". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
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New York’s finest — in Israel?
The New York Police Department has opened a branch in Kfar Saba in order to strengthen ties with Israeli security forces, Maariv reported Thursday.
According to the report, the prestigious police force was looking to cooperate on a daily basis with the Israel Police, one of the main police forces worldwide with which NYPD has strong ties.
(Read more)
A judge ruled that 10 rare gold coins worth $80 million belonged to the U.S. government, not a family that had sued the U.S. Treasury, saying it had illegally seized them.
The 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle coin was originally valued at $20, but sold for as much as $7.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002, according to Courthouse News.
After President Theodore Roosevelt had the U.S. abandon the gold standard, most of the 445,500 double eagles that the Philadelphia Mint had struck were melted into gold bars.
However, a Philadelphia Mint cashier had managed to give or sell some of them to a local coin dealer, Israel Switt.
In 2003, Switt’s family, Joan Langbord, and her two grandsons, drilled opened a safety deposit box that had belonged to him and found the 10 coins.
When the Langbords gave the coins to the Philadelphia Mint for authentification, the government seized them without compensating the family.
The Langbords sued, saying the coins belonged to them.
In 2011, a jury decided that the coins belonged to the government, but the family appealed.
Last week, Judge Legrome Davis of the Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania, affirmed that decision, saying “the coins in question were not lawfully removed from the United States Mint.”
Barry Berke, an attorney for the Langbords, told ABCNews.com, “This is a case that raises many novel legal questions, including the limits on the government’s power to confiscate property. The Langbord family will be filing an appeal and looks forward to addressing these important issues before the 3rd Circuit.” (Read more)
Great TED lecture. This guy gets it.
We noted earlier the somewhat surrealistic decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union (though entirely consistent it would seem given their previous ‘Obama’ decision) but now UKIP’s Nigel Farage has weighed in with his ‘boots on the ground’ perspective of this farce. “You only have to open your eyes to see the increasing violence and division within the EU which is caused by the Euro project” he said, adding that “the awarding of this prize to the EU brings it into disrepute.” (Read more)
Take your pick:
A cop who was canned for ticketing dead people says he was doing it to meet the NYPD’s supposedly non-existent monthly quotas.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Paul Pizzuto says he started issuing bogus summonses after brass at the 120th Precinct in Staten Island told him he had to produce more than the 125 to 150 he was already writing. (Read more)
Hampered by an increasingly hostile work environment and a bureaucratic culture that discouraged innovation, Canada’s aid blitz in Afghanistan seemed at times “divorced from reality” in the war-ravaged country, concludes a previously secret review of the $1.5-billion program. (Read more)
* Noam Chomsky
* Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker
* civil rights icon Angela Davis
* US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation former Steering Committee Member Phyllis Bennis
* Pink Floyd’s lead vocalist and bass player Roger Waters