Month: June 2014

Imaginary global warming

~ susie

derecho3

It’s all in your head, it’s not really happening. Just ask any GOP congress member!

A complex of thunderstorms erupting over Iowa this afternoon may consolidate into a powerful squall line or derecho that rips through the Upper Midwest this evening.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) forecasts has highlighted a broad region as having a 45 percent chance of experiencing destructive winds (within 25 miles of any point) over 70 mph. Des Moines, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago all lie within this zone of elevated risk, which affects almost 19 million people.

“Numerous severe thunderstorms capable of large hail, tornadoes and swaths of damaging wind are expected today into tonight over much of the Corn Belt and Midwest,” SPC says.
report-june30Already, thunderstorms have exploded over portions of Nebraska and Iowa today, with multiple reports of damaging winds and hail. A tornado touched down in northeast Nebraska, not far from Pilger, where twin tornadoes struck two weeks ago.

One tornado watch covers a large chunk of Iowa and western Nebraska until 6 p.m. central time. A second tornado watch covers eastern Iowa, northwest Illinois and southern Wisconsin until 7 p.m. central.

Heads up

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Pay attention, folks:

Security researchers from the Anti-virus firm Trend Micro have discovered a new variant of banking malware that not only steals users’ information from the device it has infected but, has ability to “sniff” network activity in an effort to compromise the devices of same network users as well.

The banking malware, dubbed as EMOTET spreads rapidly through spammed emails that masquerade itself as a bank transfers and shipping invoices. The spammed email comes along with an attached link that users easily click, considering that the emails refer to their bank or financial transactions.

Justice-splaining Hobby Lobby decision…

~ Boohunney

The Hobby Lobby decision is bad… Ruth Bader Ginsburg “justice-splains” it in these terms….

Here are seven more key quotes from Ginsburg’s dissent in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby:

  • “The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage”
  • “Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.”
  • “Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby’s or Conestoga’s plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults.”
  • “It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage.”
  • “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.”
  • “Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very ‘risk the [Constitution’s] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”
  • “The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”

Another reason we need to end the war on drugs

~ susie

westphillyhouse

These civil forfeiture laws are nothing but plunder against the poor in the name of the state, and this is a particularly egregious case. Philadelphia is about to knock possession of marijuana down to a misdemeanor, but our ambitious District Attorney is still going after cases like this? Shame on him, and shame on the craven legislative overreach that came up with this unconstitutional property grab. This poor woman suffered through the MOVE bombing (her house is on the corner of 62nd and Osage, the street that was in flames), and now the city drops another bomb on her:

Remember: No one even had to be convicted for this to happen!

At once tidy and stalwart, but pockmarked, too, with its share of boarded-up homes, Elizabeth Young’s neighborhood in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia is the epitome of urban grit.

No one would mistake this tough patch of the city for a hotbed of real estate action. And yet the District Attorney’s Office stands to make a pretty good return here.

On April 3, 2013, Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick ruled in favor of the D.A.’s Office and ordered Young, 69, a widow active in her church, to turn over her home to the city. The city had arrested her son and another man for the sale of small amounts of marijuana there, and then, under civil forfeiture statutes, moved to seize Young’s home.

They were able to do this even though Young had never been accused of a crime, much less convicted. The loss of the home is no small thing, say her lawyers. She has been forced to stay with relatives. The house was appraised at $54,000, and it was her main asset.

That and her 1997 Chevrolet Venture minivan. The D.A.’s Office took that, too.

Young’s case is now on appeal before Commonwealth Court. A three-judge panel originally heard the case in October, but in a sign of how seriously the court views the constitutional issues implicated by the seizure, a majority of its 11 justices decided to rehear the matter in May. It is expected to rule any day now on whether the seizure violated Young’s constitutional protection against excessive fines under the Eighth Amendment.

Young’s lawyers at the firm of Ballard Spahr, Jessica Anthony and Jason Leckerman, have no quarrel with the city’s aggressive posture toward drug dealing. They say the concern is that in his zeal to push back against drug dealers, District Attorney Seth Williams is subjecting people to exceedingly harsh punishment for crimes that someone else committed.

In fact, under the law, there doesn’t even have to be an underlying conviction for a civil forfeiture action to proceed.

“Civil forfeiture punishes property owners for someone else’s wrongs,” said Anthony. “That means individuals can lose their homes because a family member, friend, or even a stranger has been accused of using, storing or selling drugs in their home, even if no one gets convicted for the crime. The loss of one’s home . . . is a harsh punishment.”