Daily Archives: 15 May 2011

IMF Chief Pulled from Plane in New York on Rape Charges

open quoteDominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF chief faces arraignment in New York on rape charges.

IMF leader and potential French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, was pulled from an airplane bound for Paris just before its departure Saturday in New York, the Associated Press reported.

The IMF chief was arrested after a 32-year-old maid told authorities Strauss-Kahn attacked her Saturday afternoon after she entered his suite at the luxury Sofitel hotel to clean the $3,000-a-night suite, which she had been told was empty, the AP reported.

According to an account given by the woman to police, Strauss-Kahn came out of a bathroom naked, pursued her down a hallway, and pulled her into a bedroom, where he started to sexually assault her. The woman said she fought him off, then he pulled her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and attempted to remove her underwear. The woman once again broke free and alerted hotel staff, who called police, the authorities said.

Strauss-Kahn, considered a potential Socialist Party challenger to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012, was arrested on an Air France jet about to depart from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

close quote (Read more from globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com)

TSA Blog about Texas laws banning intrusive searches says plainly

open quoteWhat’s our take on the Texas House of Representatives voting to ban the current TSA pat-down? Well, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article. VI. Clause 2) prevents states from regulating the federal government.

We wish we lived in a world where you could just walk on a plane with no security screening, but that just isn’t the case unfortunately. Aviation security agencies worldwide have been using pat-downs long before TSA was created to prevent dangerous items from getting onto airplanes. close quote (Read more from blog.tsa.gov)

I wonder if they read the 4th Amendment.

“First Do No Harm”: Constitutional and Conservative Liberals

open quoteOne of the most fascinating things, for me as a Brit, about engaging with American politics is that all political issues are filtered in the media through an extraordinarily crass Left vs. Right paradigm.

Left and right are not the two paradigms of American politics. They are the two flavors of only one.

. . . .

The so-called “radicals” like Paul and Kucinich who appear through the old left-right filter to be so different, are more importantly defined by what they have in common — a principled attempt to protect American Constitutional rights that, while radical in 1776, should not even be up for discussion today.

Of the men I’ve mentioned, the darling of Constitutionalists today is Ron Paul. He has so far out-raised all of the potential GOP candidates for 2012, even while many of the MSM continue to conduct their polls (among likely Republican voters) often times without even including his name. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know it means something, and I like it. close quote (Read more from huffingtonpost.com)

Court: No right to resist illegal cop entry into home

open quoteOverturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”close quote (Read more from nwitimes.com)