The People's Record

The People’s Record Daily News Update (it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these)
Here’s a collection of news stories for February 7, 2013 that you may not otherwise have a chance to see/learn about.

In Colorado, a six year old boy has been suspended from his school for playing with a make-believe grenade, while imagining that he is an action hero, saving the world.7-year-od Alex Evans insists the imaginary grenade he threw at an imaginary box was necessary to rid the world of evil.

“I pretended the box, there’s something shaking in it, and I go ‘pshhh, I was trying to save people and I just can’t believe I got dispended.”

It could soon be illegal to create online parodies or to ‘catfish’ someone in Arizona, with the expected passage of an internet-censorship bill that would make it a crime punishable by prison to lie on the Internet. Administrators of Twitter parody accounts and other online impersonators will be forced to throw in the towel, or else face as much as one-and-a-half years in prison for violating a law expected to soon go up for debate.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta continues to invoke the potential of a ‘cyber pearl harbor’ in an effort to scare citizens into allowing less privacy, more censorship, and more military/government/police control of the internet.

“I believe that it is very possible the next Pearl Harbor could be a cyber attack,” Panetta told an audience at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC, after a speech. Panetta outlined Pentagon officials’ growing fears of online attacks in a question-and-answer session following a lecture on leadership and government. “There is no question, in my mind, that part and parcel of any attack on this country in the future, by any enemy, is going to include a cyber-element,” he said. “That is something we have to worry about and protect against.”

Survivavlists in Idaho plan to build a community in the forest resembling a medieval-style fortress complete with housing, a school and a gun factory. They are calling the precious ‘dream’ community ‘The Citadel’.

But those who are proposing the establishment of the Citadel say that all of the city’s residents would have to own an AR-15 rifle, 1,000 rounds of ammunition and enough supplies to withstand a collapse of society. And since AR-15s have become difficult to obtain and would be outlawed if Congress reinstates the 1994 ban on assault weapons, the fortress would have its own factory to produce them. Residents would also be required by law to carry a side arm – a small weapon worn in a holster – whenever visiting the town center.

“Marxists, Socialists, Liberals, and Establishment Republicans will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles,” states the proposal’s website. One would hope so.

In Maryland, the Maryland House Judiciary Committee is considering a bill that would allow law enforcement officials to obtain location records from mobile devices without a search warrant.

House Bill 377 lowers the standard of probable cause law enforcement officials must meet before obtaining cell phone tracking information. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement must obtain a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. While the ruling did not impose a warrant requirement or a probable cause standard for obtaining real-time location records, both practices became commonplace in several of the state jurisdictions, including the city of Baltimore, for obtaining real-time location information records.

Students at Duke University held protests after the Kappa Sigma fraternity held a racist party to mock Asians and spoof Asian dress, speech and culture.

Asian American students organized a protest that included a “Race Is Not a Party” Facebook page and a campus rally Wednesday where students chanted, “Don’t party at our expense!” and “No more hate, make Duke great!”

“It was shocking and hurtful,” one outraged student said of the party, which advertised the event via an email with the greeting “Herro Nice Duke Peopre!!”