Law

A U.S. court has ruled that citizens have “no constitutional” rights to record police officers on their cellphones, regardless of whether cops are acting unlawfully. Judge Mark Kearney in Philadelphia said that citizens must explicitly explain to cops that they are recording them for the purpose of criticizing police – otherwise face arrest. “We find there is no First Amendment right under our governing law to observe and record police officers absent some other expressive conduct,” Kearney said in reference to two cases involving Philadelphia police.

Two journalists working for the Cumhuriyet newspaper in Turkey have been sentenced to five years in prison, in the first ever case of its kind in Europe.  Can Dundar and Erdem Gul were convicted on charges of “revealing state secrets”. RT.com reports: The Turkish court has reportedly acquitted them on some of the charges, including that of “coup attempt,” according to the newspaper. The two had also faced life sentences for publishing their report which claims that Turkey has delivered weapons to terrorists in Syria.

Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman has been transferred from his maximum security prison near Mexico City to a prison near the border with Texas. El Chapo is the head of Sinaloa organised crime cartel in Mexico and is currently in-between jailbreaks. There are fears that he might be extradited to the US.  The Belfast Telegraph reports: The Sinaloa cartel boss was moved from the maximum-security Altiplano lock-up near Mexico City to a prison in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, a security official told The Associated Press, without giving a reason for the transfer.

“To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class.” — Lenin.

You really have to read this post by Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet, in which he advises his fellow legal liberals to take the gloves off and hit conservatives with bare-knuckle force. Excerpts:

Los Angeles serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper,” who preyed on destitute and vulnerable black women for over three decades, was convicted on Thursday of murdering 10 people. His victim’s families can now reconcile with the memory of their loved ones. Christian Science Monitor reports: It took decades for an arrest to occur, and even more time passed before a conviction was reached. But on Thursday a jury in Los Angeles County convicted Lonnie Franklin Jr., a former garbage man and mechanic, guilty of 10 murders. Mr.