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Paks form team to rearrest Rashid Rauf
Today's Headlines
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Nava '09 admits to fabricating assault, threatening e-mails (Princeton conservative)
Francisco Nava '09 has admitted to fabricating an alleged assault on him that he said occurred Friday evening and also to sending threatening emails to himself, other members of the Anscombe Society and prominent conservative politics professor Robert George, Princeton Township Police said today.

"He fabricated the story," Det. Sgt. Ernie Silagyi said.

Nava was released to Public Safety and charges "have not been filed pending further investigation," according to a statement from Township Police.
Dipshit
Nava had alleged that he was assaulted by black-clad moonbats after he received threatening e-mails. We should have known that lefty blackshirts wouldn't actually attack without media cover and a numerical advantage of only two to one.
Posted by: Dick Arbusto, CEO of Hallibushwater || 12/17/2007 14:28 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  idiot
Posted by: Frank G || 12/17/2007 15:26 Comments || Top||

#2  Make an example of him. This fraud provides cover for real assaults.
Posted by: Excalibur || 12/17/2007 16:00 Comments || Top||

#3  Expel him from the university on the grounds of an Honours Code transgression. This is easily as bad as cheating on an exam. It seems the young gentleman fabricated hateful communications in high school, too, which suggests he does not learn the proper lessons from experience.
Posted by: trailing wife || 12/17/2007 16:09 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Man Shot After He Pepper Sprays Police Officer; Charges Cops With Machete

Doubless thought that bringing a BIGGER knife to a gunfight would make a difference...
Posted by: Ptah || 12/17/2007 07:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  two officers responded to a report that 25-year-old Jason William Leary was violently beating his wife at his home

I never knew there was another way.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 12/17/2007 10:37 Comments || Top||

#2  C'mon Jim you'ver never heard of the Tempura Shelter?


It's for lightly battered women.

sorry, couldn't resist
Posted by: Beavis || 12/17/2007 10:41 Comments || Top||

#3  Knife: Gunfight
Posted by: mojo || 12/17/2007 12:36 Comments || Top||


-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
OMG! Monster Rat found in 'Lost World' Jungle
Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered
sic rat hunters
a giant rat - five times the size of a typical city rat.
OMG It's True, Global Warming And Now Gigantic Rats /humm I had a Big Rat named Elvis when i waz a Kid
more cute varmits at the title-linky.

How 'bout it RBurgers, A Name Contest For My New Pet Cat?...fido?

Posted by: RD || 12/17/2007 02:15 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ye gods! It's the Giant Rat of Sumatra!
Posted by: Mike || 12/17/2007 8:19 Comments || Top||

#2  Definitely Rodents of Very Large Size.
Posted by: Fred || 12/17/2007 8:35 Comments || Top||

#3  Almost qualifies as an RUS.
(rodent of unusual size)
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 12/17/2007 10:39 Comments || Top||

#4  My cat's twice that pictured rat's size, and he's not a BIG cat.(Look up "Maine Coon Cat")
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/17/2007 11:12 Comments || Top||

#5  These folks have obviously never seen a large 'waterfront rat'. Honestly, those suckers can get huge (25+ pounds).

When our office was near a medium sized midwestern river, we cornered one near the dumpster and called Animal Control (left the .45 home that day). The officer thought at first that it might be a muskrat, but after 'containment', decided that it wasn't (no webbed feet and tail was relatively hairless).
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 12/17/2007 12:16 Comments || Top||

#6  'Willard' was unavailable for comment....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 12/17/2007 12:19 Comments || Top||

#7  From the headline, I was expecting some kind of Michael Moore goof.
Posted by: SteveS || 12/17/2007 13:04 Comments || Top||

#8  Tat looks very much like a ROUS I found a few years back in my backyard (Pacific NorthWet). My fierce cats did him in. About 14 pounds.
Posted by: twobyfour || 12/17/2007 13:06 Comments || Top||

#9  so far.. 'Puny' is the handle of choice..

Heh, Jebus all you guys got some Big A$$ed Rats.

Like should we put an * asterisk by them? They be on Steroids or somthin? Do they associate with some guy named Barry maybe?

Posted by: RD || 12/17/2007 13:58 Comments || Top||

#10  Is it a big rat or a really small capybara?
Posted by: eLarson || 12/17/2007 14:05 Comments || Top||

#11  Whatssamatter? Never seen a Nutria before???
Posted by: Scooter McGruder || 12/17/2007 14:08 Comments || Top||

#12  Im used to be in teh Publicks Rat Patrol, I wuz armed with a Crossman .22 caliber pellet rifle and and attached flashlight. I sneaked around the warehaus in deh dark shootin rats. The paid me for this. Life has gone downhill steady since.
Posted by: HalfEmpty || 12/17/2007 14:39 Comments || Top||

#13  I've seen rats as big as that down by the peanut warehouse in Dothan, Alabama. Got paid to shoot them, too.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 12/17/2007 16:36 Comments || Top||

#14  Don't put down cats, mine cornered, killed, and ate an eight foot ratlesnake, (8 rattles and a button)wouldn't have believed it, but happened to come home and saw it, snake was surrounded, and scared to death, it was Custer's last stand(Where'd all those damn indians((Cats)) come from?)It really was an unfair fight, they called the neighbors (Cats) to come and have fun, I counted 24 cats-1 Rattlesnake, never found any trace, should have cut off the rattles, I did manage to cut the head off, so no cats would eat the poison sac.(Buried it deep)

Last I saw 5 cats were playing tug-o-war with the carcass.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/17/2007 18:18 Comments || Top||

#15  Here on Guam I've seen rats down at Big Navy that are just as big - goes to show what pigging out on seafood- and other natural proteins can do. TMK, NAVMAR gave local Navy divers the formal responsibility of killing troublesome rodents, mostly via scoped pellet/air guns. Also helped the divers wid their personal shooting/weapon skills. *YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A LARGE CAT = SMALL DOG, DIDN'T YOU MORIARTY - WELL, IT TAINT!?
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/17/2007 18:21 Comments || Top||

#16  REDDIT > Science is getting closer to replicating/cloning ancient DINOSAURS = DINOSAURIAN DNA, besides also wooly mammoths.
Nuthin' says righteous progress that mankind doing its all to make sure it gets properly eaten chomped, and stepped on ala JURASSIC PARK TRILOGY, or in the altern ditto by NOSTRADAMUS'
"HIDEOUS BEAST" WALKING THE EARTH. D *** NG IT, LUCIFER = GODZILLA, GLOBAL WARMING > DECENT AMERIKANS DEMAND AND INSIST TO BE DESTROYED - WHATS THE HOLDUP?
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/17/2007 18:32 Comments || Top||

#17  That's nothing. Just wait until the next DNC convention.....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 12/17/2007 19:19 Comments || Top||

#18  I've seen pigmy possums that looked a lot like that. The biggest rats I've ever seen were in Panama - about the size of a rabbit. A really FAT possum will weigh in at 20-30 pounds, and are much nastier than rats. At the other end of the scale, my cats have caught a few shrews that weighed about a tenth of an ounce. I freed one, and it now lives (or its progeny now live) under my woodpile. The cats have gone after bigger prey.

I had a cat in Germany that brought home a young cock pheasant one morning. THAT spooked me!
Posted by: Old Patriot || 12/17/2007 20:35 Comments || Top||

#19  huhu uhhu He said cock
Posted by: Beavis || 12/17/2007 21:07 Comments || Top||

#20  When Dad was in Pavuvu in WW2, they used to make trenches around their tent areas to catch the rats and keep them from the tent areas. Some fellow used a backpack flamethrower to get rid of a pack of em. T'was a nasty business, even as a rat, burning to death.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 12/17/2007 21:57 Comments || Top||

#21  Bush Meat!

Africa has critters like these, known under the generic name of "Bush Rat." Years and years ago, a missionary of my acquaintance was out in the hinterlands in an African village, 4 hours from the road and 15 hours from anywhere. Another pastor came to visit and the village was excited: somebody had come all the way from the capital to visit their pastor. So a member of the congregation went hunting. He killed, dressed, and proudly presented a bush rat to his pastor as a treat for his guest. They had a 1931 copy of "The Joy Of Cooking", and adapted the muskrat recipe. Quite good, with a little extra red pepper.
Posted by: mom || 12/17/2007 22:27 Comments || Top||


Down Under
Toilet worms trauma fear (Eye Roller of the Day)
Posted by: phil_b || 12/17/2007 02:26 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  These people, like the one on the council, should be removed from society the instant they reveal themselves. Maybe even their offspring if they've had any.

Way past time to put some chlorine in the gene pool.
Posted by: Andy Elmeath5872 || 12/17/2007 2:51 Comments || Top||

#2  A life form needs a brain that can form a coherent thought before you worry about things like traumatizing them.

And if they were actually capable of being traumatized, I'm sure the Auckland Regional Council members could always get some kind of therapy . . . .
Posted by: gorb || 12/17/2007 3:00 Comments || Top||

#3  #2) I'm sure the Auckland Regional Council members could always get some kind of therapy . . . .

#1) had the answer #2,

#3 over and out.
Posted by: #3 || 12/17/2007 3:30 Comments || Top||

#4  worms were in excellent health and breeding happily.

heh, heh. Why do I suspect the toilet worms were in a better state of health and happiness than the council member?
Posted by: Whomong Guelph4611 || 12/17/2007 4:38 Comments || Top||

#5  That vermiculturist has to be snickering in his beer.
Posted by: GK || 12/17/2007 9:02 Comments || Top||

#6  Just ask any of the Democratic Presidential hopefulls, they know a lot of shit eating worms.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 12/17/2007 10:41 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Judge: Man can't be forced to divulge encryption passphrase
A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with his Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."

Especially if this ruling is appealed, U.S. v. Boucher could become a landmark case. The question of whether a criminal defendant can be legally compelled to cough up his encryption passphrase remains an unsettled one, with law review articles for the last decade arguing the merits of either approach. (A U.S. Justice Department attorney wrote an article in 1996, for instance, titled "Compelled Production of Plaintext and Keys.")

This debate has been one of analogy and metaphor. Prosecutors tend to view PGP passphrases as akin to someone possessing a key to a safe filled with incriminating documents. That person can, in general, be legally compelled to hand over the key. Other examples include the U.S. Supreme Court saying that defendants can be forced to provide fingerprints, blood samples, or voice recordings.

Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department prosecutor who's now a law professor at George Washington University, shares this view. Kerr acknowledges that it's a tough call, but says, "I tend to think Judge Niedermeier was wrong given the specific facts of this case."

The alternate view elevates individual rights over prosecutorial convenience. It looks to other Supreme Court cases saying Americans can't be forced to give "compelled testimonial communications" and argues the Fifth Amendment must apply to encryption passphrases as well. Courts already have ruled that that such protection extends to the contents of a defendant's minds, so why shouldn't a passphrase be shielded as well?

In this case, Judge Niedermeier took the second approach. He said that encryption keys can be "testimonial," and even the prosecution's alternative of asking the defendant to type in the passphrase when nobody was looking would be insufficient.

A second reason this case is unusual is that Boucher was initially arrested when customs agents stopped him and searched his laptop when he and his father crossed the border from Canada on December 17, 2006. An officer opened the laptop, accessed the files without a password or passphrase, and allegedly discovered "thousands of images of adult pornography and animation depicting adult and child pornography."

Boucher was read his Miranda rights, waived them, and allegedly told the customs agents that he may have downloaded child pornography. But then--and this is key--the laptop was shut down after Boucher was arrested. It wasn't until December 26 that a Vermont Department of Corrections officer tried to access the laptop--prosecutors obtained a subpoena on December 19--and found that the Z: drive was encrypted with PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. (PGP sells software, including whole disk encryption and drive-specific encryption. It's a little unclear what exactly happened, but one likely scenario is that Boucher configured PGP to forget his passphrase, effectively re-encrypting the Z: drive, after a few hours or days had elapsed...)
This is an icky situation. Either the 5th Amendment goes, or terrorists are able to conceal information that could be used to try them. (Though the information could still be used for intelligence purposes, it could not be used against them in court.)
Posted by: Anonymoose || 12/17/2007 10:33 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Niedermeier? Douglas R. Niedermeier, Jr? Class of '64?
Posted by: mojo || 12/17/2007 10:59 Comments || Top||

#2  We have de-cryption programs, the cops are just to lazy to spend the time, money,and efort.

Looked for an easy way, and it backfired on them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 12/17/2007 11:19 Comments || Top||

#3  We have de-cryption programs, the cops are just to lazy to spend the time, money,and efort.

Depending on the encryption algorithm he chose, the time could be until the heat-death of the universe, and the money and effort required would be enough to hasten that day's arrival.
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 12/17/2007 12:49 Comments || Top||

#4  I'm sure the NSA could decrypt it over lunch. However, the NSA has higher demands then a pedophile to deal with and has no interest in becoming the locksmith for every law enforcement jurisdiction in the country.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 12/17/2007 14:34 Comments || Top||

#5  The password is:

oogahboogahdoodleleedee,

Your welcome, from the Psychotic Psychic Network
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 12/17/2007 15:18 Comments || Top||

#6  Proc, no they cannot, if the person used PGP properly and chose a long enough keylength and good passphrase.

NSA is good, but cannot violate basic laws of math regarding factoring of large number and other NPO-Hard issues.

They depend on the same math themselves.
Posted by: OldSpook || 12/17/2007 20:37 Comments || Top||

#7  NP-hard, not NPO. In any case, we don't know if factoring is NP-hard or not. Let's recall the definitions:

P: Polynomial time--a problem that can be solved in time polynomial in the size of the problem

NP: Nondeterministic Polynomial time--a problem whose solutions can be checked in such polynomial time. Given two factors of a d-digit number, multiply them--it takes O(d^2) operations.

NP-complete: A problem such that every NP problem can be reduced to it.

NP-hard: A problem at least as hard as NP problems.

Factoring is NP, but not necessarily NP-hard. There seems to be disagreement on whether it is or not.

Now, if you can prove P=NP or the opposite, you'll be rich!
Posted by: Eric Jablow || 12/17/2007 21:12 Comments || Top||

#8  Oy, Eric. Now my head hurts.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 12/17/2007 22:31 Comments || Top||

#9 
Posted by: DMFD || 12/17/2007 23:07 Comments || Top||



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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
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Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2007-12-17
  Paks form team to rearrest Rashid Rauf
Sun 2007-12-16
  Kabul cop shoppe boomed, 5 dead
Sat 2007-12-15
  Mehsud to head Taliban Movement of Pakistan
Fri 2007-12-14
  Khamenei appoints Qassem as Hezbollah military commander
Thu 2007-12-13
  Leb car boom murders top general
Wed 2007-12-12
  Qaeda in North Africa claims Algiers blasts
Tue 2007-12-11
  Taliban abandons Musa Qala
Mon 2007-12-10
  al-Abssi is in Syria and Fatah al-Isalm is in Gaza
Sun 2007-12-09
  Fierce battle rages for Taliban stronghold
Sat 2007-12-08
  Berri postpones Lebanon presidential election to Tuesday
Fri 2007-12-07
  Pak troops capture Mullah Fazlullah's base
Thu 2007-12-06
  Suicide attack on army bus in Kabul kills 16
Wed 2007-12-05
  Somali leader taken to hospital
Tue 2007-12-04
  Abu Maysara Positively Deader Than a Rock
Mon 2007-12-03
  40 Taliban killed, 14 held in Afghanistan

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