The DEA Wants to Access Your Medical Records Without Consent or a Warrant
Mike Riggs Back in 2011, the Office of
National Drug Control Policy
released a list of strategies for combating prescription pill
abuse. From a civil liberties standpoint, one strategy in
particular stood out: "Identify and seek to remove administrative
and regulatory barriers to 'pill mill' and prescriber
investigations that impair investigations while not serving another
policy goal." Last year
I wondered what the DEA and the ONDCP might do to "remove"
barriers that are meant to protect patient privacy.
The ACLU has an answer for us:The Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to access private prescription records of patients in Oregon without a warrant, despite a state law forbidding it from doing so. The ACLU and its Oregon affiliate are challenging this practice in a new case that raises the question of whether the Fourth Amendment allows federal law enforcement agents to obtain confidential prescription records without a judge’s prior approval. It should not.
In 2009, the Oregon legislature created the Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), which tracks prescriptions for certain drugs dispensed by Oregon pharmacies, including all of the medications listed above. The program was intended to help physicians prevent drug overdoses by their patients and more easily recognize signs of drug abuse. Because the medical information revealed by these prescription records is highly sensitive, the legislature created robust privacy and security protections for the PDMP, including a requirement that law enforcement must obtain a warrant before requesting records for use in an investigation. But despite those protections, the DEA has been requesting prescription records from the PDMP using administrative subpoenas which, unlike warrants, do not involve demonstrating probable cause to a neutral judge.
The State of Oregon sued the DEA in federal court to defend its right to require law enforcement, including federal agencies, to obtain the warrants required by state law.
Today, the ACLU filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of several patients and a doctor whose prescription records are contained in the PDMP. Our clients are concerned that the privacy of their medical information will be violated if the DEA is allowed to search through prescription records without a warrant. If the DEA can demonstrate to a judge that it has probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that prescription records will provide evidence of that crime, then it can legitimately obtain records from the PDMP. Because prescription records and the medical information they reveal are such a sensitive matter, protecting their privacy is vital, and we argue that obtaining private and confidential prescription records without a warrant constitutes an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.Florida isn't waiting around for the DEA. A Central Florida taskforce has already taken patient records without a warrant, and cops in Southwest Florida are trying to trick patients into signing away their privacy.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/29/the-dea-wants-to-access-your-medical-rec
Delaware Attorney General Strips County Sheriffs of Arrest Powers
Sheriff Jeff Christopher of Sussex County, Delaware, when he was
elected to the office in 2010, thought he was handpicked by the people
to represent them as the highest-ranking law officer in the county.
Instead, he has found himself in the middle of a fight for the future of
American law enforcement as a result of a nationwide effort to abolish
the sheriff’s office altogether.It is one more example of federal and state governments ignoring the will of the people as well state laws. In the case of Delaware, the state’s own constitution stipulates that the office of the sheriff is a constitutionally created position just like the secretary of state and the attorney general. Delaware’s Constitution states: “The sheriffs shall be conservators of the peace within the counties . . . in which they reside.”
This time it is Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, sending out mandates to commissioners informing them that their sheriffs no longer have arrest powers. In an opinion released February 24, State Solicitor L.W. Lewis said that neither the state nor the common law grants arrest powers to the county sheriffs.
It would appear that Lewis is a little confused. The office of sheriff was created more than a century before the official founding of the United States. Delaware’s first sheriff took office in 1669.
Read More: http://americanfreepress.net/
Ron Paul calls US involvement in Mali 'undeclared war' Where are the calls for impeachment?
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| Ron Paul (Reuters / Joe Skipper) |
The recently retired congressman outlined his fears in his weekly column, “Texas Straight Talk”. Paul said that while the US has only announced its transport and intelligence assistance to the French initiative, “this is clearly developing into another war”.
“President Obama last week began his second term by promising that ‘a decade of war is now ending,’” Paul wrote. “As he spoke, the US military was rapidly working its way into another war, this time in the impoverished African country of Mali.”
Paul believes that unanswered questions about possible US involvement on African soil further indicates that Obama has been more active in the conflict than he admits, and that Congress has been kept out of the loop.
“Media questions as to whether the US has Special Operations forces, drones, or CIA paramilitary units active in Mali are unanswered by the Administration,” Paul said. “Congress has asked few questions and demanded few answers from the president. As usual, it was not even consulted. But where does the president get the authority to become a co-combatant in French operations in Mali, even if US troops are not yet overtly involved in the attack?”
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that US assistance in Mali is a good example of future military assistance it might provide to its allies and that the US would not bring its own troops into the conflict. The US first became involved by airlifting French soldiers and equipment to Mali with its C-17 transport planes, but gradually expanded its roles in Africa.
In response to a French request, the US on Saturday agreed to fly tankers to refuel French jet fighters and bombers who are located primarily in the conflict zone in northern Mali. An unnamed US defense official told The Guardian that the KC-135 tankers would be involved in the operation for months, or as long as needed.
The US on Monday signed an agreement with the West African country of Niger that would allow it to increase its US military presence and create a hub near the Malian border from which American drones could monitor al-Qaeda militants in northern Mali. The hub could be used as a launching pad for strikes and intelligence gathering, but the government has still remained mute about the extent of its contributions to the French military campaign.
Although the Obama administration has hesitated at the thought of entering another war, officials have no ruled out the use of armed drones or special-operations units to go after al-Qaeda militants in Mali.
The US involvement in Mali has sparked concern among war-weary Americans.
France “doesn’t have the military resources to sustain its fight against Mali’s jihadists without help from the US military. For now, that amounts to the use of giant transport planes to ferry French troops into Mali, and planes to refuel French combat aircrafts that are pummeling the militants’ positions,” writes USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham. “But that might now be enough. As recent events have shown, Northern Africa has become an expanding battleground for jihadist groups with links to al-Qaeda.”
Wickham believes that as other al-Qaeda-linked groups begin to support their comrades in Mali, the US “will not be able to avoid a bigger military involvement.”
Paul fears that similarly to the Libya conflict, the Obama administration will intervene in Mali without consulting Congress, and that keeping legislators out of crucial decisions will spiral the US into further African conflicts.
http://rt.com/usa/news/paul-us-mali-french-011/
High-schoolers told cannibalism allowed
University where Obama spoke instructs in 'this type of violence'
The
curriculum used to instruct young Egyptian students includes permission
for them to use Christians and others as lunch, according to a
startling report from Walid and Theodore Shoebat, on the website for Walid Shoebat, a former Muslim Brotherhood member who is now a peace activist.“In the future, the Egyptian Islamists will not only be conducting systematic violence, but cannibalism against Christians and moderates,” they reported, citing a video interview from a man identified as “One Egyptian scholar” that is online.
The teachings are from the curriculum coming from Al-Azhar University, “the most reputable of all Islamic schools,” according to the report that includes video from the Eretz Zen Channel.
The scholar said, “Listen also to what they teach to kids … It says … We allowed the eating of the flesh of dead humans … under necessary conditions.”
“Egypt is merely going back to its heathen roots,” the report said. “In ancient Egypt human sacrifice was followed by ritual cannibalism. On the temple of Edifu, all lands foreign to Egypt are pictured as being under the feet of the pharaoh, as four men, their arms bound, are about to be ritually sacrificed.
As the sacrificial victims are awaiting their deaths, a person hovers over them, reciting the ‘Book of the Subduing of the Nobility.’
“This rite was part of an annual fertility ritual, the depictions of which have netted birds, fish, and mortals, as representing the enemies of the pharaoh – Asiatics, Bediun, Nubians, and others – which were to be eaten for ‘breakfast, lunch, and supper,’” the report said.
“By consuming the flesh of their enemies, the Egyptians believed that they would absorb their desired qualities.”
The Egyptian scholar, whose name was not included in the report, spoke on video, complaining of the teaching curriculum for current Egyptian students.
“This stuff is being taught to kids at al-Azhar (a religious university),” he said. “This is what is being taught to kids right now. When they teach them this kind of stuff, their minds cannot accept civilization any more.”
He quoted from the curriculum: “We allowed the eating of the flesh of dead humans… under necessary conditions. It (human flesh) must not be cooked or grilled to avoid Haram (evil) … and he can kill a murtadd (apostate) and eat him.”
The report said the university finds its “support for cannibalism in Islamic authority. It explains that the justification comes from Al-Shafie, considered a founder of Islamic jurisprudence, who wrote, “One may eat the flesh of a human body. It is not allowed to kill a Muslim nor a free non-Muslim under Muslim rule (because he is useful for the society), nor a prisoner because he belongs to other Muslims. But you may kill an enemy fighter or an adulterer and eat his body.”
See the video, with captions:
The report points out that it was at Al-Azhar in Egypt that Barack Obama gave a 2009 speech “which empowered the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The report said the scholar “also added that the support for cannibalism from Al-Azhar will give the justification for ‘the establishment of committees for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice that’ll carry out this stuff…”
The scholar identifies the book from which he is drawing his information as from the Azhari Colleges Section, Central Administration for Books, Libraries and Teaching Aides for third-year high school students.
“This sentence was taken from Page 256, from this year’s edition,” he said.
The Shoebats reported also that other incidents in the history of Egypt bear out the use of such depravity.
“If one thinks that the Muslims have evolved into a modern mindset, one must remember what took place in Ramallah in which two Israeli soldiers were beaten and tortured to death, their bodies thrown down a window to the sounds of ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and their flesh then chewed by the crowd,” they wrote.
“Muslims in Ramallah held body parts of [an] Israeli while they cried out, ‘I eat the flesh of my occupier!’”
The report said there already is rampant violence by Islamists in Egypt.
It said in November 2012 “mobsters” entered a shopkeeper’s store to use his restroom. Owner Ahmed Gharib told them they needed to ask permission, so a few minutes later 30 bearded men arrived to “discipline him for insulting a religious figure,” the report said.
They tried to cut off his hand, but he fled, the report said.
“Egypt’s new constitution already establishes that the nation will be having a Saudi-style Shariah police which will be implementing not only this sort of violence, but the eating of human flesh.
[President Muhammad] Morsi’s coming ‘moral’ mafia and mere Egyptian individuals will be given the power to partake in such barbarism,” the report said.
The Shoebats noted the nation’s new constitution “mandates that any Islamic edict coming from the government must first go through Al-Azhar University scholars. This means that the OK for cannibalism will be observed in Egypt.”
Ted Shoebat had reported only a few months earlier that there was a case in Egypt where two brothers slaughtered their mother, sister and aunt.
They reportedly had said their sister’s behavior was contrary to morality.
That was followed shortly by a report “of a butcher in Egypt who had killed his wife, flayed her flesh off the bone, and put it for sale as lamb in his market.”
At the time, Ted Shoebat warned, “The perverseness which has evidently possessed the Egyptian masses, who have recently elected Mohammad Mursi, an open member of the Muslim Brotherhood, will only escalate as time moves on. The multitude of maniacal Egyptians is only gradually turning into a crowd of zombies.”
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