Feds.  Woodchipper.  Some assembly required.

Woodchippers…they’re not just for rogue judges anymore:

THEY DIDN’T JUST TWEET A PHOTO

As Ed Driscoll reports below, when TSA flack Lisa Farbstein tweeted a photo of the contents of a passenger’s luggage–$75,000 in cash–with a snarky comment, the gratuitous invasion of privacy generated quite a bit of public backlash. But the story gets worse. The TSA took a photo, but other federal agents took the money.

The Puppy Blender then refers to the following:

Why the TSA posted a photo of a passenger’s cash-filled luggage on Twitter

The photo, from the Richmond airport, shows a passenger’s luggage containing $75,000 in cash. Farbstein asks, “Is this how you’d transport it?” Most people would not, but there is nothing illegal about simply checking a bag containing $75,000, or carrying it with you on the plane. Passengers aren’t under any obligation to report large sums of cash unless they’re traveling internationally, though the TSA recommends that passengers consider asking for a private screening.

[…]

In this case, the cash was seized by a federal agency, most likely the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to Richmond airport spokesman Troy Bell. “I don’t believe the person was issued a summons or a citation,” he said. “The traveler was allowed to continue on his way.”

If true, that would make this incident just the latest case of civil asset forfeiture at the nation’s major transportation hubs. In recent months several high-profile stories have surfaced of passengers who had large sums of cash seized by the DEA, including a young man at an Amtrak stop, a college student at the Cincinnati airport, and a nail salon owner in New York. While the DEA took the cash in these cases under suspicion of its involvement in drug trafficking, no drug charges been filed in any of the cases.

Penn & Teller called this years ago

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC3CZBDz7Wg]

Why Recycling Is A Waste Of Time

The secret is out: recycling isn’t working, because it was never really supposed to.

The Washington Post reported that more recycling companies, including Waste Management, are turning away from recycling, as the enterprise has ‘become’ totally unprofitable. They place the blame on the (well-meaning) masses who acted like apes when they were given larger recycling bins.

The article explains:

By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins — while demanding almost no sorting by consumers — the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperiling the economics of the whole system. . . Residents have also begun experimenting, perhaps with good intentions, tossing into recycling bins almost anything rubber, metal or plastic: garden hoses, clothes hangers, shopping bags, shoes, Christmas lights. That was exactly the case last year, when the District replaced residents’ 32-gallon bins with ones that are 50 percent larger.

While many are throwing shade at those big glue bins, the truth is, much of consumer recycling has been a waste of time all along. The article goes onto explain that glass probably shouldn’t have ever been recycled. It’s heavy and breaks easily, contaminating the rest of the materials in the pile. Most of it has no value, and often costs money to haul away. The stuff that is valuable is “trucked to landfills as daily cover to bury the smell and trap gases.”

USS Gabrielle Giffords Christened As First Gun-Free Warship

giffords-750x400They really shouldn’t give the brass ideas like this…they might make them reality:

USS Gabrielle Giffords Christened As First Gun-Free Warship

Designed to hold a core crew of 40 sailors, the Independence-class littoral combat ship has been stripped bare of its Mk 110 57-millimeter gun, all four of its Mk2 .50-cal machine guns, its Evolved SeaRAM 11 cell missile launcher, and its entire cache of small arms, which are typically issued to boarding teams and watch standers.

“Having this mighty warship be 100% gun-free not only helps to honor its heroic namesake, Gabby Giffords, but it also helps the Navy to steer clear of promoting a culture of violence,” said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who reportedly lobbied hard to get Congress and the Secretary of Defense on board with leaving the Navy’s newest addition to the fleet completely defenseless.

Sometimes you just have to take your humor where you can find it

Picture0003I LOL’d…this unlucky schmuck must’ve learned how to bluff from B. H. “Don’t call my bluff” 0bama:

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?blog=86&post=357554#c23815304

Lena Dunhams boyfriend of 3 years said he wouldn’t propose until everyone could get married
Well
Yesterday she tweeted to him “Yo, Get on it!” And is insisting he propose to her

Pro tip: Never bluff unless you are willing to have it called.

“A republic, if you can keep it?” Looks like we couldn’t.

From Justice Scalia’s dissent:

The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.  Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage.  It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. 

Non-White Politicians Are Running for President and Liberals Can’t Stand It

Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal

You tell me who’s really the party of “old white people:”

Non-White Politicians Are Running for President and Liberals Can’t Stand It

Consider the media coverage surrounding Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presidential announcement. The Washington Post sent reporters to India to visit Jindal’s relatives and write a story about how Jindal “has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots.”

[…]

Jindal is hardly the only minority GOP candidate to be accused of betraying his race. Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin was forced to apologize to Ted Cruz after a bizarre interview in which Halperin asked the Texas Senator about his favorite Latino foods and music, and insisted that Cruz speak in Spanish. A New York Times op-ed suggested that Cruz was as Hispanic as Tom Cruise. Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson argued in 2013 that Cruz should not “be defined as a Hispanic.”

Republican Ben Carson, the only African-American candidate from either party, has been called a “black racial hit man,” a “traitor to his people,” and a “role model for black teens until he sold out to the right.” Marco Rubio has been accused of perpetuating “all the bad stereotypes of Cuban Americans,” and has been described as a “brown face” Republicans “trot out” in an effort to appeal to Hispanics. Meanwhile, liberals have attacked Carly Florina, the youngest female candidate in the 2016 field, for daring to identify as a feminist.

I take it, then, that Marbury v. Madison is a dead letter going forward

Chief Justice Roberts: ‘In Every Case We Must Respect the Role of the Legislature, and Take Care Not to Undo What It Has Done’

O RLY? I’m pretty sure his job is to decide the constitutionality of the laws passed by Congress. The Supreme Court’s decisions in King v. Burwell and NFIB v. Sebelius constitute dereliction of duty for refusing to vacate blatantly unconstitutional laws.