August 14, 2009 journal, a coward policeman in New York State tasered a mother twice. As shown on television, a policeman arrested her after stopping her with 3 of her children in the car accusing her of talking on a cell phone and speeding but she denies doing either. She got out of her car because she wanted the policeman to show her his recording of her speeding. After Tasering her she was on the ground, he slung her out in a passenger lane. Needless to say she is suing him and I hope she wins a huge judgment in court for his job. All police should stop stopping traffic. They could get the tag number and write a letter. The people have a right to use the roads without being harassed or molested by police. Take away their Taser guns, their guns, their roadblocks, patrol cars and their authority. How horrifying is this experience, the children will never forget it being attacked like this and we simply do not need them on the highways. These are the first terrorist you see when you travel. We are a multiplied police state & more with massive abuse of power. I thought when we got rid of fear spreading B*us*h Ch*e*ne*y all fear would be gone. Another big bank failure the Colonial bank with 355 branches is on the verge of collapse. Dick the Terrible Cheney started both Gulf war's for both Bushes and it is the chief cause of the collapse of America by costing trillions of dollars and killing millions of people. We must realize the "conspiracy theory" is true about the attack on America by America for our Edomite Israeli masters to cleanse the Middle East of their Arab Moslem brothers. Yoo is being picketed at UCLA University for advising the Justice Department to torture. from-Washingtontimes.com written by Carrie Johnson. "Some public figures, if their judgment and ethics come under fire, retreat into solitude. Then there is John C. Yoo. The former Justice Department official, whose memos blessed the waterboarding of terrorism suspects and wiretapping of American citizens, has come out fighting, even as negative assessments of his government service pile up. Last month, a federal judge in California refused to dismiss a lawsuit that accuses Yoo of violating a detainee's constitutional rights. This month, the Justice Department's inspector general described Yoo's legal analysis of the Bush surveillance program as "insufficient" and sometimes inaccurate. Also expected in coming weeks is a department ethics report that sources have said could renounce Yoo's approval of harsh CIA interrogation practices and recommend that he and Jay S. Bybee, a former colleague, be referred to their state bar associations for discipline. While former colleagues have avoided attention in the face of such scrutiny, Yoo has been traveling across the country to give speeches and counter critics who dispute his bold view of the president's authority. Now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, he engages in polite but firm exchanges with legal scholars over conclusions in their academic work. This month, he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal defending his actions and labeling critics' arguments as "absurd" and "foolhardy" responses to "the media-stoked politics of recrimination." The uncompromising rhetoric can be hard to square with a soft-voiced man who easily made friends at Harvard University and Yale Law School, without regard for ideological affiliation. But the blaze of criticism that ignited late in the Bush administration appears to have pushed Yoo, 42, onto a far more assertive path, according to friends and lawyers who have followed his career. In many ways, Yoo, who declined to comment for this article, has become the face of what critics see as the Bush era's legal overreaching -- all tied to memos written from 2001 to 2003 spelling out his expansive views of interrogation, electronic surveillance and the deployment of soldiers on U.S. soil. They were ideas born early in his legal career, before stints as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Those positions, which even friends call extreme, endeared him to a Bush White House seeking to adopt a centralized approach to power. Six months into a new administration, Yoo is a man with little to lose. As a tenured law professor, he has held onto his job despite protesters who have picketed the Berkeley campus and petitioned school leaders for his ouster. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has rejected the idea of criminal investigations of Bush lawyers who developed counterterrorism policy. Probes announced by authorities in Spain and Germany could take years, and the five-year statute of limitations for allegations of attorney misconduct in Pennsylvania, where Yoo is licensed to practice law, has expired. That makes it unlikely the state bar will take up an ethics inquiry into his work at the Justice Department, which he left in 2003. He departed after then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, angry over Yoo's back-door conversations with Vice President Richard B. Cheney's office on national security issues, refused to recommend him for the top job at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Now, as Yoo navigates his various legal challenges, he and the Justice Department have once more parted ways. This month, government lawyers who had been representing Yoo since his departure from the department told a federal judge in San Francisco that "private counsel will be assuming representation of Mr. Yoo" in a case filed by Jose Padilla, a onetime domestic terrorism suspect who was held without criminal charge for more than five years. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White allowed Padilla and his mother to pursue the case, which argued that Yoo had violated Padilla's civil rights by authorizing the government's terrorist-detention policies. In a single sentence, the judge crystallized the ongoing public debate about Yoo, describing it as a struggle to balance the anti-terrorism effort with "using tactics of terror" to win. Yoo, who argued that he enjoys immunity from lawsuits because he was acting as a government official, will appeal the decision and is being represented by prominent Supreme Court advocate Miguel Estrada. Estrada will work at the government rate of $200 per hour, reimbursed by taxpayers because Yoo is being sued in connection with his government service. Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said in a statement that "as this case moves forward, the defendant deserves the opportunity to retain defense counsel that can make any and all arguments available on his behalf." Lawyers not involved in the case say the shift to private counsel spares new Justice Department leaders from having to defend Yoo's sweeping views of presidential power and his memos. It also liberates Yoo to assert that he was acting at the behest of Cheney, President George W. Bush, adviser David Addington and then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, an argument legal sources said he may make if the case progresses. Yoo has broken off ties with some former colleagues who criticized his work at Justice. But he does not shy away from public appearances. He and his wife Elsa, the daughter of former CNN newsman Peter Arnett, still socialize with friends on the West Coast. In addition to teaching, Yoo writes a regular legal-opinion column, dubbed "Closing Arguments," for his hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Editors were deluged with complaints after the arrangement became public. Jesse Choper, a Berkeley colleague of Yoo's, said he thinks "very highly" of his scholarship, even if they disagree on some issues. "This is not a person who goes around raging or screaming at people -- quite the opposite," Choper said. Just last week, Yoo once again drew attention after a video of Australian comedians infiltrating his classroom swept the Web. One comic was dressed in a black garment reminiscent of the garb worn by detainees photographed at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib. "How long can I be required to stand here till it counts as torture?" the man asked. Yoo awkwardly concluded the class, and gently told the comedians that he would give them a few minutes to disperse before he called security. Yoo's vocal justifications stand in contrast to the muted approach of former Justice Department colleagues also under scrutiny by ethics investigators. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in California, led the Office of Legal Counsel while Yoo worked there. Bybee has told students and colleagues that he has regrets about how the controversial memos have been viewed and how they were prepared. Steven G. Bradbury, who took over from Bybee but never won Senate confirmation, quietly joined the Dechert law firm in Washington as a partner last week. To his lasting regret, friends say, Yoo never got a chance to appear at his nomination hearing. Last year, though, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee summoned him for what became a hostile session on the origins of the interrogation strategies that critics assert are torture. As former vice presidential aide Addington slouched in his seat, glaring at lawmakers and offering dismissive replies, Yoo scanned a crowd filled with protesters and reporters. His dark eyes widened as he appeared to search for a friendly face. He did not find one." By Carrie Johnson. The Washington Post Company (Where is justice?) August 15, 2009 journal, banks abandon foreclosures leaving homeowners in despair. The dreadful evil banks foreclose on homes evicting families but when there is no buyer they abandon the property leaving all the problems and expenses to the original owner. Banks have enjoyed the demand for foreclosure sale properties which has diminished. August 16, 2009 journal, a quick trip to FolkFest Atlanta where sales were not as before. Some said their sales were only one-third of last year. The edge for folk art may be off a lot plus the recession makes the last day look like the first day of the show with full stock. August 17, 2009 journal, this bloodthirsty nation will not continue its path of destruction. The city of Chicago has 3 days off unpaid vacation not from generosity but from its own bankruptcy the same as every city in the United States is bankrupt. Falling revenues has already wiped out their cash & they are desperate to survive as any kind of government. The predator aircraft was shown again on 60 Minutes killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq from a Nevada Air Base thousands of miles away saying they never make a mistake. All we can see from the victims on the ground is the burying their innocent dead people. It has been said that the Bu*sh administration operated on 3 conditions, fear, fear & fear. Airline passenger had to give up her tube of toothpaste 2/3rds empty which is of course a plot to sell more toothpaste. What does anyone care about peoples rotting teeth anyway. O how much we could use those thousands of dentist in Mexico that have little business. Even eBay is said to be selling goods at half price compared to one-year ago. Chaotic conditions will dominate our immediate future like it did in Russia and all of the Soviet Union when they collapsed turning into lawlessness much like USA Iraq is today. Before you know it one of these bastards will be after you even if it's just for your stolen ID. They will all be collecting money you do not owe and getting away with it for sure. All ids will be stolen and used clandestinely to make a muck of one's life and one's credit. The pattern is already set in place and the city, county, state and federal government is a part of the pilfering of America. These rogues stop at nothing to feed their evil appetites. The bastard banks are not finished yet until they destroy America and what could be the good life. See the movie Sally Fields in the cotton farm with the oppressive banker that said ma'am this bank don't deal with women and certainly don't loan any money to them. We do have a mortgage on that farm your husband left and we have the right to foreclose on it and demand payment in full immediately should anything ever happen to him at all. Don't tell me that Dan Rather has not got his bailout yet to continue his journalism. Until America recognizes and believes that Dick Cheney was the architect of 9*1*1 in cooperation with the modern State of Israel and possibly Dubai, then the puzzle does not fit together. There will be a time when these facts for shouted from the rooftop but for us in America I predict it will be too late. We have been feeding at the trough for too long. Someone in Texas discovered a 200 year-old law requiring the Bible to be taught. Reader's Digest is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy organized in 1922 very successfully. 22 people arrested in the biggest heist of credit cards information including Office Max and other major corporations with millions of credit card numbers being compromised. There is really no real difference in the banks and the scammers both are sucking your blood. The only cure is to let the patient die and then start all over from ground zero. The president said today while touring the Grand Canyon that he and his family has seen deer, elk and buffalo while back in Washington it is all bull. Can he get by saying that? Texas Public schools are required to teach the Bible in public schools no matter about the separation of Church & State. Long live Texas to teach the Bible in their public schools. The stock market today dropped 175 points meaninglessly because it is prefixed to win. Is the president trying to put everybody on Medicare with a public option to opt out? If Medicare is right for older folks then why is it not right for everybody in America? Those people pay for Medicare about a hundred dollars per month and that is all it should cost. I have never been a fan of socialized medicine but we have had it for decades now. We have just not admitted to having it. Anything is better than what we now have with all the insurance companies determining life and death or the pharmaceuticals wicked industry. 28 year-old Albert Gonzalez of Miami Florida a Secret Service informant is charged with tapping into 150 million credit card accounts including a major credit card clearing house in New Jersey. 7-11 stores transactions were compromised and that is nearly everybody in America carrying a card. The industry cannot recover from such a break in its security. This may be the final meltdown of the credit card fraudulent banks in robbing the people. Just call it an inside job because we have become every bit as crooked as other countries. This fraud is facilitated with cooperation of agents in Russia being the biggest in history. The fallout from this compromise will be endless and devastating to credit-card holders.