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SALT LAKE CITY — U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced the approval of a major natural gas drilling project in Utah that the Obama administration says will support more than 4,000 jobs during its development while safeguarding critical wildlife habitat and air quality.

During an appearance outside Salt ...

RALEIGH, N.C. — The national debate over gay marriage is turning its attention South.

North Carolina could be the next state to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman. Voters are casting their ballots Tuesday.

In the final days ...

Kurt Nimmo | "Hate crime" suspects appear to have been produced by central casting at the FBI.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has repeatedly dragged its feet in responding to whistleblower complaints about safety problems and stronger oversight of air safety is needed, a government watchdog said Tuesday....

GUNTOWN, Miss. (AP) — Police have filed kidnapping charges against the wife of a man suspected of killing a Tennessee woman and her oldest daughter and kidnapping the woman's two other daughters.

As an intense manhunt for Adam Mayes and the two young girls continued, his wife, Teresa Mayes, and ...

A.M. Freyed
 | When it comes to the elite dialectic and Money Power, there is likely no difference at all between the genders.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The judge in the Roger Clemens perjury trial said jurors were getting bored with the pace of the case and told both sides Tuesday to stop wasting time with unnecessary questions....

NEW YORK (AP) -- Maurice Sendak didn't think of himself as a children's author, but as a writer who told the truth about childhood....

Aaron Dykes | Hip hop fantasy envisions sipping on signature cognac while watching female passengers getting a close inspection from power grabbing TSA agents.

 

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin voters filed into polling stations Tuesday to decide whether to give Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett a rematch against Republican Gov. Scott Walker in next month's rare recall election or whether to back one of Mr. Barrett's fellow Democrats.

Mr. Barrett was one of ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. bomb experts are picking apart a sophisticated new al-Qaida improvised explosive device, a top Obama administration counterterrorism official said Tuesday, to determine if it could have slipped past airport security and taken down a commercial airplane....

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin voters filed into polling stations Tuesday to decide whether to give Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett a rematch against Republican Gov. Scott Walker in next month's rare recall election or whether to back one of Barrett's fellow Democrats....

Steve Watson | Footage shows Texas Rep. swatting screener's hand away from his genitals.

The video showed defendant crossing the centerline repeatedly. There was probable cause for his stop, despite his contention that state law was not violated. “Additionally, as noted by the officer and demonstrated by the video, the defendant's driving pattern indicated that he might be impaired, also warranting an investigatory stop.” United States v. Benitez, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62913 (N.D. Ala. April 4, 2012).*

Defendant probationer consented to a search of his cell phone and pictures of him holding guns were revealed, and that justified a probation search of where he lived. United States v. Peila, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63036 (D. Nev. April 3, 2012).*

Defendant filed a general motion to suppress which was heard before trial, but only statements made at the time of arrest were discussed. A gun was also seized in Tennessee, and it was never mentioned. At trial, the gun was not objected to. On appeal, the issue of the seizure of the gun was waived. Rockholt v. State, 2012 Ga. LEXIS 446 (May 7, 2012).*

Drug officers stopped defendants based on a request to stop him so used the fact that one of three taillights was out. But, Arizona law just says that “a stop light” needs to work, and this is a mistake of law because defendants otherwise were committing no traffic violation. The subsequent consent derived from the illegal stop, and it’s all suppressed. United States v. Pro, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63058 (D. Ariz. May 3, 2012).*

NEW YORK (AP) -- Maurice Sendak, the children's book author and illustrator who saw the sometimes-dark side of childhood in books like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen," died early Tuesday. He was 83....

GUNTOWN, Miss. (AP) -- The Mississippi man on the run from a double-slaying thought he might be the father of the two girls he's now accused of kidnapping, his mother-in-law said....

GUNTOWN, Miss. (AP) -- Court officials in Tennessee say first-degree murder charges have been filed against the wife of a man suspected of killing of a woman and her teenage daughter and fleeing with her two younger girls....

LA Times editorial: The secret life of your cellphone; In a threat to the 4th Amendment, law enforcement is using location data as a crime-fighting tool:

Concerned that mobile phone networks are becoming surveillance tools, the American Civil Liberties Union recently asked hundreds of local law enforcement agencies whether they've tracked people's movements through their cellphones. Most of those that responded said they had, usually obtaining the information from mobile phone companies without a warrant. The practice has become so routine, the ACLU found, that phone companies are sending out catalogs of monitoring services with detailed price lists to police agencies. The alarming findings should persuade Congress to clarify that the government can't follow someone electronically without showing probable cause and obtaining a warrant.

Allegations of excessive force used during defendant’s arrest did not justify suppression of the search where there was no causal connection. United States v. Collins, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63214 (N.D. Ind. May 4, 2012):

The Defendant's primary objection to the admission of the evidence against him is his claim that Officers Ealing and Johnson used unreasonable force to effectuate his arrest. The Defendant cites a Ninth Circuit case, United States v. Ankeny, for the proposition that a Fourth Amendment excessive force violation requires suppression of the evidence seized. 502 F.3d at 836. However, the Defendant also cites to United States v. Watson, where the Seventh Circuit disagreed with the Ankeny court. Specifically, the Seventh Circuit declined to apply the Ankeny court's reasoning, holding: "We thus disagree with the dictum in United States v. Ankeny ... that the use of excessive force in the course of a search can require suppression of the evidence seized." 558 F.3d at 705. Rather, if a defendant proves excessive force, "his remedy would be a suit for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (or state law) rather than the exclusion from his criminal trial of evidence that had been seized in an otherwise lawful search." Id. at 704. Therefore, under a plain reading of Watson, suppression would not be appropriate even if the Defendant could establish that Officers Ealing and Johnson used excessive force against him. Rather, the Defendant's appropriate remedy would be a § 1983 civil suit against the Officers for use of excessive force.

The Court notes that even under Ankeny, suppression would not be appropriate in this case. The Ankeny court held that it did not need to determine whether unreasonable force had been used because there was no "causal nexus" between the allegedly unreasonable force and discovery of the evidence. Ankeny, 502 F.3d at 837; see also Watson, 558 F.3d at 702 ("There was no causal connection ... between the alleged police misconduct and the obtaining of the evidence."). The bag containing cocaine was obtained not because of any allegedly unreasonable force used by the Officers, but because the Defendant threw it away from his person before Officer Ealing used any force. As the Government urges, "[a]n arrest does not occur until a police officer lays hands on a subject or the subject voluntarily submits to a show of authority." United States v. Britton, 335 Fed. Appx. 571, 575 (6th Cir. 2009); California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626 (1991) ("An arrest requires either physical force ... or, where that is absent, submission to the assertion of authority."). The exclusionary rule is only triggered where evidence is obtained "following an unlawful arrest." United States v. Howard, 621 F.3d 433, 451 (6th Cir. 2010). Because the facts indicate that the Defendant threw the bag away from his person before Officer Ealing touched him, the bag was not obtained "following" an arrest at all, and so there can be no nexus between the alleged unreasonable force and finding the bag. For that matter, it appears that the Defendant placed the bag in a publicly exposed place, suggesting that the Government's retrieval of the bag did not constitute a search at all within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Eubanks, 876 F.2d 1514, 1516 (11th Cir. 1989) ("[U]nder the fourth amendment no governmental 'search' occurs if the place or object examined is publicly exposed such that no person can reasonably have an expectation of privacy.").

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Schools should be a cornerstone of the nation's obesity battle, but to trim Americans' waistlines, changes are needed everywhere people live, work, play and learn, a major new report says....