FBI Director upset they can't break into your phone as easily

Perhaps if you (the government), hadn't spent all your credibility to snoop on people who are not suspected of a crime. Also, trying to play the terror card and the child card doesn't fool anyone anymore. [Link]

Apple said last week that it would no longer be technically feasible to unlock encrypted iPhones and iPads for law enforcement because the devices would no longer allow user passcodes to be bypassed. The move comes as tech companies struggle to manage public concerns in the aftermath of last year's leak of classified National Security Agency documents about government access to private user data.

On a privacy site for its new mobile operating system, iOS 8, Apple outlined new features and tips for users on how to manage their privacy. It also included an explanation of how Apple will respond to government information requests in the future.

"Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data," the company said. "So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."

Comey said that while he understood the need for privacy, government access to mobile devices may be needed in extreme circumstances, such as in the event of a terror attack.

"I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the content of anyone's closet or their smart phone," he said. "The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened -- even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order -- to me does not make any sense."

Comey said FBI officials have had conversations with both Apple and Google about the marketing of their devices.

"Google is marketing their Android the same way: Buy our phone and law-enforcement, even with legal process, can never get access to it," he said.

"There will come a day -- well it comes every day in this business -- when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain access to a kidnapper's or a terrorist or a criminal's device. I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country before that day comes. I'd hate to have people look at me and say, 'Well how come you can't save this kid,' 'how come you can't do this thing.'"

The director further expressed concern that public outcry over privacy in the wake of the NSA scandal may lead to unforeseen consequences.

"I get that the post-Snowden world has started an understandable pendulum swing," he said. "What I'm worried about is, this is an indication to us as a country and as a people that, boy, maybe that pendulum swung too far."

No, no it hasn't.

They really do not like this. Chicago Chief of Detectives claims the iPhone will now be the choice for pedophiles. [Link]

Now, the chief of detectives for Chicago's police department has issued an alarming statement on the effects of Apple's heightened encryption.

Speaking to the Washington Post, John J. Escalante said, "Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile. The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone."

Double Secret No-Fly List

Person put mistakenly on no-fly list removed, but still on secret list of no admittance. [Link]

However -- and here's where it gets really sketchy -- the government started putting her back into the terrorist screening database (TSDB). She was added back in 2007... and then removed three months later, for no clear reason. But then, in 2009 she was added back to the TSDB "pursuant to a secret exception to the reasonable suspicion standard." Let's repeat that. In order to be put into the TSDB, the government is required to show a "reasonable suspicion" that the person is a terrorist. However, what this court ruling has revealed is that there is an unexplained secretexception that allows people to be placed on the terrorist screening database even if there's no reasonable suspicion, and the government used that secret exception to put Ibrahim back on the list. 

Later in the ruling it notes that the terrorist screening center knows Ibrahim is not a terrorist threat. This line was revealed back in February:

The TSC has determined that Dr. Ibrahim does not currently meet the reasonable suspicion standard for inclusion in the TSDB.

However, the next two sentences were redacted until now:

She, however, remains in the TSDB pursuant to a classified and secret exception to the reasonable suspicion standard. Again, both the reasonable suspicion standard and the secret exception are self-imposed processes and procedures within the Executive Branch.

The ruling also makes it clear that Ibrahim has not been on the actual no fly list (even if she is on other lists) since 2005, and that she should be told this (and, indeed, to comply with the law, the government has now told her solely that she's not on the "no fly" list and hasn't been since 2005). It also tells the government to search for all traces of her being on all such lists and correct all of those that are connected to Agent Kelley's initial mistake. However, it's not at all clear if this applies to the later additions to the TSDB, which was done for this secret and undisclosed exception, and might not be directly because of Agent Kelley's mistake (though, potentially is indirectly because of that). In fact, a different unredacted section now says that the reasons why Ibrahim was denied a visa (which were revealed to the court in a classified manner) were valid, and thus it appears that Ibrahim will still be denied visas in the future (unredacted portions underlined) -- and, indeed, as we explain below that has already happened:

The Court has read the relevant classified information, under seal and ex parte, that led to the visa denials. That classified information, if accurate, warranted denial of the visa under Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)(B). (That information was different from the 2004 mistaken nomination by Agent Kelley.) Therefore, under the state secrets privilege, any challenge to the visa denials in 2009 and 2013 must be denied

Thus, it appears that while Ibrahim has been told she's been taken off the no fly list (and has been for nearly ten years), she's still not going to be able to travel to the US, because she's still in the TSDB for an unrevealed secret reason -- even though everyone admits she's not a threat. And, indeed, Ibrahim tried to apply for a visa to the US on Monday and was denied (with the apparent reason -- if you read between the lines -- being that she is related to someone "engaged in a terrorist activity.") 

Social Security to stop shaking down children for their parent's debts

With enough bad press, even the government can make the right decision sometimes. [Link]

The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers’ debts to the government that are more than 10 years old.
The action comes after The Washington Post reported that the government was seizing state and federal tax refunds that were on their way to about 400,000 Americans who had relatives who owed money to the Social Security agency. In many cases, the people whose refunds were intercepted had never heard of any debt, and the debts dated as far back as the middle of the past century.
“I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to recover debts owed to the agency that are 10 years old and older pending a thorough review of our responsibility and discretion under the current law,” the acting Social Security commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said in a statement.
Colvin said anyone who has received Social Security or Supplemental Security Income benefits and “believes they have been incorrectly assessed with an overpayment” should contact the agency and “seek options to resolve the overpayment.”
The effort to collect on old debts began with a single line in the 2008 farm bill that lifted the statute of limitations on debts to the government that are more than 10 years old. The Treasury Department then set up rules that allowed the government to settle such debts by intercepting taxpayers’ refunds. The department has collected about $2 billion in intercepted tax refunds this year, $75 million of that on debts delinquent for more than 10 years.
Mary Grice, a federal worker who lives in Takoma Park, Md., never got the refunds she was expecting to see in her mailbox this year. The government seized her checks because of a $2,996 debt that was supposedly incurred under her father’s Social Security number. Her father died in 1960, when she was 4, and her mother received survivors’ benefits thereafter.
But 37 years passed between when the Social Security agency says it overpaid someone in the Grice family and when Mary Grice’s refund was taken. She was unable to find out from the agency exactly who received the overpayment — her mother or perhaps her father’s first wife, both of whom are no longer living.
The suspension of the collection effort is “the right thing to do,” said Grice’s attorney, Robert Vogel. “It’s a first step. The next thing they have to do is stop collecting debts from children under any circumstances.”
Vogel filed suit in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., last week, alleging that the government denied Grice due process by failing to give her notice of the debt and by taking the money from her, even though she was not receiving government benefits at the time the debt was incurred.
Vogel and several members of Congress argued that the government should not be holding children accountable for the financial acts of their parents. The Federal Trade Commission,on its Web site, advises Americans that “family members typically are not obligated to pay the debts of a deceased relative from their own assets.”
After The Post’s article was published late last week, many hundreds of taxpayers whose refunds had been intercepted came forward and complained to members of Congress that they had been given no notice of the debts and that the government had not explained why they were being held responsible for debts that their deceased parents may have incurred.
In a note Social Security officials sent to several members of Congress on Monday, the agency said, “We will be reexamining our responsibilities under current law for such referrals and will be notifying you of our conclusions upon completion of the thorough review.”
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that government agencies were apparently “not properly notifying individuals or allowing them to inspect records of the debt they supposedly owe, which are violations of the law.”

Law enforcement entrapment getting a closer look

The FBI does it like clockwork to make sure everyone knows the FBI hunts terrorists, whether they are real or not. Now the BATF gets slapped down for trying the same thing. Go after actual criminals, don't try to make new ones. [Link]

For years now, we've been writing about the FBI's now popular practice of devising its own totally bogus "terrorist plots" and then convincing some hapless individual to join the "plot" only to later arrest them to great fanfare, despite the fact that everyone (other than the arrested person) involved was actually an FBI agent, and there was no actual danger or real plot (or real terrorists) involved. In fact, we just had yet another such story. We've written about similar occurancesover and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover again -- and, depressingly, it seems that courts repeatedly uphold this practice as not being entrapment. Many have been questioning why the FBI is spending so much time and money creating fake terrorist plots that don't seem to protect anyone (but do give the FBI/DOJ lots of big headlines about "stopping terrorism!"), but the courts have basically let it go. 

However, it finally appears that one judge thinks these kinds of things go too far -- and it happens to be Judge Otis Wright, whose name you may recall from being the first judge to reallyslap down Prenda law for its obnoxious copyright trolling practices. Reader Frankz alerts us to the news Wright has dismissed a case involving the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for a similar "made up crime" and completely trashed the government for doing these kinds of things. As with his order in the Prenda case, I urge you to read his full dismissal which is granted for "outrageous government conduct." Judge Wright, it appears, is not one to hide his opinions about those who abuse the legal system. The ruling kicks off with a hint of where this is heading:

“‘Lead us not into temptation,’” Judge Noonan warned. United States v. Black, 733 F.3d 294, 313 (Noonan, J., dissenting). But into temptation the Government has gone, ensnaring chronically unemployed individuals from poverty-ridden areas in its fake drug stash-house robberies. While undoubtedly a valid law-enforcement tool when employed to target or prevent demonstrated criminal enterprises, reverse stings offend the United States Constitution when used solely to obtain convictions.

This case didn't involve "terrorism" like the FBI cases, but rather a similar "reverse sting" in which an ATF agent pretends to be a cocaine courier, tells some dupes about a "stash house" he knows about and then pushes them to rob the house. The ATF agent convinced a couple of guys, Cedrick Hudson and Joseph Whitfield, to take part, and they eventually brought along a third guy, Antuan Dunlap, after the ATF guy kept asking them to bring along associates. The group, lead by the ATF agent's detailed plan, agreed to rob this house and then were all arrested. It's the third guy, Dunlap, who argued that the government was engaged in outrageous conduct. The government claims that Dunlap bragging about being involved in past robberies means that it was perfectly reasonable to arrest him here, but Wright isn't having it:

the Court finds that the Government’s extensive involvement in dreaming up this fanciful scheme—including the arbitrary amount of drugs and illusory need for weapons and extra associates—transcends the bounds of due process and renders the Government’s actions outrageous.

Wright is not persuaded by the fact that Dunlap apparently bragged about his criminal past to the ATF agent, noting the reality of the situation:

It makes little sense to justify the Government’s capricious, stash-house scheme at its inception by what Thompson later learned about Dunlap. In a situation where an apparently experienced cocaine courier is boasting to some small-time crooks about the chance to hit the mother lode, it is only human nature that the individual is going to try to impress the courier with wild tales of past criminal conduct. In this case, there is no evidence that Dunlap actually robbed a Western Union or Nix. But even if he did, Thompson did not learn about Dunlap’s alleged past crimes until after Dunlap joined the doomed-to-fail crew. The Government cannot bootstrap this post hoc knowledge to justify the scheme from the beginning.

Those commercial robberies also bear little upon the fictitious stash-house scheme or the home invasions the ATF sought to eliminate. In fact, when Dunlap was bragging about this past exploits, he disavowed any connection to drugs:

[Dunlap]: Keep my ass clean. I never touch dope. I’m just saying though.

[Whitfield]: He’s a jack boy, he don’t know nothing about no drugs.

So contrary to the Government’s contention, Dunlap’s “admissions” only served to demonstrate that he had no propensity to commit drug crimes—the entire subject of the reverse sting.

Judge Wright clearly sees how allowing this kind of activity is going to lead to serious problems, especially as law enforcement can prey on desperate individuals, coax them into various plots, and then arrest them:

Allowing after-the-fact knowledge to mitigate the Court’s concerns in a situation like this also creates a perverse incentive for the Government. It encourages the Government to cast a wide net, trawling for crooks in seedy, poverty-ridden areas—all without an iota of suspicion that any particular person has committed similar conduct in the past. And if the Government happens to get it right and catch someone who previously engaged in crime, the courts will place their imprimatur on the whole fishing expedition.

The Court declines the invitation to endorse this nab-first-ask-questions-later approach. While this situation is a win-win for the Government, it is really only lose-lose for the unwitting individuals unlucky enough to fall into the Government's net. If they have never committed criminal activity in the past but agree to participate in the fake robbery, they go to prison—unless they can surmount the Everest-like hurdle to establish an entrapment defense.

This is important, because many people try to fight back against these kinds of cases with claims of entrapment, but Judge Wright correctly notes that (unfortunately) the bar to meeting an entrapment claim is ridiculously high. However, it's pretty obvious that there is no crime hereabsent the government's own intervention:

But for the undercover agent’s imagination in this case there would be no crime. The undercover agent invented his drug-courier persona, the stash house, the 20 to 25 kilograms of cocaine supposedly inside the stash house, the two individuals supposedly guarding the stash, the need to use weapons, and the idea of robbing the stash house. He even provided the putative safe house and getaway van. Dunlap brought little to the table besides his sheer presence and perhaps the hope of being able to obtain some quick cash.

.... Despite the Supreme Court’s admonition, the ATF manufactured this entire crime. It did not infiltrate an ongoing criminal enterprise, as there is no indication that Hudson, Whitfield, and Dunlap had any previous criminal affiliation between them.

Furthermore, Judge Wright notes that the government encouraged the activity, even if it wasn't to the level of entrapment, it was still quite clearly the key driver of the entire "crime" and that's what makes it "outrageous."

Chutzpah!

CIA: We Only Spied On Senate Intelligence Committee Because They Took Classified Documents That Prove We're Liars. [Link]

Earlier this week, we wrote about the accusations that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee as they were working on a massive $40 million, 6,300-page report condemning the CIA's torture program. The DOJ is apparently already investigating if the CIA violated computer hacking laws in spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee computers. The issue revolved around a draft of an internal review by the CIA, which apparently corroborates many of the Senate report's findings -- but which the CIA did not hand over to the Senate. This internal report not only supports the Senate report's findings, but also shows that the CIA has been lying in response to questions about the terror program. 

In response to all of this, it appears that the CIA is attempting, weakly, to spin this as being the Senate staffers' fault, arguing that the real breach was the fact that the Senate staffers somehow broke the rules in obtaining that internal review. CIA boss John Brennan's statement hints at the fact that he thinks the real problem was with the way the staffers acted, suggesting that an investigation would fault "the legislative" branch (the Senate) rather than the executive (the CIA).

In his statement on Wednesday Brennan hit back in unusually strong terms. “I am deeply dismayed that some members of the Senate have decided to make spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts,” Brennan said.

“I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the executive branch or legislative branch,” Brennan continued, raising a suggestion that the Senate committee itself might have acted improperly.

A further report detailed what he's talking about. Reporters at McClatchy have revealed that the Senate staffers working on this came across the document, printed it out, and simply walked out of the CIA and over to the Senate with it, and the CIA is furious about that. Then, in a moment of pure stupidity, the CIA appears to have confronted the Senate Intelligence Committee about all of this... directly revealing that they were spying on the Committee staffers.

Several months after the CIA submitted its official response to the committee report, aides discovered in the database of top-secret documents at CIA headquarters a draft of an internal review ordered by former CIA Director Leon Panetta of the materials released to the panel, said the knowledgeable person.

They determined that it showed that the CIA leadership disputed report findings that they knew were corroborated by the so-called Panetta review, said the knowledgeable person.

The aides printed the material, walked out of CIA headquarters with it and took it to Capitol Hill, said the knowledgeable person.

“All this goes back to what is the technical structure here,” said the U.S. official who confirmed the unauthorized removal. “If I was a Senate staffer and I was given access to documents on the system, I would have a laptop that’s cleared. I would be allowed to look at these documents. But with these sorts of things, there’s generally an agreement that you can’t download or take them.”

The CIA discovered the security breach and brought it to the committee’s attention in January, leading to a determination that the agency recorded the staffers’ use of the computers in the high-security research room, and then confirmed the breach by reviewing the usage data, said the knowledgeable person.

There are many more details in the McClatchy report, which I highly recommend reading. And, yes, perhaps there's an argument that Senate staffers weren't supposed to take such documents, but the CIA trying to spin this by saying it was those staffers who were engaged in "wrongdoing" is almost certainly going to fall flat with Congress. After all, the intelligence committee is charged with oversight of the CIA, not the other way around. "You stole the documents we were hiding from you which proved we were lying, so we spied on you to find out how you did that" is not, exactly, the kind of argument that too many people are going to find compelling. 

Still, the latest is that the CIA has successfully convinced the DOJ to have the FBI kick off an investigation of the Senate staffers, rather than of the CIA breaking the law and spying on their overseers. 

Why going through the 'proper channels' as a whistle blower is a fool's game

Listen to the NSA's Inspector General. [Link]

What's more troubling is how Ellard views the press. Ellard calls the journalists Snowden gave documents to "agents," showing that he (and other national security insiders) view the world through espionage-tinted glasses. Journalists are now "agents," supposedly acting at the behest of their "handler," Edward Snowden. It's a smear thinly disguised as SIGINT shop talk -- a small-minded attempt to portray reporting leaks as a dark and nasty business. 

What makes all of this more remarkable than the normal NSA defensive efforts is the fact that Ellard was Snowden's "proper channel." 

Ellard has been the NSA’s inspector general since 2007. In this capacity he has not spoken in a public forum before so that made what he said additionally significant. Had Snowden made the decision to report his concerns through approved NSA channels it would have been through Ellard’s office. 

The route Snowden supposedly should have taken runs right through Ellard's office. And what Ellard would have given him in exchange for his concerns was a recitation of the NSA's talking points.

Ellard was asked what he would have done if Snowden had come to him with complaints. Had this happened, Ellard says would have said something like, “Hey, listen, fifteen federal judges have certified this program is okay.” (He was referring to the NSA phone records collection program.)

This offer to explain the (alleged) constitutionality of the program may have meant something if Ellard had made this statement at any point before June 2013. Delivering it now -- with all the inside information that's been uncovered since then -- is remarkably tone deaf. It shows that NSA officials still have no idea how to approach potential whistleblowers. Those in that position actually still think delivering stale talking points will somehow dissuade someone who's truly shocked by the vast power and reach of the agency. 

If you think this statement indicates Ellard's incredibly out of touch with the reality of the situation, the next assurance effort he offers removes all doubt.

“Perhaps it’s the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do. If not, I would have made the Senate and House Intelligence Committees open to him. Given the reaction of by some members of that committee, he would have found a welcome audience."

Really? Mike Rogers? Dutch Ruppersberger? Dianne Feinstein? This is the "welcome audience" Snowden would have faced. They, like Ellard, would have rubbed his boyish head and told him not to worry about all these lawful programs he simply didn't "understand." And then they would have sent him on his way. (And, most likely, reported him to his superiors and redundantly suggested Ellard open an internal investigation.) 

The "proper channels" wouldn't have given Snowden anything other than a swift ride to the "EXIT" door and some threats about just how much of a living hell the NSA would make his life if he passed any of his knowledge on to the general public. Ellard's attitude towards Snowden shows how much hostility awaits those who find themselves unable to be good NSA company men/women. Following proper channels means being greeted with condescension, cliches and a lifetime of suspicion. 

Kafka would be proud

US Government Says CIA Black Site Prisoners' Memory Of Their Own Torture Is Classified And Cannot Be Revealed. [Link]

Apparently Ammar al Baluchi, and some of the other prisoners are trying to argue that the US violated the UN Convention Against Torture with how they treated prisoners at the infamous black sites. But here's the crazy part: the US is arguing that the prisoners' own recollections of what was done to them cannot be used in court, because it would reveal classified information. Talk about adding insult to injury. 

Yes, the US government is arguing that it can torture people (though, of course, it won't call it that), but if you try to call them on it via various courts, domestic or international, the very people who were tortured are not allowed to present evidence of their own torture, because it would reveal classified information. Classified information like how the CIA tortured people. Now, the people in this case may be very bad people, who really were involved in planning 9/11, and if that's true and proven as such, I have no problem with them being punished for their actions. But that doesn't excuse torturing them, no matter what some misguided authoritarians believe. And, furthermore, if the government is going to torture them, then they should at least have the balls to stand up in court and discuss what they did and why -- not telling the people they tortured thattheir own recollections of how they were tortured are considered classified material. 

Narratives, Justice and Absurdity

All wrapped up into one untidy package. I hadn't heard about this during the trial. [Link]

Nailing a guy on something, anything, is a time-honored American tradition: If you can’t get Al Capone on the Valentine’s Day massacre, get him on his taxes. Americans seem to have a sneaky admiration for this sort of thing, notwithstanding that, as we now know, the government is happy to get lots of other people on their taxes, too. Ever since the president of the United States (a man so cautious and deferential to legal niceties that he can’t tell you whether the Egyptian army removing the elected head of state counts as a military coup until his advisers have finished looking into the matter) breezily declared that if he had a son he’d look like Trayvon, ever since the U.S. Department of so-called Justice dispatched something called its “Community Relations Services” to Florida to help organize anti-Zimmerman rallies at taxpayer expense, ever since the politically savvy governor appointed a “special prosecutor” and the deplorably unsavvy Sanford Police Chief was eased out, the full panoply of state power has been deployed to nail Zimmerman on anything.

How difficult can that be in a country in which an Hispanic Obama voter can be instantly transformed into the poster boy for white racism? Who ya gonna believe — Al Sharpton or your lying eyes? As closing arguments began on Thursday, the prosecutors asked the judge to drop the aggravated-assault charge and instruct the jury on felony murder committed in the course of child abuse. Felony murder is a murder that occurs during a felony, and, according to the prosecution’s theory du jour, the felony George Zimmerman was engaged in that night was “child abuse,” on the grounds that Trayvon Martin, when he began beating up Zimmerman, was 17 years old. This will come as news to most casual observers of the case, who’ve only seen young Trayvon in that beatific photo of him as a twelve-year-old.

In that one pitiful closing moment, the case achieved its sublime reductio ad absurdum: After a year’s labors, after spending a million bucks, after calling a legion of risible witnesses, even after the lead prosecutor dragged in a department-store mannequin and personally straddled it on the floor of the court, the state is back to where it all began — the ancient snapshot of a smiling middle-schooler that so beguiled American news editors, Trayvon Martin apparently being the only teenager in America to have gone entirely unphotographed in the second decade of the 21st century. And, if Trayvon is a child, his malefactor is by logical extension a child abuser. 

Needless to say, even in a nutso jurisdiction like Florida, the crime of “child abuse” was never intended to cover a wizened old granny kicking the ankle of the punk who’s mugging her a week before his 18th birthday. But, if Aggravated Pedophilia is what it takes to fry that puffy white cracker’s butt, so be it. If, for the purposes of American show trials, an Hispanic who voted for a black president can be instantly transformed into a white racist, there’s no reason why he can’t be a child abuser, too. The defense was notified of this novel development, on which the prosecution (judging by the volume of precedents assembled) had been working for weeks or more likely months, at 7:30 that morning. If you know your Magna Carta, you’ll be aware that “no official shall place a man on trial . . . without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.” But the rights enjoyed by free men in the England of King John in 1215 are harder to come by in the State of Florida eight centuries later. So the prosecutors decided, the day before the case went to the jury, that Zimmerman was engaged in an act of child abuse that had somehow got a bit out of hand: No “credible witnesses” to this charge had been presented in the preceding weeks, but hey, what the hell? Opposing counsel taking the reasonable position that they’d shown up to defend Mr. Zimmerman of murder and had had no idea until that morning that he was also on trial for child abuse, check bouncing, jaywalking, an expired fishing license, or whatever other accusation took the fancy of the State of Florida, asked for time to research the relevant case law. Judge Debra Nelson gave them until 1 p.m. At that point, it was 10:30 a.m. By the time the genius jurist had returned to the bench, she had reconsidered, and decided that “child abuse” would be a reach too far, even for her disgraceful court.

And now, after his acquittal, there will probably be more trials, for federal civil rights violations or wrongful death from the Martin family. They will keep having trials until they get it "right".

Injury by Turtle, Lamppost and Macaw

New Obamacare required injury codes. [Link]

Obamacare will require doctors to use roughly 122,000 new medical diagnostic codes to inform the federal government of injuries sustained by Americans, so says Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

The new codes, Sen. Paul explained, include classifications for "injuries sustained from a turtle," "walking into a lamppost" and "injuries sustained from burning water skis."

"Your government just wants to take care of you," he added, criticizing the new law's 9,000-plus pages of new regulations. "They don't think you're smart enough to make these decisions."

Physicians currently have about 18,000 medical diagnostic codesto choose from to help them inform insurers of their patients' ailments. However, as Paul (himself a physician) notes, Obamacare includes a mandate for 140,000 of those codes -- and some of them sound downright ridiculous.

"Included among these codes," the senator continued, "will be 312 new codes for injuries from animals; 72 new codes for injuries just from birds; 9 new codes for 'injuries from the macaw."'

"The macaw?" he asked. "I've asked physicians all over the country, 'Have you ever seen an injury from a macaw?"'

He continued, adding that he had found "two new injury codes under Obamacare for 'injuries sustained from a turtle."'

"Now, you might say, 'Well, turtles are dangerous' -- but why do you have to have two codes?" he asked.  "Your doctor has to inform the government whether you've been struck by a turtle or bitten by a turtle."

He added:  "There is a new code for ... walking into a lamppost. There's also a code for 'walking into a lamppost, subsequent encounter.'"

"I guess that's if you don't learn," he added. "[T]here is [also] a code ... for 'injuries sustained from burning water skis."'

It's like they didn't want to get complaints

If they don't get complaints, they must be doing okay. and you can't complain because there IS a process. [Link]

How difficult is it to file a complaint against a rogue abortion doctor in Pennsylvania? It's a question I had after reading the grand jury report in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. I got even more curious after reading this item by my colleague Garance Franke-Ruta, who interviews a nurse practitioner at a different organization who tried to help two former Gosnell clients to file a complaint:

...she personally tried to work with two women to file complaints to the Pennsylvania Department of Health about him. In both cases, the women found the complaint process so onerous and the telling of their stories so personally difficult that they failed to complete the paperwork and abandoned the effort. The Health Department complaint process "was way too burdensome" for the women, she said, "not to mention the stigma, to have to tell your story aloud to state officials." So why didn't she complain on her own? "It really had to be a patient," she said. There was no clear channel for independent third-party complaints like hers. 

Of course, that was then. Say that a woman walked into a clinic like Gosnell's today for a consultation. If she saw cat feces, blood-spattered blankets, and medical waste all around, causing her to leave immediately, would there be an easy way to alert the appropriate public health officials? Say she had the inclination to complain, but would give up if it turned out to be excessively difficult. And imagine, though it's probably naive to do so, that she knew the Pennsylvania Department of Health was in charge.

Let's start at that website (interested readers can open a new tab and see how quickly you can find where to complain before reading on):