Sometimes I feel like YouTube is the only thing keeping the United States from devolving completely into a fascist state. Or are we there already?

> YouTube is the only thing keeping the
> United States from devolving completely

You might want to check your math on that.

Waking up the sheeple... Melodically!

Not to disrupt, but I found a really cool website of people telling the stories of those who died in 9/11...

http://storycorps.org/

PS- Good for that jury! Maybe if word got out more about the importance of jury duty in our legal system less people would be inclined to dodge it.

FYI: Federal appeals court has already ruled that you have a
constitutional right to videotape the police in a public place.

http://www.universalhub.com/2011/court-says-state-law-banning-recording-police-offi

The technology is so cheap, that the government should have a duty to record interviews. This would include interviews which might place a citizen in jeopardy, collect evidence, or which concern an official complaint.

And the citizen should have the explicit right to record any interview, and any interaction with another person.

Many jurisdictions allow audio recordings where at least one of the participants agree. Illinois allows recordings only where all participants agree or there is a warrant. Of course, Illinios has a long history of official corruption. Al Capone comes to mind.

Liberty thang

I remember once when a particularly gifted thinker said something about the American fascination with video.

Look at the Rodney King tape.

The police learned from that -- stop the filming or you're screwed.

>Liberty thang(Crids Link)

Right, so apparently denying gun permits to law abiding citizens in neccessary to combat gun crime.

Well with any luck yellowstone will explode fairly soon and the people smart enough to survive can get another crack at building a sensible scociety

I'm trying to fathom why cops seem to think that they shouldn't be recorded if not so they can abuse their privilege with impunity. Then I'm reminded of the arrest of Shelwanda Riley, a 17-year-old girl who was out past curfew wearing clothing with the tags still attached and carrying a white garbage bag with more tagged clothing inside. She refused to answer the policeman's questions, attempted to kick him in the groin, resisted arrest, and yet somehow, some people seem to watch this video and think "FUCK THE POLICE!" Why?

From where I sit, this cop didn't do anything wrong. Maybe some cops object to being recorded because some people are so friggin' stupid.

From the Liberty Thang post:

Quoting Marin, Judge Seibel said, "The underlying activity of possessing or transporting an accessible and loaded weapon is itself dangerous and undesirable, regardless of the intent of the bearer since it may lead to the endangerment of public safety." Marin also held that transporting a loaded weapon on a public street "creates a volatile situation vulnerable to spontaneous lethal aggression in the event of road rage or any other disagreement or dispute."

"For all these reasons, I hold that the state has an important government interest in promoting public safety and preventing crime," Judge Seibel said in Kachalsky. v. Cacace, 10-cv-05413.

She makes the same assumption of every non-gun owner, liberal, progressive, whatever you want to call the radical left: The possession of a firearm in a public space will cause you to lose all reasonable, sound, judgement in at the slightest stress on the CCW persons life.

The very possession of a firearm means that you have lost all consideration for the use, or misuse, of that firearm. You also have no regard for the consequences that come with that use.

If that were the case -- there would be thousands, if not tens of thousands of incidents it this were true. There are between 6 and 10 million licensed to carry in the U.S. already. If there was a 1% incidence out of 6 million that would be 60,000 firearm incidents.
Gun Deaths & Injuries

In 2007, guns took the lives of 31,224 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour.

So revising my numbers at a guess to 2007 to 4 million licensed CCW -- that would 40,000 deaths and or incidents of improper use.

Plain and simple: Do the math and you can debunk the bullshit.

www.defensivecarry.com/forum/concealed-carry-issues-discussions/120389-how-many-concealed-carry-permits-there-us.html

www.lcav.org/statistics-polling/gun_violence_statistics.asp#3

legallyarmed.com/decade.htm

Bunk, and debunking, isn't really enough. They're happy to lie... They think they're saving *lives*, man.

Notice:

I hold that the state has an important government interest in promoting public safety

The needs of the state and government are mentioned distinctly, as if the they weren't identical, while individuals go unmentioned and the "public" is passive.

Watch language. Always. Got it? Constructions like that are not accidental.

I may be wrong, but it seems like these laws arose from laws protecting other workers... ie parents secretly taping nannies, bosses videotaping employees, etc. I can see why they might want cops protected from people filming them picking their nose on duty or taping them having a private conversation with their partner as they sit and watch construction sites. I assume this was the intent.

Couldn't the law be rewritten so that you could film them committing crimes? Intent counts in other crime situations, why not here?

Don't anyone infer from my previous post that I am against being allowed to record the police. On the contrary, I'm for recording every police encounter you experience. We should have hidden cameras surrounding and inside our house and in our vehicles.

Just trying to fathom why an honest cop might object. The only reason I can see is that otherwise appropriate conduct, such as exercised by Dan Gilroy in the video I posted in my previous post, might still be viewed as "police brutality." Other than those few -- very few -- exceptions, the only reason a cop has to object to your recording him is because he intends on violating your civil rights and doesn't want you recording it.

The only logical reason I can see for Police not wanting to be video taped is that they KNOW they're not always above board and completely honest.
But in court, we know who gets the benefit of the doubt from the bench in cop vs. citizen.

OK, I got a deal for you. We'll stop videotaping police when we reinstate the Constitution and Bill of Rights in their entirety.
NO MORE illegal searches at the airport by the TSA. Read the Fourth Amendment again, your honor. Tell us which part you have trouble understanding.
NO MORE illegal DUI checkpoints. Did we forget the Fourth Amendment already?
NO MORE security theater. Tourists and amateur photographers taking pictures is not a 'suspicious activity' requiring your attention. National monuments, parks, etc are things many people like to see and (imagine that) take pictures or video of. Fact is, tourists and photographers outnumber terrorists by a large margin. Sorry this fact might interfere with Fatherland Security's budget.
Stop treating us all like potential suspects.

Until that happens, we'll all continue to video you folks as we see fit.

See how I pull two related topics together?