Remember that we extensively discussed the idiotic and immoral raid on baby Bou Bou’s house in search of someone who wasn’t there?  The horrible and inept “criminal justice system” didn’t even hold the people who perpetrated that evil act accountable for it.  A grand jury couldn’t even convince themselves that they should have continued legal action against the police, and the raid ended up crippling the poor child and causing multiple surgeries.

The police state in America is so screwed up that it can’t even learn from such a disaster as that.  “Officer safety” must return home at the end of his shift, and the war on drugs must go on.  True to form for the police state, I missed that yet another flash bang was thrown at a baby in Indiana after the raid on baby Bou Bou.  This time, at least the court had doubts and threw out the evidence collected in the raid.  Fortunately, no one was harmed.

The Evansville (IN) Police Department has seen a drug bust go up in a cloud of flashbang smoke. A search warrant for drugs and weapons, based on an informant’s tip, was executed perfectly… if you’re the sort of person who believes it takes a dozen heavily-armed officers, a Lenco Bearcat, and two flashbangs to grab a suspect no one felt like arresting when he was outside alone taking out his trash. (via FourthAmendment.com)

The state appeals court decision [PDF] hinges on the deployment of a flashbang grenade into a room containing a toddler. Fortunately, in this case, the toddler was only frightened, rather than severely burned. But it was this tossed flashbang that ultimately undoes the PD’s case. The evidence is suppressed and the conviction reversed.

Scattered throughout the opinion are some amazing depictions of the PD’s SWAT team at work — and how those officers seem to believe the violence of their entries during warrant service are somehow just the new normal.

Things like the following paragraph. First: some background. In some cases, it’s (theoretically) more difficult for law enforcement to obtain no-knock warrants. Facts need to be asserted that show that warning the occupants of a residence in any way would most likely result in the destruction of evidence and/or an armed response. Some judges are more willing than others to hand these out, but either way, the standard warrant boilerplate can’t be used.

So, here’s the difference between a “knock and announce” warrant and a no-knock warrant, as deployed by the Evansville PD.

The SWAT team rode in a Lenco Bearcat that followed a patrol vehicle to the residence. At least a dozen officers were involved. Upon arrival and prior to entry, three officers and a police vehicle approached the rear of the residence and at least nine officers, most armed with assault weapons, approached the front of the residence. At 10:30 a.m., the police knocked on the residence and one of the officers announced, “Police – Search Warrant – Police – Search Warrant,” and another officer announced over a loudspeaker “Search Warrant. 314 Illinois.” State’s Exhibit 1 at 3:55-4:00. One second later, the SWAT team knocked down the door with a battering ram.

ONE SECOND. Technically, still a knock-and-announce warrant, even though the residents had been given no chance to respond.

Within the next couple of seconds, a flashbang grenade was tossed into the front room, which contained a playpen and a baby’s car seat. The toddler was in the playpen.

After the flash bang grenade was deployed, Detective Gray entered the residence and picked up a nine-month old baby crying on top of blankets in a playpen just inside and “very close to the door.” Id. at 332. The room also contained a baby’s car seat and a toddler’s activity center in the line of sight of the front door. One of the officers moved the car seat with his foot to proceed further into the residence.

The officer who tossed the flashbang said he could see more than what was captured by his helmet cam, but still admitted he could not see everything in the room into which he tossed the grenade. This grenade was thrown within two seconds of the officers’ announcement that they had a warrant and roughly one second after the door was breached.

Officer Taylor testified that his perception of things involved a much wider view than what the camera could see. At a time stamp of 4:01 on the video, a member of the SWAT team rammed the door open several inches with a battering ram. From an angle to the right, Officer Taylor tossed the flash bang into the house at 4:02, and it detonated at 4:04. The video at 4:02 shows only a portion of the right rear of the couch and the wood floor on which it sat. The video reveals that about five minutes after the initial entry someone stated: “Make sure you get a picture . . . are you taking a picture of that?” State’s Exhibit 1 at 8:50-8:55. This appears to be a reference to a charred stain on the floor. The person then stated: “Because the baby was in this room, but I put it right there for a reason.” Id. at 8:55-9:00.

The lower court found these tactics unreasonable on the whole and granted suppression of the evidence obtained during the search. The state argued that suppression wasn’t the proper remedy and anything resulting from the “unreasonable” use of a flashbang grenade in a toddler’s room was something to be addressed in a civil lawsuit.

The appeals court disagrees, finding nothing justifiable about the SWAT team’s violent entry into the home.

The video shows almost no time lapse between when the door was battered in and the tossing of the flash bang. The door was barely opened when the flash bang was immediately tossed into the room, and the angle at which Officer Taylor was standing to the door did not allow him an opportunity to see what was inside the room. Indeed, Officer Taylor acknowledged that he could not see portions of the room in which the flash bang was placed. Specifically, he testified that he could see “from the couch over to the left, I can’t see the corner, the left corner inside the room and I can’t see the hallway in front of it, that’s why the flash bang goes in the threshold.”

That’s the flashbang, delivered two seconds after the police announced their presence. This is only part of it. The attempt to salvage the fruits of the search with a claim that the house potentially contained dangerous criminals also receives no judicial sympathy. The state makes assertions, but cannot back them up.

The State does not point us to any other evidence indicating the criminal history of Watkins or the other occupants of the house. The record contains no evidence that law enforcement could not have safely presented the person matching Watkins’s description with the search warrant during the time that he was outside the house and before he re-entered it.

The court basically gets it right in terms of the correct way to do this kind of police work.  Observe the residence, proceed with entry when no one is at home, and then present an arrest warrant to the perpetrator when he returns.

Or better yet, we could give up this ridiculous war on drugs.  Either way, it will never be necessary to throw grenades into homes towards babies for any reason under the sun, unless you’re immoral and a coward.  As for the objection that they didn’t know a baby was there (if that is indeed the objection), that is no excuse.  They should have done the rudimentary investigative work to find out.  That’s what detectives are for.

The smart people are supposed to work as detectives.  Call them first.  They can think about smarter ways of doing this sort of thing.  Finally, rather than just throw out evidence, the court should have imprisoned the officers who did this and the judge who approved it for violation of the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the constitution.  They deserve to be in the state penitentiary with the general prison population.

The constitution is a covenant under which stipulations we are all supposed to live.  Failure to do so means that the covenant has been broken, and breakage of the covenant means that punishments are supposed to ensue.

George posts four videos for Monday.  Go watch them all.  I’ll only embed the first one, but in it George bets everything that if Steve Feinberg makes his way into the Trump administration, the entire investigation of the CIA, DynCorp and Clinton Foundation of war-making, oil plays, and drug and human trafficking will come to an end.  Of course, this would be a sad state of affairs, and God would punish our country for it.  Not just the leaders, but the country … corporately.  All of us.

Wikileaks:

NOTE: No present Wikileaks staff, including our editor, have medical, psychological or drug conditions which could lead to sudden death.

For the record, neither do I.

Casper Star Tribune:

“We need to do something about people who are going to attack us getting weapons to do it,” said co-sponsor Sen. James Anderson, R-Casper.

Anderson said he heard a presentation on the issue at a legislative committee meeting last year and asked for a bill to be drafted.

Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that banning gun sales to people on the federal no-fly watch list would be at least somewhat effective at preventing terrorism, according to a June poll by Gallup.

Senate File 75 would add people on the FBI’s Terror Screening Database — which includes the “no-fly list” — to the list of people who are not eligible to possess guns in Wyoming.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate have unsuccessfully pushed several times to pass federal legislation barring people on the terror watch list from purchasing firearms. The efforts, which were repeatedly defeated, were intended to pressure Republican senators who oppose any form of gun control.

But if the measure placed conservatives in a difficult political position, it included a further wrinkle.

Because there is little judicial oversight of the various terror watch lists included in the FBI database, several liberal and civil liberties groups — who are already often opposed to the lists — were concerned about taking away the constitutional right to bear arms from American citizens without due process.

Anderson indicated he was ambivalent about that issue.

“I don’t happen to believe that the military and the police state would make those many mistakes,” Anderson said of who ends up on the terror watch list.

So somebody in Wyoming should ask Anderson why there are “terrorists” here to begin with?  What kind of open border policy does he support that lends itself to having terrorists come into America unimpeded?

And that could lead to the next point, which is that the “watch list” is comprised no only of cross border terrorists who should be deported but haven’t been under the Obama administration, but America patriots as well who happen to believe that the second amendment is the final remedy against a tyrannical state.  Or in other words, peaceable American citizens who haven’t been tried in any court or found guilty of any crime whatsoever.

He should be forced to admit that in front of people, and then to admit that he is a gun controlling communist.  Do I have good readers in Wyoming who can press this issue with Anderson?  It looks like y’all have your fair share of trash to take out just like the rest of us do.

Law Newz:

The GOP has just risen to a whole new level of crazy. Last week, it introduced the Duncan-Carter Hearing Protection Act of 2017, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) and Rep. John Carter (R-TX). The bill removes gun silencers from the scope of the National Firearms Act of 1934, and refunds the $200 transfer tax to applicants who purchased them after October 22, 2015.

Yes, we’re talking about gun silencers, or “suppressors” as they are euphemistically known in the industry. You know – those things that assassins snap on the ends of their pistols in action movies to look all slick and cold-blooded. Apparently, the logic is that the world would be a much safer place if silencers were more readily available to the average consumer. Sure.

[ … ]

The people who should be most outraged by the Hearing Protection Act aren’t gun-hating liberals who knee-jerk at any mention of firearms. They are conservatives and libertarians who value their own credibility in the nationwide debate over Second Amendment rights. It is the responsibility of supporters of Heller to call bullshit on legislation that is nothing more than a marketing plan dressed up as “hearing protection.” Gun owners of integrity have an obligation to remind Congress that earplugs and earmuffs are readily available, and that claims of the necessity of silencers are as stupid as any that big tobacco should manufacture self-lighting cigarettes to prevent kids from burning themselves with lighters.

So I guess suppressors can give you cancer and cause you to become professional assassins.  Since suppressors actually do no good protecting your hearing from noise, I guess there must be another reason for them.  I’m sure they don’t allow hunters to be aware of their surroundings, like whether they’re near other hunters when they shoot.  I’m sure all of those ear muffs don’t interfere with your cheek weld.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when people who know absolutely nothing about guns try to make policy and law about guns.  They have nothing to which they can turn except shoot-’em-up movies and assassins.  And suppressors are the same thing as tobacco and can give you cancer.

I don’t think there is any question that the voters put Donald Trump in office, at least in the main, because they’re sick and tired of seeing their jobs go to Hispanics and Latinos, all the while observing the cash-based society they live in where they don’t do business via official channels where they would be taxed.  And they’re tired of this cashless society since they have to endure the taxation to prop up medical care, SNAP, welfare and other support for cross-border workers.  They’re tired of paying their share when others don’t.

Paul Ryan doesn’t care about you or your views.

Congressional Republicans are working with the Trump transition team on a solution for immigrants brought illegally to this country as kids, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday.

Hundreds of thousands of these immigrants gained temporary protections and work permits from President Obama. While campaigning for president, Donald Trump promised to undo those protections, putting the immigrants at risk of deportation, although he said last month he hoped to “work something out” to help them.

Ryan didn’t detail what Congress and Mr. Trump would do about the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. But when questioned on a CNN town hall by a woman who identified herself as a DACA recipient with a young daughter, Ryan told her he did not want to see her deported.

“I can see you love your daughter, you are a nice person who has a great future ahead of you, and I hope your future is here,” Ryan said.

“What we have to do is find a way to make sure that you can get right with the law, and we’ve got to do this in a good way so that the rug doesn’t get pulled out from under you and your family gets separated.”

Host Jake Tapper pointed out that Mr. Trump, during the campaign, promised a “deportation force” to round up the more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. Ryan dismissed that idea.

“I’m here to tell you in Congress, it’s not happening.”

It sure would be nice if we engaged in the fabrication of machine guns in violation of the NFA, and then had Paul Ryan on our side who wanted to help us “get right” with the law.

But we haven’t yet made our voices heard in such a way that Paul hears them.  Mark my words now though, he is compromised.  I’ll guarantee it, I would bet every penny I’m worth on it.  He is involved in the deep state, and someone has pictures of him.  Mark my words.  It’ll eventually be found out.

And as for what you really need to know about Ryan, you have already heard it.  Paul Ryan advocates universal background checks.  There.  That’s all you ever need to now about him.  He is a communist.  Case closed.

George Webb Sweigert, from Portland, Oregon, has an amazing video series that I’ve linked before and will continue to link.  I won’t embed every video since the last time I posted, but I will embed two, and in these two videos George outlines a number of bad actors in the deep state, including the Council on Foreign Relations, Steve Feinberg and DynCorp, David Petraeus, The Clinton Foundation, and a number of Senators who will be found to be involved in this for various reasons, including oil plays.  All of these operations involved disinformation, lies, propaganda, murder for hire, toppling of sovereign nations, and the trafficking of oil, arms and children. Also, at The Sullen Bell, Ed Jewett has a good collection of Webb PowerPoint slides and also links to a number of source documents George uses.

Recall precisely one month ago when I said this?

First, trot out some CIA shills to say that Russia was meddling in the affairs of America.  Unnamed people, saying things using unnamed sources, of course.  Next, claim that any porn or CP found on computers is a Russian plant.  Next, quickly and silently pass the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act.  Next, trot out Senator John McCain to say that he cannot believe that Trump doesn’t believe all of this.

Today, we learned this.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate committee hearing that he wouldn’t be surprised if Russian hackers put child pornography on US computers.

The only step I missed was the one on the ridiculous claims about Trump in Prague.  That way, the intel community can say, “See, even you’ve been affected by that horrible Vlad dude who did nefarious things to your reputation.  They did it to us too!”

They’re so damned predictable they don’t even make this difficult for me.

This is rich.

When Kai Kloepfer points his .40 caliber handgun, it fires like any other weapon. But when someone else gives it a try, it doesn’t work. It’s the first firearm with same built-in security as many smartphones.

If the gun is picked up by an authorized user, a sensor recognizes the fingerprint and it will fire.

Guns that only work for their owners used to be the stuff of movies, like James Bond’s gun in “Skyfall,” but Kloepfer thinks he has the technology to make them a reality, reports CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil.

“I think this could be huge. I think it could really be the future of firearms,” Kloepfer said.

He’s the founder of BioFire, a start-up still headquartered in his parent’s house in Boulder, Colorado. Now a freshman at MIT, Kloepfer started work on his gun as part of a science project when he was 15 years old.

“There’d be days when I’d sit down … I’d look up 14 hours later. I hadn’t moved from the spot. I hadn’t thought about anything else,” Kloepfer said.

He realized he couldn’t stop mass shootings, but he thought he could still save lives.

After all, in one year alone, nearly 600 people died in firearm accidents. There were thousands more suicides, many committed with guns that do not belong to the victim.

“Why did it take four and a half years to put a fingerprint reader on the side of a gun?” Dokoupil asked him.

“Well, it’s not as simple of a process as you might imagine,” Kloepfer said. “It’s also not something anybody has ever done before.”

Kloepfer’s weapon doesn’t only lock like a smart phone – it charges like one.

The invention has won him some deep-pocketed allies.

“Kai is the Mark Zuckerberg of guns,” Ron Conway said.

Conway was an early investor in Google and Facebook, and now he’s a putting his money behind Kloepfer’s smart gun.

“What Kai has done is used all of the latest technology available us to innovate a truly authenticated gun. You couldn’t do this five years ago,” Conway said.

But a push for similar guns misfired memorably in the late 1990s. A Colt prototype failed in a major demonstration, and Smith & Wesson dropped its smart gun program after resulting boycotts nearly bankrupted the company.

“What has changed from then until now to make it possible to make a smart gun like the one you’re working on?” Dokoupil asked.

“I would argue pretty much everything,” Kloepfer said.

Well, almost everything.

“Good intentions don’t necessarily make good inventions,” said Stephen Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. They’re the main trade group for companies that make and sell guns.

Sanetti expressed concern about the reliability of any firearm that depends on battery power.

“The firearm has to work. And a firearm is not the same as a cell phone,” Sanetti said. “The consequences of a cell phone not working are inconvenience. The consequences of a firearm not working could be someone’s life.”

Kloepfer said his gun is “relatively reliable.”

How many of you want a gun, a more expensive gun I might add, that is “relatively reliable?”

So young engineer (I’m so sorry, I’m an engineer and I hate that you’re getting ready to throw your career away on something like this, but apparently there is no one around who can counsel you any better).  Here is what you need to do.

… let’s talk yet again about smart gun technology.  I am a registered professional engineer, and I spend all day analyzing things and performing calculations.  Let’s not speak in broad generalities and murky platitudes (such as “good enough”).  That doesn’t work with me.  By education, training and experience, I reject such things out of hand.  Perform a fault tree analysis of smart guns.  Use highly respected guidance like the NRC fault tree handbook.

Assess the reliability of one of my semi-automatic handguns as the first state point, and then add smart gun technology to it, and assess it again.  Compare the state points.  Then do that again with a revolver.  Be honest.  Assign a failure probability of greater than zero (0) to the smart technology, because you know that each additional electronic and mechanical component has a failure probability of greater than zero.

Get a PE to seal the work to demonstrate thorough and independent review.  If you can prove that so-called “smart guns” are as reliable as my guns, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat, eat it, and post video for everyone to see.  If you lose, you buy me the gun of my choice.  No one will take the challenge because you will lose that challenge.  I’ll win.  Case closed.  End of discussion.

Unless you can design a gun that has a delta of precisely zero (0) greater failure probability, is as light, aesthetically pleasing, no more weighty or roomy, and just a cheap as classic guns, there is no market for your toy.

Sorry.  And actually, there wouldn’t be any market anyway even if it met all of those stipulations because the government or a perpetrator (perhaps I’m being redundant) might be able to use the electronic features to turn the gun off when they wanted to.

But I don’t want to be too negative on this, because I want to see companies go bankrupt funding the research.  So carry on.

George begins to tie the bow on the present for the incoming government, which may or may not be in a position or have the moral courage to deal with the problem.  George also names names, including sitting Senators.  Listen carefully.

An interesting point comes up in the video that will make you think a bit.  George says that in his opinion, a DynCorps person will be at the bottom of the pile of bodies in every mass shooting in America you can remember, at least the recent ones.

Think about that for a moment.  And watch his video for the beginning stages of wrapping this all up.