control Measure

Nearly six months after the Supreme Court put an end to the District of Columbia’s decades-old ban on handgun possession, the City Council here passed a sweeping new ordinance on Tuesday to regulate gun ownership. The legislation would require all gun owners to receive five hours of safety training and to register their firearms every three years. In addition, they would have to undergo a criminal background check every six years. Councilman Phil Mendelson, who helped draft the bill and shepherd it through the Council, called it a “very significant piece of legislation that borrows best practices from other states.” Opponents said the legislation flew in the face of the Supreme Court ruling in June. “The D.C. Council continues to try to make it harder and harder for law-abiding citizens to access this freedom,” Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, told The Associated Press....

Court orders gun libel suit back to state

The federal appeals court in Atlanta has ordered a lawsuit claiming New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg libeled a Georgia sporting goods store by calling it 1 of several "rogue gun dealers" to be returned to the state court where it originated. Friday's decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the latest development in a 2-year legal battle that began when Bloomberg sued 15 firearms brokers in five states, including Georgia. The suit said they were selling weapons that ended up in the hands of New York criminals. Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, representing Adventure Outdoor Sports in Smyrna, Ga., argued before the appeals court in September that the suit should be returned to state Superior Court. Bloomberg's lawyers wanted the suit to be dismissed or remain in federal court, because it applies to whether the gun stores violated federal laws.

Clown strip searched at airport

A clown wearing colourful pantaloons, huge shoes and a flashing police helmet was strip searched by airport security guards. Dave Vaughan, 60, who was due to perform for sick children as PC Konk, also had his plastic handcuffs confiscated at Birmingham International Airport. Mr Vaughan was with a crowd of 100 disadvantaged youngsters about to board a charity flight around Britain when he set off a metal detector....

Satellites Spy on Washington from on High

Washington, D.C., home of the CIA, National Security Administration (NSA) and FBI, is a well-known haven for spies and surveillance. But new satellite pictures of the White House, Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial show these government agencies aren't the only ones watching and being watched. These latest images from Dulles, Va., satellite-imaging company, GeoEye, are among the first to be collected by the GeoEye 1, a satellite launched into polar orbit on September 6 that can "see" objects on Earth as small as 16 inches (0.41 meter) in size in black-and-white mode or 64.6 inches (1.64 meters) in color. Images from the GeoEye 1, which stands 20 feet (6.1 meters) high and weighs more than 4,300 pounds (1,950 kilograms), so impressed Google that the Internet search giant plans to add the satellite's high-resolution, digital color photos to Google Earth next month. View a slide show of images taken by GeoEye satellites.

Michigan City Bans “Being Annoying in Public”

Last Thursday, the Brighton (MI) City Council approved a local ordinance that tickets anyone caught annoying others in public “by word of mouth, sign or motions.” This is perhaps one of the most obvious infringements on free speech in this nation’s history. This ordinance obviously violates the free speech clause and also to a lesser extent the free association clause. Also the idea of “annoying speech” is so incredibly subjective that it can mean any speech, thus giving the executive (police) the complete and total fiat of determining what speech is acceptable for the community....

US police could get 'pain beam' weapons

The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects. The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain. Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a "repel response" - a strong urge to escape from the beam....They say this is to "reduce injury to suspects." Another holiday gift from the feds.

Tangled U.S. Objectives Bring Down Spy Firm

After a federal jury in New York swiftly convicted a major Afghan heroin trafficker and Taliban supporter named Haji Bashir Noorzai, the government promptly issued the usual celebratory news release thanking the men and women of the DEA and FBI for their "countless sacrifices" in making the case. Left out was any credit to the party most responsible for the government's victory: an unusual three-man private intelligence firm called Rosetta Research and Consulting. At the instigation of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Rosetta agents lured Noorzai to America and delivered him right into the feds' hands. He spent 11 days in an Embassy Suites Hotel in Manhattan in 2005, enjoying room service and considering himself a guest of the U.S. government -- until he was arrested. He was imprisoned for three years awaiting his trial, which concluded in September. He faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced in January. Noorzai's capture should have been Rosetta's finest hour. Instead, it led to the company's downfall. A close examination of the case reveals how a spy firm trafficking in sensitive intelligence for profit got sandwiched between conflicting government goals: Noorzai, one of the company's best sources, was considered an asset by the intelligence side of the government, even as the law enforcement side considered him a criminal. The tale reveals some of the rivalries, ugly choices and ironies that permeate this shadowy world. The company that thought it might get a $2 million reward was dragged into an internal Justice Department investigation. The FBI employees who helped the firm ended up in trouble with their own agency....

Mexico Halts Meat Purchases From 30 U.S. Plants, Including Top Processors

Mexico suspended meat imports from 30 processing plants in 14 U.S. states, including some of the nation's largest, on Wednesday and Friday, according to a list posted on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site. The action pushed down beef and pork futures in trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday. USDA spokeswoman Amanda Eamich said in an e-mail that Mexico had discussions over the last five business days with the agency regarding concerns about the general condition of meat products, sanitation issues and "possible pathogen findings." "Occasional differences in shipments in trade relationships do occur and allow for the option of notifying specific plants of suspension of those shipments," she said. Among the plants listed on the site are the Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., the world's largest pork slaughterhouse. Another Smithfield plant in Plant City, Fla., that processes pork, beef and poultry is on the list, along with three plants operated by subsidiary John Morrell & Co., two in South Dakota and one in Iowa, a Nebraska pork plant run by subsidiary Farmland Foods and a Pennsylvania beef plant run by its Moyer Packing unit. Six operations run by Tyson Foods in Iowa, Texas and Nebraska also are on the list. Tyson spokesman Archie Schaffer III said the company had no prior warning from Mexico about the ban and only learned of it when shipments were turned aside at the border Wednesday. The ban could greatly affect the company, as high feed prices already have strained its profits. Mexico represented 23 percent of its $3.8 billion of international sales in 2008, according to company statistics. "No information or explanation was given," Schaffer said. "We're going to be working beginning Monday" to restore trade. Attempts to reach representatives at Smithfield and Swift were unsuccessful. According to published reports, the suspensions may be in retaliation for the United States putting a country-of-origin labeling law into effect on Oct. 1 in response to concerns about the safety of imports. Last week, Mexico joined Canada in opposing the law, which involves fresh beef and pork, in a complaint to the World Trade Organization. Canada filed its complaint Dec. 1, saying it was concerned the U.S. rules were discriminating against Canadian agricultural exporters. The country-of-origin labeling law mandates the separation of foreign cattle and pigs in U.S. feedlots and packing plants. Foreign animals also are required to have more documentation about where they come from and, in the case of cattle, must have tags that indicate they are free of mad cow disease. Canadian farm groups say a growing number of meat plants in the United States are refusing to accept Canadian cattle and hogs for processing since the law went into effect.

Snowzilla Is Back!

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Snowzilla the giant snowman rose from the dead Tuesday morning after some holiday pranksters thumbed their noses at city orders and rebuilt him overnight. When news of the controversial and world-famous Anchorage snowman's demise exploded on the Internet this week, hundreds of Alaska and Lower 48 readers had two words for the city of Anchorage and anyone else who criticized the crowd-pleasing giant: "Bah humbug." And before dawn Tuesday, in downtown Anchorage, someone erected a small, misshapen snowman at the entrance to Anchorage City Hall: A crude mini Snowzilla brandishing a protest sign that read "Snowmen of the world unite!" Several weeks ago, city code enforcers -- acting when this year's giant snowman was half-complete -- declared Snowzilla a nuisance and a safety hazard. They banned homeowner Billy Powers from building an "extraordinarily large snowman." The city posted its stop-work order at the base of the snowman and on Powers' front door....

E.P.A.’s Doctor No

... So there we have it. One original initiative in eight years, saved at the bell. That’s a poor showing, and the Democrats are hardly alone in hoping for better under an Obama administration. Last week, two prominent moderate Republicans — William K. Reilly, who ran the E.P.A. under President George H.W. Bush, and William D. Ruckelshaus, who served as administrator under both Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — sent a little-noticed but eloquent letter to President-elect Barack Obama. The gist of the letter was that the E.P.A. could be an enormously positive force in the fight against climate change and oil dependency. All it needed was someone who believed in its mission and was prepared to use the laws already on the books. Granting California its waiver, carrying out the Supreme Court decision, regulating emissions from vehicles and power plants — all this and more, they wrote, could be accomplished with the statutory tools at hand. This exhortation from two veterans of the environmental wars was designed to encourage not only Mr. Obama, but also Lisa Jackson, the woman he has chosen to run the agency. It was also, however, an arrow aimed at the ideologues who have been running the agency for the last half-dozen years — and a lament for how little they have done with the weapons Congress gave them....

My Kind of Santa

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A group of Santa impersonators are on the naughty list of Arizona law enforcement officials. A YouTube video posted Monday shows four people dressed as Kris Kringle, white beards and red hats included, covering three speed and red light enforcement cameras in Tempe. Two are covered with boxes - one decorated with Christmas wrap - and the third is blocked with what appears to be a red sheet. The Jackson 5's ``Santa Claus is coming to town'' plays during the more than two-minute video. At the end is a message that reads: ``Ho Ho Ho! Death to the surveillance state! Free movement for all people!'' The group that posted the video also wrote ``lumps of coal to all of those who make it their business to watch and control.''

'Green' Jobs Compete for Stimulus Aid

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In one of the first internal struggles of the incoming Obama administration, environmentalists and smart-growth advocates are trying to shift the priorities of the economic stimulus plan that will be introduced in Congress next month away from allocating tens of billions of dollars to highways, bridges and other traditional infrastructure spending to more projects that create "green-collar" jobs. The debate has centered on two competing principles in the evolving plan: the desire to spend money on what President-elect Barack Obama calls "shovel-ready projects," such as highway and bridge construction, vs. spending on more environmentally conscious projects, such as grids for wind and solar power. Lawmakers opposed to the emerging-technology projects accuse their colleagues of using the financial crisis to push through pricey policy proposals that they say would do little to boost the economy in the immediate future. The largest beneficiary of the shovel-ready construction projects would be labor unions....

In Reversal, Court Allows a Bush Plan on Pollution

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A federal appeals court in Washington reversed itself on Tuesday and temporarily reinstated a Bush administration plan to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants. In July, the court struck down the rule, saying the Environmental Protection Agency had exceeded its authority in devising a new emissions-trading system to reduce that pollution, and must rewrite the rule to fix its “fundamental flaws.” Environmentalists criticized the decision as a major setback for clean air. In Tuesday’s decision, the court said that having a flawed rule temporarily in place was better than having no rule at all. The agency must still revise the rule but has no deadline for doing so. The regulation, known as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, had been the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s re-engineering of the Clean Air Act. It set significant targets to reduce pollution around the power plants and in the downwind states whose air quality was affected by the emissions....

Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’

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Award winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer, who was reportedly fired by former Vice President Al Gore in 1993 for failing to adhere to Gore’s scientific views, has now declared man-made global warming fears “mistaken.” “I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer, who has published over 200 scientific papers, told EPW on December 22, 2008. Happer made his remarks while requesting to join the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environment and Public Works Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK) of over 650 (and growing) dissenting international scientists disputing anthropogenic climate fears. [Note: Joining Happer as new additions to the Senate report, are at least 10 more scientists, including meteorologists from Germany, Netherlands and CNN, as well as a professors from MIT and University of Arizona. See below for full quotes and bios of the new skeptical scientists added to the groundbreaking report, which includes many current and former UN IPCC scientists.] “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly,” Happer said this week. Happer is a Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences....

Howls of protest greet Mexican wolf reintroduction

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On a cold, wind-whipped November morning, about 90 minutes south of Albuquerque, N.M., a line of people faces off against a pack of wolves. They clutch poles, nets, and lassos, props not necessarily meant for use, but to make them look bigger. A US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) official tells them not to worry, there’s little danger. But if a wolf tries to break the line, don’t go sticking out a limb. Most of these wolves, an endangered Southwestern subspecies, were born and bred in captivity. They’re the fruit of a 25-year-old plan by the FWS to reestablish the Mexican wolf in the wild. The captive wolves live between two hills on the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, their enclosures largely isolated from human sights, sounds, and smells as a rewilding exercise. They can’t be habituated to a human presence; without sufficient fear of people, they won’t last long in the wild. Indeed, only the most fearful will be released at all. The Southwestern wolf-reintroduction program has been less successful than reintroduction programs in the northern Rockies. Different socioeconomic realities and a different landscape have complicated the Mexican wolf’s comeback. Some ranchers near the recovery area, a 6,745-square-mile swath straddling the New Mexico-Arizona border, say wolves have no place there. Conservationists counter that the recovery area, 95 percent national forest, is public land and should be wild, predators included....

Conservationists Request Feds Replace Photo of Wolf

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Sixteen conservation and animal welfare organizations today asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to replace the photograph of the “poster wolf” of the Mexican gray wolf program – prominently displayed on the federal agency’s website and in a oversized blowup poster at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters – because the wolf was trapped and inadvertently killed in 2005. The wolf was one of at least 2,911 gray wolves killed as a result of Fish and Wildlife Service actions since 1996, most in the northern Rocky Mountains and upper Midwest, but also including 29 highly imperiled Mexican gray wolves in the Southwest. The killings in the northern Rockies have rendered wolves in Yellowstone National Park almost entirely genetically isolated, threatening their viability and preventing the northern Rockies wolves’ recovery. There are now only about 50 Mexican wolves in the wild – a population that scientists say is already undergoing debilitating inbreeding depression....

Election alters wilderness fight outlook

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Some people are wondering how a change in New Mexico's congressional delegation will impact a proposal for designating thousands of acres in Doña Ana County as wilderness. The proposal for an official federal wilderness designation, initially put forward in late 2005, stalled after it lost support from outgoing U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and was opposed by outgoing U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., who backed a different land-use plan favored by ranchers. But Domenici is retiring, and Pearce unsuccessfully sought election this year to Domenici's Senate seat. Replacing them are Sen.-elect Tom Udall, now a congressman from northern New Mexico, and Rep.-elect Harry Teague, both Democrats. Teague, in a phone interview two weeks ago, said he's already spoken to some constituents about the wilderness proposal, but is still gathering information. He said he doesn't have a stance yet. "I don't really have everything I need to have about that," Teague said. Marissa Padilla, a spokeswoman for Udall, said the senator-elect will invite and listen to all of the various parties to build consensus on the wilderness. Udall looks forward to working with Bingaman, Teague and the members of the new delegation to take steps toward the introduction of legislation, she said. Jude McCartin, spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that, in January, the senator will begin talks with Doña Ana County residents and the new delegation "with the intention of developing wilderness legislation."....