RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Dec. 29, 2019 to Jan. 4, 2020 Asset seizures by cops have been a controversial policy for years, largely because they are so lucrative and help fund police departments around the country. This investigation by St. Louis Public Radio and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting finds that it is often tantamount to legalized bribery: Motorists agree to surrender money and vehicles in order to avoid serious charges they may or may not deserve. The focus here is St. Charles County, Missouri, where officers seized $2.6 million from 39 motorists they stopped along Interstate 70. That was the biggest haul of any police agency in the state. No state criminal charges were filed in any of the 39 cases, according to documents filed with the Missouri state auditor. Here's how reporters William H. Freivogel and Mimi Wright describe a typical stop: It's after midnight at mile marker 204 on westbound Interstate 70 near Foristell. St. Charles County police officers watch for suspicious cars. Once they identify a car, they begin to look for a minor traffic violation to justify a stop. "Failing to keep right" is a common one. After pulling over and questioning the motorists, police take them to a nearby towing company, Superior Towing, just off the highway at 11 Elaine Drive in O'Fallon. There, often in the middle of the night, police begin to take apart the vehicle and interrogate the occupants. They are looking for large amounts of cash, signs of a drug connection and inconsistencies in the motorists' stories. When Fleck, a trained police dog, smells marijuana on wads of cash, the officers advise the suspects that the best way to avoid years in prison is to sign a legal waiver surrendering ownership of anything in the car, including the money. Many readily sign and are released on a traffic ticket. The money — often tens of thousands of dollars — goes into police department coffers. Read Full Article
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Trump Retweets Name of Alleged Whistleblower, Daily Beast
Judicial Watch Sues CIA and DoJ for Ciaramella Records, Judicial Watch
Giuliani's Shadow Bid to Oust Venezuela Strongman, Washington Post
IRS Put Lien on Hunter Biden for $112,800 In Unpaid Taxes, Daily Caller
Hunter Biden's Stake in Infamous Congo Mine, Via Chinese, Free Beacon
FBI Agent Who Interviewed Flynn Played FISA Role, Epoch Times
The Biden Papers: Senate Document Trove Being Kept Secret, Breitbart
Unredacted Ukraine Files Show Pentagon Legal Concerns, Just Security
Inspector General Missed Yet Another Lie From the FBI, Federalist Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Afghanistan: U.S. Military's Fatal '08 Raid on Its Own Security Guards
USA Today
U.S. military officials publicly touted Operation Commando Riot as a victory. A high-value Taliban target had been killed; the collateral damage was minimal; the village was grateful. This article reports that none of that was true. The Taliban commander escaped. Dozens of civilians were dead in the rubble, including as many as 60 children. The local population rioted. The Aug. 22, 2008 raid on Azizabad took one of the deadliest civilian casualty tolls of the Afghan war. But the story of how the operation turned tragic has been largely hidden from the public. This investigation draws on a wide array of government records and interviews that, it reports, "tell the story of a disaster that was months in the making as military and company officials ignored warnings about the men they had hired to provide intelligence and security. The records also reveal that the Defense Department has for years downplayed or denied the fatal mistakes surrounding the tragedy." In a separate article, the Washington Post reports on the frantic effort to save lives after a deadly attack on the CIA in Afghanistan in 2009. Battle to Save U.S. Spies After 2014 Chinese Hack
Yahoo News
The 2014 hack of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management by the Chinese government didn't just compromise the personal data of 22 million former and current American civil servants - it was also a watershed moment in the history of spying. This article reports: [T]he familiar trope of Jason Bourne movies and John le Carré novels where spies open secret safes filled with false passports and interchangeable identities is already a relic, say former officials - swept away by technological changes so profound that they're forcing the CIA to reconsider everything from how and where it recruits officers to where it trains potential agency personnel. Instead, the spread of new tools like facial recognition at border crossings and airports and widespread internet-connected surveillance cameras in major cities is wiping away in a matter of years carefully honed tradecraft that took intelligence experts decades to perfect. The Christian Health Insurance That's Not
New York Times
Health insurance is prohibitively expensive for many Americans who have to buy policies without the benefit of a federal subsidy through the Affordable Care Act. In response, many people have turned to Christian health care-sharing organizations that charge less money for fewer benefits and caps on total payouts. This article provides little reporting on those who are thankful they can buy affordable insurance and focuses instead on people who have suffered catastrophes that have left them with huge medical bills because of limited coverage. It also reports that regulators worry about these plans siphoning off healthy individuals from the A.C.A. marketplaces, leading to higher premiums for Obamacare policies. The Christian Withdrawal Experiment
Atlantic
Throughout American history, some religious groups have walled themselves off from the rhythms and mores of society. This article focuses on the town of St. Marys, Kansas, which serves that function for some conservative Catholics - and is representative of a growing impulse among some Christians to retreat from society (many influenced by Rod Dreher's 2017 book"The Benedict Option"). St. Marys is home to a chapter of the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX. Named for the early-20th-century pope who railed against the forces of modernism, the international order of priests was formed in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church's attempt, in the 1960s, to meet the challenges of contemporary life. The priests of SSPX see themselves as defenders of the true practices of Roman Catholicism, including the traditional Latin Mass, celebrated each day in St. Marys. Perfumed with incense and filled with majestic Latin hymns, the service has an air of formality and grandeur. In their four decades in St. Marys, the followers of SSPX have more than doubled the town's size. Even with six Masses on Sundays, parishioners fill the Society's chapel to capacity; overflow services are held in the gym of the society's academy. Watching the Death Row Detective
The Economist
There are about 90,000 private eyes in the United States, but Richard Reyna stands out because of his specialty: He is a death-row sleuth. The Texan is usually hired as a late roll of the dice by the condemned, after trials "went wrong" in state courts and as federal appeals and eventual lethal injection loom. Reyns's paymasters tend to be defense lawyers, federal public defenders, or European donors eager to expose what they see as America's misuse of its death penalty. This article profiles Reyna, who seemed destined for this field since childhood, when he loved true-crime stories. Much of his work still involves paperwork: One case involved fabricated bar receipts that put an individual near the scene of a murder where he supposedly drank, alone, $3,000 worth of beer in one evening. Then there was the time a district attorney had scribbled on a legal report: "Texas Rangers lied to me to get me to file charges." Most common, he claims, are clues implying that prosecutors illegally withheld evidence that might have helped the defense. "Prosecutors," he alleges, "including federal ones, don't give two shits about it." |
