Thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape and other felonies.
The forensic experts in these cases were trained by the same elite FBI team whose members gave misleading court testimony about hair matches and later taught the local examiners to follow the same suspect practices, according to interviews and documents.
Review of FBI forensics does not extend to federally trained state, local examiners
Mark Ruffalo to PG: Gas industry hiding behind non-disclosure deals
Actor Mark Ruffalo, an outspoken and longtime opponent of shale gas fracking who is in southwestern Pennsylvania to work on a movie, said lawsuit settlements that prevent those involved from discussing their problems are "un-American" and infringe on the public's need to know about drilling impacts that could damage human health and the environment.
During a break in shooting scenes in Washington County last week for the movie "Fair Hill Project," Mr. Ruffalo met privately with Stephanie Hallowich, a onetime anti-fracking activist. She has been silenced by a nondisclosure agreement contained in the August 2011 settlement of a civil lawsuit against Range Resources, MarkWest Energy Partners and Williams Gas/Laurel Mountain Midstream Partners, that claimed drilling operations around her family's farm in Mount Pleasant, Washington County, had harmed their health and property value.
Jesus, Christmas And Palestinian Genocide: Humanitarian Jesus Was A Palestinian
On Christmas Day this year the World will again celebrate the birth of Jesus but needs to loudly and publicly proclaim the truth that Jesus was a Palestinian. Goodhearted and honest Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Jews, Animists, Agnostics and Atheists would all agree that Jesus was a wonderful humanitarian, and an outstanding moral philosopher.
All of us, from Atheists to Zoroastrians, recognize Jesus as the most renowned Indigenous Palestinian.
Cannabis can make patients 'less bothered by pain'
Cannabis makes pain more bearable rather than actually reducing it, a study from the University of Oxford suggests. Using brain imaging, researchers found that the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis reduced activity in a part of the brain linked to emotional aspects of pain.
But the effect on the pain experienced varied greatly, they said. The researchers' findings are published in the journal Pain. The Oxford researchers recruited 12 healthy men to take part in their small study.
FBI Gun Background Check Database Missing Millions Of Records On Mentally Ill
Federal safeguards meant to keep guns out of the hands of potentially violent individuals have a huge shortcoming: the database used for background checks may be missing millions of records about people with mental illnesses who are forbidden to own firearms.
Despite improvements in recent years, state governments are failing to submit records to the Federal Bureau of Investigations of people with mental illnesses who have been institutionalized or otherwise deemed by authorities to be dangerous to themselves or others, The New York Times reported Friday. The Times cited a 2011 study by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of more than 700 city officials that is co-chaired by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), an outspoken proponent of stricter gun control laws.
Big Pharma cashes in on HGH abuse
A federal crackdown on illicit foreign supplies of human growth hormone has failed to stop rampant misuse, and instead has driven record sales of the drug by some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, an Associated Press investigation shows.
The crackdown, which began in 2006, reduced the illegal flow of unregulated supplies from China, India and Mexico.
Alex Baer: Another Voice Chimes in from the OK Chorale
This is another one of those pieces attempting to reconcile what we know of our culture and country, and still have it make some sense after another round of innocents have been slaughtered.
Just one more voice in the trying-to-be-OK choir and chorale, here, wondering how it is we had another place of learning and laughter turn into a one-sided OK Corral.
Many people are doing the same, to greater and lesser degrees of futility or utility. Some people are so far past the deep end, they're wheeling out all the things they already hate, plugging in their old lists as legitimate new causes.
Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency
Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgment?
So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.
Supreme Court rulings limit options of gun-control task force
The Obama administration’s high-level gun-control task force, established Wednesday, will be navigating tricky legal terrain reshaped by Supreme Court conservatives.
Some state and local gun-control measures already have died over the past four and a half years, done in by the high court’s 2008 ruling that recognized expansive constitutional protections for firearm ownership. Similar Second Amendment restraints will limit the ambitions of the Obama gun task force and its Capitol Hill counterparts.
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