FEDERAL BUREAU OF INCOMPETENCE AND ASSOCIATES

It is no longer a surprise to most citizens of the United States that the legal system is broken and law enforcement agencies arrogantly abuse our human rights.

An acquaintance of mine who has many decades of experiences as a tough, honest, law enforcement leader, once told me that he considers the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) better suited to be known as the Federal Bureau of Incompetence.

I have personally seen the FBI screw up badly and continue like it hasn’t made a mistake. We've seen how  poorly they treated national security before 9/11, and for years under the leadership of the infamous J.Edgar Hoover, functioned as an agency of extortion to use against citizens who dared to challenge him.

People lie all of the time. 

Lying seems to be the most popular pastime in the World. 

In America, lying is pervasive and knows no limits. People, corporations, agencies, religions, just about anyone alive will lie to protect their own asses, regardless of those damaged by the lies.

Given all of this, it is not unexpected that law enforcement, first responders, prosecutors, coroners, associated agencies, in all of their arrogance, routinely lie in Court "because they can".

It is naive to believe that the standards of their sworn duty to protect would guide them to be any more truthful.

Recent admissions from the FBI and Department of Justice "confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques, like hair and bite-mark comparisons, that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989."

That link points back to 2012 coverage of problems with FBI forensic analysis, but the existence of shoddy forensics has been so clear for so long in so many different state and local jurisdictions that the following conclusion is difficult to avoid: Neither police agencies nor prosecutors are willing to call for the sorts of reforms that would prevent many innocents from being wrongfully convicted, imprisoned.

Much more important to myself, as a son and father of victims, is that these lack of reforms, no transparency are deliberate as to the: fabrication of false evidence, incompetence of those conducting investigations, indifference by them to obtain the real truth, self protective systemic codes of lying, omissions of facts, all done to protect those who supposedly are sworn to provide justice, perpetuating the cruel illusion of justice served, and creates results that never bring the real criminals, the truly guilty to justice.

The Justice Department and FBI have in the past week formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

Ignorance of the problem is not an acceptable excuse and the history of this appears to be deliberately, systemically ingrained in a code of "circling" the wagons" to protect the asses of those in the justice system both on the Federal, State, and local levels.

This is all about cases involving demonstrable forensic misadventures. 

That is, it is about cases where forensic and law enforcement experts have provided false / erroneous testimony, or false / erroneous findings, with dire consequences. 

Sometimes this occurs out of ignorance and sometimes it occurs by accident from those who know better. 

And sometimes what appears to be accidental at first is in fact a successfully concealed fraud, as over the years investigation and litigation have revealed a more disturbing truth about some of these "misadventures".

Among recent examples:

• At a Massachusetts drug lab, a chemist was sent to prison after admitting that she faked the results in perhaps tens of thousands of drug cases, calling into question thousands of drug convictions that ended with people in prison.
• In St. Paul, Minnesota, an independent review of the crime lab found "major errors in almost every area of the lab's work, including the fingerprint and crime scene evidence processing that has continued after the lab's drug testing was stopped in July. The failures include sloppy documentation, dirty equipment, faulty techniques and ignorance of basic scientific procedures. Lab employees even used Wikipedia as a 'technical reference' in at least one drug case. The lab lacked any clean area designated for the review and collection of DNA evidence. The lab stored crime-scene photos on a computer that anyone could access without a password."
• In Colorado, the Office of the Attorney General documented inadequate training and alarming lapses at a lab that measured the amount of alcohol in blood.
• In Detroit, police shut down their crime laboratory "after an audit uncovered serious errors in numerous cases. The audit said sloppy work had probably resulted in wrongful convictions, and officials expect a wave of appeals, auditors re-examined 200 randomly selected shooting cases and found serious errors in 19."
• In Philadelphia, "three trace-evidence technicians have flunked a routine test administered to uphold the police crime lab’s accreditation, police brass announced Tuesday. Each technician tests hundreds of pieces of evidence a year for traces of blood and semen, so if investigators determine that the methods are problematic, it could throw countless court cases into question ... "
• In North Carolina, "agents withheld exculpatory evidence or distorted evidence in more than 230 cases over a 16-year period. Three of those cases resulted in execution. 

The above examples are a highly incomplete sample from just the last decade.

Go back a bit farther to 2004 and you'll find a New York Times report on major problems in a Texas metropolis:

The police crime laboratory in Houston, already reeling from a scandal that has led to retesting of evidence in 360 cases, now faces a much larger crisis that could involve many thousands of cases over 25 years. Six independent forensic scientists, in a report to be filed in a Houston state court today, said that a crime laboratory official because he either lacked basic knowledge of blood typing or gave false testimony which helped convict an innocent man of rape in 1987.

The panel concluded that crime laboratory officials might have offered ''similarly false and scientifically unsound'' reports and testimony in other cases, and it called for a comprehensive audit spanning decades to re-examine the results of a broad array of rudimentary tests on blood, semen and other bodily fluids. 

Elizabeth A. Johnson, a former director of the DNA laboratory at the Harris County medical examiner's office in Houston, said the task would be daunting. ''A conservative number would probably be 5,000 to 10,000 cases,'' Dr. Johnson said. ''If you add in hair analysis, it's off the board.''   

There are many more horror stories in most every state.

One major barrier to improving forensic evidence in criminal trials is that in most jurisdictions, the state has a monopoly on experts. Crime lab analysts and medical examiners (and to a lesser extent DNA technicians) typically work for the government and are generally seen as part of the prosecution's "team," much like the police and investigators. 

Yes, science is science, and it would be nice to believe that scientists will always get at the truth no matter whom they report to.

• There is widespread lying, corruption, and pressure from prosecutors and other law-enforcement officials all over our Country on crime lab analysts to produce results that would help secure convictions. And the pressure has worked.

But studies have consistently shown that even conscientious scientists can be affected by cognitive bias. A scientist whose job performance is evaluated by a senior official in the district attorney or state attorney general's office may feel subtle pressure to return results that produce convictions. 

In cases in which district attorneys' offices contract work out to private labs, private pathologists, the labs, Dr's, other experts may feel pressure, even if it's not explicit (though sometimes it is) to produce favorable results in order to continue the business relationship.

I know personally of at least 3 cases where those involved in the investigations of murders, wrongful death cases were explicitly told by their superiors to lie, cover up the truth in order to protect "reputations" of those whose incompetence actually killed the victims, or in other ways caused the failure of the real criminals involved from being brought to justice.

The horrible truth is that it is more important to these scum to keep their agencies, their own worthless jobs, by lying at any cost, because they consider themselves the law, and above the law.

Indeed, according to Business Insider, "In many jurisdictions, crime labs receive money for each conviction they contribute to, according to a 2013 study in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics. Statutes in Florida and North Carolina mandate that judges provide labs with remuneration “upon conviction” and only upon conviction. Alabama, Arizona, California, Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New Mexico, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Virginia are among the states with similar provisions."

Five specific reforms that have been proposed are as follows:

Forensic counsel for the indigent: 

In many jurisdictions, indigent defendants aren't given access to their own forensic experts. As a result, the only expert witnesses are often testifying for the prosecution. This undermines the whole adversarial basis of our criminal justice system. Indigent defendants should be given vouchers to hire their own experts, who can review the forensic analysis and conclusions of each prosecution expert.         

        

      Expert independence:

Crime labs, DNA labs, and medical examiners, coroners shouldn't serve under the same bureaucracy as district attorneys and police agencies.

If these experts must work for the government, they should report to an independent state agency.

There should be a wall of separation between analysis and interpretation. 

When the same expert performs both the analysis and interpretation, defense experts are often at a disadvantage, having to rely on the notes and photos of the same expert whose testimony they're disputing.

Rivalrous Redundancy:  

Whether the state uses its own labs or contracts out to private labs, evidence should periodically and systematically be sent out to yet another competing lab for verification. 

The state's labs should be made aware that their work will occasionally be checked but not told when. 

In addition to helping discover errors that might otherwise go undetected, the introduction of competition to government labs would all but remove any subconscious incentive to appease police and prosecutors and would strengthen the incentive for a more objective analysis.

Statistical analysis:

The results from forensic labs should be regularly analyzed for statistical anomalies. Labs producing unusually high match rates should throw up red flags for further examination. 

For example, in 2004 Houston medical examiner Patricia Moore was found to have diagnosed shaken-baby syndrome in infant autopsies at a rate several times higher than the national average. This led to an investigation and the reopening of several convictions that had relied on Moore's testimony.

       Mask the evidence:  

A 2006 U.K. study by researchers at the University of Southampton found that the error rate of fingerprint analysts doubled when they were first told the circumstances of the case they were working on. 

Crime lab technicians and medical examiners should never be permitted to consult with police or prosecutors before performing their analysis. 

To the extent that it's possible, evidence should be stripped of all context before being sent to the lab. Ideally, state or city officials might hire a neutral "evidence shepherd," whose job would be to deliver crime-scene evidence to the labs and oversee the process of periodically sending evidence to secondary labs for verification.

Imagine the intense opposition by the currently entrenched legal system if crime lab analysts and medical examiners were to report to an "Inspector General", or the most senior member in the relevant independent office that would oversee them.

Yet they happily embrace the inverse and shamelessly call it a justice system.

They will do anything to perpetuate their very existence regardless of how dysfunctional and catastrophic the status quo damages human lives.

That is what bureaucracies do. 

The horrific results speak for themselves.

FLYING SUCKS BUT IT'S GOT NOTHING ON CANCER-ELIZABETH SEDWAY,CANCER PATIENT KICKED OFF FLIGHT

Stupidity has increased to epidemic levels in the world. 

It is not unusual to be subjected to stupidity from morons many times each day.

Some will say it's because the human being is dumbed down by technology and no longer has to use their shrinking brain cells.

I believe it is even more than that, a stupid person with NO common sense is the new norm in our world.

The rest of us are its victims.

Flying sucks, but it's got nothing on cancer. 

Unfortunately for Elizabeth Sedway, 51, of Granite Bay, Calif., these two ruinous things and a lack of common sense from Airline staff came together at once to make a severely unpleasant experience with Alaska Airlines.

She posted an emotional video on her Facebook page Monday showing her family being kicked off a packed plane.

Mrs Sedway, who suffers from multiple myeloma, a rare form of plasma cancer detailed her ordeal in a status update accompanying the short video, which has been shared nearly 10,000 times as of Tuesday evening

In the message, the mother of two explained that she was sitting in the handicapped section of a boarding area at Lihue Airport on Kauai in Hawaii, when an Alaska Airlines representative noticed she had put on a surgical mask to shield herself from germs and came up to her asking if she needed anything.

Mrs Sedway initially said she was fine, but when the airline employee approached her a second time, she indicated that she might require a little extra time to board the plane because she sometimes felt 'weak.'

The Sedway family eventually boarded the plane and were awaiting takeoff in their seats when an airline representative came on board and announced that the cancer stricken passenger could not fly without a note from her doctor.

In Sedway's video below, her husband dressed in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt is seen removing their carry-on luggage and helping their sons out of their seats while his wife narrates their removal from the flight.

             
                                     CLICK ON VIDEO BELOW

'All these people are waiting, and I am being removed as if I'm a criminal or contagious because I have cancer,' she says.

'My family is being forcibly removed from an airplane because I have cancer and no note to fly.'

As the family of four walk towards the exit, Elizabeth Sedway breaks down and tearfully apologizes for holding everyone up.

One of the passengers tells the woman, 'God bless you.'

In an interview with NBC Bay Area, Elizabeth Sedway said the airline was concerned she might collapse during the eight-hour flight to San Jose, California.

After being asked to leave the plane, Mrs Sedway emailed her oncologist in California and he gave her the green light to fly, but she told the local NBC affiliate in a phone interview that the airline was not satisfied and refused to let her re-board.

Named and shamed: Sedway shared this photo of Alaska Airline staff at Lihue Airport on her Facebook page, identifying them as the employees whom she had to deal with during the incident 

The Sedways spent Monday night in a hotel in Maui, for which they were forced to pay out of pocket, and they returned home on a Hawaiian Airlines flight Tuesday evening.

Elizabeth Sedway lamented on her Facebook page that because of the delay caused by Alaska Airlines, she will miss two chemotherapy sessions, her husband will miss important meetings and her sons will miss school.

Damage control began from Alaska Airlines  after the Video went viral and the Airline later apologized to the family for mishandling the situation 

Earlier today, a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told CBS San Francisco that the company apologized to Elizabeth Sedway for the inconvenience and for the way its employees handled the situation.

Alaska spokeswoman Halley Knigge, clearly prepared by the few not stupid people at Alaska Airlines, stated,‘her family’s tickets have been refunded and we will cover the cost of her family’s overnight accommodations in Lihue,’.

‘While our employee had the customer’s well-being in mind, the situation could have been handled differently.’

Indeed, yes the situation could have been handled differently but please don't insult the rest of us with the lie that the "employee had the customer's well-being in mind.

In the sageful words of George Carlin" THINK OF HOW STUPID THE AVERAGE PERSON IS, AND REALIZE HALF OF THEM ARE STUPIDER THAN THAT.

Alaska Airlines you are "Stupider than that" and your employees reflect the cruelty and ignorance of your Company. No amount of "damage control" by your PR person can change that as the truth.

Common sense does not require a person to be smart. It's not rocket science, it is a simple task that requires very few brain cells, to treat other human beings in a kind, helpful manner, the way you would want for yourself.

Being courteous and using common sense, it may be old fashioned to some, but it is a lot better than being stupid cruel.

Take a lesson from Mrs. Sedway who understands the true meaning of doing the right thing, she wrote in the a Facebook update early today that she plans to donate the refund.

She wrote: "As with most unpleasant times, there are silver linings, if we're determined to find them," she wrote. "Here, we plan to donate the airfare, to be refunded by Alaska Airlines, to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation – MMRF. Additionally, this airline will likely look at future events of this kind with increased wisdom and sensitivity."

NUTS FOR NUTELLA

                                                     Nutella 

         

I don't do well with temptation, but if it matters at all, there are natural hazel nuts in it, so its healthy, right? 

The first time was exquisite. Something that based on the orgasm after tasting it, is the new ultimate climax.

My Nutella addiction began a few years ago when my friends Michelle and Miriam offered me a taste from a jar that they were quickly devouring together. 

The next day I found myself buying several jars of the largest size in my local supermarket. The rest is history.

From that point on I was hooked and could not avoid the endless cravings for my numerous daily Nutella fixes.

The problem arose mostly at night. I would be reclining in my favorite chair or in bed, when Ms. Nutella came calling my name. 

I like exotic forms of sugar as much as the next guy, and just because of that I try to not bring them home for consumption. 

But Nutella was different, it was made especially for me and I craved the taste as it flowed through my entire body.

There she was, sweet, creamy, a chocolate mystery in a bottle, so touchable and with the arrogant brown consistency of a thousand ground up chocolate bars, calling me.

(Here's a tip: Do not walk out of the kitchen with a spoon and an open container of Nutella. You will return in a sugar rush from a time-warp, carrying only a very polished, clean spoon or extremely Nutella splattered fingers, face, shirt,).

At first, I only ate Nutella in the context of a sandwich. 

Spread a bit here, put a bunch between two slices of bread, add a banana, I had a sensible and delicious snack. 

After a few days, however, I was out of bread but still had some Nutella left. 

I knew that eating it out of the jar could possibly take me down a very dark path, one that I might have not been ready for spiritually, emotionally, and sexually, but I NEEDED the wondrous hazelnut spread. 

I needed its destination to be my stomach and was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. 

So I ate it out of the jar. 

I put spoonful after spoonful in my mouth and loved every sinful moment of it. 

I soon realized that those sandwiches were all just for show, to convince people that I was normal and eating Nutella in a socially acceptable way.

Well, no more hiding! I was going to eat Nutella out of the jar.

If someone asked me for a Nutella sandwich, I would give them a knowing nod and slip them the jar. I spoke their language and could read between the lines.

A month passed, then another, then maybe a few more. I no longer used a spoon, just primitively getting immediate sustenance by dipping my fingers directly into the jar was all I needed. 

That intoxicating spell cast by the sirens allure; lovely, soft gentle mouth fulls of this concoction.

Now I was buying Nutella by the case (Walmart has the cheapest price, order online at $6.46 USD for a 26.5 oz. jar and if you buy $50 or more, they will ship it to you for free), soothing, melodious tastes that lasted for a few hours, until I needed more. 

Soon, Nutella dinners, mixed with ice cream, banana, pretzels, yogurt, anything, this "balanced" meal became my nightly routine, with the always present "high" of bliss full sounds and feelings within me.

(CLICK HERE FOR 700 NUTELLA RECIPES)

I still hear them out far in the distance so sweetly singing, while I sat there enchanted, just me and my fingers filled with Nutella.

Eventually like all intense love affairs, I couldn't live without it, but yet it was literally consuming me.

In desperation, realizing that this pleasure had turned into an almost out of control addiction, I finished my last jar, then went cold turkey for 2 weeks, resisting all urges to buy another jar of Nutella. 

I have been free of the demon sweet Nutella for over a year, but it is often on my mind that I need just a small taste for old times sake.

I still gaze lovingly at the Nutella display whenever I am in the grocery store. 

It's as if I am seeing an old friend who is not a good influence on me. I say hello, with a small moment of eye contact, and quickly move on by.

Devotees of Nutella will tell you that it is delicious smeared over toast, sensational oozing out of pancakes, and just about anything you can imagine (CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE THINGS YOU CAN EAT WITH NUTELLA)

Half a century after it was invented in the back room of an Italian bakery, the world appears to have an almost ­insatiable appetite for Nutella, the hazelnut chocolate spread.

Nutella was created by a man named Pietro Ferrero, who was a pastry maker in Italy during the 1940′s. At that time, there was a shortage of cocoa due to the rationing of World War II, so this genius used hazelnuts to add substance to the spread and to extend their chocolate supply.

Last year Nutella devotees devoured a ­staggering 365,000 tons of the stuff in 160 countries.

A jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds worldwide.

Nutella is a global phenomenon, produced in 11 factories worldwide, and accounting for one fifth of the Ferrero Group's turnover, along with other products such as Kinder and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

What goes into Nutella?

• 97 hazelnuts in each 750g jar
• Ingredients: Sugar, palm oil (non-hydrogenated), hazelnuts, low-fat cocoa, skimmed-milk powder, whey powder, emulsifier (soya lecithin), vanillin
• Nutritional information per 100g: 544 kcal, protein 6g, sugar 56.7g, fat 31.6g
• Produced in 11 factories located in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Australia

The company has been particularly creative at marketing Nutella as a good ingredient for a nutritious breakfast, emphasising the hazelnuts and milk rather than the high content of sugar and saturated fat. It is in fact nearly 57% sugar and 32% fat of which about a third of the fat is saturated.

Nutella: If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.  

WARNING: After eating Nutella straight out of the jar for a period of time, you will almost certainly start to experience stomach, gastric pains and feelings of fatassness.