Conventional collectivist created authority is a deception in consciousness. You are your own Authority!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

TSA Busts 95 Year-old Diapered Terrorist Suspect at Airport

Special Ops black beret SWAT teams set loose from amidst the bowels of the United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Geriatric Suspects Unit (GSU), at a Florida Airport, swooped down recently upon a hapless wheel chair bound and cancer-stricken 95-year-old female suspected terrorist for special invasive, aggressive, pat-down and strip-search treatment while looking for a suspected bomb in her dirty diapers.

The feeble and sickly old woman, ravaged by a debilitating form of leukemia, underwent a blood transfusion the week before the ordeal to bolster up her strength for travel. This behavior, coupled with highly suspicious circumstances at the security gate, apparently triggered TSA alarms when they discovered also that she was traveling with her shifty-eyed daughter from Florida to Michigan in order to “allegedly” move in with relatives before eventually going to an assisted living facility. More likely, in their minds, she was trying to smuggle a bomb on the aircraft.

The aged suspect was dragged crying and sniveling into a private glassed-in area by a TSA officer, where a pat-down and diaper removal search was performed. One of the TSA goons “felt something suspicious” on the old woman’s leg and couldn't determine what it was, prompting the dirty diaper removal strip search procedure. The terrified suspect was later forced to go through the airport and on to her flight without underwear after no security threat was found.

Her daughter likewise burst into tears during the mindless assault, which prompted the remaining thugs at the security gate to pat her down as well, along with other intimidating measures, all in strict accordance with TSA protocol.

The TSA released a statement Sunday defending its agents' actions. "While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner," the federal agency said. "We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure."

The TSA announced last year that it was gearing up the use of full-body scanning and pat-downs to stop nonmetallic threats, including explosives, from getting on planes. The goal is to head off underwear ass cheeks bomb attacks like the one attempted by the infamous failed 2009 Christmas bomber.

And the TSA is not backing down from its aggressive policy. "Every traveler is a critical partner [i.e. potential terrorist suspect] in TSA's efforts to keep our skies safe," Administrator John Pistole, who ordered the new approach, said. "And I know and appreciate that the vast majority of Americans recognize and respect the important work we do," he deadpanned.

For some unfathomable reason, debilitated adults in diapers seem to set off all kinds of bells, whistles, alerts, alarms, and grave suspicions at this government agency. See my recent post: “Bad Judgment at the TSA.”

Toddlers and small children also perk up the paranoia antenna on these agents, who like to see plastic bombs and other imaginary lethal weapons residing in every prepubescent butt cheeks cavity. More outrage recently erupted over a video-recorded pat-down of a 6-year-old passenger at New Orleans' airport last April, showing the little girl resisting and crying over the intrusive search.

Pistole tried to explain this outrage to a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee meeting, insisting that the pat-down was ordered and necessary because the child had moved while passing through a body imaging machine.

You see, one false move at the TSA screening station gets you the crotch groping experience of your life whether you are 6 years old or sixty. And, don’t forget 95 year-old incontinent ladies, and 29 year old mentally disabled suspects wearing diapers. They’re singled out for special strip searches and hands on treatment every time.

OK, maybe I exaggerated a little here. There are no Special Ops black beret SWAT teams operating within the TSA so far as I know, and no Geriatric Suspects Unit yet; the old lady wasn’t dragged crying and sniveling to her fate, she went along compliantly; and the daughter wasn’t exactly shifty-eyed, but everything else I’ve written is true, I swear, according to CNN.

I love to call these TSA agents reprehensible names like thugs and goons in order to vent my considerable rage about the creeping police state our nation has become, but that probably isn’t fair either. They, for the most part, are normal people like you and me, just following orders and doing their jobs.

The person originally responsible for this constitutional Fourth Amendment shredding is none other than George W. Bush, the President of the United States after 9/11, our nation’s chief executive officer, who could have, with the stroke of his pen put a stop to this unbelievable nonsense. Now the responsibility lies with Barrack Obama, who could very easily do the same.

And then there is Congress and the grasping politicians, who have the power, but not the will to end this unrelenting nightmare. They are the real thugs and goons in the equation. They are doing this to us deliberately, and too few of us automaton allegiance pledger’s seem to care.

Sadly, 235 years of ostensible liberty has come down to this.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in Pakistan

Pakistani spooks have arrested several of their own citizens this week for cooperating with the CIA in the events which lead up to the U.S. Navy SEALs raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad last May, according to U.S. officials and Fox News.

Five CIA informants, including the owner of a CIA safe-house, and a Pakistani major who copied license plates of cars visiting the compound before the raid, were detained by Pakistan’s top military spy agency, known as Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI).

The fate of the informants is so far unclear, and U.S.-Pakistani relations are still strained to the max because of the secret U.S. military raid on sovereign Pakistani territory. U.S. officials say these arrests are just the latest evidence of an ongoing fractious relationship between the two countries.

On a rating scale of between 1 and 10, right now Pakistan's cooperation with the United States on counter terrorism operations is a "Three," according to Michael Morell, a deputy CIA director, although another CIA spokeswoman, tried to sugar coat the relationship, saying that “we will continue to work together,” calling it a “crucial partnership in the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups who threaten our country and theirs."

For what it’s worth, that, and about $3.50, will buy you a small cup of coffee at Starbucks. This is the thanks we get for ridding them and the world of the most evil terrorist bastard in the recent history of civilization.

Had the Pakistani government been told about the raid beforehand, there is little doubt in my mind that Osama bin Laden would still be plotting new adventures with impunity in his brand new Abbottabad terror compound, right down the street from the old one, under the loving protection of the Pakistani military.

The United States gives Pakistan billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. We support them diplomatically in their constant feuds with neighboring India. We bend over backwards to keep them all fat and happy, and then they turn around and stab us in the back every chance they get. It’s truly a wonder that we manage any assistance at all from Pakistani citizens when they have to fear the wrath of their own government in the process.

It’s the same situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and every other miserable hellhole in the Middle East, except Israel. They get our lives, blood and cash. We get sneered at and slapped in the face. They hate us! They hate our guts and no amount of aid, assistance and goodwill is ever going to change that, at least not in my lifetime.

Why the United States of America has ever become involved with them militarily is well beyond my humble comprehension. It can’t be about oil. They’ll sell their oil on the world market just like always, where we can buy it just like anyone else. Oil and opium is all they have to sell anyway, and they are not about to abandon their biggest customer.

The war in Iraq was a huge mistake – nearly as bad as Vietnam. The war in Afghanistan was likewise totally unnecessary.

The average American had no beef with Saddam Hussein, and surely none with the Taliban either. Sure, it’s nice that Saddam is gone, but for $3½ trillion dollars, together with over 4000 dead soldiers, it just doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. He was a nasty dictator to his people but at least the country was stable. Now it’s a powder keg ready to blow, and there is no hope for the better anytime soon. 

As for Osama bin Laden, we didn’t need to spend thousands of lives to get him. The CIA and 40 Navy SEALs did the trick just fine. We certainly don’t need to crush the Taliban. The average Afghan male loves Uncle Taliban. They’ll be back in power again within days of our leaving Afghanistan – that is if we ever do leave, which is highly doubtful. And when that happens, the U.S. will have lost the war and we’ll only continue in our grotesque role as the laughing stock of the Middle East and the world.

When it comes to America and our “allies” in the Middle East, it appears that no good deeds go unpunished.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Bad Judgment at the TSA

Maybe I’m just plain stupid, but I simply can’t understand all the fuss from some pinheads out there about our patriots at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) patting down passengers at airports. Why should anyone object to a little crotch groping if it means we’ll be safe on the airplane from terrorists?

Geez-o-Pete … some people will bitch and moan about the least little thing.

Just because government agents want to grab and squeeze everyone’s sex organs while looking for weapons and bombs doesn’t mean their intent is sexual. So, come on people; what’s the big deal? It’s a dirty job looking for terrorists, and somebody has to do it.

When looking for terrorists, everyone is a likely suspect.

Now all the anarchist kooks and liberty freaks in La-La Land, (you know who you are), are riled up about TSA agents in Detroit just doing their jobs by singling out a 29 year old severely mentally disabled man, on a trip to Disney World with Mom and Dad, wearing adult diapers, for a comprehensive junk checking pat-down search.

When the father tried to intervene and explain his son’s disability, the agents told him: “Please, sir, we know what we’re doing.” You’re darned right they know what they’re doing. And, Daddy trying to intervene just makes the situation all the more suspicious, in my opinion.

My goodness! A 29 year old man with the mental capacity of 2-year-old wearing diapers should make anyone suspicious for heavens sake. There might be a plastic bomb planted by Mommy in those diapers. Diapers are a perfect place to stash a bomb. I’m surprised that the terrorists haven’t thought of putting some explosive diaper padding in the pants of a special-needs passenger before. It’s absolutely brilliant!

And, here, the agents also found and confiscated, of all things, a six-inch hammer made out of plastic on this same suspicious looking passenger. His cagey parents tried to tell the agents that the tiny hammer was just something their disabled son carried around with him as a means of comfort for the last 20 years, but the eagle-eyed agents saw it for what it really was: a potential security threat to everyone on the airplane.

He might have conked a flight attendant on the head with that six-inch plastic hammer and taken over the aircraft. The agents tapped the wall with it, and told Daddy, “See, it’s hard. It could be used as a weapon.” So the family was told they’d have to ship the dangerous hammer separately if they wanted their son to keep it.

There now, do you see now how nice and accommodating our heroic TSA agents can be in the face of constant adversity at the airport?

OK, OK, so there was no bomb in the diaper this time, and the hammer was just a harmless plastic toy, but one can never be sure about these kinds of things. That’s why every infant and toddler – especially adults and feeble minded old ladies -- at the airport wearing diapers should not only be patted down, but thoroughly strip searched as well, strictly, of course, in the perfectly reasonable interest of passenger safety.

Now, after all the uproar from pinheads, the TSA has seemingly caved in and apologized to the man’s family, saying they’re reviewing the incident. Maybe the man’s toy hammer should have never been confiscated, and maybe -- just maybe -- this was an “isolated case of bad judgment,” said the TSA.

Again; maybe I’m just plain stupid, but all I can think to say is: if this was a case of bad judgment, then the entire mission of the TSA is a case of bad judgment.

Does that make sense to you?

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Homophobia in Cheese Land

People don’t cotton much to gay folks in the great State of Wisconsin.

Not only is gay marriage strictly prohibited in Wisconsin, there is also a law on the books that makes criminals of any residents having the temerity to “go out of state to contract a marriage that would be prohibited within Wisconsin.” Violators of that statute “can be fined up to $10,000 and/or imprisoned for up to 9 months.”

Theoretically then, if two otherwise law abiding friends of the same sex residing in Wisconsin decide they’re in love, and go to Massachusetts to get married, they automatically become outlaw fugitives in their home state for the heinous “crime” of unlawful wedlock by flight.

"Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state," proclaims an amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution.

You see, a majority of cheese heads up in Wisconsin don’t want peace loving gays to marry; don’t want gays to be married, period; and don’t even want gays thinking about enjoying anything near the same legal status as heterosexual married couples.

The Wisconsin authorities apparently feel that gays, who inherit their sexuality at conception, having no choice what-so-ever in the matter, aren’t fully fledged human beings entitled to the joys and benefits of matrimony.

Gays, then, just aren’t considered “persons” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment of the United Sates Constitution, like you and I would be in Wisconsin.

By some egregious means and methods, however, a Democrat controlled legislature, in 2009, somehow got a law passed that gives citizens in same sex relationships the right to visit their partner in a hospital.

This so-called “domestic partnership registry” law would require gay domestic partners to register with the state for permission from the government to visit their sick loved one in the hospital.

Can you imagine that? The people of Wisconsin don’t even want gays visiting each other in a hospital unless they get special permission from the government. How in the name of reason and humanity can human beings regard fellow human beings so cruelly and mean spirited?

But wait a minute; it gets even worse! Recently, Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, (R), told a judge that his office wants to stop defending the new law. The governor doesn’t want to defend a law that allows gays to visit loved ones in a hospital.

That law is unconstitutional, says Walker. He thinks that allowing gays hospital visitation privileges gives them a legal status which is just too “identical or substantially similar to marriage.” So he told the judge in his legal brief that allowing gay partners such rights “does not serve the public interest," and he insists that the state should not have to pay attorneys to defend it.

On top of all that, the Wisconsin Family Action (WFA), a socially conservative and fiercely homophobic anti-gay organization, is also challenging the law in court on the grounds that letting gays visit each other in the hospital violates the Wisconsin constitution because it permits them a "legal status identical or substantially similar to marriage."

“We can’t have gays enjoying the same legal status as straights in Land of Cheese,” they croak in unison from the court house steps.

God bless America!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

$3 Billion More Down the Toilet in Iraq

The last place in the world any self respecting U.S. diplomat wants to work is Baghdad, Iraq. Americans and American diplomats aren’t welcome in Iraq; most Iraqi’s hate Americans.

That’s why the United States Embassy in Baghdad is located in the so-called Green Zone, a small heavily fortified enclave of the city, where most Iraqi natives are not allowed to tread. The Green Zone has been a target of insurgency bullets, bombs, and rocket attacks from the beginning of U.S. occupation, and the danger to Americans there is only getting worse.

Five American soldiers were killed last week in Baghdad; the largest single such loss since April of 2009.

American diplomats are likely to be shot if they step outside their offices, even while still in the Green Zone, so they often have to wear flak jackets and military helmets outdoors. Forget about going outside the Green Zone; they’ve all got big bulls eyes painted on their backs for every wild-eyed insurgent, militiaman, amateur sniper, and kidnapper in the vicinity to target. 

Imagine that: Our diplomats having to wear helmets, flack jackets, and be squired around in armored cars. We’ve occupied the place for nearly 10 years and our diplomats can’t even peek out from the bullet proof windows of their Green Zone fortresses without mortal fear of being blown away by a rocket propelled grenade.

Now we learn that, after the $3½ trillion we’ve already thrown into the stinking quagmire of Iraq, the U.S. State Department is going to spend another $3 billion before we leave the Hell hole at the end of this year to hire a security force solely for the protection of U.S. diplomats.

This all comes in spite of the fact that both the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people want the 50,000 U.S. troops still there to go, and there is strong opposition to our leaving any Americans behind. That’s how grateful they are about our gratuitous toppling of their dear leader, Saddam Hussein.  

Never-the-less, the U.S., for reasons far beyond my humble comprehension, insists on keeping a huge diplomatic presence in Iraq, both in Baghdad and the rural provinces. The U.S. departments of state and defense are scrambling to find the means to protect them.

We need a small army of 5,100 men just to guard embassy buildings and operate a fleet of aircraft and armored vehicles, said Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state, in testimony before Congress – about $3 billion dollars worth. (WSJ; 6/7/11)

You see, the whole country is surely going to revert back to complete chaos when occupation forces leave, and no one knows that better than our own U.S. diplomats, who would rather be posted in Siberia if they had a choice. They don’t want to have their head’s blown off.

What does this say about the efficacy of our war in Iraq?

It tells me plainly and simply what the diplomats already know; that $3½ trillion dollars from the United States treasury has so far been totally wasted. We can kiss it goodbye, and the U.S. government is still perfectly willing to flush billions more down the toilet in Iraq for absolutely nothing in return -- zero.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Drug War Truths

Recreational drug prohibition has been a miserable and continuing failure: (Drug War Tales)

The unvarnished truth about defeat in the global War on Drugs has slowly and grudgingly become accepted by honest politicians and former world political leaders. The enlightenment is limited so far to former political leaders since none of the current ones has the integrity or guts to admit that the War on Drugs has been a colossal mistake.   

A Global Commission on Drug Policy, consisting of a blue ribbon panel of 19 former world leaders, including those from Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, high profile businessmen, and other distinguished former heads of state, has issued a 24 page report acknowledging the dismal failure up front, and calling for legalization, especially decriminalization, of most recreational drugs and users. (BBC; 6/2/11)

The multi-decades long War on Drugs, especially in the United States, is ineffective, fuels organized crime, causes thousands of deaths annually, and costs taxpayer’s huge sums of money, says the report, even while “opiate use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008, cocaine by 27%, and cannabis by 8.5%.”

Government policy regarding recreational drugs should be based on methods empirically proven to reduce crime and promote economic and social development with strategies oriented toward health care and human rights objectives, the panel recommends.

"Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won," they conclude.

Not surprisingly, both the United States and Mexican governments have dismissed the report, calling it “misguided.” "Making drugs more available - as this report suggests - will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," a government spokesman opined, as if our communities are healthy and safe now.

I find it most interesting to note, however, that none of the 19 panel members who issued the critical report has anything potentially to gain should the powers that be ultimately adopt their findings, therefore it can be fairly surmised that their motivation is entirely reasonable, sound, and in the public interest.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for the global legions of grasping hypocritical current rulers, politicians, and government agency hacks whose livelihoods depend upon maintaining the status quo upon any irrational excuse, and at any cost.

As far as they are concerned the public interest may be damned.  

Sunday, June 5, 2011

What Dr. Keith Ablow Doesn’t Understand About Liberty

The ink on Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s death certificate had barely enough time to dry before his right wing socially conservative enemies, (you know, the one’s who liked to call him “Doctor Death” for assisting terminally ill patients end their intolerable lives), came out in full force to excoriate him and vilify his courageous libertarian cause.

Dr. Keith Ablow, a talking head TV psychiatrist, and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, stated it this way in his 6/3/11 Fox News Op Ed piece, What Dr. Jack Kevorkian Didn’t Understand About Death:

“In sum, Kevorkian’s passing is the passing of a singular threat to our civilized way of thinking and our embrace of the value of human life.”

“If Jack Kevorkian (and notice that I do not in this article use ‘Dr.’ in front of his name, ever) did not intuit that [a] slippery slope would certainly manifest itself in America (were assisted suicide widely available) then he was either naive or bloodthirsty. We really can’t know which. What we do know is that he was willing to kill, again and again, even though it was against the law,” Ablow proclaimed from his lofty perch while demonizing the man ad hominem, never having met him, and even dismissing his professional medical credentials.

“Kevorkian seemingly didn’t understand that anyone in America or anywhere else can take his or her life painlessly if that person is utterly determined to do so. Sadly, information is available in books and on the Internet about how to bring about one’s own demise with certainty. No one really needed Kevorkian’s help to leave the earth before God took that person,” concludes Dr. Ablow.

What’s apparent to me though, is that it is Dr. Ablow, not Dr. Kevorkian, who doesn’t understand death; and more to the point, just doesn’t understand basic concepts of liberty.

Here is a so-called scientist, a psychiatrist no less, resorting to religion, (the greatest delusion ever perpetrated upon civilization in the history of mankind), to condemn an equally qualified colleague as irrational. It’s OK with him when “God” takes a person for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter, but not OK if that same person decides to end his own life with the full benefits of professional medical assistance.   

It’s the anti-abortion argument all over again, only now at the threshold of death. Women, they insist, should not be at liberty to end unwanted pregnancies with the full benefits of professional medical assistance because matters of life and death are up to God and the state – never individuals under any imaginable circumstances.

What does Dr. Ablow care if people are suffering intolerable pain, or otherwise no longer have any substantial reasons to live? They should all simply wait patiently for God to take them, says this scientist.

But, I’m sure Dr. Ablow knows very well that everyone who has ever lived on planet earth has either died already or is going to die sooner or later. We’re all going to die. The lucky one’s among us will die of old age in their sleep; but some people suffer a long and horribly painful existence before finally succumbing to the inevitability of death. To some of these people, Dr. Kevorkian was ‘Dr Mercy,’ not ‘Dr Death.’

Dr. Ablow perceives two basic problems with Dr. Kevorkian’s, (and the libertarian) view of the proper place for euthanasia in the world.

First, he speculates about whether Dr. Kevorkian’s early childhood had something to do with a fascination for death because his mother fled the Armenian death marches organized by Muslim Turks during the early part of the 20th century. Maybe that is why “he decided to become a pathologist, a medical specialty focused on diseased tissues and ones from dead bodies,” Dr. Ablow conjectures, without a shred of evidence.

“Kevorkian photographed the eyes of dying patients while a pathology resident,” which leads Ablow to believe that his scientific interest in death and dying bordered on an unhealthy obsession that might have turned him into a “serial killer.” “A legitimate question remains whether Kevorkian was a dedicated, though misguided, physician, or a serial killer taking refuge under the mantel of the profession. If a serial killer, he was perhaps the most prolific in the history of the world,” muses Dr. Ablow, while diagnosing the psychological state of a person he has never met.

Second, he posits that physician assisted suicide is an ethically “slippery slope” leading ultimately to the killing of people who really don’t want to die. He once met a Dr. in Amsterdam, where physician-assisted suicide is legal, who told him he would consider assisting in the suicide of an amputee if that person felt life was unbearable without four limbs.

Nonsense! That, and all the other examples he cites are about people who want to die. Every one of Dr. Kevorkian’s patients was terminally ill and wanted desperately to die a merciful dignified death. Physician assisted suicide elsewhere has not led to indiscriminate killing.

“Can you imagine a psychiatrist advising a patient that her desire to commit suicide was rational and that he would offer her a referral to a physician to administer her a lethal injection? That is the world Jack Kevorkian wanted to see.” Yes, Dr. Ablow, if you would only remove your religious goggles for a brief moment, you might understand that sometimes the desire of a free minded person to commit suicide to end her own painful miserable existence is exceedingly well conceived and rational.

“The German government’s embrace of euthanasia before the Holocaust was no accident,” Dr. Ablow pontificates, comparing the demon Kevorkian to Hitler.

The fact is that Dr. Jack Kevorkian was an authentic American hero and champion in the libertarian cause for human freedom – the right to direct one’s own life and death. His memory and sacrifice deserves better from the likes of Dr. Keith Ablow. 

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Manslaughter by Ignorance in Italian

Imagine a TV weather caster being prosecuted as a criminal fraudster because he predicted partly cloudy on a rainy game day. Meteorologists can predict the weather good, but not that good.

Worse yet, imagine a seismologist facing manslaughter charges for failing to predict the day a large earthquake killing 300 people would happen. No one can accurately predict when an earthquake will strike, right?

Wrong, according to Italian Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella, allowing criminal manslaughter charges to proceed against seven scientists, who, in his words supplied  "imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information," at a press conference six days before an earthquake killed 308 people in the city of L'Aquila, Italy. “In doing so, they "thwarted the activities designed to protect the public," said the judge. (FoxNews.com; 5/27/11)

Italian government ‘persecuters’ accused the country's top seismologist, Enzo Boschi, president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), and six others, of manslaughter because they failed to predict the 2009 disaster which, in their deluded minds, could have avoided the deaths. He actually did predict that a large quake was coming, but couldn’t say when.  

Naturally, scientists around the world are shocked and stunned by this outright judicial insanity: "It has a medieval flavor to it -- like witches are being put on trial," a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), said. According to the USGS, in fact, no major quake has ever been predicted successfully. Earthquakes are impossible to predict accurately in advance.

"Neither the USGS nor Caltech nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake," the USGS says on its website. "They do not know how, and they do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future."

"Whoever made these accusations misunderstands the nature of science, the nature of the discipline and how difficult it is to predict anything with the surety they expect," Alan Leschner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said about a letter his organization sent to the Italian government which was ignored.

"It reflects a lack of understanding about what science can and can't do," he explained, "and frankly, it will have an effect of intimidating scientists.”

He shouldn’t be surprised.

Intimidation is the hallmark of government.

Maybe they can plea bargain the charges down to negligent homicide.