Illinois Traffic Stop Of Star Trek Fans Raises Concerns About Drug Searches, Police Dogs, Bad Cops

Very disturbing story and video on how the cops abuse and harass citizens for no reason. Police State USA is definitely a reality that strikes with alarmingly frequency.

Last December, filmmaker Terrance Huff and his friend Jon Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a "Star Trek" convention in St. Louis. As they passed through a small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff's red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road, allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour, Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff's car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff's car by hand. Ultimately, he sent Huff and Seaton on their way with a warning. Earlier this month, Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop taken from Reichert's dashboard camera. No shots were fired in the incident. No one was beaten, arrested or even handcuffed. Reichert found no measurable amount of contraband in Huff's car. But Huff's 17-and-a-half minute video raises important questions about law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the drug war, profiling and why it's so difficult to take problematic cops out of the police force.

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The Huffington Post

Obama keeps pushing the bipartisan religion of interventionism

Michael Scheuer is deadly accurate - foreign interventionism is a bipartisan religion (or disease, whichever you prefer). Too often, I believe, Americans think about Washington’s interventionism only as the actual physical intervention of U.S. military forces abroad in places where no U.S. interest is at risk. That activity certainly is intervention, but President Obama’s despicable decision last week to have his administration leak intelligence claiming that Israel has concluded an agreement with the government of Azerbaijan to allow its use of Azeri airfields for an air strike on Iran is just as much an unwarranted intervention by the United States government. Readers of this blog will know that I carry no brief for Israel, that I believe it is a state that is irrelevant to U.S. national interests, and one whose U.S.-citizen supporters are disloyal to America and involved in activities that compromise U.S. security and corrupt the U.S. political system. That said, Israel — l...

How Thorough a Brainwashing

Saw this on Facebook: Left this comment: It's more thorough of a wash job than that. They don't just believe they are not brainwashed, the question has never occurred to them and as long as they keep reading TIME and watching MTV, it's *impossible* for the question to occur to them. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it. EDIT: And one more thing-- don't ever stop considering what questions it is currently impossible to occur to you . This is what I've been thinking about a lot lately and I'm worried just how large and numerous my own blindspots are. The only solution is to be as intellectually curious as possible. To learn voraciously. To read things that challenge us. To read things that are hard for us to understand and then try to understand them. To expose ourselves to ideas far removed from our present culture and place on the timeline. Read old books. Read foreign books. Turn off the TV. You have already absorbed its biases and blindspots. ...

How To Gain More Twitter Followers

Earlier today, I wrote : "My goal is to write a book before the end of March. My goal is to spend no more than a week from start to publication, spending as much time as I need in order to get it done during that week. My goal is to give it away to you for free here on HumbleLibertarian.com. What's a goal you have? Something you may have been putting off for years? Something you could accomplish in one month if you were determined? If it's near-term enough of a goal, and specific enough of a goal, and you share it in the comments below, feel free to tell me how I can help you and I'll do whatever I can. If it's a libertarian / news / politics-related goal, my manner of help would be easy to determine. I could promote it, introduce you to someone via email, (etc.). If it's something apolitical like quit smoking cigarettes, start exercising, learn guitar, start a business, gain more Twitter followers, learn another language, eat a paleo diet, or...

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