Wyden and ACLU on GPS tracking

The US government, its agencies and your local police all can track your cell phone GPS location without getting any warrant or making a case before a judge that you pose a risk of committing a crime.  Ron Wyden, along with two Republican Co-Sponsors have introduced legislation to correct that.  Needless to say the US Department of Justice opposes the idea.  That's the same folks who justified killing anybody in the Mid-East with Drones, which may soon be showing up in a neighborhood near you if they have their way.

The strange story of Beda Singenberger and the IRS

A recent news story is making the rounds that says a Swiss Financial Advisor who was helping US citizens hide money from the IRS accidentally sent a list of his clients to somebody in the US and, again accidentally, it ended up in the hands of the US Dept of Justice which started prosecuting the 60 people on the list. Those people had concealed over $184 million of wealth from the tax man, and now they're going to pay up.

There is one person who thinks the story is a smoke screen, and I think his version is more probably correct than the official story.  The US probably put the squeeze on the Swiss Bankers involved and they coughed up the list of clients, but they needed a cover story to avoid being in violation of Swiss laws, so the list turned up "accidentally".

Beda Singenberger is also charged by US authorities, but for the moment he is basking in Switzerland and not likely to be tried in the US.  Singenberger, who lives in Zurich, was charged in New York federal court in July 2011 with conspiracy to cheat the IRS.

Legal Executions

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has asked the Obama administration to answer questions about when and how they decide a US Citizen can be summarily killed after this leaked White Paper was leaked to the press.  He has long been concerned on the lack of transparency by the administration on this subject.  He is in a delicate position since as a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he knows a lot of the answers, but he can not arbitrarily release them publicly.  He will be bringing up the issue in the John Brennan confirmation hearings as director of the CIA.

Update 2/6/2013 6:45 PM, Wyden wins after threatening to derail Brennan nomination.

Wall Street Whimpers

If you had to pick out some of the principal bad guys in the financial meltdown, S&P would be high up on the list along with all the other rating agencies.  Their negligence allowed the Wall Street crooks to unload billions of toxic assets on the entire world, and finally the Department of justice is proclaiming they'll sue, along with a few State Attorney generals.  In January 2011, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission called the agencies "essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction" and "key enablers of the financial meltdown."  The Senate panel released internal documents showing how Moody's and S&P failed to heed their own internal warnings about the deteriorating mortgage market.
 
The self-serving response by S&P is enough to make me angry.  They ought to be in prison by now.