http://wcbstv.com/…

Undercover police officers who arrested four men on drug charges are under investigation after surveillance video proved the men they arrested committed no crime.

Drug charges against brothers Jose Colon and Maximo Colon, along with two of their friends have been dropped.

The undercover NYPD officers are seen on video dancing in the street, then attempting to frame four innocent men.

“I asked police officer why are you arresting me,” said Maximo Colon. “Never did I get an answer.”

The investigators swore under oath they bought drugs from the four men. Jose and Maximo colon say that didn’t happen.

“The cops are supposed to help us,” said a shaken Jose Colon.

Defense lawyers say the surveillance cameras proved their clients were framed.

“It was nauseating,” said defense lawyer Rochelle Berliner.

Two hours of video showed no contact at all between the four men arrested and undercover officers - proof that lead prosecutors to drop charges against the four men, and even declare in court the men did not commit the crime.

Defense lawyers say it’s disturbing but not uncommon.

“As defense attorneys you know it exists more often than government wants you to believe,” said Brad Wolk.

In the 6 months it took to clear the Colon brothers names, they lost their business and their savings.

As a result of his ordeal, Maximo Colon has lost trust in police officers.

The two men are now involved in a civil suit against the city and hope to one day rebuild their lives.

The NYPD is investigating the officers involved in this incident. Two of the officers are reportedly on modified duty.

Modified duty? Looks like they’re going to get off. Even if they win their civil case they’re likely not going to get enough to cover all the loses they have incurred let alone additional restitution.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that Child Protective Services (CPS) abused its discretion by seizing 468 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints ranch in Eldorado. Eugene Volokh has a roundup of the legal analysis.

CPS invited some mental health workers to the various shelters to help care for the hundreds of children. The mental health workers were disturbed by what they saw of CPS’s treatment of the women and children, and their written reports corroborate the bitter complaints of the FLDS mothers. I don’t think the news media has given this aspect of the story the attention it deserves — so here are some excerpts from the various reports that have been made public:

• “Women were constantly lied to about where their children [were] and when they could see their lawyers and about when they would be reunited with their children.”
• “Constant reminders that the adult women were only guests and that they were not in charge of the children and what CPS did to them. [The children] belonged to CPS now and they could talk, interrogate, separate and treat them any way [CPS] wanted. This included physical exams and x-rays without [parental] supervision.”
• “I sat with Audrey while three of her children were removed for six hours of questioning.”
• “The children arrived healthy and happy and left sick and crying.”
• “The door to the room was almost constantly open. Even when the women closed the door to reduce noise during naptime or to dress themselves or the children, it was almost immediately opened again [by a CPS worker].”
• “The women were lied to and denied access to their attorneys.”
• “At least 5 mothers reported that at night CPS [workers] circled their beds, held flashlight in their faces & then would sit inches away from them as they tried to sleep. Mothers reported that they were scared CPS would take their children during the night.”
• “The CPS workers were openly rude to the mothers and the children, yelled at them for trying to wave to friends and family members in surrounding shelters, threatened them with arrest if they did not stop waving to others, continually reminded them that the women were guests only and could be made to leave if they did not cooperate, threatened the mothers with never seeing their children again if they did not cooperate, and ignored requests for anything.”
• “The children were amazingly clean, happy, healthy, energetic, inquisitive, well behaved, and self-confident; while the mothers were consistently calm, patient, and loving with their children.”
• “Living conditions in the coliseum were not conducive to good health for anyone, and the presence of hostile CPS workers who spied on them constantly, kept them awake at night by shining lights in their faces and talking and laughing created enormous stress for the mothers and children. None of them slept well or enough.”
• “Try to imagine all these children from age 1 to 12 years, left in that coliseum [separated from their mothers] with only CPS and [police officers] to care for them. The only others were mothers whom CPS decided were under 18 and kept in their custody along with their children. The floor was literally slick with tears in places. A baby was left in a stroller without food and water for 24 hours and ended up in the hospital. A 4 year old boy was so terrified that he snuck away and hid and was only found after the coliseum had been emptied the next day.”
• “I witnessed a young mother named Rosinith be required by CPS to board the bus back to the ranch, though her young child was in the hospital with 104 degree fever and even though the child’s physician had personally requested the mother’s presence at the hospital. This event haunts me still, and I cannot imagine such a heartless act.”
• “By the second day, I was ready to run in front of the CNN cameras to shout that there was a travesty happening inside those walls…. Of course I was cautioned not to interfere in a ‘crime scene investigation.’”
• “I have always been proud to be an American and a Texan but this incident is not what America or Texas stands for and something must be done to undo the horrible injustice that has been done.”

CPS denies the allegations of mistreatment. But the excerpts above are eyewitness reports from objective/disinterested social workers that CPS invited into the shelters.

Justice is still not served. Not until restitution is paid and those who brought this about are punished directly. Now we need the state to return the children kidnapped from Strong City. Jeff Bent, Wayne Bent aka Michael Travesser son, was on Free Talk Live yesterday for those interested.

http://www.cnn.com/…

The state of Texas should not have removed more than 400 children it took from a polygamist sect’s ranch, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

Earlier this year, authorities raided the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, after they received reports of child abuse.

About 460 children were taken from the ranch, which is run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a polygamist sect linked to the jailed “prophet” Warren Steed Jeffs.

Parents have denied the claims of abuse and have been fighting to get their children back.

This is a great turn of events. Just in the past days I’ve heard that another court in Texas hearing some part of this case told the mothers that if they wanted their children back they’d have to repudiate their religion. As I understand it that’s an unforgivable sin, blasphemy. If true that’s absolutely disgusting. Effectively asking them to choose between eternal damnation or their child. In any case this ruling is the first positive thing to come out of this travesty. Hopefully it continues on this new path. Unfortunately even if nothing is ever found likely no one from the State will be held responsible for this. No charges will be brought or if they are nothing will come from it. No restitution. The Nuremberg defense will be used and at worst maybe a reprimand or a bureaucrat or two will loose their job. Nothing however to change the likely pre-existing belief the FLDS had that the modern world was controlled by Satan. They have no doubt now.

It bugs me that as much as the MSM talks about this case they still don’t really mention that the original call was a fake. That the whole operation was completely unfounded. That several if not dozens of the women are over the age of 18 yet kept in custody as children. Likely they prefer to stay with the younger ones but it’s still disgusting.

Update:

Here is the AP version:

A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect’s ranch.The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were “legally and factually insufficient” under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children.

Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators.

The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/…

In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard presents selling oneself into slavery as a logical impossibility because of the “inalienability of the will.” The will may be inalienable, but a contractual obligation certainly is not “inalienable.” Rothbard would reject a contract worded thusly: “I hereby sell myself into slavery to Smith Co. in return for subsistence living and three lottery tickets per week.” However, consider this case. Joe A. Gambler is given a one million dollar line of credit at 20% interest at the casino. He gambles it all until he has one million in debt, and just the monthly interest is more than his attainable monthly income. He is bankrupt, and if Rothbardian contractual debt obligations are enforceable in a meaningful sense, then the casino has very significant rights on the control of how Joe gets to spend his income, how much leisure he gets, and how much he must work. Joe has become a de facto slave.

Rothbardians miss this essential problem. People are advertised, persuaded, brainwashed, conned, Ponzi schemed, schooled, and more to convince them to sell themselves into virtual slavery. It is not a non-issue, it is a central issue. Living by debt is walking on a wobbly fence when falling on the wrong side is slavery. Call debt slavery merely de facto slavery if you will, but if it looks like a dead fish and smells like a dead fish, then why treat it other than like a dead fish? Notice how important thrift and debt avoidance was to Thoreau in the first half of Walden. He noticed that, like today, people would sell themselves into debt for superficial luxuries in housing when one could build an acceptable structure without debt. For those who say it cannot happen, I say rather, don’t let it happen.

1. “I hereby sell myself into slavery to Smith Co. in return for subsistence living and three lottery tickets per week.” is a an invalid statement/contract. You can’t be definition be a voluntary slave. You can’t be property. You can voluntarily act like a slave which from an ignorant 3rd party perspective looked like enslavement but you can not call that situation slavery. Looking and smelling like a dead fish does not mean it’s a dead fish.
2. Rothbard clearly describes restitution proportionality and what he feels should be considered a legitimately enforcible contract. One’s inalienable right to life would override any debt described in the above article. In all but the most extreme cases, just as today, people would not end up in any sort of prison or work camp or otherwise physically restrained in order to pay off their debts. This includes wage garnishing to an extent where the debtor was unable to sustain themselves. There would more likely be a great amount of ostracism which the debtee attempts to propagate if the debtor fails to make reasonable efforts to repay the debt. That debt however is voluntary theft and therefore you are obligated to repay it… not involuntary slavery.
3. Nor is it the same as the situation of supposedly selling yourself into slavery. In that case you are agreeing to something which is continuous. Shelter and food can be stopped at any point with little or no theft. You stop working and they stop providing shelter. That’s significantly different from Joe A. Gambler taking a one million dollar loan at 20% interest. In that case you’ve taken money conditionally and upfront. Any failure to repay under those conditions is outright theft. Just because you cannot predict the future doesn’t negate the situtation you’ve agreed to. The debtor could have won money and repaid the loan too… so that act of getting the loan they possibly couldn’t afford isn’t in itself illegitimate. Besides it’s not practical. Are you really going to go to the individuals who have the money and ask for it back telling them the loan was illegitimate to begin with? If we are talking about a free society there can not be an organization with a monopoly on force, justice and law which attempts to forbid such contracts from being created in the first place.
4. “People are advertised, persuaded, brainwashed, conned, Ponzi schemed, schooled, and more to convince them to sell themselves into virtual slavery.”
   1. advertised: voluntary
   2. persuaded: voluntary
   3. brainwashed: hardly scientific IMO, can’t judge
   4. conned: fraud
   5. Ponzi schemed: possibly fraud, caveat emptor
   6. schooled:voluntary

   If you voluntarily enter into a situation that turns bad then there is little I feel someone can argue about. Lots of people make bad, ignorant decisions. That’s not fraud however nor is it something realistically preventable nor should it be prosecuted. Fraud however is a different story and would negate any contract entered into.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…

A man wrongly jailed when a woman cried rape has failed to prevent being charged £12,500 for his “board and lodging” while in prison.Warren Blackwell, 38, spent three years in jail as a convicted sex attacker until his ‘victim’ was unmasked as a fantasist.

It was revealed he has been awarded £252,500 compensation for his lost years - but minus the estimated cost of his food and accommodation while behind bars.

Mr Blackwell said he had failed to stop the money being siphoned off after his lawyer told him there was little to be done about it.

The father-of-two, said: “It’s the principle of the thing. They slam you in jail for three years and four months, brand you a sex attacker, leave your family to cope without you, then turn around and say sorry but demand £12,500 for living expenses incurred during your time inside.

Mr Blackwell was jailed on the word of a woman who claims he seized her at knifepoint outside a village club early on New Year’s Day 1999, marched her down an alleyway and indecently assaulted her.

She picked him out of an identity parade and a jury found him guilty, even though there was no forensic evidence and he had no previous convictions.

The conviction appears to have been a sham. That’s sad enough. This taking of room and board costs is pretty disgusting. £12,500 seems pretty low, I doubt that their prison system is that efficient, so perhaps he’s making out in that regard but it’s no less heinous. How can anyone defend this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

Brazil’s government has expressed its “unhappiness” that no senior police officers involved in Jean Charles de Menezes’s shooting will be disciplined.

The Brazilian electrician was shot dead in 2005 by police who mistook him for a terrorist after the London bombings.

The independent police watchdog had cleared 11 of the 15 officers involved, and has now ruled the other four senior officers will face no further action.

They included commanding officer Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick.

A Brazilian government statement said: “The foreign ministry expresses its unhappiness with the decision of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) which absolves four senior officers involved in the death of the Brazilian citizen Jean Charles de Menezes.”

A Met Police spokesman said the shooting was “a matter of deep regret”, but added: “We are pleased by this move forward and for these officers and their families who have faced much uncertainty.”

Last I had heard and posted on this was that the Metropolitan Police force was fined for putting people in danger but nothing was being done to those that took Mr. Menezes’ life. It looks like that will stay. I’ve not seen anything in this new article but I’m betting his family is not getting any sort of restitution. Hopefully the Brazilian government will continue to complain. Someone needs to take some responsibility for this.