Mcnorman's Weblog

No holds barred.  Well worth reading in it’s entirety.  The most telling statement?

It’s time to tell Americans the truth. And the first party to do that will own the future.

via Opinion: The real deal on the debt debate.  Question is, which party has the balls to own the future?

H/T Anthony

Hacked DOT Road Sign Reads “Impeach Obama”

Several drivers stopped to take pictures of the message.

Union Country, N.C. has a funny sense of humor.

Wynn CEO Goes On Epic Anti-Obama Rant On Company Conference Call.

Via Seeking Alpha, here’s the crux of it:

I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what’s going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing’s going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress. But everybody is so political, so focused on holding their job for the next year that the discussion in Washington is nauseating.

Precarious situation at border: Private security company to search border-crossers vehicles for hire.

A security company employee and a drug-sniffing dog check maquiladora tractor-trailers on the Mexican side of the border. Tourists and regular border commuters have approached the company to check their vehicles for possible drugs before they enter the U.S. Motorists don’t want to undergo the ordeal of Ana Isela Martínez of Juárez, a teacher at an El Paso private school who spent a month and a half in prison after drug smugglers planted two bags of marijuana in her car.

In January, El Paso resident Dr. Justus Opot and co-worker Marisol Perez were also detained in Juárez after drugs that didn’t belong to them were found in Perez’s vehicle. All have been released from custody.

Why would anyone want to go to Mexico?

Obama Meets Secretly With Boehner and Cantor.

It’s true that real negotiations need to be conducted quietly. But keeping secret a meeting between the two most powerful people in Washington – the president and the Speaker of the House, is not necessary, especially when news of the sessions will emerge anyway.

In all my time covering Washington, I’ve never heard of a secret meeting between the president and the Speaker. The openness White House has now held three of them, with more perhaps coming.

 

Why the secret?   We all know we are about to get royally screwed.

DOJ: We can force you to decrypt that laptop.

Prosecutors stressed that they don’t actually require the passphrase itself, meaning Fricosu would be permitted to type it in and unlock the files without anyone looking over her shoulder. They say they want only the decrypted data and are not demanding “the password to the drive, either orally or in written form.”

On the other hand are civil libertarians citing other Supreme Court cases that conclude Americans can’t be forced to give “compelled testimonial communications” and extending the legal shield of the Fifth Amendment to encryption passphrases. Courts already have ruled that that such protection extends to the contents of a defendant’s mind, so why shouldn’t a passphrase be shielded as well?

In an amicus brief (PDF) filed on Friday, the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the Justice Department’s request be rejected because of Fricosu’s Fifth Amendment rights. The Fifth Amendment says that “no person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

“Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act–revealing control over a computer and the files on it,” said EFF Senior staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. “Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying under oath, or risking contempt of court.”