Daily Commentary – Wednesday, October 16, 2013 – Ex-San Diego Mayor Bob Filner Pleads Guilty to One Charge of False Imprisonment & Two Counts of Battery

• Disgraced Bob Filner pleaded guilty to charges involving 3 women; one charge of false imprisonment and two misdemeanor counts of battery. “Filthy” Filner finally resigned effective August 30, 2013, even though back in July he did not believe he was guilty of any sexual harassment of woman. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Listen to the podcast below.

Under the plea agreement, Filner will not serve any time behind bars but will spend three months in home confinement, give up most of his mayoral pension and promise never to run for office again.

Filner will also undergo treatment as “directed by a mental health professional” during his three years of probation.

Lost Priorities … North Andover High School Punishes Teen Erin Cox for Being Responsible and Giving Drunken Friend a Ride Home From a Party

Honestly, what has happened to the world that I grew up in … ZERO Tolerance has ZERO common sense.

North Andover High School senior, 17 year old Erin Cox has been demoted from being captain of the school’s volleyball team and suspended for 5 games because she did the right thing and went to a party to drive a drunk friend home. That is correct folks, punished because of an ignorant “zero alcohol” policy for actually doing the responsible thing. How is it that we have become a nation that punishes people for doing the right and responsible thing? UNREAL. This is not a trouble making student, in fact she is a model student. I guess the rocket scientists at the school would rather have teenagers drive drunk and harm kill themselves, as well as putting other innocent people in harms way?

Is this the message that we want to be teaching kids? Attorney Wendy Murphy, friend of SM and frequent guest of the Dana Pretzer Show, is representing the teen against the ridiculous policies of the North Andover, MA school. Murphy stated, “If a kid asks for help from a friend, you don’t want that kid to say ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you. I might end up in trouble at school.’” She is 100% correct.

Two weeks ago, Erin received a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive. Erin drove to Boxford after work to pick up her friend. Moments after she arrived, the cops arrived too and busted several kids for underage possession of alcohol.

A North Andover High School honor student, Erin was cleared by police, who agreed she had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol. But Andover High told Erin she was in violation of the district’s zero tolerance policy against alcohol and drug use. In the middle of her senior year, Erin was demoted from captain of the volleyball team and told she would be suspended from playing for five games.

From The Daily Caller … We are proud of her as well!!!

According to AHS’s student handbook, student athletes are forbidden from “knowingly being and remaining in the presence of other minors using alcohol or illegal drugs or controlled substances.” Since Cox admittedly attended the party–in order to help her drunk friend–she violated the policy.

But Cox’s mother says she did the right thing, regardless of district policy.

“She didn’t do anything wrong,” said Eleanor Cox. “She did what she thought was right, and I’m very proud of her.”

NSA Collecting Hundreds of Millions of Contact Lists from Personal E-mail & IM Accounts, Including Americans

The government may be shut down, but the NSA is not …

Nothing is off limits to the NSA and so much for anything personal privacy. According to the NSA and their collection techniques, we are guilty until proven innocent. According to the WAPO, “Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.”  But don’t worry, President Barack Obama previously stated that the NSA’s email collecting program “does not apply to U.S. citizens.” Of course this is the same individual who says that the Obamacare website is a success, it is just “glitchy”.

The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.

During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250?million a year.

From The Hill … Maybe some one might want to define and quantify what “required to minimize the ‘acquisition, use and dissemination’ of contacts of U.S. citizens” is!

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the program is aimed at “valid foreign intelligence targets,” including terrorists, drug smugglers and human traffickers. He added that the NSA is required to minimize the “acquisition, use and dissemination” of contacts of U.S. citizens.

But of course because of media bias, we hear really nothing of this invasion of privacy. However, as the Lonely Conservative states, image if a Republican was in the White House?

We The People Fight Back Against Obama Tyranny … Americans Storm Barricades At Lincoln Memorial

Take a good look at what peaceful disobedience looks like …

Memorials and monuments belong to the American people and any government that would barricade an open air, outside memorial is nothing more than an act of tyranny.  From KLTV, watch patriots rip through the tape, move the barriers and take back what belongs to “We the People” as they walk up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and celebrate.

Veterans March on Washington …Live UStream Video … #Veteran, #1MVetMarch

Today is the Million Vet March in Washington, DC that we posted on previously. Watch the Live UStream video below.

Check out the many pics and stories on Facebook: Million Vet March on the Memorials.

UPDATE I: From WTOP, Crowd storms World War II Memorial.

Fantastic pic from today’s Veteran’s March

Thousands of people converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall on Sunday morning and tore down the barricades blocking it off, protesting the closure of the memorial during the federal government shutdown.

Beginning at about 9:30 a.m., Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as well as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, were among the luminaries in a crowd that chanted “Tear down these walls!” and sang “God Bless America” as well as other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial, which has been closed since the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Tractor-trailers headed down 17th Street toward the Mall, blaring their horns. The Metropolitan Police Department blocked off the street, prompting the crowd to head up the street, shouting at the police to move their vehicles.

Cruz said that President Obama was using veterans as political pawns in the shutdown.

Sharmen S. Wright  @SharmenSWright

UPDATE II: From The Blaze, many pics from today’s Veterans March.

UPDATE III: Even more great pictures and Tweets from Powerline and Twitchy.