Late Friday night, the Justice Department released a series of e-mails related to Operation Fast and Furious that indicate officials at the agency, including Attorney General Eric Holder, were alerted within hours of the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and that Holder’s aide was told guns found at the scene were linked to the gun trafficking scheme.

[...]

The timing of this document dump fits a pattern, because Holder is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday. NPR posts some critical documents here. Among them is an e-mail exchange between then-U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke and Holder aide Monty Wilkinson.

While I’m hoping this will be an interesting thing to watch I fear these e-mails will also be swept under the rug like so much of Fast and Furious has been. The simple fact that Holder has continued to maintain his job demonstrates how corrupt Washington really is. Were you or I involved in an operation that smuggled American arms into Mexico to arm the drug cartels we’d be in prison so fast our heads would spin. The rules are entirely different when the government does the smuggling though.

Chevrolet’s electric-powered Volt has been cleared by US federal safety investigators, with the plug-in car deemed to present no more significant fire risk than its gasoline-powered counterparts, and leaving Chevvy with the unenviable task of re-marketing the vehicle. “No discernible defect trend exists” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said of the Volt, going on to highlight General Motors’ improvements to the structure of the car and the battery cooling systems. The investigation – perhaps uncomfortably public for GM – will educate new NHTSA guidelines on dealing with electric car safety.

Now that the government has given their money receiving cronies the all clear how about an investigation performed by a third-party that doesn’t have a conflict of interest? I’m sorry but I’m far more willing to trust a private entity like Consumer Reports (whom I don’t trust very much) than I am the federal government who has a stake in General Motors. Trusting the federal government to investigate the Volt is like asking Bernard Madoff to investigate investment fraud.

Consumer group Public Knowledge on Friday accused the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its head, former Sen. Chris Dodd, of trying to intimidate lawmakers into supporting a pair of controversial anti-piracy bills.

In recent days, Dodd and other top Hollywood figures have threatened to cut off campaign donations to politicians who do not support their effort to crackdown on online copyright infringement.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said on Fox News on Thursday.

Our “representatives” don’t represent us, they represent those who pay them. When lobbyist groups want a piece of legislation passed all they need to do is threaten to cut off the money flow and presto, you have a large based of politicians ready to stand behind the cause. It’s too bad the average citizen can’t afford lobbyists.

Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.

The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.

While such an investigation may be interesting it really won’t help people learn the lesson that your data is never private if it’s on a server you don’t entirely control. If the likes of Facebook, Google, and Yahoo don’t have your personal information they can’t give it away to anybody. With Facebook receiving money from the CIA’s venture capitalist fund and Google’s CEO being so tightly tied to the Obama administration there should be no belief any information stored with either service will not fall into the hands of Big Brother.

I really do hope Issa starts an investigation because I want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes. More importantly I want to see what maneuvers will be used to keep information about the rabbit hole away from the prying eyes of concerned citizens.

With Energy Secretary Steven Chu set to testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the government’s $573 million loan to failed solar panel maker Solyndra, an explosive new list of energy loan amounts to President Obama’s top fundraisers, bundlers, and supporters has been released by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out.

As the list reveals, 80 percent of all $20.5 billion in Department of Energy loans went to President Obama’s top donors. Furthermore, some of those dwarf in size those given to Obama bundler George Kaiser, owner of the now defunct Solyndra.

I’m sure the Obamabots will claim this is just a coincidence and that this outcome was obvious since the people donating to Obama’s campaign are obviously the smartest and most qualified companies in the alternative energy market. Of course those people are also mindless sheep who will jump whenever Dear Leader commands (not that mindless Republican shills are any better mind you).

A tip of the hat goes to Alan for this gem of government corruption.

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs.

Obviously I’m not a rocket scientist but it seems rather difficult to comply with a regulation that requires the use of unicorn farts. Even though complying with the state’s regulation is literally impossible the fuel companies have no option but to pay less the state bring violence to play. If I were agents of the state I would just make a regulation against emitting CO₂ and fine everybody for exhaling.

Though a deeply divided Congress is currently considering Internet website censorship legislation, the US has no such official policy—not even for child porn, which is voluntarily blocked by some ISPs. Nor does the US have a government-backed “three strikes” or “graduated response” system of escalating warnings to particular users accused of downloading music and movies from file-sharing networks.

Yet here was the ultimatum that the US Embassy in Madrid gave the Spanish government in February 2008: adopt such measures or we will punish you. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have the text of the diplomatic cable announcing the pressure tactics.

We propose to tell the new government that Spain will appear on the Watch List if it does not do three things by October 2008. First, issue a [Government of Spain] announcement stating that Internet piracy is illegal, and that the copyright levy system does not compensate creators for copyrighted material acquired through peer-to-peer file sharing. Second, amend the 2006 “circular” that is widely interpreted in Spain as saying that peer-to-peer file sharing is legal. Third, announce that the GoS [Government of Spain] will adopt measures along the lines of the French and/or UK proposals aimed at curbing Internet piracy by the summer of 2009.

The Watch List referenced is the US Trade Representative’s “Special 301″ list, updated annually. Spain was duly put on the list in 2008 after failing to take such measures. (“The United States is concerned by the Spanish government’s inadequate efforts to address the growing problem of Internet piracy, described by U.S. copyright industries as one of the worst in Europe,” said the 2008 report.) Spanish copyright holders applauded the move; indeed, the cables show that they repeatedly asked US officials to make it.

At least United States citizens aren’t the only people on the federal government’s watch lists. Whether through direct invasion or underhanded threats the government of the United States likes to force other countries to obey its bidding. What’s frightening about this is when the government here finally enacts Internet censorship legislation there are going to be fewer safe havens that can be proxied into.

The United States isn’t satisfied until the entire world is one big fucking police state. What’s next? Is our government going to give the Spanish government military weaponry to better suppress it’s citizens? Wait, that already happened (what’s really sad is I was going to make that quip but did a quick Google search to ensure it wasn’t false, my default assumption was that the United States had given Spain military aid at some point and apparently it was the correct assumption).

Also today, the court upheld the dismissal of EFF’s other case aimed at ending the illegal spying, Hepting v. AT&T, which was the first lawsuit against a telecom over its participation in the dragnet domestic wiretapping. The court found that the so-called “retroactive immunity” passed by Congress to stop telecommunications customers from suing the companies is constitutional, in part because the claims remained against the government in Jewel v. NSA.

“By passing the retroactive immunity for the telecoms’ complicity in the warrantless wiretapping program, Congress abdicated its duty to the American people,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “It is disappointing that today’s decision endorsed the rights of telecommunications companies over those over their customers.”

Today’s decision comes nearly exactly six years after the first revelations of the warrantless wiretapping program were published in the New York Times on December 16, 2005. EFF will now move forward with the Jewel litigation in the Northern District of California federal court. The government is expected to raise the state secrets privilege as its next line of defense but this argument has already been rejected in other similar cases.

Telecommunications companies are willing to play ball because the state, who controls the courts, said no prosecution will be allowed against said telecommunication companies. On top of the telecommunication companies are unlikely to fight warrantless wiretapping orders in court because they have immunity and therefore no harm can come to them for playing the state’s game.

A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

[...]

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Emphasis mine. I believe the real theory is people scoring higher on intelligence tests are more likely to think critically about what they’re doing and decide to either seek more honorable employment or fight for legal reform. The state doesn’t want people who will question orders or currently established laws, they want dumb brutes who will do exactly as they’re told.

It’s sad to see intelligence isn’t seen as a virtue when hiring a police officer.

The instrument cluster and leather dashboard were gone. The caramel-colored seats were torn up. The gear shift was ripped out and stray wires hung limp everywhere. Geico, Richardson’s insurance company estimated the damage at $12,636.42 — more than he paid for the car — and declared the vehicle a “total loss.”

According to police reports, the damage to the black BMW 325i came in the aftermath of a traffic stop during which officers detected a “strong odor of raw marijuana” inside the vehicle. Searching for a cache of drugs, members of three different police agencies and a detective from a federal drug task force spent two days tearing the car apart, the reports said.

So what did police find after their $12,000 search?

Absolutely nothing.

The destruction of this car was made possible because an officer pulled the driver of the BMW over and claimed his spidy keep cop senses detected the smell of marijuana. An officer can only search your vehicle if they have a warrant or probable cause but the war on drugs has essentially made probable cause any cockamamy excuse a police officer can think up. All an officer must do is claim he could smell drugs and it’s an instant sanction to search the vehicle. While I lack a time machine to directly interview the authors of the Bill of Rights I’m pretty sure the destruction of this car would qualify as an unreasonable search and seizure.

Truth be told there is a chance that Geico may have a rare chance to bring a case against the police for their actions but it will only come at taxpayer expense. Even if you win a case against the police you still loose because you’re only getting your tax money back. The officers who destroyed the car are effectively immune from lawsuits and thus have no fear of being sued. What a brilliantly designed system, the state gets away with anything it wants and may return some of our money if they decide they went too far.