Homeland security officials in the Washington area plan to dramatically expand the use of automated license plate readers to prevent possible terrorist attacks.

Officials from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia have agreed to install 200 license plate readers on police vehicles, at airports and along roads. The plan announced Friday will be funded by federal homeland security grants for the area.

Britain used the readers in the 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks. But in the United States, the devices have mostly been used to regulate parking or catch car thieves.

The readers will scan every license plate that passes by and will run the numbers through federal criminal and terrorist databases.

New York officials recently said they plan to scan license plates of all cars entering Manhattan.

Privacy experts say it’s a vast expansion of the use of technology for security.

Well, duh.

I’m sure there’s a way to harness the power created by George Orwell rolling over in his grave.

H/t: Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge

And for those wondering why I refer to Matt Drudge as Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge, it’s because Ted Baxter — I mean Bill O’Reilly — referred to Drudge as such after Drudge posted O’Reilly’s less than stellar book sales figures.

Roll the transcript!:

[BILL] O’REILLY: Now I want to make it quite clear to everybody that the right-wing Web sites do this, too. I mean you can’t believe a word Matt Drudge says, for example. They’ll just spin it and twist it and take it out of proportion every which way.

[…]

O’REILLY: Well, who knows this? Who said this? Now you’ve got the Matt Drudges of the world and these other people, Michael Moore and all of these crazies, all right, no responsibility, and legitimate journalists — I see stuff in “The New York Times” taken off Web sites all the time by their columnists and reporters. They just throw it in there. And then…

[…]

O’REILLY: And I mean that is — that is a threat to democracy, I think.

Yes, damn those people. They have some nerve expressing their opinions. Only I, your pretentious, self-absorbed Overlord at Fox News should be able to do that!

Why do people still watch that dork?

An Anne Arundel County judge has released a 19-year-old woman who served eight months in a juvenile detention facility for the death of her newborn baby.

The judge ruled the woman had been rehabilitated and the woman was released to her father’s custody. The woman had been sentenced last December to stay at a juvenile facility until she was 21, but the juvenile services department asked Thursday for the sentence modification.

The former Broadneck High School student was 17 in December 2005 when she delivered the full-term baby boy in a bathroom at her home in Arnold, then put him in a trash can. An autopsy showed the baby was born alive but died from asphyxiation.

A man suspected of raping at least nine women in Prince George’s County, many of whom he met through the popular Web site Craigslist, died after shooting himself in the head yesterday while barricaded inside a Hyattsville apartment building, Prince George’s police said.

Prince George’s County police say a Suitland man suspected of raping at least nine women shot himself in the head yesterday while barricaded inside a Hyattsville apartment building.

Police say 33-year-old Mark Antonio Humphries shot himself Wednesday and was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical condition.

They say Humphries visited Craigslist and chat rooms to set up dates with professional escorts. When the women showed up, police say they were attacked by a masked man.

There were seven [jail] guards — most of whom are black — who had access to White’s isolation cell. While all seven were still of interest to investigators, along with all of the Department of Corrections’ 630 employees, investigators had taken particular interest in three individuals.

This is the first and only reference to any body’s race in the whole story

What’s the point to pointing out that “most” of the guards are black?

Since there’s no conscious reason for that to be mentioned in the article, I then turn to the subconscious reasons:

1.) The victim was white, the suspect was black, “most” of the guards were black; ipso facto, the black guards wouldn’t have committed “black-on-black crime” and killed someone that is charged with killing a cop — like one of those crazy cracker [white] cops would have. We all know those crazy cracker [white] cops love to violate people’s human and civil rights.

2.) “Most” of the guards are black; ipso facto, they are more likely to kill someone (or something).

The fact that he points out the race for any reason to indicate that someone is less (or more) likely to commit a crime in this situation is the very definition of racism (from Webster): “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities”.

The remains of a Maryland airman missing in action during the Vietnam War will be returned to his family for burial, the Department of Defense announced Tuesday.

Air Force Senior Master Sgt. James K. Caniford, of Brunswick, will be buried May 28 at Arlington National Cemetery.

Caniford and 13 other men were aboard an AC-130A Spectre gunship that took off from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, on an armed reconnaissance mission over southern Laos on March 29, 1972, according to the Department of Defense.

The aircraft was struck by an enemy surface-to-air missile and crashed. Search-and-rescue efforts were stopped after a few days because of heavy enemy activity, defense officials said.

In 1986, a team excavated the crash site and recovered human remains and other evidence, including identification tags, life-support items and aircraft wreckage, authorities said. The remains of nine men from the crew were identified.

Teams resurveyed the crash site in 2005 and 2006 and found more remains, including those of Caniford, Maj. Barclay B. Young, of Hartford, Conn., and two men whose names are being withheld at the request of their families.

Montgomery County police said today they expect to make more arrests in a bust involving three pounds of marijuana and students at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Winston Churchill High School in Potomac and Woodrow Wilson High School in Northwest Washington.

Investigators believe that several students pooled money to buy an unspecified amount of marijuana to sell to other teenagers, police said. Detectives found $6,600 and scales at one of the student’s homes, they said.

Thus far, detectives have arrested two adults and two students — a 17-year-old male from Walt Whitman and a 17-year-old female from Winston Churchill. Among the suspects not charged is at least one student from Woodrow Wilson, police said.

The Washington Post:

The 12-year-old boy had finished his homework and was playing a video game when he heard his mother cry out. Rushing to her aid, he found her on the kitchen floor, straddled by a fellow resident of their Prince George’s County boarding house, the man’s hands wrapped tightly around her neck, the boy said yesterday.

“I kept saying, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ ” the boy said, describing the events of Monday night. “But he just ignored me. He didn’t stop. He just kept hurting her.”

The boy said he grabbed a knife and swung, slashing 64-year-old Salomon Noubissie across the neck and opening an artery. Noubissie was fatally wounded.

The mother, Cheryl Stamp, said she did not immediately understand what had happened. “What did you do?” she said she asked her son.

“He didn’t say anything,” she said. “But I knew when I looked in his eyes. I said, ‘Oh, Lord.’ ”

Law enforcement officials were reviewing evidence yesterday and had not decided whether to file charges. Their preliminary account of the incident broadly matches that of the boy and his mother.

“In Maryland, there can be a legitimate defense of third parties in the event of a violent attack,” State’s Attorney Glenn F. Ivey said. “That is a possibility in this case.”

No, it’s not a matter of “possibility”. So, it was all a plot by this evil 12 year-old to kill this guy (must have been those evil video games)? What other possibilities are there besides the story of the mother and the son (where the police’s own account match with their’s)?

Nothing like the People’s Republic of Maryland.

I feel a need for someone to run a write-in in Ham Sandwich campaign against this idiot.

H/t: Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge

Consider what the People’s Republic of Maryland is doing. NBC 4:

People arrested for certain crimes would have to submit DNA samples under a bill approved by state lawmakers.

The House of Delegates passed a bill Saturday allowing the collection of DNA evidence from people who have been charged, but not convicted, of a violent crime.

So much for people not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and all that jazz.

And in a couple years, they’ll be doing what the Brits are doing: Ace of Spades HQ’s coverage:

Scotland Yard Director of Forensic Sciences Gary Pugh is looking to use the UK National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database more effectively. He thinks one way is to use educators and others to screen children for pre-criminal behaviors. Those with criminal tendencies would have their DNA added to the database to await their eventual criminal act.

[…]

‘The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,’ Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling – everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database – is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

A college student was given probation for repeatedly ramming his car into another man’s vehicle, claiming the man was a terrorist and he was the character Jack Bauer, a federal agent on the Fox television show “24.”

[…]

According to charging documents, Sullivan was driving his Ford Escape on Interstate 95 last February when he struck Cantoral’s van. Cantoral left the highway and was struck a second time before he drove over a grass median strip and fled on foot into the lobby of the Patuxent Institution Correctional Facility.

Sullivan followed Cantoral inside and tried to assault him, shouting “he’s a terrorist,” according to charging documents.

Jack: I have killed two people since midnight. I have not slept for over 24 hours. So maybe, maybe you should be a little more afraid of me than you are. Sit!

“My name is Jack Bowers (Bauer) and I work for the FBI and the Secret Service. My wife and family was kidnapped by the president and terrorist,” Sullivan continued, The (Baltimore) Examiner reported Friday, citing charging documents.

Moron didn’t even know how to spell “Bauer”. And he got his seasons mixed up. Tool.

Officers contacted Sullivan’s father who said his son was not married and the family was fine, authorities said.

Police officer: You’re lying.
Jack: Yes I am. But you’re still going to have to trust me.