Egyptian Man Fighting To Be Considered Black By U.S. Government

NewsOne

After emigrating stateside in 1978, Mostafa Hefny (pictured) was shocked when his government-issued identification classified him as “white.” According to the Office of Management and Budget Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity, citizens are designated as White if they have “origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa or the Middle East.”

U.S. Economic Confidence Surged 11 Points Last Week

Gallup

Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index surged to -18 last week, up from -29 the week prior. Democrats and independents, whose economic confidence spiked after the start of the Democratic National Convention, drove this surge.

Click to read more ...

Obama DNC speech gets 35.7 million viewers

The Griot

President Barack Obama can beat rival Mitt Romney as a television draw, but can’t eclipse his old self.

The Nielsen company said 35.7 million people watched the final night of the Democratic convention on Thursday between 10 and 11 p.m. Eastern time. That’s when the president delivered his nomination acceptance speech.

Last week, Mitt Romney had 30.3 million viewers for his speech at the GOP convention, with an assist from Clint Eastwood.

Four years ago, Nielsen said candidate Barack Obama’s speech was seen by 38.3 million. But that estimate did not include PBS’ audience, which no doubt pushed the audience over 40 million.

Click to read more ...

Chile court sentences Pinochet-era police chief to 15 years in prison for murder

Jurist 

A Chilean judge sentenced General Manuel Contreras, former chief of police under the reign of Augusto Pinochet [BBC obituary; JURIST news archive], to 15 years in prison on Thursday for murdering an opposition activist. Left-wing activist Ramon Martinez was allegedly tortured and shot [BBC report] while in police custody in 1975. Martinez was a member of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement and was shot on the way to a detention center after he resisted arrest. Contreras was sentenced along with various other police officers who were involved in Martinez's murder, including Brig Miguel Krasnoff Marchenko, Col Marcelo Moren Brito, Col...

Click to read more ...

Obama expands lead in three tracking polls

Citizens for Legit Gov

Maybe President Obama is getting a bit of a convention bounce after all. The president's lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney has expanded in three daily tracking polls since his convention ended in Charlotte on Thursday night. "The bump is actually happening. I know there was some debate whether it would happen... but it's here," said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark, reports Reuters...Obama's lead over Romney is comparable to Romney's former lead over the president after the Republican National Convention finished last week, Clark said.

Click to read more ...

Loser Prosecutor Can't Let OJ Go: Accuses Johnny Cochran (RIP) of Tearing Gloves

Detroit Free Press

A prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial said this week that he believes defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. tampered with the famous bloody gloves that were a key piece of evidence in the football star's acquittal.

During the 1995 trial, Simpson tried on the gloves and held up his hands to the jury to show the leather bunched up around his palms. Summed up Cochran: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

Several jurors cited the too-tight gloves as a key reason for voting to acquit Simpson. But this week, Christopher Darden, one of the prosecutors on the case, told Reuters news service and a law school audience that he believes Cochran "tore the lining ... so that O.J.'s fingers couldn't go all the way up into the glove."

Click to read more ...

Artist behind iconic Obama poster sentenced to two years' probation

RT.Com

Acclaimed street artist Shepard Fairey has been sentenced to two years’ probation and asked to pay a $25,000 fine after being found guilty of criminal contempt in a case involving his now iconic “HOPE” image adopted by Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Fairey, 42, pleaded guilty back in February to one count of criminal contempt for destroying documents, manufacturing evidence and other misconduct, the Los Angeles Times reports. The artist had been in trouble with the Associated Press over the alleged misuse of a photograph taken of Mr. Obama by an AP staffer in 2006, only to admit after the fact that he attempted to present himself as innocent by fabricating elements in his case.

While Fairey initially received accolades for his “Hope” image used during President Obama’s first run for the White House, the AP insisted that the artist was guilty of copyright infringement, a claim he contested by saying the image was protected under fair-use laws. In return, Fairey turned around and filed a suit against the AP, but not before publically admitting in October 2009 that he lied about the photograph he used for his source, nearly one year after Fairey’s image helped elect President Obama.

Click to read more ...

Feds seize gold coins worth $80 mln from Pennsylvania family

RT.com

A federal judge has upheld a verdict that strips a Pennsylvania family of their grandfather’s gold coins — worth an estimated $80 million — and has ordered ownership transferred to the US government.

Judge Legrome Davis of the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania affirmed a 2011 jury decision that a box of 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle coins discovered by the family of Israel Switt, a deceased dealer and collector, is the property of the United States.

In the midst of the Great Depression, then-President Franklin Roosevelt ordered that America’s supply of double eagles manufactured at the Philadelphia Mint be destroyed and melted into gold bars. Of the 445,500 or so coins created, though, some managed to escape the kiln and ended up into the hands of collectors. In 2003, Switt’s family opened a safe deposit back that their grandfather kept, revealing 10 coins among that turned out to be among the world’s most valuable collectables in the currency realm today.

Switt’s descendants, the Langbords, thought the coins had been gifted to their grandfather years earlier by Mint cashier George McCann and took the coins to the Mint to have their authenticity verified, but the government quickly took hold of the items and refused to relinquish the find to the family. The Langbords responded with a lawsuit that ended last year in a victory for the feds.

Click to read more ...

FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America

RT.com

Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .

Click to read more ...

Anonymous releases how-to instructions on fooling facial recognition (VIDEO)

RT.com

Here’s a predicament: you don’t want the government using high-tech face scanning technology to track every inch of your walk to the post office, but you also don’t want to take a sledgehammer to your neighborhood surveillance camera. What do you do?

Don’t worry, concerned citizen! Big Brother may indeed be watching, but that doesn’t mean you have to make his unwarranted surveillance mission easy to operate.

Although little news has developed as of late in regards to TrapWire, a global surveillance operation that RT blew the cover off of nearly two weeks ago, opposition waged at the world-wide intelligence network is still rampant. Now in one of the newest videos uploaded to the Web to make people aware of TrapWire, a person claiming to be involved with Anonymous is trying to spread a YouTube clip that offers helpful suggestions on how to rage against the machine, properly and peacefully.

Click to read more ...

Use Of Confidential Informants Mostly Unregulated

NPR

In a piece for The New Yorker, Sarah Stillman tells the stories of several young offenders who were killed while or after working as confidential police informants. Stillman, officer Brian Sallee and trial lawyer Lance Block discuss how legislation could help this largely unregulated system.

Poll: Obama Approval Up 7 Points After DNC

ThinkProgress

President Obama’s approval rating climbed to 52 percent, his highest rating in many months, according to Gallup’s latest poll. The last three days of the Democratic National Convention gave him a 7 percent bump in approval over three days, with a 3 percent hike in just the past 24 hours. Mitt Romney received no bump in the polls from the RNC, dropping from 47 percent before the convention to 46 percent. The DNC also surpassed the RNC in ratings; even competing with the opening night of NFL football, more people tuned in to Bill Clinton’s DNC speech than the second half of the Cowboys-Giants game.

Interfaith Group Protests Anti-Islam Ads On New York Transit System

ThinkProgress

A series of anti-Islam ads appeared on public transit in New York and San Francisco last month, and continue to draw criticism for stoking Islamaphobia. On Thursday, a coalition of interfaith religious leaders and community activists protested in White Plains, New York, calling for Metro-North to denounce the ads and donate the revenue to human rights groups.

Pamela Geller’s anti-Muslim American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) is behind the ads. In August, San Francisco’s Muni system agreed to donate ad revenue to the Human Rights Commission. The N.Y. protesters called on Metro-North in Westchester Country to do the same.

SPLC suit over police use of pepper spray against students in Birmingham, Ala., gets major boost with class action certification

Southern Poverty Law Center - News

A federal court has granted class action status in the SPLC’s lawsuit against the Birmingham Police Department, meaning the organization will represent all current and future students who could be exposed to pepper spray at the hands of police officers stationed in the city’s schools.

Griselda Blanco: Life and death of a Billionaire Latino Cocaine Queen

Miami Herald

Griselda Blanco’s story was often told in numbers: she turned tricks at 14, and moved 300 kilos of cocaine a month in her 40s.

Known as the “Godmother” of the cocaine racket, she had up to 20 aliases, and unsubstantiated lore said she ordered some 250 murders. Police put it closer to 40. She died Monday at 69 at the Cardiso butcher shop on 29th Street in a Medellín neighborhood, where the former madrina was gunned down after a life of drugs and murder. Her last act on earth was buying $150 worth of meat.

Idiot Limbaugh To Obama: Global Warming Is A Hoax, "Just As You Are"

Media Matters for America - Latest Items 

From the September 7 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

DOJ allows New Hampshire voter ID law

Jurist

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] on Tuesday allowed [DOJ letter] a New Hampshire law [materials] requiring the use of photo identification in order to cast a regular ballot during elections. The new law is schedule to take effect on September 13. Voters who are unable to present a government issued will be permitted to cast a regular ballot after they sign a qualified voter affidavit and permit a photograph to be taken of themselves at the polling location. Voters refusing a photograph for religious reasons will be required to affirm an affidavit to that effect. The...

ACLU asks federal appeals court to rehear cell phone tracking case

Jurist

The American Civil Liberties Union [official website] (ACLU) on Tuesday asked [amicus brief, PDF] the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] to reconsider a case in which it decided [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] last month that police use of GPS tracking on a person's cell phone is not an illegal search under the Fourth Amendment [text]. The ACLU asserts that this decision "is an unusually important and weighty precedent given its status as the first appellate decision in the nation to apply [United States v. Jones] to GPS tracking via cell phones and severely undercuts...

Cambodia genocide tribunal announces declassification of war crimes trial documents

Jurist

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website], Cambodia's UN-supported war crimes tribunal, announced Thursday that it would declassify more than 1,700 documents [press release, PDF] including "victims' 'confessions' and biographies, witness statements, transcripts of in camera hearings, and rogatory letters." The documents being declassified are those which were part of "Case 001" which resulted in a guilty verdict and life sentence [JURIST reports] for former Khmer Rouge [BBC backgrounder] official Kaing Guek Eav [case materials; JURIST news archive]

NAACP's Ben Jealous on the Voting Rights Battles That Could Roll Back Gains and Decide 2012 Election

DemocracyNow

NAACP President Ben Jealous joins us to discuss what some are calling the greatest wave of legislative assaults on voting rights in more than half a century. As shifting demographics give more weight to voters in the South, eight of 11 states in the former Confederacy have passed restrictive voting laws since the 2010 election. Republicans have led the effort, saying voter ID laws prevent fraud. But others call it a political ploy to suppress voters who may not have the proper identification, and typically vote Democrat.