Agency head admits $1 billion body scanner program may fail.

Although reports today suggest that the TSA is looking to move away from physical pat downs, owing to public backlash, TSA head John Pistole admitted recently that screeners are being trained to pay specific attention to the crotches of travelers moving through airport security.

In comments to Bloomberg News columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, Pistole noted that the TSA is responding to the recent crotch bomber double agent panic.

“Pistole told me that the TSA has developed mock-ups of the bomb, and agents are being instructed on its design and how to detect it.” Goldberg writes.

“If done properly, it may be found,” Pistole said referring to TSA pat downs.

Goldberg himself was the journalist that related the story of his own 79-year-old mother-in- law being stopped and asked by the TSA if she was wearing a sanitary napkin because TSA agents spotted “an anomaly in the crotch area”.

Goldberg also reveals that Pistole admitted that the expensive body scanners that have been installed in hundreds of airports across the country may fail to detect explosives.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet.

A group of Communist Party veterans have written a daring open letter calling for the removal of China’s top security official, in the latest sign of disunity ahead of Beijing’s leadership transition.

Security chief Zhou Yongkang, one of China’s top nine rulers, is viewed as a hardliner and is linked to Bo Xilai , the charismatic party leader whose downfall earlier this year triggered the nation’s biggest political scandal in decades.

In an open letter to President Hu Jintao, published on a number of overseas websites, the veterans suggest that Zhou is part of a movement to revive the China of Mao Zedong.

Zhao Zhengrong, a retired anti-corruption official from the southwestern province of Yunnan, told the AFP news agency that he, and 15 other party members from the same province, had sent the proposal advocating Zhou’s removal to higher authorities.

Speculation has been growing about the future of Zhou since the downfall of another top politician, Bo Xilai.

Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan said that the letter was significant because it was rare to see this type of dissent in China.

“For the first time in 20 years, we really are seeing a debate and a split in the political leadership,” she said.

Despite this divide, she said the letter was unlikely to have any impact on the national government.

“What’s lost in this entire narrative is that the next president and premier of China are not going to change,” she explained.

Source: Al Jazeera. Video at link.

Opponents of a U.S. law they claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block the measure.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan yesterday ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces.

The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.

“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ – i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”

CONTINUED at Bloomberg.

Surveillance aircraft used by the U.S. military overseas could soon be coming to the skies above Los Angeles County.

KNX 1070′s Charles Feldman reports the Federal Aviation Administration is making it easier for local law enforcement agencies to fly unmanned drones.

The FAA has streamlined the process that would allow agencies to fly smaller, unarmed versions of the drones that hunt down terrorists in places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has not yet applied for an application to fly drones over our skies, its Homeland Security chief Bob Osborne said drones could be in the department’s future — with some caveats.

CONTINUED at CBS Los Angeles.

Four US representatives introduced an amendment to the Justice Department appropriations bill, House Resolution 5326, which would bar the agency from spending funds to attack medical marijuana operations in states where it is legal. The bill was being considered Wednesday, before failing on a voice vote Wednesday evening.

A roll call vote was taken later, with the amendment failing 163-262 — 50 Democrats opposed it and 28 Republicans supported it. While the total number of “ayes” was almost identical to the last time the amendment was offered several years ago, that reflects the larger number of Republicans in the House. Both Democrats and Republicans voted for the amendment in greater percentages than in the past. [Ed: We will publish analysis of the voting breakdown this week.]

The House heard Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Jerold Nadler (D-NY), and Steve Cohen (D-TN) speak in favor of the amendment, while the most notable opposition came from committee Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA).

Hinchey was a cosponsor of the amendment, as was Rohrabacher, of Huntington Beach, and his California colleagues Reps. amie Farr (D-Carmel) and Tom McClintock (R-Auburn).

As a presidential candidate, then-Senator Obama said his administration would not use its resources to undermine state medical marijuana laws, especially if people were following their state’s law. At first, the administration lived up to his word. Shortly after he was elected president, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum to US Attorneys urging them not to waste taxpayer dollars and law enforcement resources arresting and prosecuting people following their state’s medical marijuana law.

CONTINUED at Stop the Drug War.

Spain took over Bankia, the country’s fourth biggest lender, on Wednesday, trying to dispel concerns over the government’s ability to clean up the financial sector four years after the banks were hit by a property market crash.

In a deal that will give the state a 45 percent indirect stake in Bankia, the government will take control of its parent company BFA by converting into equity a 4.5 billion euro loan it had given the financial group previously, the central bank said.

The economy ministry pledged to do all it takes to clean up Bankia, which has more than 30 billion euros of exposure to troubled loans to property developers and repossessed land and buildings.

The government is expected to lend or give Bankia up to 10 billion euros in additional aid, though some bank analysts say it will need more.

CONTINUED at Reuters.

When riot police broke up a recent protest over a forced eviction, Vietnam’s bloggers were ready — hidden in nearby trees, they documented the entire incident and quickly posted videos and photos online.

Their shaky images spread like wildfire on Facebook, in a sign of growing online defiance in Vietnam, in the face of efforts by authorities to rein in the country’s Internet community.

“They follow me, they keep track of what I am writing, they keep track of all dissident bloggers. Anything they can do to harass us, they do,” said blogger Nguyen Thi Dung, one of several bloggers who publicised the April 24 Hung Yen unrest on a variety of websites.

“They have many people browsing the net, reporting things they don’t like, getting them taken down. It is a perfect copy of what the Chinese are doing on the Internet,” she told AFP, asking that her name be changed for her safety.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News Canada.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has announced it will introduce legislation designed to strip Americans of the right to defend themselves. Called “Stop Shoot First Laws,” the amendment to the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill under consideration in the House would deny states federal funding allocated under section 505 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 if they continue to allow citizens to defend themselves.

“Shoot first laws have already cost too many lives,” said Progressive Caucus co-chairs Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva upon introducing their amendment. “In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn’t be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people. This is no different than withholding transportation funds from states that don’t enforce seatbelt laws.”

“The message here is if you have this kind of law that your federal funding is going to take a hit because they make states less safe,” Adam Sarvana, communications director for Grijalva, toldPolitico.

In other words, the Democrats will force states to choose between putting their citizens at the mercy of violent criminals or taking federal largess.

Because the House does not have an open amendment process, the amendment will likely not see a vote on the floor. Ellison and Grijalva introduced the amendment in and effort to further politicize the Trayvon Martin case and increase pressure on the Second Amendment.

Democrats are using “Shoot First” instead of “Stand Your Ground” in an effort to portray self defense as homicide.

“Stand Your Ground” is a legal extension of the Castle doctrine stating that a person has a right to defend himself against an intruder. “Stand Your Ground” laws state that one can use deadly force in any location one is legally allowed to be and removes the requirement that the threat must occur on one’s own property.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is the largest caucus within the Democratic caucus in Congress. It is supported by the Institute for Policy Studies, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, Hip Hop Caucus, and other liberal and so-called “progressive” organizations.

Source: Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo.

Voters in North Carolina on Tuesday approved Amendment One, a fiercely debated and highly restrictive amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman.

The amendment not only outlaws same-sex marriage — already illegal in the state — but bans civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay or straight couples. Family law experts say it will threaten domestic partnership health benefits for local government workers and strip unmarried couples, both gay and straight, of their rights to make financial or emergency medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.

With all counties reporting, the amendment was approved, 61% to 39%.

Passage of the measure, called the Defense of Marriage Act by Republican sponsors, makes North Carolina the final state in the South to pass an amendment banning gay marriage, and the 29th state overall, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ten states have statutes defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Proponents said the amendment was needed to keep “activist judges or politicians” from overturning the state’s 1996 law.

The measure is more restrictive than all but three of the marriage amendments passed in other states, according to a study published by 11 family law professors at seven North Carolina universities. The measure could even deprive unmarried women of protections against domestic abuse, while restricting child custody and visitation rights for unmarried gay or straight couples, they said.

Only Idaho, Michigan and South Carolina have so strictly defined marriage, and courts in those three states are still struggling to interpret amendments passed in recent years. The North Carolina amendment is likely to face similar court battles.

CONTINUED at LA Times.

Refuses to buy stock over privacy concerns.

In an interview with CNN, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian said he would refuse to buy Facebook stock because of the company’s appalling attitude to privacy and its support for the CISPA bill.

“I’m not planning on it…I understand the business value to what Facebook is doing. We’ve never seen a company like this before–ever. And it knows things about our private lives that no one else does. And one of the big issues that a lot of us in the tech community have had of late has been their support for bills like CISPA that make it really easy for companies like Facebook to hand over private data about us without any due process. So that’s why I’ll be holding off,” said Ohanian.

Reddit joins Mozilla as the only other major tech company to decry CISPA, with firms like Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Symantec, AT&T and Verizon all backing the bill. Last week, Mozilla released a statement calling the legislation an “alarming” threat to privacy, adding, “The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse.”

CISPA has been identified by many as a greater threat to privacy than SOPA, which was opposed by a deluge of major tech firms after a viral online opposition campaign, but because CISPA has received less attention, corporate giants have found it easier to stay mute.

Not only would CISPA mandate ISPs to share Internet data of users with government “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” it also empowers the Department of Homeland Securityto monitor the communications of the federal courts and Congress, and intercept tax returns sent to the IRS.

The bill “gives companies a free pass to monitor and collect communications and share that data with the government and other companies, so long as they do so for ‘cybersecurity purposes,’” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has noted. “Just invoking ‘cybersecurity threats’ is enough to grant companies immunity from nearly all civil and criminal liability, effectively creating an exemption from all existing law.”

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson. Video at link.