North Dakota Retaliating Against Journalist For Screwing Up Pipeline Project

Democracy Now! journalist
Amy Goodman faces a North
Dakota arrest warrant for
her work reporting on the
Dakota Access pipeline
protests earlier this month. 

Journalist Amy Goodman had a career highlight on an important story last week.

Goodman, executive producer of Democracy Now! on September 3 showed up  at Native-American protests agaist the Dakota Access pipeline.

The Native Americans were understandably upset about the pipeline disrupting burial grounds and threatening future contamination of their drinking water supply near the Standing Rock reservation.

The protests turned violent. The Native Americans stormed the construction site. Private security guards responded with attack dogs and pepper spray. Goodman and  her videographer got it all on video.

That video is rather shocking, with all the dogs and pepper spray and such. Clearly, the security people could have handled the protests much better than they did. The video is at the bottom of this post.

It was big and dramatic and really shined a light on what was going on in North Dakota. Goodman's video of the protests went viral, and such obscure media outlests like CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and Huffington Post rebroadcast Goodman's video.

Amid the swirl of media attention, the Obama administration ended up suspending the pipeline construction, pending further review.

Goodman got an amazing scoop, and like any good journalist, changed the course of events by exposing and effectively calling attention to an important public issue.

Naturally, pipeline advocates are annoyed with Goodman for her reporting. That's fine. Some of those pipeline advocates are in local government. In a chilling display of press intimidation, the Morton County, North Dakota sheriff's office has issued an arrest warrant on Goodman, accusing her of criminal trespass.

She was on pipeline property when she conducted interviews and filmed the scene. That's what journalists do, and in America are generally given wide berth when reporting major news events, even when they occur on private property.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said, "This arrest is a transparent attempt to intimidate reporters from coverning protests of significant public interest.....Authorities in North Dakota should stop embarrasing themselves, drop the charges against Amy Goodman, and ensure that all reporters are free to do their jobs."

The Morton County sheriff's office is declining comment, says the Guardian.  However,  I see what's going on here. I doubt the Morton County sheriff's office or anyone else who'se after Goodman expects her to suffer much of any consequence from this.

But the arrest warrant is a shot across the bow, a warning to American media. Don't stick your nose in our business unless you want to deal with expensive litigation and other trouble. The clear message to the media is, "shut your mouths and look the other way."

Goodman is a classic muckraking journalist, an increasingly rare breed in American news media. She's an investigative journalist who does tend to go after The Powers That Be, and that ruffles a lot of feathers.

She's somewhat of an advocacy journalist, who tries to cover important issues that aren't getting much attention elsewhere. She comes at things from perhaps a liberal perspective, but she is very careful to get her facts right. She's got all the right journalistic chops.

I noticed no credible outfit is questioning Goodman's accuracy with her North Dakota reporting. They just don't like the fact she reported it. (Other national media wasn't there, but she thought it was an important story, and went there.)

Goodman will come out of this just fine. But we should all care what's happening. Lord knows the American news media is far from perfect.  Neither is the government, or private business, or any other organization. The cliche is light is the best disinfectant. Let the media continue to shine the line in dark places, and under the potentially corrupt darkness under all those rocks.

North Dakota officials need to drop the charges again Goodman now and move on.

Here is the video from Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! that the North Dakota authorities are not happy with:

DEA, Like Other Law Enforcement Shakes Down Airline, Train Passengers

Is the DEA enforcing drug laws, or or
they just shaking down people for cash. USAToday
raised the question.  

Asset forfeiture, the habit of law enforcement of taking money from people they "suspect" of a crime, whether these people actually committed a crime or not, keeps getting more widespread, we find out.

It's basically larceny by law enforcement, but shhhh! We're suppose to call it, "Cracking down on the drug trade."

Or whatever.

According to a USA Today report last week, federal DEA agents routinely mine data on airline and Amtrak passengers to find supposedly suspicious activity, then seize large quantities of money from some of these passengers, then often let them go.

The point of this, says the DEA, is to stop the flow of cash in the drug trade. And I'm sure some or even many of the cash seizures involve drug curriers or other people involved in the illicit drug industry.

But as I've complained about regarding other police agencies, is it really OK for law enforcement to just grab money for fun and profit without due process?

Technically, it's legal in a lot of places, but doesn't seem to follow the spirit of the Constitution for me. But hey! If we can just steal money from stupid schlubs who get in our way, we don't have to go through the pain in the neck process of bothering law-abiding taxpayers.

And you keep those anti-tax and spend politicians happy.

Never mind that some of the people law enforcement steals money from are also law abiding. It's just easier this way, apparently.

Based on the USA Today report, you probably shouldn't travel one-way, pay for your ticket with cash, have checked baggage or give the ticket agent a phone number for you that's not working.

The DEA could well mine that data on you, then take your money at your next stop.

The danger of this pervasive practice, which so far nobody has really put a stop to, is that we lose more and more confidence in law enforcement. They're written off as just another part of the corrupt system.

If people come to that conclusion, what's to stop them from really breaking the law. Hey, the cops do it, why shouldn't I,? goes the logic.

But, people running these law enforcement shakedowns don't think in those terms. They just want to rake in the cash.

Woman Almost Became Felon For Buying Bottled Water

I'm all for cracking down on underage drinking but if this story is true, some alcohol enforcement agents in Virginia ought to get a hobby.

According to The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Virginia, a student named Elizabeth Daly, 20, walked out of a store with two friends. Daly was carrying what looked like a 12-pack of beer. It was really a package of bottled water.

Yes, crack down on underage drinking. But
do you need a SWAT team to do it?  

Then Virgiina Alcoholic Beverage Control agents swooped in, one with a gun drawn and surrounded her car, according to The Daily Progress. They were in plain clothes, and Daly said she could identify the badges.

Daly panicked. "I  couldn't put my windows down unless I started the car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were terrified," she was quoted as saying.

She was  thinking she was being attacked by thugs and tried to drive away. In that effort, she supposedly grazed a couple of the agents as she fled. Daly was also calling 911 at the time, and wanted to drive to a police station.  She stopped when she saw the flashing police lights on one of the agents' cars, and realized they were law enforcement.

The agents charged Daly with two counts of assaulting a police officer and attempting to elude. She faced up to five years in prison.

She spend the night and a good part of the next day in jail, but common sense eventually prevailed, according to the Charlottesville Newsplex.

The   local prosecutor dropped the charges, saying Daly's account of what happened was consistent with the facts.

According to the prosecutor:

"The male agent who approached that side of the vehicle could see that she was misperceiving the events in terms of who the agents were and their intentions. This agent could also see that the passenger was calling 911. Before the vehicle sped off, the agent saw the front passenger jump into the rear seat and yell toward the driver words to the effect of 'go, go, go, get out of here'"

The Alcohol Beverage Control Agency had a far different take on the events.

"The agents were acting upon reasonable suspicion and this whole unfortunate incident could have been avoided had the occupants complied with law enforcement requests. We take all citizen complaints seriously and the matter is currently under review by the ABC Bureau of Law Enforcement."

Yeah, and this whole unfortunate incident could have been avoided if the alcohol control agents weren't pretending they were an assault team capturing a mass murderer.

If they thought Daly was buying booze, why didn't they walk up to her as she left the store, check out what she was buying, and make sure it was really a 12 pack of water, not a 12 pack of Old Milwaukee Light.

The Alcohol Beverage Control agents must be bored and frustrated to turn into a SWAT team just to crack down on underage drinking. I could understand the guns drawn, the leaping up onto the car if they thought she just robbed the store, but GAWD!


Daly's defesne attorney, and an analyst of said this:

John Whitehead of of the Rutherford Institute is shocked and says it's unfortunately part of a trend he's seen in the past several years, according to the Charlotte Newsplex:

"I mean these weren't criminals with guns it was total over reaction," Whitehead said. "It's all part of the same kind of paradigm we're seeing. A very aggressive police investigating minor incidents and drawing their guns."

If Whitehead is right and more law enforcement is reaching for their guns, what is the reason? Is it just more dangerous for cops nowadays and they have to be hypervigilant? Or do they have better equipment and want an excuse to use it? Something else?

 I hope there is a good reason behind it. 

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