Penny Dean and Your Rights

<img src="http://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2016/02/24/Chicago_Police.JP... align="right" width="300">Photographing police activity without “any stated purpose of being critical of the government” isn’t constitutionally protected, a federal judge in Philadelphia has ruled.

The Marshals Service's surveillance log lists 5,975 cases in which the Marshals Service used stingrays. The agency declined to say what time period the log covered, or where the suspects were arrested. It also declined to identify the suspects, to protect their privacy.

"Just that sheer number is significant," American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Nathan Wessler said. "That's a lot of deployments of a very invasive surveillance tool."

An appeals court has ruled that a male Cleveland police officer fired for sending 8,000 sexually explicit texts to female crime victims should get his job back.

Detective Vincent Lucarelli was fired in January 2013 after an internal affairs investigation found that he had committed numerous departmental violations that included the text messages which were sent to seven women, six of who were crime victims.

The violations also included him having contact with women at their homes while on duty and inside his police car.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge. Rocky Houston appeals his conviction of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). At trial, the primary evidence against Houston was video footage of his possessing firearms at his and his brother’s rural Tennessee farm. The footage was recorded over the course of ten weeks by a camera installed on top of a public utility pole approximately 200 yards away.

A former worker is suing Universal Orlando, claiming he was illegally fired for having a gun in his car.

Dean Kumanchik, a ride technician, filed the lawsuit in Orlando on Thursday.

Kumanchik says he regularly kept a firearm in a car at work. He says Universal officials fired him after someone broke into his car and stole the gun.

This is the last line from the article (thanks <a href="<http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-27/man-stabbed-to-death-during-perth-...) "Man stabbed to death during Perth bus port brawl".

Please read about how people are unable to defend themselves in a society where guns are outlawed. And how criminals with knives are emboldened (for the same reason). And how the police prevent such atrocities (see our headline above for the spoiler).

San Francisco is being sued for what a federal class-action lawsuit argues is an unjust bail system that penalizes the poor with unpayable amounts for small offenses, yet allows wealthy defendants charged with serious crimes back on the streets because they can afford to pay.

The City’s bail system is unconstitutional because it violates the principle of equal protection under the law, the lawsuit alleges. Six similar lawsuits have forced local jurisdictions across the country to amend their bail schedules so the poor are not negatively impacted.

Last Friday a federal judge in Kansas turned away a civil rights lawsuit by a Leawood couple whose house was searched in 2012 based on a visit to a hydroponics store and a field test that incorrectly identified tea in their garbage as marijuana. In a summary judgment, U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum said police acted legally and reasonably in planning and conducting the fruitless raid on the home of Robert and Adlynn Harte, former CIA agents whose children were 7 and 13 at the time.

<img src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/11/29/us/29evidence-web01/29evidence... align="right" width="200">Steven Mark Chaney, who was freed from prison in October after 28 years, had to fight back tears as he watched forensic dentists argue here, before the Texas Forensic Science Commission, whether bite patterns on the skin of murder, rape and child abuse victims can offer valid clues to the perpetrator’s identity.

<img src="http://cdn.csgazette.biz/cache/sq500-d62878d8ce38a313ab79184e1bb05f4e.jpg" align="right" width="240">"The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for trump [sic] and say, 'this is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.'"