FPR Blog 20: Uh Oh, more leaks out of the National Security Agency...

Wikileaks wrote a press release on Tuesday, June 23, 2015, where it says WikiLeaks has begun publishing a collection of top secret intelligence reports and technical documents from the US National Security Agency.

These documents concern, targeting and signals intelligence intercepts of communications of high-level officials from successive French governments over the last ten years.

FPR Blog 19: An Unlikely Ally in the Fight Against the War on Drugs.

If you were a listener and reader of my previous, decade-long project, 'fjs radio', then you know how I feel about the war on drugs.

If you weren't and don't know, I'm not a fan.

Every year the war on drugs cost taxpayers, both state and federal, billions of dollars.

That is not an exaggeration...

There's a great website, Drug Sense, (DrugSense.org) and the site has a clock that goes up by the second. It estimates that we've already spent $19 billion and it is still counting. The states spent more than the federal government by $5 billion.

FPR Blog 18: U.S.'s Neglected Security Systems. We are Vulnerable.

On Tuesday June 16, 2015, the Associated Press reported that, 'Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spoke in unison to describe their outrage over what they called gross negligence by the Office of Personnel Management'.

The agency's data was breached last year in two massive cyber attacks only recently revealed.

I understand the government can't tell us everything. There are things they have to hold on to for a while and some stuff they hope will never come out.

FPR Blog 17: Charleston Shooting; Act of a Madman, Not a Gun Issue. UPDATED Jon Stewart.

By now most of you reading this know what happened in Charleston, NC on Wednesday night June 17, 2015.

A gunman, 21-year-old Dylan Roof walked into Emanuel African Episcopal Church during a weekly bible study meeting, sat down for approximately one hour, then stood up and started shooting.

The group consisted of 12 members, 9 of which were killed, including the church's leader, Reverend Clementa Pinckney.

I checked out his Facebook profile, his pic has him sporting a jacket with patches of apartheid-era South Africa and the unrecognized, white state of Rhodesia. These are both symbols of white supremacy...

He has many friends on his Facebook page, some of which are black. Some of them are posting what they know about the shooting and I saw 2 people talking about recognizing his car.

Some of his Facebook friends appear to be classmates.