I had written two skeptical articles on the issue of “isolated tribes” in the Amazon region.
In the first article, I pointed out that the idea that these people can and should remain isolated (by keeping out the governments and do gooders and developers) is wrongheaded, because that won’t stop the bad guys from moving in […]

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My summer reading this year kicked off with Cambodia’s Curse: the Modern History of a Troubled Land by former New York Times reporter Joel Brinkley. Brinkley won a Pulitzer in 1980 for his coverage (at the Louisville Courier Journal) of the fall of the Khmer Rouge.
The title Cambodia’s Curse bugs me. Though cultures resistant to […]

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If you live in the Philippines, the big news of the day is sorrow and anger that China has executed three of our OFW (overseas foreign workers) for carrying drugs into China.
The anger is partly because two of the “drug mules” were women with families, and many Filipinos who have family members overseas shudder at […]

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I can already smell the bong resin emanating from the radical marijuana legalization crowd that supports Ron Paul to the point of being cult-like, breathing down fire upon my comments section. You would have thought I punched the pope at Christmas mass after my last article on Ron Paul. I feel very strongly that Ron […]

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In my last essay, I argued that a lot of false assumptions have been made about the political shooting in Tucson, yet several attributing factors have been ignored, including the inability of the public and of public officials to recognize severe mental illness. 
An entertainment culture that glorifies and justifies deviant behavior and violent acts is […]

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Sometimes a story is so local it jumps up and bites you. Such is the case with the stash of potentially explosive materials found in an apartment building in the town where I live. Say hey for Delmar, New York. It’s a mighty nice place. Delmar is a suburb of Albany. The kind of […]

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Since I started blogging back in 2004, one the topics I’ve covered pretty extensively is the abuse and neglect of children.  I’ve covered topics where I thought children were exploited in our consumer culture, children were abused or neglected by their parents or stories in which parenting is supplanted […]

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Even Eric Holder and his crew have been unable to justify a reason to fight it. That’s why they are sitting on it, claiming that they are going to go slowly in order to mull it over. As near as many of us can tell, they are sitting on it until the law takes effect in the hopes of catching an Arizona police officer attempting to use it to commit a crime.

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Last time, after the health care ’summit’, he continued on with his own plans despite every good idea and point made by his opposition. This time, it was “get to the people and announce a border guard surge before McCain gets to the Senate floor.”

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Obama, in yet another speech last Friday, failed to apologize for not having been any better than his predecessors in taking action to protect the border, and blamed Congress, (who he had forced into a year long pre-occupation with health care) for failing to enact ‘comprehensive reform.’ He then made another ‘promise’ that if Congress continues to waste its time pandering to his agenda, “We will continue to see misguided efforts opening up around the country.”

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So…this guy is happy to be paid for not doing anything, and happy that his employer couldn’t ask him to do physical labor, and happy that no matter what’s going on in the shop, he’ll get his break on time. This really sounds like a great worker; someone I’d definitely want to have on my payroll. He’s sure living the American Dream.

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Bill Clinton attempted to connect the small and peaceful demonstrations of upper middle class Americans with the Oklahoma City bombings in a recent New York Times Editorial.
…we should never forget what drove the bombers …They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an […]

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In bumper sticker speak, I heart Vermont. I lived in the Green Mountain State for periods in the 1960’s and 70’s and still visit often. The border is fairly close to the part of upstate New York where I now live. Crossing it brings the eyeball impact of Vermont’s no-billboard policy. Scenery? Every rapture ever […]

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Those who travel by air in the future might soon face full body pat downs to check for bombs in the bosom and crotch, thanks to Umar the Panty bomber.
But the real problem is that “no using the rest room for the last two hours of flight”. Apparantly, Umar spent an hour in the restroom […]

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To those out there desperately trying to paste together scraps of enthusiasm by singing the poetic praises of VP Dick Cheney, please don’t expect the average conservative out in flyover country  to join your little Republican booster club.     Certainly, there is not much to disagree with in what the former VP says.  No doubt, we’re […]

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Every day we see some new concern in the western media, our media or some apex western meeting. Richard Holbrooke’s recent congressional hearing was quite pithy in this context. One comment from BBC’s anchor is still frozen in my memory, that some people argue that instead of AfPak policy it should be called the PakAf […]

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Upon hearing that Chris Simcox had decided to take on John McCain in the AZ 2010 Senate race, I’ll wager many a good conservatives thought, “oh. Cool!”    Nothing would be better than to see John McCain become as positionally irrelevant within the GOP as he actually is.  Wouldn’t it be sweet to see someone come […]

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Congressman Murtha again shows his ignorance of his own district when he offers to house Gitmo prisoners in his Congressional district in Pennsylavania.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top House Democrat who is a leading critic of the Iraq war says he would have no qualms about transferring Guantanamo detainees to a prison in his Pennsylvania district.
Suspected […]

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The “fake scientific study” of the day is the one that announced that four cups of coffee would make you see visions.
It got a lot of press, of course, with even the staid National Geographic reporting “Coffee may cause hallucinations”.
The UK press had a field day:
Three cups of brewed coffee a day ‘triples risk of […]

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I have an insight. The block party Insite supporters held yesterday afternoon was an attempt to embarrass Canada’s freshly re-elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Insite supporters — particularly executives and staff at the PHS Community Services Services Society which operates Insite — do not want Harper to shut down this space where junkies in Vancouver […]

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Dallas, TX police found almost half a million dollars worth of cocaine hidden in an undercover police car while cleaning the vehicle’s interior on Wednesday. The nearly fifty pounds of cocaine were found in hydraulically-controlled compartments.
Deputy Chief Julian Bernal, Commander of the narcotics division, found the 2004 Infiniti during a raid at a drug house […]

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Obama’s been in the news courting faith voters, talking to evangelical leaders.
McCain? He’s been visiting Colombia and Mexico. Ho hum. Yawn.
I was bemused when one political writer wondered if the hostage rescue in Colombia had been “timed” for his benefit. Tres estupido.  What if the rescue had gone wrong? But of course, the rescue merely […]

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With budget cuts by Governor Mitch Daniels, and Terrible news by a resent study on towns in the path of I-69, Oakland City Indiana seems to be headed for trouble.
A study conducted by The University Of Southern Indiana (USI) states “Investment in upgrading/expanding infrastructure (e.g., water/sewer facilities)
yields a greater return if it is made early-on, […]

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New Jersey art dealer, George Wieschenberg of Lambertville, was sentenced to six years of prison for being a marijuana “farmer.”
According to MSNBC, Wieschenberg, pleaded guilty to “operating a marijuana production facility,” in which he grew marijuana plants, said State Attorney General Anne Milgrim.
Back in October of 2007, New Jersey State Police officers saw large marijuana […]

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In Colombia, the narco “insurgent” group FARC is being decimated by a “carrot-stick” approach by the Colombian President Uribe.
After years of a “talk nice and let’s negotiate” President, where FARC used truces and safe zones to regroup and fight again rather than to negotiate, the present government is hitting hard, but offering amnesty to those […]

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(Photo courtesy of the OCCRP site)
Eastern European/Eurasian organized groups seem to have their hands in a wide variety of organized criminal activity. They are often mentioned when referring to anything from auction fraud to payment (credit/debit) card skimming and computer crimes.
eBay claims there are entire towns in Romania making a living via auction fraud on […]

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The war on terror has encouraged other countries to follow and kill known terrorists who found safe havens a couple miles across the border.
First someone dropped a missile on some AlQaeda bigshot in Pakistan, then the Turks sent troops to chase Kurdish separatists into Iraq. They too were terrorists who have killed and bombed […]

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How long have they known about and underestimated the toxic effects of Methadone?
In a February 12th 2008 article from the Baltimore Sun, it was revealed that SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration) withheld information on reported abuses of Suboxone.   It is reported that over 2 years ago, SAMHSA learned that people were misusing and […]

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(Cartoon by Suad Leija. Suad is the artist, however the political opinions are those of her husband. More cartoons can be seen on her new site, here.)
With the 2008 election in full swing, most of the candidates seem content to dodge the issue of border security.
Tied into another controversial issue, which is illegal immigration, discussing […]

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About every 2 weeks, somewhere in the US, a SWAT team raids the wrong home  
The Increasing Militarization of the America’s Police

“A Man’s Home is his Castle.”
–A proverbial expression that illustrates the principle of individual privacy, which is fundamental to the American system of government. In this regard, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution […]

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