George Donnelly Trial Postponed to September 1, 2010, at 2:00 pm

FIJA Demonstration in Baltimore, MD on August 23, 2010

I arrived at the U. S. District Courthouse at 101 W. Lombard Street, in Baltimore, MD at 11:50 am. It was a hot and sunny day. I stood on federal property about one foot away from the public sidewalk and started distributing the American Jury Institute Pamphlet entitled “A Primer for Prospective Jurors” with my insert.

At 12:00 pm a police woman approached me and told me that I was OK where I was, but not to go to the courthouse door. She also asked if I planned further dates for distribution. I answered that we had no specific plans, but that we probably would return at a future date.

At 12:10 pm another police woman approached and took a pamphlet. Both women were private police under contract with the U. S. District Court.

At 12:17 pm the second woman returned and asked how long I had been doing this. I responded about one year. She asked for my name, but I refused to provide it. I asked for her name, but she also refused to provide it.

At 12:28 pm, the first police woman returned, accepted a pamphlet, and left.

Pedestrian traffic was light. I distributed about 25 pamphlets with my insert. At 1:10 pm I left for the day because of the low pedestrian traffic, it was very hot, I forgot my sunscreen, and my JURY INFO sign handle had broken. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

FIJA Demonstration in Alexandria, VA on August 24, 2010

I arrived at the U. S. District Courthouse at 401 Courthouse Square in Alexandria, VA at 7:59 am. It was a chilly and overcast day. The courthouse is set in a court, so that there is almost no pedestrian traffic except for people entering or leaving the courthouse. I stood on the sidewalk, which was federal property, in front of the entrance.

At 8:01 am a courthouse security officer told me that I had to move across the street. I declined his request. I asked his name, but he refused to give it to me. He left.
At 8:08 am another security officer took a pamphlet and read my flyer in my presence. Then he left. I was not approached by any officer for the rest of my stay.

I continued to distribute pamphlets with flyers unmolested. At 9:20 am a person exited the courthouse, identified himself as a defense attorney, and said: “good stuff.”

At 9:30 am I left. I had distributed about 50 flyers. Everyone who accepted entered the courthouse.

Read More…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Glenn Jacobs – Kane! – writes:

Yesterday afternoon, I visited one of Knoxville’s two shopping malls–the downscale one on the east side of town. It had been months since I’d been in this mall; since then it has lost its Dillard’s department store, one of its anchor stores. Fully a quarter of the storefronts were closed, with more on a limited schedule.

But there was one place where business was booming…the county government has opened a branch office in the mall. The line of people waiting to pay property taxes and have their licenses renewed was out the door.

Above the entry to the office, a sign proudly proclaimed “Bringing Government to the People”. Hmmm, I thought “we are the government,” or at least that’s what we are always told. Just like the real stores in the mall, the government relies on slick marketing to “sell” its product.

It strikes me that this a microcosm of the American economy. While the rest of us suffer from the boom and bust that the government has caused, the government is there to pick through the bones.

Government–the anchor store of the new economy.

Bill Anderson followed up with:

Seeing Lew’s post reminds me of a drive I took the other night on PPG Road near Cumberland, Maryland. I passed a sign that announced it was an “Industrial Park.” However, the “industry” on that road is an office of Homeland Security, a huge lot where FEMA trailers are stored, and a federal prison. Welcome to the American growth industries of the 21st Century!

Turns out:

Donna Hanks initially purchased her home (315 South Ellwood, Baltimore, MD 21224) on 7/06/2001 for $87,000. She re-fi’d in 2005 for $270,000, went into bankruptcy in 2006, and this was the 2nd foreclosure. The $300 a month was actually the $340 a month she agreed to re-pay as she was over $10,000 behind in her payments. The house was sold in July 08 and they couldn’t get her out until September 08 after not paying anything for over a year.

Homesteading involves abandoned or never utilized property. This house is obviously owned by at least the bank and a two minute phone call could have revealed it was now sold to a new owner. That house was never hers. It was the banks. It’s unlikely she was even close to having more than 50% of the principle paid.

Groups like ACORN and those who support them helped create this housing bubble by using government to ban so called discrimination in lending, redlining, pushing for the CRA and low interest rates.

That term predatory lending bugs me big time. Why isn’t it predatory borrowing? The government was incentivizing if not forcing banks to lend. No one forced the lendees to borrow. No one forced them to ignore the contract or keep them from having a lawyer look over the mortgage.

If you can’t afford to own, rent. If you want to homestead there is plenty of unutilized land out west.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.

“The names don’t belong in there,” he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It’s as simple as that.”

The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”

Both Hutchins and Sheridan said the activists’ names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries.

“I don’t believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government,” he said. Hutchins said he did not notify Ehrlich about the surveillance. Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the governor had no comment.

I’m pretty sure one of the precise reasons for the First Amendment is to disrupt the government. Besides… how is it that these people are in any way a threat? They are activists AGAINST violence. At what point will a software limitation cause all liberty activists to end up on watch lists? Or am I being too optimistic that we aren’t already?

http://www.dailypaul.com/…

I am outraged! Senator Mikulski actual said, on the floor of the Senate “I’m deeply troubled by where we find ourselves when the House Republicans are defying their own President.” They don’t work for him, they work for us! She seems to have forgotten that she works for the people of Maryland. Here is what she had to say about us – “…in the last 72 hours I’ve gotten close to 8,000 emails and only 30 were for this bill. I’ve gotten over 1,300 phone calls and almost all were against the bailout. “We listen to them loud and clear…” Yet she is still going to vote for this steaming pile. She went on to say that our democratic process in action was “hubbub”. HUBBUB?! Then she call for GW to become the “Commander of the economy”. In other words, DICTATOR.

November is going to be interesting.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

The Most Idiotic Governor in America?

Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo at September 23, 2008 06:33 PM

I know I’ll receive many emails from people claiming that the governor of their state deserves the title of “Most Idiotic Governor,” but for now I’d like to nominate Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. In a desperate attempt to appear relevant to the presidential race (he was a Hillary supporter) he announced over the local airwaves today that the Bush administration, which has spent more domestically than LBJ did, and which initiated an unnecessary, non-defensive war that has lasted longer than World War II, should be condemned as a bunch of “no government, or minimal government, ideologues.”

Case closed.

Politicians say the darnedest things.