On the morning of Wednesday, August 15th, a jury of twelve went behind closed doors to begin deliberations in the trial of Jose Padilla and two co-defendants who were charged with operating a support cell for Islamic terrorists, including al-Qaeda.

The jurors will initially deliberate from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and will not be sequestered. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke has, however, prohibited the jurors from consuming any news media covering the case.

Padilla, a U.S. citizen, had been initially investigated from 1993 to 2001. He was arrested by federal agents in May of 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and was held as material witness until June of that year in relation to a warrant issued by the state of New York regarding the 9/11 attacks; it was believed he was involved in a plot to set off a “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city.

The “dirty bomb” accusations are not present in this trial, partially because Padilla “was not provided a lawyer or read his constitutional rights when he was interrogated about the plot while in military custody.“

On June 9th, 2002, President Bush declared Padilla an Illegal Enemy Combatant and transferred him to a military brig in South Carolina, arguing that he was not entitled to protection under U.S. law. Neither his family nor attorney were initially notified of the move.

Padilla was subsequently held, without formal charges being issued against him, for three and a half years. So much for habeus corpus.

On November 22, 2005, Padilla was finally indicted facing allegations that he “conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas.”

Prosecutors claim that Padilla, 36, and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, both 45, were part of a North American terror cell that supplied money, fighters and military equipment to extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia and Chechnya.

Prosecutor Brian Frazier claimed that Padilla filled out a form to attend an al-Qaeda training camp in 2000. Padilla’s attorneys say he traveled overseas to study Islam and Arabic in Egypt, not join al-Qaeda.

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A new program called Wikipedia Scanner created by Virgil Griffith allows users to search a database containing millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits. These edits leave behind an IP address that the program uses to figure out who made the changes.

Wikipedia is an online user-editable encyclopedia that keeps a detailed log of the changes made to it. The person changing the article is tracked by their user name if they are logged in or by a unique IP address if they choose to remain anonymous.

Wikipedia Scanner uses the IP address of these anonymous editors to track the location and name of the person or entity that owns the address.

Doing a search for “Federal Bureau of Investigations”, for example, should reveal edits by any IP address owned by the FBI. All of the results on the screen should be anonymous edits to Wikipedia pages made by people in an FBI building.

You can also search by IP address if you know what range of addresses the person or entity owns.

Searching for “Diebold” reveals that someone in the organization’s corporate office buildings deleted fifteen paragraphs from a Wikipedia article; removing all criticism of it’s e-voting machines.

The paragraphs were shortly restored by another user who warned that deleting information from Wikipedia “…is considered vandalism.”

The CIA, Microsoft, members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate, and Wal-Mart have all had individuals in their organizations edit their own entries. Sometimes they add positive information, but other times, as was the case with Diebold, they also remove criticism.

Former Montana Senator Conrad Burns’ office changed a paragraph headed “A controversial voice” to “A voice for farmers,” and changed the content of the section in order to make it more image-friendly.

Engaging in these types of actions is certainly not against the law, but it seems to be highly unethical; and a possible violation of a corporations code of ethics. If a company or — maybe even more so — a politician is editing Wikipedia in a deceitful manner they should be looked down upon.

All of these organizations should be pressed to find out who in their infrastructure was responsible for either doing the editing or ordering that it be done and proper actions should be taken.

The CIA has also been busy editing Wikipedia, but probably not in a way you might expect. Many changes are updates to local events and school histories while one edit deals with lyrics sung in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Glad to see our tax dollars hard at work.

Are you an Atheist? Do you live in the state of Massachusetts? If you answered ‘Yes’ to both of these questions, you could be facing up to a one year imprisonment and three hundred dollar fine for your transgression.

File this one under insane, obscure, unconstitutional laws that are probably never enforced.

Chapter 272: Section 36. of the General Laws of Massachusetts states:

“Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.”

It makes you wonder how laws like this could have ever been passed and why they are not repealed.

I know this law would never be enforced, but I do think valuable time of our politicians could be spent better looking through the existing laws and repealing ones like this that are never enforced and are blatantly unconstitutional.

This would be a far more constructive expenditure of their time than their current actions. Declaring the watermelon the official state vegetable, for example, is just a waste of time.

Mitt Romney comes out the clear winner with Giuliani and McCain virtually no where to be seen. It is interesting to see the large number of ’second’ and ‘third-tier’ candidates so close to the top.

McCain is 10th on the list of 11 receiving more votes than only John Cox. Giuliani is 8th doing better than only Duncan Hunter and the two aforementioned candidates.

Dark horse candidate Ron Paul came in at a slightly disappointing 5th place getting beaten by Romney, Huckabee, Brownback and Tancredo.

It is worth noting that five out of the top six candidates are not the so-called ‘front-runners’ of the race and number seven is Fred Thompson who is not officially running.

Maybe the country, or at least the Iowa Republican Party, is starting to look at the less popular candidates more seriously.

It is also worth noting that there was a fee to enter the convention to cast a ballot.

Here are the official results from littlegreenfootballs.com:

1. Mitt Romney - 4516 votes, 31%
2. Mike Huckabee - 2587 votes, 18.1%
3. Sam Brownback - 2192 votes, 15.3%
4. Tom Tancredo - 1961 votes, 13.7%
5. Ron Paul - 1305 votes, 9.1%
6. Tommy Thompson - 1,009 votes, 7.3%
7. Fred Thompson - 231 votes
8. Rudy Giuliani - 183 votes
9. Duncan Hunter - 174 votes
10. John McCain - 101 votes
11. John Cox - 41 votes

Two male suspects, including a 15-year-old boy, are being held by Newark police under suspicion of murder. It is believed that they took part in the murder of three college students in a Newark Schoolyard. The students were lined up against a wall, asked to kneel down and were subsequently shot in the head execution-style.

All of the victims were enrolled, or in the process of enrolling at Delaware State University.

31-year-old Joseph Carranza surrendered earlier this afternoon with his lawyer present.

The 15-year-old boy, who was brought into custody at around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, is not being identified because of his age.

The prosecution is looking at trying him as an adult.

Mayor Cory A. Booker has said that other suspects are being looked for. “We have very, very strong leads,” he said. “I want the killers off the streets of Newark.”

Information from lone survivor Natasha Aeriel, ballistics evidence and a fingerprint have led to a major break in the case according to CNN.com.

Robbery is believed to be the motive of the crime, but authorities are also looking at possible gang involvement.

There is a $150,000 reward for any information regarding the case.

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During that time period the military was attempting to rebuild Iraqi forces that had recently disbanded amid increasing attacks from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.

Since 2004 the military “has not consistently collected supporting records confirming the dates the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, or the Iraqi units receiving the items,” the report said.

“Since 2006 the command has placed greater emphasis on collecting the supporting documents. However, GAO’s review of the January 2007 property books found continuing problems with missing and incomplete records.”

The US government has, in the past, accused countries like Iran of supplying weapons to enemy militia groups in Iraq yet they can not locate 190,000 weapons of their own. Weapons that may be in use by the aforementioned illegal militias against American soldiers.

The government of Turkey has recently expressed concern over cross-border raids from enemy forces who used US issued weaponry.

Is the US government selling these arms to countries that are hostile towards us and our allies? Are the Iraqi soldiers selling the weapons? Why is the US government not watching what the Iraqi special forces are doing with US issued weaponry?

The answers to these questions are beyond me, but they need to be answered. Hopefully, someone will be held accountable.

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