The CBS 3 I-Team has learned that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over sex abuse allegations now holds a sensitive security post at Philadelphia International Airport.

The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day. But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.

Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.

So who’s feeling you up today?

This is for developing tools for local and state law enforcement who, of course, would never do anything outside the legal usage.

The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications.

The establishment of the Quantico, Va.-based unit, which is also staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a response to technological developments that FBI officials believe outpace law enforcement’s ability to listen in on private communications.

While the FBI has been tight-lipped about the creation of its Domestic Communications Assistance Center, or DCAC — it declined to respond to requests made two days ago about who’s running it, for instance — CNET has pieced together information about its operations through interviews and a review of internal government documents.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books.

Recently, JPMorgan Chase announced that it had lost more than $2 billion on risky trades. The news raised more questions about the need for tighter banking regulations; some insisted that more oversight is needed in order prevent the risk inherent in depository institutions proprietary trading. Others, though, believe that introducing new regulations won’t really solve the problem. Instead, there are suggestions that reinstating the Glass-Steagall act would be the most effective way to prevent these types of losses in the future.
[...]
Glass-Steagall prohibited commercial banks from participating in investing.

Oddly enough, in looking for a picture, I found this from two years ago. I wonder where we’d be if they had done it back then? Or five years ago? Or never killed it?

This is an interesting video from late last year that I missed somehow. The woman is supposedly insane and made up the whole story. The Wikipedia has an interesting entry on her here. It’s hard to tell, but her anecdotes are quite interesting. Curiously her tale makes a lot of sense.

And the whole private prison system is making it worse. To be profitable, they need inmates, so you need people convicted, one way or another. Add to that cops who need arrests to justify their overtime pay and the need to collect financial penalties to help ailing city coffers and you have a recipe for abuse. Oh, yeah. Almost forgot ‘tough on crime’ politicians, the surveillance state, and…

The US criminal justice system is a broken machine that wrongfully convicts innocent people, sentencing thousands of people to prison or to death for the crimes of others, as a new study reveals. The University of Michigan law school and Northwestern University have compiled a new National Registry of Exonerations – a database of over 2,000 prisoners exonerated between 1989 and the present day, when DNA evidence has been widely used to clear the names of innocent people convicted of rape and murder. Of these, 885 have profiles developed for the registry’s website, exonerationregistry.org.

The details are shocking. Death row inmates were exonerated nine times more frequently than others convicted of murder. One-fourth of those exonerated of murder had received a death sentence, while half of those who had been wrongfully convicted of rape or murder faced death or a life behind bars. Ten of the inmates went to their grave before their names were cleared.

The leading causes of wrongful convictions include perjury, flawed eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct. For those who have placed unequivocal faith in the US criminal justice system and believe that all condemned prisoners are guilty of the crime of which they were convicted, the data must make for a rude awakening.

If only we had men of balls like this today who would speak to politicians this way.

Miles Davis was a man of few words. When he did speak, his words often had a similar effect to a hand grenade being lobbed into the room. In 1987, he was invited to a White House dinner by Ronald Reagan. Few of the guests appeared to know who he was. During dinner, Nancy Reagan turned to him and asked what he’d done with his life to merit an invitation. Straight-faced, Davis replied: “Well, I’ve changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?”