Civil Liberties

Calvarysun.com | Political activist John Boncore was entitled to try to arrest former U.S. president George W. Bush for war crimes, his lawyer told a Calgary court Monday. Defence counsel Charles Davison said his client’s attempts at breaching a police barrier to gain access to Bush were justified. Boncore is charged with obstructing a peace officer for repeatedly trying to get past security and into the Telus Convention Centre last March 17.

Sun Times | Mayor Daley today unveiled his annual package of gun control legislation and denied he's "swimming upstream" at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled its intention to overturn Chicago's handgun ban.

RawStory.com | For being caught with just over a quarter pound of pot, 54-year-old Henry Walter Wooten will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, thanks to a jury in Tyler, Texas.

PrisonPlanet.com | Since the establishment media is convinced that tea party members, 9/11 truthers, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, and basically anyone with a dissenting political opinion is a likely domestic terrorist, they should be celebrating the fact that a new bill would allow the government to detain such people as “enemy belligerents” indefinitely and without trial based on their “suspected activity”.

FDL | The National Security Agency spies on all Americans illegally. This includes, landline phones, cell phones, internet and probably everything else they can use Government whistleblowers are threatened with prison or worse, if they reveal this Conspiracy. The Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board helps direct these criminal activities. This Board is a secret neo-con government. It is controlled by corporate criminals and war profiteers such as Stephen Friedman of Goldman Sachs.

Ammoland.com | Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for the year reported 14,033,824 NICS Checks for the year of 2009, a 10 percent increase in gun purchases from the 12,709,023 reported in 2008.

Cannabis Culture | Ex-narcotics officer turned cop-busting filmmaker Barry Cooper has been arrested for allegedly filing a false police report in a KopBusters sting operation, and for possession of less than a gram of marijuana found in a raid on his home.

abclocal.go.com | An Eyewitness News investigation talks to a police officer who reveals the pressure they are under to make quotas.

AP | Dale Welch recently walked into a Starbucks in Virginia, handgun strapped to his waist, and ordered a banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun. He says the firearm drew a double-take from at least one customer, but not a peep from the baristas.

AP | A couple worries that burglars who tried to break in when the wife was home alone will return. A retiree fears the drug dealers and junkies just outside his window will attempt — again — to steal what he spent a lifetime earning. And a businessman wants to protect himself as he could when he was a police officer.

Mail Online | Gordon Brown defended the controversial DNA database and plans to extend CCTV today as he put the fear of crime and yobbery at the heart of the election campaign. The Prime Minister attacked the Tories' opposition of the CCTV roll-out and the retention of DNA samples from people arrested but not convicted. In a major speech on law and order, he promised that both would be 'on the ballot paper' in the coming election.

NewsWithViews.com | There is a classic story about how no one had been able to capture a herd of wild hogs that was rooting up crops from numerous farms. It got so bad that rewards had been posted for anyone clever enough to corral the critters. But even this resulted in only limited success.

The Register | The US government’s policy of leaving the Internet alone is over, according to Obama’s top official at the Department of Commerce. Instead, an “Internet Policy 3.0” approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, according to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance.

RawStory.com | A majority of Americans believe that the federal government is "an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens," a new poll suggests.

RawStory.com | In the wake of congressional Democrats' reauthorization and extension of the USA Patriot Act, few elected Democrats have been as vocal about the post-9/11 security measures as they were during the Bush administration.