Taxpayers should get a receipt so they know what they're paying for, a think tank called Third Way argues in a new paper.

Here's a sample from the group. It includes federal income tax and FICA, which funds Medicare and Social Security. Details are here.

What we pay for provides a view of this.

Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt. : Planet Money : NPR

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has tapped Northrop Grumman to develop binoculars that will tap the subconscious mind. The Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program, informally called "Luke's Binoculars," combines advanced optics with electro-encephalogram electrodes that can, DARPA believes, be used to alert the wearer to a threat before the conscious mind has processed the information.

Northrop To Develop Mind-Reading Binoculars | Danger Room from Wired.com

The TSA has finally managed to successfully turn the airports into a dragnet that pulls in large numbers of people guilty of all kinds of minor offenses that have nothing at all to do with terrorism.

"In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip," said Maccario from his office in Boston. "When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, ... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."

Such people are referred for secondary screening, which can include a pat-down search and an X-ray exam. The microfacial expressions, he said, are the same across many cultures.

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

So they have a systematic process of harrassing travellers. For every 100 travellers that they detain and harrass they find one person guilty of a "crime." Most of those crimes involve warrants out for things like unpaid parking tickets, possession of illegal drugs (a victimless crime), and "weapons violations" (unregistered firearms or knives that are outside local municipal rules likely possessed by people who aren't even planning to get on a plane and may not even know they are illegal, etc)...

As long as there is a risk of terrorism this system will be perpetuated, but its real purpose is in enforcing a myriad of laws regulating behavior that is at best only illegal because of its secondary social effects and not because it is directly harmful to anyone, and at worst is a direct effort at social control by narrow minded and powerful people.

The next time some TSA person smiles at you and asks how your day is going think of this passage from 1984:

He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

I know I will, and I know I'll be in for secondary screening while they try to determine whether my rage at their assault on the freedom this country once knew is a sign that I'm hiding something they can charge me for. Some day, perhaps, that rage itself will be illegal.

Airport profilers: They're watching your expressions

"In focus groups, the biggest thing they said to us was it made them safer, because if you are in a public space you know someone's watching."

The parade of horrors presented nightly by sensationalistic local television news has scared a certain segment of the population from leaving their living rooms, and its warm, glowing advertisement display. Now these people, the most paranoid in our society, have been armed with the power to spy on the actions of the rest of us and report those activities to the police! I'm sure its thrilling to think that from the comfort of their couches they can participate in law enforcement! This is how you build a network of informers and snitches!

Home snoop CCTV more popular than Big Brother | The Register

For a minute or so, it's just Coles being a good samaritan, trying to stop a potentially violent confrontation and demanding that one of the men who picks up a rock put it down. It's already extremely tense by the time that someone starts pointing at the masked protestors and chanting "policier!" Coles demands that the men take off their masks, and the majority of the crowd join him––some even reach for the bandannas themselves––and accuse the masked men of being cops, police provocateurs hired to start a riot. When Coles actually looks at one of the men dead-on and says, "you're a police officer," the masked men all freeze, seemingly dumb-struck. And then they kind of start being aggressive again, until a little over two minutes in, when there's the weirdest police takedown you'll probably ever see.

Interesting video... I nearly posted it yesterday. If you were a protestor holding a rock, which is clearly a violent jesture, would you walk toward the police line for protection when the crowd starts chanting at you, still holding the rock? Don't miss the picture where the "protestors" and police are all wearing the same boots. These kinds of accusations are made often but I've never seen such clear evidence. Fortunately the mainstream press in Canada appears to be picking up on it.

Just remember that authorities never abuse power, which is why we don't need checks and balances. Checks and balances kill Americans.

Torontoist: Bon Cop, Bad Cop

WASHINGTON -- In a victory for TV networks but a setback for efforts to shield children from coarse language, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that broadcasters cannot be penalized for expletives that are considered impromptu.

The three-judge panel in New York repudiated the Federal Communications Commission's recent crackdown on broadcast indecency, calling its efforts "arbitrary and capricious."

My gut reaction is that this will be overturned on appeal, but the ruling makes for VERY interesting reading if you are interested in broadcast free speech (still going through it). Also, the response from the FCC is hillarious.

One important point that is worth making is that this is NOT a reversal of the general rule regarding the use of indecent speech on the air.

Basically, it is not as simple as "you can't say fuck on the air" and it has never been that simple. (For example, can you explain the difference between profanity and indecency? The decision discusses this and its quite interesting.) Since 2003 the FCC has started enforcing a new prohibition on "off the cuff," isolated cursing that didn't exist before. This decision concerns that rule and has nothing to do with prohibitions on general indecency that have existed for decades.

Judges toss FCC rule on cursing | Chicago Tribune

Hari & Parker do Junior Big Brother. Hari and Parker are cute little toys that love to hang around.
They watch and listen – and they look great in a child's bedroom. The cute characters are in fact the speculative instruments of a government campaign to promote and encourage children to commit subtle acts of domestic surveillance.
Hari has a microphone ear and Parker a video-camera nose and fingerprint-scanner paw.

The Hari&Parker brand is instantly recognisable. Their reassuring faces can be found on toys,

"Better be nice to me, or I'll send you to guantanamo..."

The Science of Spying - Part 3

"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.

They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.

About �500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.

Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said the government should be "very careful" over the cameras.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | 'Talking' CCTV scolds offenders

In the winter of 2002, with the federal budget stretched thin, President George W. Bush asked Congress to give back money that lawmakers had earmarked for local projects so it could be used instead to fund the Pell grant program, which helps needy students pay for college. One of the local projects that had drawn particularly harsh scrutiny was a $273,000 federal grant that U.S. Rep. Sam Graves had procured to study goth culture in Blue Springs, Missouri. "It's one of those priorities that my constituents asked me to fight for," Graves told an Associated Press reporter at the time.

Ignorant conservative pork barrel bullshit. This is old news, but its worth a look.

Kansas City - News - Black Hole - pitch.com

Colbert on O'Reilly:

O'Reilly on Colbert:

Colbert meets O'Reilly