And The Meek Shall Inherit A Raid

A very bizarre story from Rolling Stone's Tatiana Siegel today, detailing the disappearance of former ABC News national security producer James Meek. The FBI raided his apartment in Virginia in April, and apparently he has dropped off the grid for the last six months as nobody seems to know where he went.

AT A MINUTE before 5 a.m. on April 27, ABC News’ James Gordon Meek fired off a tweet with a single word: “FACTS.”

The network’s national-security investigative producer was responding to former CIA agent Marc Polymeropoulos’ take that the Ukrainian military — with assistance from the U.S. — was thriving against Russian forces. Polymeropoulos’ tweet — filled with acronyms indecipherable to the layperson, like “TTPs,” “UW,” and “EW” — was itself a reply to a missive from Washington Post Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe, who noted the wealth of information the U.S. military had gathered about Russian ops by observing their combat strategy in real time. The interchange illustrated the interplay between the national-security community and those who cover it. And no one straddled both worlds quite like Meek, an Emmy-winning deep-dive journalist who also was a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee. To his detractors within ABC, Meek was something of a “military fanboy.” But his track record of exclusives was undeniable, breaking the news of foiled terrorist plots in New York City and the Army’s coverup of the fratricidal death of Pfc. Dave Sharrett II in Iraq, a bombshell that earned Meek a face-to-face meeting with President Obama. With nine years at ABC under his belt, a buzzy Hulu documentary poised for Emmy attention, and an upcoming book on the military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the 52-year-old bear of a man seemed to be at the height of his powers and the pinnacle of his profession.

Outside his Arlington, Virginia, apartment, a surreal scene was unfolding, and his storied career was about to come crashing down. Meek’s tweet marked the last time he’s posted on the social media platform.

The first thing Meek’s neighbor John Antonelli noticed that morning was the black utility vehicle with blacked out windows blocking traffic in both directions on Columbia Pike. It was just before dawn on that brisk April day, and self-described police-vehicle historian Antonelli was about to grab a coffee at a Starbucks before embarking on his daily three-mile walk. He inched closer to get a better vantage, when he saw an olive-green Lenco BearCat G2, an armored tactical vehicle often employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other law-enforcement agencies. A few Arlington County cruisers surrounded the jaw-dropping scene, but all of the other vehicles were unmarked, including the BearCat. Antonelli counted at least 10 heavily armed personnel in the group. None bore anything identifying which agency was conducting the raid. After just 10 minutes, the operation inside the Siena Park apartment complex — a six-story, upscale building for D.C. professionals, with rents fetching about $2,000 to $3,000 a month — was over.

“They didn’t stick around. They took off pretty quickly and headed west on Columbia Pike towards Fairfax County,” Antonelli recalls. “Most people seeing that green vehicle would think it’s some kind of tank. But I knew it was the Lenco BearCat. That vehicle is designed to be jumped out of so they can do a raid in that kind of time. It can return fire if they’re being fired upon.”

Multiple sources familiar with the matter say Meek was the target of an FBI raid at the Siena Park apartments, where he had been living on the top floor for more than a decade. An FBI representative told Rolling Stone its agents were present on the morning of April 27 “at the 2300 block of Columbia Pike, Arlington, Virginia, conducting court-authorized law-enforcement activity. The FBI cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation.”

Meek has been charged with no crime. But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration. A federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court signed off on the search warrant the day before the raid. If the raid was for Meek’s records, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to give her blessing; a new policy enacted last year prohibits federal prosecutors from seizing journalists’ documents. Any exception requires the deputy AG’s approval. (Gabe Rottman at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press says, “To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a case [since January 2021].”)

In the raid’s aftermath, Meek, who frequently collaborated with ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir, has made himself scarce. None of his Siena Park neighbors with whom Rolling Stone spoke have seen him since, with his apartment appearing to be vacant. Siena Park management declined to confirm that their longtime tenant was gone, citing “privacy policies.” Similarly, several ABC News colleagues — who are accustomed to unraveling mysteries and cracking investigative stories — tell Rolling Stone that they have no idea what happened to Meek.

“He fell off the face of the Earth,” says one. “And people asked, but no one knew the answer.”

An ABC representative tells Rolling Stone, “He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.”

Sources familiar with the matter say federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid. One investigative journalist who worked with Meek says it would be highly unusual for a reporter or producer to keep any classified information on a computer.

“Mr. Meek is unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents,” his lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, said in a statement. “If such documents exist, as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing. The allegations in your inquiry are troubling for a different reason: they appear to come from a source inside the government. It is highly inappropriate, and illegal, for individuals in the government to leak information about an ongoing investigation. We hope that the DOJ [Department of Justice] promptly investigates the source of this leak.”

 

This story is extremely weird on its face and it get more strange by the minute. This guy was a well-known national security journalist and producer, he's worked in print, TV, and online. For someone like that to vanish and nobody really saying anything about it for six months, when he had ongoing book and Emmy campaign activities going on?

All of this smells like a head cheese, limburger and durian sandwich.

The other observation is "If you or I had classified documents in our homes" argument about Trump's Mar-a-Lago trove of stolen classified material. Meek apparently did. The FBI showed up as a result.

There's a hell of a lot more to this story, and I'd want to see what it is, but I don't like any of this. All of it sets off my alarm bells, the timing of the story, the disappearance of a national security journalist, the raid, the whole thing just doesn't make much sense without additional context and this story raises more questions than answers.

Keep an eye on this one.

Age Is No Excuse

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A 91-year-old woman who pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing $201,000 from the south Alabama town where she was mayor for three decades paid hush money in a bid to keep her crimes secret, documents showed.

Prosecutors said River Falls Mayor Mary Ella Hixon pleaded guilty to theft and resigned. In exchange, authorities dropped another felony ethics charge.

Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan sentenced Hixon to 10 years in prison but suspended the term because of Hixon's advanced age. She must spend five years on probation.

I'm not saying it's great to have a 91-year-old woman in jail, but neither should someone steal that amount of money and then confess with no repercussions.  Five years of probation?  What is she going to do in her early 90s, start a motorcycle gang?

What really sucks is that while I see why the judge made that call, this woman got away with multiple crimes.

Elderly Man Attacks Daughter / Caregiver

NEW YORK (AP) — A man hurled acid in his daughter's face in a gruesome attack that sent her into a street screaming for help as her skin peeled and her clothes disintegrated, police and witnesses said.

As his 49-year-old daughter sat on his couch in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon, Jerome Lynch abruptly left the room, returned with a cup of what she thought was water and doused her with it, she later told a cousin, according to the Daily News.

Then the corrosive burning started, and Darlene Lynch ran outside as her clothes disintegrated and her skin fell from her face, witnesses said.

"You could see the smoke coming off her body," Clarissa Shakespeare told the newspaper. "Everyone was just traumatized and scared. Her skin looked like melting wax."

Bystanders poured water on the victim, helped pull away her clothes and covered her with a sheet, witnesses said.

Her 69-year-old father was arrested on an assault charge. Information on his arraignment and lawyer weren't immediately available Sunday.

It is clearly time for this gentleman to live under professional care.  I have taken care of both patients and relatives with dementia, and it never gets better.  For his own safety, and the public, he has to be watched around the clock.

I pray for that poor woman.  I've been burned by a very mild acid, it hurt like hell for a long time.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to be burned by a strong acid that may have taken my eye.  Her suffering must be incredible, and even if she makes it she will forever bear the scars inflicted by her own father.  There's no win there for her, ever.

Priest Says "The Younger Is The Seducer" In A Lot Of Cases

(Reuters) - A Roman Catholic priest in New York expressed sympathy this week for some clergy who sexually abuse children, saying that it is often the "youngster" who is the seducer, then later apologized for his remarks.

Comments by the Rev. Benedict Groeschel, 79, co-founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in Westchester County outside New York City, in which he expressed sympathy for convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky, drew strong criticism from the Archdiocese of New York and the support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

"Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer," Groeschel said when asked by an interviewer from the National Catholic Register, the nation's oldest Catholic newspaper, about his work with priests who abuse children.

Yeah, and surprise, he apologized.  He didn't say he was wrong, mind you, he is clearly the expert.  Just that he isn't as clear as he once was.

I just don't even know what to say about this.  I have some Catholic friends who are appalled by the actions of their church, and yet keep hoping for change.  I thought honestly that nothing could surprise me anymore, and yet here I am... slackjawed and unable to find the words to express my outrage.

Bugger kids, cover it up, blame the kids when caught, and speak as the authority on what is holy, right and pure.  And in the end it will just disappear, because we are hurtling towards some sort of spiritual brick wall, where little boys getting nailed is like a delicacy and nobody can stop them anyway.

I can't think about it anymore.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

I love the smell of post-racial America in the morning.  It smells like Klan cross-burnings in small town North Carolina in 2012.

Residents in Reidsville, North Carolina have begun receiving fliers inviting them to a May 26 Ku Klux Klan cross burning intended for “white people only.”

Reidsville Police Department Captain Ken Hanks confirmed to Raw Story that people in several neighborhoods had reported receiving the invitations.

Asked if the fliers had broken any law, Hanks replied, “Not that I’m aware of,” and added that the matter was not being investigated.

“I’m a little bothered by it,” Annie P. Pinnix, who received a flier, told the Winston-Salem Journal on Monday.

Pinnex said her husband found the flier in their driveway. It reads:

“Join us, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, for a rally and cross lighting, Saturday, May 26, Harmony, North Carolina. Free Admition [sic]-White People Only. No alcohol, drugs, fighting, glass bottles or weapons. Free on site camping-all major motels in area. Souvenirs. Vendors. Food and beverages for Sale. Cross lighting at dusk-a white unity event. Live country band. Security provided by LWK.”

A recording on the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan “24 Hour Hot Line” confirmed the May 26 cross burning event.

Hey, bring the kids!  Gotta start the hate indoctrination when they're young, after all.  And yes, free speech, folks.  What makes America, America, is that these clodhoppers get to do this.  What makes America great is that the rest of us roundly reject this for the stupidity it is and will sit our kids and nephews and nieces down and tell them exactly why this is going on, and why it's wrong, and why we're better than this.

Well, most of us are better than this, anyway.

Also, this has entirely nothing to do with a black President.  Nope.

Me?  I hope it rains.  I hope it rains wolverines.

Last Call

Kodachrome, you give us those nice bright...uranium reactors?

Kodak has the bomb.

 … OK, not really. But according to a report from the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle, an Eastman Kodak facility had a small nuclear reactor and 3 ½ pounds of weapons-grade uranium for more than 30 years.

Kodak. The company that makes cameras and printers.

“It’s such an odd situation because private companies just don’t have this material,” Miles Pomper, a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, D.C., told the Democrat and Chronicle.

No kidding. A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the Los Angeles Times that the company had enriched 1,582 grams of uranium-235 up to 93.4%, a level considered weapons-grade. Good thing Kodak isn't in Iran; that’s the kind of thing Israel’s been threatening to go to war over.

The company was using the reactor to check its chemicals and perform radiography tests, the commission said, and had upgraded to its in-house system after using one at Cornell University, according to the Democrat and Chronicle. It was reportedly guarded and monitored carefully.

Kodak, not known as one of the world’s nuclear powers, filed for bankruptcy protection in January and has been shedding some of its holdings.

Lest this story conjure up memories of the anxiety over “loose nukes” after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kodak ditched the uranium in 2007 with the coordination of the U.S. government, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Just sitting in a basement in Rochester.  And they kept that awesome little secret for 30 years.  "Everything looks worse in black and white", indeed.

Last Call

Somebody explain to me again which side is trying to start a "race war" again, because these folks don't look like the New Black Panther Party or La Raza or a Islamist jihadi group to me.

Members of a white supremacist skinhead group called American Front trained with AK-47s, shotguns and explosives at a fortified compound in central Florida to prepare for what its reputed leader believed to be an “inevitable race war,” prosecutors said Tuesday.

According to court documents, members of American Front discussed acts of violence that included causing “a disturbance” at City Hall in Orlando, shooting at a house and attacking an anti-racist skinhead group.

At least 10 members of the group, which authorities described as a militia-styled, anti-Semitic domestic terrorist organization, have been arrested in Florida since the weekend, including at least three people on Tuesday.

The felony arrest charges include paramilitary training, attempting to shoot into an occupied dwelling, and evidence of prejudices while committing an offense. The last charge falls under Florida's hate-crimes law.

“This investigation is a result of our ongoing partnership with local law enforcement and federal agencies in a concentrated effort to stamp out hate crime in our community,” Ninth Circuit State Attorney Lawson Lamar said in a statement Tuesday.

So can we admit that we have a domestic terror problem in the United States, and that law enforcement should profile, I dunno, rural white people? Pull them over at traffic stops randomly? Harass groups of them because a group may pose a danger to the community? Put them on no fly lists?   We have to throw these guys in Gitmo because we can't possibly give them a trial here on US soil, right?  I mean, when does this administration do what conservatives say we have to do in a situation like this?

Oh that's right, never.  This administration doesn't operate like that.

Thank god.

It Makes My Brain Hurt

The irony of this could power suns for aeons.

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a Fox News contributor, tea party activist and personal friend of Sean Hannity’s said in a sermon recently published to YouTube that America’s greatest mistake was allowing women the right to vote, adding that back in “the good old days, men knew that women are crazy and they knew how to deal with them.”

In the video, published to YouTube in March, Peterson explains that he believes women simply can’t handle “anything,” and that in his experience, “You walk up to them with a issue, they freak out right away. They go nuts. They get mad. They get upset, just like that. They have no patience because it’s not in their nature. They don’t have love. They don’t have love.”

Reverend Patterson, like myself, is an African-American.  The irony of any African-American saying other groups shouldn't be allowed to vote while on a cable "news" network dedicated to pushing the notion that African-Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote because they're all criminals and fraudsters actually caused me to slam my head on my desk when I first read the article. 

I just can't fathom it.  It's insane.  It makes me despair for humanity.

Rotten Apple, Part 2

Gonna say that I wasn't aware as to the extent that Apple plays the bad corporate citizen game, but the NY Times continuing "iEconomy" series has been very illuminating. Apple's profits in 2011 doubled from 2010, their tax payments basically remained the same through a number of accounting gimmicks and offshore shell games.  This weekend's installment discusses those tax games, dubbed "The Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich".

Apple, the world’s most profitable technology company, doesn’t design iPhones here. It doesn’t run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn’t manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby.

Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. 

Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. 

California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero. 

Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.

And Republicans and conservatives will tell you that the problem isn't the tax code that allows states to play their zero sum games with jobs, nor is it Apple setting up their jobs in California to take advantage of Silicon Valley and paying zero taxes in Nevada as a contribution back.

No, the problem is California has a corporate tax rate above zero percent, and that's inherently evil.  Meanwhile, the reason why Apple stays in California includes some $400 million in R&D tax credits and grants.  Have your cake and eat it too, and other US multi-national corporations are following suit.

In the GOP world, it's Red States vs Blue ones.  We're not united at all, we're fighting each other for resources through war by any other means, most of it economic.  No wonder our national economy is weak.

They don't want anyone else to be a part of their "America".

WTH: Bully In The Classroom Is The Teacher?

(Reuters) - A New Jersey school district has fired at least two educators for verbally abusing autistic children after a father sent his 10-year-old autistic son to school wearing a hidden microphone upon suspecting he was being mistreated by staff.

The audio recordings, made public in a 17-minute video later posted on YouTube, capture educators speaking in harsh tones to the autistic children, including one in which a woman tells the young boy what sounds like "You are a bastard."

"That night my life changed forever," father Stuart Chaifetz said of the first time he heard the recording. "What I heard on that audio was so disgusting, so vile."

The father demands an apology, saying it is about reclaiming his son's dignity.  For six months, he had meetings with the school in response to complaints that his autistic son was acting out of character.  The man was worried about his son's development and taped the events that led to the firing of at least two school employees.

The thing is, while it's great that uploading the video to YouTube had the right results, I'm really worried about the lack of teacher supervision in schools, especially for the most vulnerable students.  In the day of remote monitoring and other technology, I really expected schools to be proactive in recording and watching classrooms, if for no other reason than to deter lawsuits and allegations.

Mistreating autistic children should mean never working with kids again.  However, it likely won't, something that should concern other parents.  Hell, I don't even have kids and I'm worried about it.

Cry Meh, And Let Slip The Blue Dogs Of "I'm Not Sure"

West Virginia Dem Sen. Joe Manchin isn't sure if he's going to even vote for President Kenyan Melaninson at this point.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has done more than any other Democrat up for reelection this year to distance himself from President Obama, said he does not know if he will vote for Obama or presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in November.

“I’ll look at the options,” Manchin said this week. The last three years “have made it pretty rough” for his state, he said.

That stance is at odds with almost every other Democrat who is up for reelection this year or is from a state that Romney is likely to win. And it’s an indication of the unique effort Manchin has made to establish his independence from Obama and other Democrats. The senator has regularly used floor speeches and closely watched votes to, as he puts it, “respectfully” highlight differences with Obama, especially on environmental issues. He said Obama has never called him or sought a one-on-one conversation.

Manchin said his own vote will depend on how his constituents view the contest.

At this point, Manchin should just switch parties and be done with it, except in West Virginia (like Kentucky) he'd immediately be primaried by somebody even more insane.

“I am just waiting for it to play out. I am not jumping in one way or another,” Manchin said. “I’m worried about me. I’ve said it’s not a team sport. You need to go out and work for yourself.”

Translation, screw the black guy.  I've got serious energy lobbyist dollars to harvest in a state where being black is only good if you're a cart full of coal, and I'm in it for myself.  Any questions?

Last Call

NOW can we leave Afghanistan for good when our troops are doing completely stupid, moronic crap like this?

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse's severed legs.

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.

This is ghoulish, disgusting, and we're coming up on eleven goddamn years of this.  We're coming up on an entire generation of kids knowing nothing other than our war in the sandbox.  Between this and the shooting rampage last month, we have no moral authority left.  None.  It's a travesty.

Bring them home.  Just for the love of all that's good in the world, go.

Don't Bite The Hand That... Well, You Know

Okay, the title made me laugh.  But this is a serious story for a few reasons.  Normally, I wouldn't dive into a married couple's issue like this but since they went public I figure it's all up for grabs.

A former top Alabama official who campaigned against gay marriage in his failed bid for governor has donated sperm to several lesbian couples in New Zealand while doing earthquake-recovery work, according to The New Zealand Herald. His wife described the news as "the utmost of betrayal."

Bill Johnson, 52, who describes himself as a conservative Christian, used an online alias to meet women wanting to get pregnant, the paper says. He said he could not have biological children with his wife, Kathy, who had a hysterectomy before they married in 2004. She has three children from a previous relationship.

There's a lot more going on. His wife didn't know he was doing this, and he says he believes she knew he would continue donating. It's hard to imagine a miscommunication like that, but I digress. His wife is pissed and doesn't even pretend to be flexible on the matter.

"My heart is broken. I told Bill when I talked to him this morning after receiving your call that I simply can't talk. I can't even breathe.

"I have no idea what life holds for us in the coming days."

"He knows I am shocked and deeply hurt and even angry. It's not something a wife ever wants to experience. It's very personal and very tragic and we'll have to work through this as a family.

"I just can't believe this could be true. I don't believe he would put the reputation he has earned at risk by acting in such an irresponsible, selfish manner."

Well now, wait a minute now. Someone with that stance probably didn't misunderstand or fail to clarify her feelings on the subject. You don't do something like this without the full consent of your spouse, period. He has opened their family up to legal, ethical and financial peril and it sounds like he at the very least pushed the boundaries of what is preferred from donor parents. It's actually a cool thing to do, when your own partner is comfortable with it and has been in on the process. It's a really crappy thing to blindside someone with and then ask how they feel. They feel lied to and violated, and the fact that (hopefully) happy healthy babies are now with parents who really want them won't diminish the betrayal.

Now knowing what the future holds says enough.  Happy babies, lying jackass, I'm so conflicted about how to tag this one.

Last Call

So here, the Cincy sports world is still talking about Saturday's UC-Xavier men's basket-brawl game at the annual Crosstown Shootout on Saturday, but the issue of race and college sports, especially in basketball, is often overlooked.  ESPN's Myron Medcalf had the same reaction I did to the story:  would the reaction of the college b-ball press and Hamilton County prosecutors have been the same if the athletes who did this were white?

As a 28-year-old African-American, I'm concerned about the backlash that will outlive the incident. Xavier and Cincinnati fed negative stereotypes about the violent nature of young black men that will last long after players serve their suspensions.

They're not true. Most young black men aren't violent. But Saturday's incident and others like it provide ample evidence for those who disagree.

Check the message boards.

Predictably, plenty have feasted on the viral violence involving multiple young black men.

After Cincinnati officials announced the six-game suspension for Yancy Gates on Sunday, I tweeted, "I figured 10 minimum for Gates. 6?"

Here's how one of my followers responded: "Only six? That's pretty soft for a gang beating."

Too often, the negative behaviors of young black men -- more than other groups -- are tied to their race. Their actions are sometimes viewed as cultural, instead of individual. 

Medcalf rightfully goes on to say that as college athletes who have been given an incredible gift and the opportunity to use it to better themselves, that they are being held to a higher standard because of the number of folks out there fully vested in seeing black men fail, and that's basically been the case for a very, very long time.

That in no way excuses their actions.  In fact, it makes Fox Sports Ohio writer Zac Jackson railing against the stiff suspensions given out to several players by both coaches and calling the suspensions "soft" not only totally predictable but nearly impossible to counter without bringing up race, and in a situation like this that's simply going to be a losing argument.

It's an unfortunate reality, made all the more real by our country's current political tensions.  Cooler heads should have prevailed.  They did not.  Maybe I am overly sensitive being a pretty big black man myself.  My father cured me of my temper in youth by sitting me down and explaining to me that as big as I was, if I ever really hurt anyone in anger, that I would not be shown leniency in any way by the system in North Carolina.  I had to be better than that, not for his sake, but for my own.

You're just not allowed to show anger like that as a black man in America.  And the reactions to this fight highlight exactly why.  It's a lesson that has much wider applications for our political times, but that's an argument for a different night.

This Week's WTH - Crotchless Edition

It started as a family trip to the mall.

"We went towards the play area, because we like to take our son over there," Erin French said.

Next to the play area was a new store called Kids N Teen.

"They have cuddly little backpacks, and pretty little princess dresses," French said.

She also saw underwear.

"Then we saw crotchless panties, and I was mortified. My first initial response was, 'Am I really seeing that?'" French said.

She was. The product has since been taken off the shelves after outraged parents complained to mall management. The store is geared to kids but state that because approximately 25% of their clientele are teens they thought this was okay.

Just... wow.

WTH HTC?

The boys over at Android Police have been working hard.  They have found a lot of background on how certain HTC devices have a nasty habit of collecting a ridiculous amount of information and have left it completely unguarded.  They go into some detail about how that information can be used, including cloning, but this security lapse is the type that can be used for an incredible number of problems.

In recent updates to some of its devices, HTC introduces a suite of logging tools that collected information. Lots of information. LOTS. Whatever the reason was, whether for better understanding problems on users' devices, easier remote analysis, corporate evilness - it doesn't matter. If you, as a company, plant these information collectors on a device, you better be DAMN sure the information they collect is secured and only available to privileged services or the user, after opting in.

That is not the case. What Trevor found is only the tip of the iceberg - we are all still digging deeper - but currently any app on affected devices that requests a single android.permission.INTERNET (which is normal for any app that connects to the web or shows ads) can get its hands on:

• the list of user accounts, including email addresses and sync status for each
• last known network and GPS locations and a limited previous history of locations
• phone numbers from the phone log
• SMS data, including phone numbers and encoded text (not sure yet if it's possible to decode it, but very likely)
• system logs (both kernel/dmesg and app/logcat), which includes everything your running apps do and is likely to include email addresses, phone numbers, and other private info
• Normally, applications get access to only what is allowed by the permissions they request, so when you install a simple, innocent-looking new game from the Market that only asks for the INTERNET permission (to submit scores online, for example), you don't expect it to read your phone log or list of emails.

 But that's not all. After looking at the huge amount of data (the log file was 3.5MB on my EVO 3D) that is vulnerable to apps exploiting this vulnerability all day, I found the following is also exposed (granted, some of which may be already available to any app via the Android APIs):

• active notifications in the notification bar, including notification text
• build number, bootloader version, radio version, kernel version
• network info, including IP addresses
• full memory info
• CPU info
• file system info and free space on each partition
• running processes
• current snapshot/stacktrace of not only every running process but every running thread
• list of installed apps, including permissions used, user ids, versions, and more
• system properties/variables
• currently active broadcast listeners and history of past broadcasts received
• currently active content providers
• battery info and status, including charging/wake lock history

In other words, giving permission for what seems innocent, such as high score or playing with a friend can lead to a stalkertastic time, including every call or message that is sent, and directly accessing account information.  It isn't made clear to users, and it isn't protected.  The best these geeks can tell there is no obvious reason to collect user data of this magnitude, and yet it's being done without apology or correction.

It's time to increase accountability for tracking our information and protecting it.  Period.

This Week's WTH: Felony Lunch Money Theft

DEXTER, Mo. (AP) — Authorities in the southeast Missouri town of Dexter are investigating after hackers were able to access Dexter School District money through a bank account and steal some of those funds.

The Dexter Daily Statesman (http://bit.ly/olMc40 ) reports that the school district's database did not appear to be corrupted, so officials believe the breach was "within the banking industry."

Nice fast move blaming it on the banks. It may be right, but it sure sounds like a scramble to place blame to me. Meanwhile, we'd better hope this was a child or the nature of crime could mean a whole lot of time.

Last Call

OK, I understand that Qaddafi is a bit eccentric, but this is just uncomfortably weird here.

Libyan rebels successfully raided the compound of Muammar Gadhafi and found amongst his possessions guns, cars and valuable artwork.

According to Newser, Gadhafi's compound also holds unusual objects such as his daughter's gold mermaid couch, a statue of a giant hand crumpling a U.S. fighter jet, and golf carts that rebels seem to enjoy riding in as they celebrate their success.

However, the object that seems to raise the most eyebrows is a photo album filled with pictures of former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In his 2007 interview with Al-Jazeera television, Gadhafi boasted, "I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders...Leezza, Leezza, Leezza...I love her very much. I admire her and I'm proud of her because she's a black woman of African origin."

Yeah, in addition to everything else, dude had his stalker scrapbook of Condi Rice.  I'm not sure what's creepier, a septuagenarian dictator hitting on a woman 25 years younger than him, or a world leader obsessed with Condi Rice to have a scrapbook of her.

Eeeeeugh.  *shudder*

The Emerald (Sunken) City

A pretty interesting story from Reuters involving half a billion dollars in sunken treasure and who owns it, angry investors, corporate greed, and a guy named Jay Miscovich who made one hell of a find.

In early 2010, Miscovich, an investor in sunken treasure excavations, claimed to have located a site and recovered a "cache" of precious stones.

To pay for the pricey recovery work, Miscovich turned for assistance to his brother Scott, a Hawaiian physician. Scott connected Jay with Dean Barr, the former Citigroup hedge fund executive, who in turn, brought in Ash the accountant. In the summer of 2010, the pair agreed to pony up roughly $2 million, according to the partnership agreement, although the two sides differ on how much of that they actually invested.

Almost immediately, things soured. The investors suspected the Miscoviches were scheming to keep the most highly prized gems for themselves -- a concern fueled by the empty safe deposit box episode.

Their worst fears seemed to be confirmed when Ash, the accountant, was contacted by Gerry Edwards, a diver working on the recovery efforts in Florida. Recounting the conversation to Reuters, Edwards said he told Ash that boxes of emeralds were being stashed out of the investors' reach in Key West.

Soon after Edwards' call to Ash, the investors sued. They wanted a ruling that Jay Miscovich had breached his contract with the investors and that they could seize control of the partnership.

The Miscovich side of the story, as related in court documents, is quite different. According to Jay Miscovich, the investors created events like the empty safe deposit box as a pretext to have the bank deny the brothers' access to the vault. The "stash" that the diver Edwards discovered in Key West was nothing but worthless stones.

To Jay Miscovich, it was the investors who appeared to be angling to snatch the treasure.

It gets crazy from there, involving the Smithsonian Museum, "bags of gemstones", a former Bill Clinton campaign manager, a movie deal and a sealed settlement in Delaware courts.  This one's going to make a great movie when it comes out if you ask me.

I really hope Matthew McConaughey isn't in it.

Facepalm

It's a bad news day for Springfield.

Springfield, MO — Three people are now charged with misdemeanour child endangerment after police said they left 10 kids in a hot SUV for hours, while they sat in a Springfield bar, drinking.

25-year-old Mackisha B. Johnson and 38-year-old Christopher M. Jones are behind bars.

This was within a few miles of my house.  I know stupid is everywhere, but it sure seems to be closing in on me.