St. Louis CofCC Blog

Fox News:

Mexican Embassy: Official Fired After Getting Caught With White House BlackBerries

Whether he was up to no good or simply desperate to play BrickBreaker, a Mexican press attaché was caught on camera pocketing several White House BlackBerries during a recent meeting in New Orleans and has since been fired, FOX News has learned.

Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, Rafael Quintero Curiel, served as the lead press advance person for the Mexican Delegation and was responsible for handling logistics and guiding the Mexican media around at the conference.

(snip)

Sources said Quintero Curiel made it all the way to the airport before Secret Service officers caught up with him. He initially denied taking the devices, but after agents showed him the DVD, Quintero Curiel said it was purely accidental, gave them back, claimed diplomatic immunity and left New Orleans with the Mexican delegation.

He was in New Orleans to plan the formal integration of Canada, the USA and Mexico. That way, the next time something like this happens, it will simply be a “domestic theft” on the books.

And by the way, White House CrackBerries?  What did he think he would find on them?  All the real good top secret stuff is on Federal government laptops.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Civil rights groups sue state officials over voter registrations

Voting-rights activists filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Missouri public aid officials and election authorities in St. Louis and Kansas City, saying that agencies have failed to help poor people stay active on the voter rolls.

The suit, filed in Kansas City by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, focuses on a 1993 federal law that requires voter registration to be offered at drivers license facilities and government assistance offices — those that offer aid such as food stamps, Medicaid and welfare. But although registering at drivers license offices is now commonplace, activists claim the Missouri Department of Social Services has shirked its obligations.

Because it’s so hard to register to vote otherwise, we have to make it even easier, by offering up the opportunity for people in the places where they will go to sign up to collect some of your tax money.  And which political party and philosophy do you think would these voters endorse?

Boston Globe:

Bill bars gangs from ’safety zones’

Gang members seen talking to one another or standing together on public property could be fined or jailed under a new bill being pushed in the Legislature and supported by some prosecutors and Boston police.
more stories like this

The bill would give broad authority to police and prosecutors to bring civil lawsuits against reputed gangs or their members, forbidding them to hang out together in the neighborhoods and parks that police say they terrorize.

(snip)

Under the bill, suspected gang members would be barred from parks, neighborhoods, and other areas designated as “safety zones,” and police could order groups of three or more gang members found there to leave. The restriction, which would not extend to church or school events, would also impose a 10 p.m. curfew on gang members.

Good luck with that, Boston.  You’re talking about people that have trouble obeying laws against murder, robbery, drug dealing, and so on.  What makes you think they’ll cede to curfews and safety zones?  Assuming that, and assuming that gang members are that easy in a legal sense to identify (gang laws often do not hold up in court, because of the nebulous and informal nature of black and Hispanic street gangs), why stop at a 10 PM curfew and only a few “safety zones?”  Why not make a 24-hour-a-day curfew and make all of Boston a “safety zone?”  Further, why not just round them up using RICO and state equivalents?

Similarly, I cringe whenever I hear one community activist or another calling for a moratorium on violent crime for a finite length of time.  If they have that much power to stop crime for a month, why not make it forever?