During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. “The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”

I had gone to court to listen to our legal team argue a case to protect the First Amendment rights of our client, Twitter user @p0isAn0n, aka Guido Fawkes. That user, who wishes to remain anonymous throughout the proceedings, was the target of a Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney’s administrative subpoena to Twitter, dated December 14, 2011. As we wrote last week, the subpoena asked Twitter to hand over @p0isAn0n’s subscriber information, including our client’s IP address, which can be used to help track down someone’s physical residence.

[..]

The known knowns: the scrum of lawyers, defense and prosecution, addressed the judge. I saw the judge speak to the lawyers. Then I saw our attorneys return to their bench, closer to where I was sitting, out of earshot of the sidebar. But the ADA stayed with the judge. He spoke to her, with his back to the courtroom, for about ten minutes. Our attorneys didn’t get to hear what he said to her, didn’t have a chance to respond to whatever the government was saying about our client, about the case. It was frankly shocking.

After those ten minutes of secret government-judge conversation, our attorneys were invited back to the sidebar, whereupon the scrum of lawyers spoke with the judge for another ten or fifteen minutes. Then they dispersed. The judge uttered not one word to the open court. And that was it.

Stunned, I followed a group of reporters outside and listened as Attorney Krupp attempted to answer their questions. It was then I realized that the judge had impounded all the court records related to the case, and mandated complete secrecy governing the proceedings. The public wasn’t even to know whether our motion to quash had been approved or denied.

The press scrum was Kafkaesque to say the least.

‘Can you tell us what the judge decided?’

‘No.’

‘Did the judge grant your motion to quash the subpoena?’

‘I can’t say.’

A US judge has signed a default judgment finding Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaida liable for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

A ‘cleaned-up’ hydrogen bomb, according to the AEC, may someday trim mountains, melt icecaps, and thus change world wind patterns.

Hurricane fury might be blunted, even diverted from land, by enormous heat updrafts from fuel oil poured on ocean surface and lighted.

Harmless, tasteless chemicals spread on water surfaces could slow down evaporation, reducing rainfall on adjacent land areas.

By age 23, almost a third of Americans have been arrested for a crime, according to a new study that researchers say is a measure of growing exposure to the criminal justice system in everyday life.

The study, the first since the 1960s to look at the arrest histories of a national sample of adolescents and young adults over time, found that 30.2 percent of the 23-year-olds who participated reported having been arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic violation.

That figure is significantly higher than the 22 percent found in a 1965 study that examined the same issue using different methods. The increase may be a reflection of the justice system becoming more punitive and more aggressive in its reach during the last half-century, the researchers said. Arrests for drug-related offenses, for example, have become far more common, as have zero-tolerance policies in schools.

The study did not look at racial or regional differences, but other research has found higher arrest rates for black men and for youths living in poor urban areas.

The US must be a nation full of criminals!

Footage taken from North Korean state media.

Norway’s tax office risks facing pimping charges if it insists on taxing a 29-year-old Lithuanian prostitute, the woman’s lawyer has said.

Something like that may have been in the mind of Jesse Dimmick, who sued Jared and Lindsay Rowley last month. Dimmick was convicted in May 2010 of four felonies, including two counts of kidnapping, for a 2009 incident in which he held the Rowleys against their will for several hours. Dimmick was fleeing a murder charge in a stolen van when he drove over some spikes laid by Topeka police. The van came to rest in the Rowleys’ front yard, and Dimmick then invited himself in at knifepoint to enjoy some involuntary hospitality.

Patch Adams (the movie)This report doesn’t say how long the standoff lasted, but it was at least 115 minutes. "A neighbor told the Topeka Capital-Journal in September 2009 that the couple gained [Dimmick's] trust by eating Cheetos and drinking Dr. Pepper with him while watching the movie ‘Patch Adams,’" the 1998 film in which Robin Williams earned a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of the unorthodox doctor/clown. Whether it was "Patch Adams" or just the passage of time that put Dimmick to sleep is unclear, but sleep he did and out the Rowleys went. The police then entered, and Dimmick was accidentally shot in the back while he was being subdued.

Various lawsuits followed. Dimmick sued the city of Topeka over the shooting, and (possibly because of the prospect that he might get money from that suit) the Rowleys sued Dimmick last September for trespass, intrusion and negligent infliction of emotional distress. That seems to have given Dimmick the idea to sue the Rowleys, and he brought a counterclaim against them for breach of contract.

You see, Dimmick alleges that, after breaking into the Rowleys’ home with a knife and gun, they all then sat down and hashed out a deal under which they would hide him from police (the police who were right outside) for an unspecified amount of money. "Later," he complained, "the Rowleys reneged on said oral contract, resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities." Ergo, breach of contract.

Julian P. Heicklen, a 79-year-old retired chemistry professor, has often stood on a plaza outside the United States Courthouse in Manhattan, holding a “Jury Info” sign and handing out brochures that advocate jury nullification, the controversial view that if jurors disagree with a law, they may ignore their oaths to follow it and may acquit a defendant who violated it.

Then, last year, federal prosecutors had Mr. Heicklen indicted, charging that his activity violated the law against jury tampering. Lawyers assisting him have sought dismissal of the case on First Amendment grounds.

But now prosecutors are offering their first detailed explanation for why they charged Mr. Heicklen, arguing in a brief that his “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without Constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.”

“His speech is not protected by the First Amendment,” prosecutors wrote.

Matthew Lopez went to the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch on Thursday night for the Black Friday sale but instead was caught in a pepper-spray attack by a woman who authorities said was "competitive shopping."

C. Crews TownsendAutomated ticketing vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) filed suit Tuesday against Knoxville, Tennessee for its failure to issue tickets for turning right on a red light — and that is costing the company a lot of money. A state law took effect in July banning the controversial turning tickets, but the Arizona-based firm contends the law should not apply to their legal agreement with the city, which anticipated the bulk of the money to come from this type of tickets.

[..]

ATS asked the Chancery Court for Knox County to declare the right turn law unconstitutional because it discriminates against traffic camera companies.

Diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2009, Norman B. Smith, 63, has been treated at Cedars-Sinai by oncologist Steven Miles, who approved medicinal marijuana in part to help his patient cope with the effects of chemotherapy. Smith became eligible for a liver transplant last year, but was removed from the list in February after testing positive for marijuana.

British viewers will see seven episodes, the last of which deals with global warming and the threat to the natural world posed by man.

However, viewers in other countries, including the United States, will only see six episodes.

The environmental programme has been relegated by the BBC to an “optional extra” alongside a behind-the-scenes documentary which foreign networks can ignore.

Let’s not educate people about global warming, because they’re uneducated about global warming.

In response to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s insistence that Occupy Denver choose leadership to deal with City and State officials, and drawing inspiration from the notion that corporations are people, Occupy Denver’s General Assembly has elected a leader: Shelby, a three year old Border Collie. “Shelby is closer to a person than any corporation: She can bleed, she can breed, and she can show emotion. Either Shelby is a person, or corporations aren’t people,” said a Shelby supporter at the time of her election.

Occupy Denver reserves the right to alter leadership status, but for now, Shelby exhibits heart, warmth, and an appreciation for the group over personal ambition that Occupy Denver members feel are sorely lacking in the leaders some of them have voted for on national, state, and local levels. Accordingly, Occupy Denver looks forward to communication with Mayor Hancock and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper sometime this week to introduce their leadership.

This is from a commercial for East Japan Railway. Because nothing says “safe, reliable and rapid public transportation” like synchronized ostrich skiing.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has devised a bizarre plan for deploying its new XO-3 tablet. The organization plans to drop the touchscreen computers from helicopters near remote villages in developing countries. The devices will then be abandoned and left for the villagers to find, distribute, support, and use on their own.

[..]

“We’ll take tablets and drop them out of helicopters into villages that have no electricity and school, then go aback a year later and see if the kids can read,” Negroponte told The Register.

It is a textbook demonstration of “pricks pretending to care”, as I said before.

They take three paragraphs to obfuscate their “No” and add a paragraph about Open Source, which has just about nothing to do with the worries about software patents. The trolls at Lodsys must be laughing their pants of with this statement by the White House.

A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist – even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal – part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice – would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

Open-government groups object.

Change, as brought to you by Mr. Obama.

You know how every time Michele Bachmann opens her mouth it’s kind of exciting because you never know what’s going to come out, but then it’s also terrifying because you’re worried whatever she says will be taken seriously? Well, brace yourselves because today she’s dropped a real doozy: she thinks the people of Iraq should pay us back for all of the money we spent invading them.

Really? Really??

Can somebody please tell me the difference with this?

And while we’re at it:

"We don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE," and, gesturing to his genitals, "the warrant is coming out of my balls."

They’re called “ICE” because “Gestapo” is too hard to spell for them.

In an interview with AllThingsD’s Ina Fried, Google’s Andy Rubin made a two-line case against Siri, Apple’s new voice-controlled ‘virtual assistant’ for the iPhone 4S. “Your phone is a tool for communicating,” Rubin said. “You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.”

Wow. That’s up there with Steve Jobs saying the Kindle was irrelevant because “people don’t read anymore”.

STATE Parliament is set to pass new legislation making it a criminal offence to "insult" Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien.

Fines of up to $11,945 will be given to anyone found guilty of upsetting the minister and his staff under the extraordinary new offence.

The Baillieu Government is seeking changes to the Gaming Regulation Act which it says are "reasonably necessary to respect the rights and reputation of the minister and authorised persons". If passed, the ruling will become law.

The amendment proposed to the Act will make it an offence to "assault, obstruct, hinder, threaten, abuse, insult or intimidate" the minister or authorised persons exercising "due diligence" in monitoring gambling systems such as pokies.

State Labor has seized on the extraordinary amendment, with Opposition gaming spokesman Martin Pakula branding the minister "Windscreens O’Brien – because this proves he’s got a glass jaw".

"Is the minister so precious that he now needs legislation to protect him from insults?" he said.

Good afternoon thank you for calling Air India staff helpline, my name is Richard Realcaucasian-Honest, how may I help you?

Hi Richard, I’m the co-pilot on today’s Mumbai-Heathrow flight and stuck in Gatwick on the runway at the moment because of fog, can you please advise?

Thank you very much for the information sir please wait while I work out the best answer for you.

Ok thanks…

Ok sir, could you please tell me which gate in Heathrow you have parked your plane at?

Uhh, no I said we are at Gatwick airport, on the runway. We have been here for 2 hours now. Can you please advise us with directions?

Oh I see sir my apologies. Please hold on one moment

… uhh, ok…

Right, can you please tell us which terminal in Mumbai airport you left from?

Terminal 3.

Thank you sir. And what time did you arrive in Heathrow today?

I have not arrived in Heathrow yet, I already said we are in Gatwick! I need advice so we can get the passengers off the plane and to their destination!

But sir your flight information says your flight is destined for Heathrow airport

Yes it was. But we’re not there.

Ok sir thank you for the information, so can you tell me which airport are you at right now?

……….. G.A.T.W.I.C.K ………..

Thank you sir, can you please hold for a short time while I speak to my colleague? hold music begins

………

Nokia Tune is one of world’s most recognized audio brand assets and is estimated to be heard over one billion times a day. Nokia is launching a global crowdsourcing campaign to find a fresh version of the Nokia Tune.

And the first winner is in.

Although I wonder what tone deaf ten thumbed talentless noise polluter invented this aural piece of excrement and, just as important, which bunch of cunts voted it to win?

Or perhaps it just shows how what Nokia marketeers like is inversely proportional to what everyone else likes…

The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they’re carried out. The new law, sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) allows prosecutors to bring conspiracy charges against anyone who discusses, plans or advises someone else to engage in any activity that violates the CSA, the massive federal law that prohibits drugs like marijuana and strictly regulates prescription medication.

“Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for reforming the country’s drug laws. “The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you’re there wouldn’t be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the U.S. a federal crime.”

The law could also potentially affect academics and medical professionals. For example, a U.S. doctor who works with overseas doctors or government officials on needle exchange programs could be subject to criminal prosecution.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, risks an explosive rift inside the Coalition with an explicit call for the scrapping of the Human Rights Act.

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“I’d personally like to see the Human Rights Act go because I think we have had some problems with it,” she says.