It was worth a shot!
A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves.
This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit.
While the Fourth Amendment guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons … and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) made it clear earlier this week that the Constitution does not apply in D.C. According to Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn, “Inspections could take place at any Metrorail station or Metrobus stop. They will be random, unannounced and focused on explosive detection.” While the justification supplied for ignoring the Constitution was one of deterring terrorists, the unfortunate reality is that this gross violation of rights is likely to be completely ineffective.
Comprising 86 Metrorail stations (many with more than one entrance) and over 12,000 bus stops, the WMATA operates the second-largest rail transit system and fifth-largest bus network in the United States. Given that there aren’t enough officers (WMATA or D.C. police) to conduct searches at all those stations and stops, a would-be terrorist only has to find a location without a checkpoint. Also, searches aren’t likely to be conducted 24 hours a day, which creates another easy way to exploit the program.
“Unlike the Eastern States, we have large areas threaded by a single stream of water… If the local laws should permit these arteries of wealth and health to be monopolized by the few who chance to control their banks, to the entire exclusion of all other and adjacent land owners, they would be doing a great wrong under the shadow and protection of the law.”
–George W. Haight in Riparian Rights, 5 Overland Monthly 561, 566 (1885)
"A river is more than an amenity…. It is a treasure. It offers a necessity of life that must be rationed among those who have power over it."
–Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), U.S. Supreme Court justice, New Jersey v. New York, 4 May 1931
Recently, another Texan came to Colorado to buy his piece of the state. His intent is to turn two miles of the Taylor River and the adjoining 2000 acres of ranch land into a private, kitschy fishing resort. An additional three miles of meandering meadow streams and six ponds also invite the fortunate few to glory in the splendor of the grass privatized. Building lots start at $2.9 million, of which 26 are planned along with separate restored ranch cabins for guests.
There was a strange moment last week during President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union. There he was, groveling before a cast of Wall Street villains including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, begging them to “Look into your heart!” like John Turturro’s character in Miller’s Crossing…when out of the blue, the POTUS dropped this bombshell: “The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we’re proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny.”
The Big Secret, of course, is that every living creature within a 100-mile radius of Cooper Union would fail “this scrutiny”—or that scrutiny, or any scrutiny, period. Not just in a 100-mile radius, but wherever there are still signs of economic life beating in these 50 United States, the mere whiff of scrutiny would work like nerve gas on what’s left of the economy. Because in the 21st century, fraud is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet Volts—fraud’s all we got left, Doc. Scare off the fraud with Obama’s “scrutiny,” and the entire pyramid scheme collapses in a heap of smoldering savings accounts.
Arizona legislators are fed up with being terrorized by illegal immigrants, and they have passed a law to get tough. Under the measure, passed this week and sent to the governor, police would have to stop and question anyone they suspect of being in this country without legal authorization.
The bill passed after the fatal shooting of Robert Krentz, a 58-year-old rancher whose killer apparently entered illegally from Mexico. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says police are also under siege: "We've had numerous officers that have been killed by illegal immigrants in Arizona."
Friday, the Commerce Department will report estimated first quarter GDP growth. The consensus forecast is for a 3.5 percent increase, further confirming the end of the recession and that the recovery is moderate and disappointing.
Unemployment will hang above 8 or 9 percent well into 2011, and most workers will continue to face a tough job market and declining living standards.
This recovery is decidedly anti-middle class. Wages will not keep up with rising prices, health care premiums and taxes. A good deal of the gains, so far, are going to Wall Street and the medical and intellectual property industries.
What lots of Americans don’t realize is that the new Arizona immigration law simply extends to the entire state the requirement that darker-skinned, poorer-looking Americans along the border have had to live with for decades — carrying their papers, just like people in totalitarian countries have to do.
For decades, any darker-skinned, poorer-looking person who travels entirely within the United States but along the U.S.-Mexican border has had to carry his papers with him. There is the possibility that he could be stopped by a U.S. immigration checkpoint as he travels from east to west or vice versa.
A series of recent studies conducted by the Pew Research Center shed new light on the scope of the economic crisis in the US and the level of hostility the majority of the American population holds for the US government.
Released in March, before the passage of the Obama administration’s health care legislation, a survey entitled “Health Care Reform—Can’t Live With It, or Without It” indicates that 92 percent of Americans give the national economy a negative rating. No fewer than 70 percent of the respondents report having suffered job-related and financial problems in the past year, an increase from 59 percent the year before. Fifty-four percent report someone in their home has been without a job and looking for work in the past year, up from 39 percent in 2009.