Peruvian police: Gang killed people for their fat | Seattle Times Newspaper — Oh brother.

Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts say they doubt a major market for fat exists.

Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have been involved in dozens more, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police. He said one suspect claimed the gang wasn’t the only one doing such killings.

Mejia said two of the suspects were arrested carrying bottles of liquid human fat and told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon ($15,000 a liter).

At a news conference, police showed reporters two bottles of fat recovered from the suspects and a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim. Suspect Elmer Segundo Castillejos, 29, led police to the head, recovered in a coca-growing valley last month, Mejia said.

Should you be required by law to pay a gratuity if you don’t think the restaurant’s service was worth it? The police in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania think so, and they arrested two college students for refusing to pay a $16.35 tip over what they claim was poor service.

Philly.com – Nov. 19, 2009:

“You can’t give us terrible, terrible service and expect a tip,” said Pope, a 22-year-old Moravian College senior who’s a Pottsville native, according to the Lehigh Valley Express-Times.

They had to find their own napkins and cutlery while their waitress caught a smoke, had to ask the bar for soda refills, and had to wait over an hour for salad and wings, they told NBC10.

The pub, which was very busy that night, took the $73, but then called the cops, who treated the matter as a theft.

Airport rules changed after Ron Paul aide detained – Washington Times — The TSA has defended this action, now seeing it will lose in court relents. The audio is below. It’s unfortunate that people like this have no regard for the real laws of the USA. This situation was essentially false imprisonment and the TSA officials should be indicted.

An angry aide to Rep. Ron Paul, an iPhone and $4,700 in cash have forced the Transportation Security Administration to quietly issue two new rules telling its airport screeners they can only conduct searches related to airplane safety.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union is dropping its lawsuit on behalf of Steve Bierfeldt, the man who was detained in March and who recorded the confrontation on his iPhone as TSA and local police officers spent half an hour demanding answers as to why he was carrying the money through Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

The new rules, issuedin September and October, tell officers “screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security” and that large amounts of cash don’t qualify as suspicious for purposes of safety.

“We had been hearing of so many reports of TSA screeners engaging in wide-ranging fishing expeditions for illegal activities,” said Ben Wizner, a staff lawyer for the ACLU, pointing to reports of officers scanning pill-bottle labels to see whether the passenger was the person who obtained the prescription as one example.

He said screeners get a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, strictly to keep weapons and explosives off planes, not to help police enforce other laws.

“We’re supposed to pay out, too? Quack!”

This could be a new method (if not already in place) for insurers of all policies to save (ie, make) money. No coverage for a severed limb unless you provide the limb and whatever (and/or whoever) cut it off. No payout for a damaged car from a hit and run unless that driver & unrepaired car can be produced.

A mother whose daughter was murdered is suing American Life Assurance of Columbus (AFLAC) because it has refused to pay the death benefit on life insurance the daughter applied for shortly before her death.
[...]
In November 2004, AFLAC denied the claim due to “insufficient proof of loss” stating that it required the name of the person charged with the homicide. In 2009, AFLAC closed the file, while the investigation into the death of Michelle Williams remains open.

Twenty-six percent (26%) of employed adults say they have seriously thought that someone in their workplace was capable of mass violence, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Most working adults (64%), however, say they have not seriously thought a co-worker would be capable of such violence. Another 11% are undecided.

One-in-three men (33%) say they have held that thought before, compared to only 17% of women.

Forty-three percent (43%) of government workers say they have felt a fellow employee was capable of mass violence, more than double the number among those who work for private companies.
[...]
Just 22% of all Americans believe stricter gun control laws would reduce the number of workplace shooting sprees. Most (58%) adults say stricter laws on gun ownership would not help this problem, while another 19% are undecided.

At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, “The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many.”

And what’s the point of this horsecrap?

Another Media Black Eye: Second Cop — Not Kimberly Munley — Brought Down Fort Hood Killer — Gee, who would have thunk it. If you have been listening to No Agenda we were skeptical about the original accounts from the beginning including the story about this woman. How much BS is the public supposed to take?

With the publication of an interview with Sgt. Mark Todd, the actual cop who gunned down the killer at Fort Hood — following its account of an unnamed eyewitness last night–The New York Times this afternoon finally underlined what some of us noticed from nearly the start: the media fell hook, line and sinker once again for a military account of what happened during the tragedy.First, it was the “death” of the apparent mass murderer, Major Hasan, not corrected for hours. Then, for days, the story of how a white female cop brought down the shooter, even as she was receiving serious wounds.Yet I noticed–without great searching–just hours after the attack that scattered eyewitnesses, via the Web and Twitter, were saying that the killer re-loaded after Kimberly Munley went down.How could he have done that if she had just plugged him four times, supposedly ending the rampage? Some of those witnesses said they yelled at the unnamed second cop to shoot Hasan–which he did, and then went up and kicked his gun away.

Found by Heinrich Moltke.

“Gotta get prepared for tonight’s show.”

I know some couples are more sexually open and adventurous and sharing and whatever than others, but really, doesn’t taking your wife kinda defeat the purpose of going to one?

A Silverdale woman told a Kitsap County sheriff’s deputy that a dancer at Toys Topless attacked her verbally and physically just after midnight Saturday.

The woman said she and her husband were at the establishment when the dancer began talking inappropriately to her about lap dancing.

The pair left, but the woman said the dancer followed them out to the parking lot. The woman said the dancer then punched and scratched her.

The deputy caught up later with the dancer at her Port Orchard home. She claimed that the fight was two-sided.

What exactly could a stripper say to a wife that is deemed “inappropriate” while in the middle of giving her husband a lap dance?

House Committee on Ways & Means – Republican — This kind of solves the problem if you think of it. Jails have health care.

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp R-MI released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation JCT confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill H.R. 3962, as amended could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax generally 2.5% of income, are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

Found by Matt Duvall.

While the reason for this may be reasonable, how many others are in jail, even been executed, because prosecutors are immune from answering, like the rest of us, for their actions? Perhaps it’s time to have their offices wired with cameras and mics like police cars that catch dirty cops in the act. What’s that line about power corrupting?

In July 1977, retired police captain John Schweer was shot and killed while working as a night watchman at an Oldsmobile dealership in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Two teenagers, Curtis McGhee and Terry Harrington, were convicted of the murder based on evidence they allege was knowingly fabricated by prosecutors.
[...]
Now both men are suing the Pottawattamie County prosecutors, claiming they coerced and coached witnesses, fabricated evidence and arrested them without probable cause. But according to federal law supported by numerous legal precedents, prosecutors have immunity for anything they do during a trial. Richter and Hrvol say they were just doing their job.

“If a prosecutor knowingly introduces false evidence at trial, that prosecutor is absolutely immune from lawsuit,” explains Stephen Sanders, an attorney representing Richter and Hrvol. The rationale is that if prosecutors could be blamed for errors in a trial, they would become vulnerable targets for any litigious convict with an ax to grind.

“This means that some people who are genuinely wronged by a prosecutor [are not] able to recover,” Sanders concedes.
[...]
Hrvol and Richter cannot be tried for knowingly putting a dishonest witness on the stand. They don’t have to own up to the fact that they presented false evidence or coerced a witness’s testimony. But fortunately for McGhee and Harrington, they did something on which the law is not completely clear — they didn’t just present the evidence at trial, but also helped gather it. In an unusual move, the prosecutors aided detectives by canvassing the neighborhood and interviewing witnesses, and so their actions may not be covered by absolute immunity. That is what the Supreme Court will decide.