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Hoo boy, if only there was a way to regulate stupidity.

ABC17:

During the opening weekend of the latest 'Iron Man' movie, a man walked into the theater in full tactical gear and carrying a fake gun.

Jefferson City police and witnesses, however, are not pleased with the stunt and are questioning the theater's logic after recent shootings in Aurora, Colo. and Newtown, Conn.

John Molock is a retired Army war veteran and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He told ABC 17 News this most recent trip to the movies triggered memories he never wanted to relive.

"We had just finished watching Iron Man 3," said Morlock. "We're just getting into the car when I spotted a man in full assault gear, carrying what appeared to be a modified M-4 and 9 mm on his side."

Morlock did not call police, but several other moviegoers did.

"We received a series of 911 calls stating that a man dressed in all black and body armor and a rifle was walking into Capital 8 Theaters," said Capt. Doug Shoemaker.

Officers thought they were responding to an active shooter investigation.

"Everything was in place, it's the opening night of a superhero movie, it's somebody walking in all-dark clothes, everything pointed to bad things about to happen," said Shoemaker. "There's really no good that can come of this."

But the armed man was a paid actor carrying fake weapons, and hired by the theater manager as part of a publicity stunt for the movie opening. Capital 8 Theaters manager Bob Wilkins told ABC 17 News that the stunt was planned "months in advance," and that "only a few" patrons were upset. "Hundreds" were entertained, he explained, and "My job is to entertain people."

Asked if management took into consideration the the mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater, Wilkins responded, "Absolutely. That's my number-one priority every day. It's the safety and security of our guests."

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Update May 11, 2013: This gets even weirder Saturday morning as the Dallas News updates their report from Friday.

- West officials for the first time told the state agency that licenses paramedics that Reed was let go two days after the explosion. A reason wasn’t given.

- According to a post this week on Bryce Reed’s Facebook page, his wife left him sometime after the explosion.

- It’s unclear if Reed knew about his apparent departure. The day after officials said he was let go, he gave an update about small fires at the explosion site to displaced West residents at a local hotel.

- Neighbors said the man and his wife and daughter hadn’t been living in their duplex since the blast. One neighbor, who asked that his name be withheld to protect his family’s safety, said Bryce Reed told him his wife had left him. The man said Bryce Reed also told him that the ATF was investigating him for fraud and that his attorneys had advised him to “get the hell out of Dodge.”

- The same neighbor said that Bryce Reed told him that he had a pipe bomb that had belonged to Cyrus Reed, but that he had given it to a friend to store.

- Reed has also made unverifiable claims about his education and career on his online resúmé on LinkedIn. It is unknown when it was last updated, but the bachelor’s and master’s degrees he claims he earned have been disputed by records and authoritative sources. He also claims to have held management positions with three entities that are now defunct.

- The only thing that seemed constant in his life was his career as a paramedic. As late as last week, Reed admitted feeling emotionally unstable.

- Records also show that two days after the explosion, Reed was “let go” at West’s volunteer EMS department, according to records and interviews.

- Back in West, neighbors who exchanged notes Friday said they quickly realized Reed had woven a different story to each of them. He told one that he was a cop and another that he worked for the government.

- Also, according to WFAA-TV (Channel 8), Reed is a contact person for a fundraiser that’s raised $33,177 in T-shirt sales through the website Tee-Spring.com.

Again, there are still no indications reported of a connection between the blast and Reed's arrest.
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday afternoon said it “will not speculate” on whether a pipe bomb allegedly belonging to a West paramedic has any connection with the fatal fertilizer plant fire and explosion that he responded to.

Reuters:

U.S. prosecutors charged Bryce Reed, 31, one of the first to respond to a deadly explosion last month in the Texas town of West, with unlawful possession of pipe bomb components, but authorities said no evidence linked the charge to the fertilizer plant disaster.

Reed appeared at federal court in Waco, Texas, on Friday, where he faced one count of unlawfully possessing an unregistered destructive device. He did not enter a plea, said Daryl Fields, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Texas.
...
Reed, who was arrested Thursday, is being held without bail and is due in court on May 15, according to court papers.

Federal prosecutors said in court papers they had responded to a home in Abbott, Texas, where they found a section of pipe 3-1/2 inches long and 1-1/2 inches in diameter, end caps, fuses and explosive powder. The resident of that home, whom they did not identify, told police the components came from Reed.
...
The state fire marshal's office has said that ammonium nitrate stored at the plant detonated in the explosion but it has not been able to pin down the cause of the fire and blast.

State officials on Friday ordered the Texas Rangers to join McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara in a criminal investigation into the blast.

The move to conduct a criminal investigation comes after weeks of largely treating the blast as an industrial accident.

Divergent portraits of Bryce Reed emerge as he remains in federal custody. The Dallas News reports:

After answering the door at his Rockwall home Friday, Gary Nelson said he couldn’t believe the charges against his stepson. He said there is “not a chance” that Reed was involved in the deadly explosion.

“He's been tore up about it,” Nelson said, adding that the family is “100 percent behind him.”

But the sister of a firefighter Reed eulogized at a public memorial last month said she had to ask police to guard her deceased brother’s apartment because she feared Reed had been stealing from it since the blast.

“Instead of grieving my brother's death, we're dealing with all of this,” said Sarah Reed, who is not related to Bryce Reed.

Bryce Reed’s wife, Brittany Reed, declined to comment when reached by phone early Friday.

“I can’t. No comment, no comment, no comment right now,” she said before hanging up the phone.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw and McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara released a joint statement Friday morning about the criminal investigation. Neither mentioned Reed’s arrest.

“The citizens of McLennan County and Texas must have confidence that this incident has been looked at from every angle and professionally handled – they deserve nothing less,” McNamara said.

Bryce Reed’s neighbors on Main Street north of downtown West on Friday said that ATF agents were at the man’s home for several hours late Thursday afternoon. The neighbors declined to give their names but said Bryce Reed had a young daughter and that he hadn’t been staying at the home since the explosion.

At last month’s public memorial for the 12 people killed responding to the fire, Reed gave the eulogy for Cyrus Reed, who was a volunteer firefighter in nearby Abbott. The two men weren’t related, though they shared the same last name and Bryce Reed often referred to Cyrus Reed as his brother.

But Sarah Reed, who is Cyrus Reed’s biological sister, said her family had been “fooled by Bryce Reed.” She said that her family let Bryce Reed eulogize their relative because he led them to believe that he and Cyrus Reed were very close.

Sarah Reed said she and her family have gone through Cyrus Reed's computer and cellphone records and have found that the two first responders might not have been as close as the suspect led the public to believe, she said.

“He convinced us that he and Cyrus were very close, like brothers," she said. "But I want people to know they are not brothers, and he is not part of our family."

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The hacktivist collective known as Anonymous is calling for an internet blackout on Monday, April 22, in protest of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that recently passed the House of Representatives.

The group is also "encouraging" all web developers and website owners to go dark on Monday, and display a message as to why, and encourage others to do the same.

The call for a blackout is being spread with a newly released video (above) and also on a Facebook page.

Text of the video statement follows:

Dear citizens of the internet,

We are Anonymous.

The United States Government is again attempting to control and censor the internet. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act has just recently passed the house.

This bill would allow major internet entities such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google to voluntarily share your personal information with the U.S. Government. This will not only effect users in the United States, but also anyone with an account with these companies.

This upcoming Monday, April the 22nd, we invite you to join Anonymous in a internet blackout. We encourage all web developers and website owners to go dark on this date. Display a message as to why you are going dark, and encourage others to do the same.

We hope, just like the successful protest over the Stop Online Piracy Act, we can encourage the senate to stop this bill.

Spread the message, and inform the world.

We are Anonymous
We are the people
We are the internet

Knowledge is free

The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill Moyers shares examples of the striking extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless -- who’ve grown 20 percent in the last two years -- are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps.

“A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill, “while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.”

Full transcript below the fold.

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Video report from February 1st tells of the discovery of new burial sites at the Dozier School for boys in Marianna, Florida.

The official stance on 98 dead boys from the Dozier School in Florida is that they were "accidents," or that the children died from "natural causes." Increasingly, it seems that may not have been the case.

From The Independent:

'A concentration camp for little boys': For years, almost no one at the Dozier School even knew about the burial ground in a clearing in the woods on the edge of campus. It was forbidden territory. The soil here, churned in places by tiny ants, holds more than the remains of little boys. Only now is it starting to give up its dark secrets: horror stories of state-sanctioned barbarism, including flogging, sexual assault and, possibly, murder.

That the Arthur G Dozier School – a borstal for delinquent boys founded in 1900 – was not a gentle place was well-established. Boys as young as six were chained to walls, lashings with a leather strap were frequent and, in the early decades, children endured enforced labour, making bricks and working printing presses. When it was closed in 2011, it had already been the subject of separate federal and state investigations.

But, as suspicions deepen about how the boys in the burial ground died, pressure is growing again on the state to shine new light into the darkest days of the school in Marianna, a Florida Panhandle town that once was a bastion of the KKK and the site of the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal. The pressure is coming from some of the school's survivors, from relatives of boys who died here, and from Florida's top US Senator, Bill Nelson."

All Apologies: A NATO commander describes the shooting of children, both under 10, as case of "mistaken identity" during fight with Taliban.

A report in the New York Times explains that sharing on Facebook now comes at a cost.

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KPTV - FOX 12

A Portland gun rights activist and a few of his friends decided to roam the streets in Portland on Wednesday in order to "educate the public" on their second amendment rights, with their AR-15s slung over their shoulders.

Via:

Medford police have received at least 67 complaints about Warren R. Drouin openly carrying a semi-auto rifle or handgun in a wide range of public settings between June 2011 and December 2012, according to agency records. One episode generated more than two dozens calls to police. At least one Medford business barred him from the property because of his behavior.

The 22-year-old Medford man is so familiar to police in the southern Oregon city that top officials in the 103-member police force refer to him simply as "Warren" when describing their interactions with him. Officers receive training specifically on how to approach Drouin and others in the so-called open carry movement, which promotes the ability to openly carry guns.

Tim Doney, Medford's deputy police chief, said department officials have emphasized to officers that not everyone openly carrying a weapon will be as benign as Drouin.

"We go out on every one of these calls," Doney said. "And who knows? The next one may be the one that is an active shooter."

You can listen to some of the 911 calls from terrified citizens who weren't aware they were being educated at this link.

I really don't think this is the way to go about winning the hearts and minds of people who supportive of gun control, and I think these "activists" know that. Or...maybe not. From Warren Drouin's Facebook page, he says he was "homeschooled," and...:

"I am a full flesh libertarian and a gun right extremest. We the people should control our government and bring us back to when we had and own our Life, Liberty, and Property. I hate socialist, dictators, and corrupt Government. We are losing are rights every day while not knowing it and then it become to late."

In the Youtube video below, listen to the runaround the armed men give the local police when they simply ask to see their gun permits (You need a concealed carry permit to carry a loaded weapon in public) and identification:

A Bennington, Vermont math and science teacher is home on administrative leave after being briefly hospitalized for a mental evaluation on the recommendation of police officers last week. Police became concerned after becoming aware of disturbing videos posted to Youtube and Facebook, and calls from concerned neighbors who witnessed the teacher carrying a rifle, a Bushmaster AR-15, to his car. There were also emails sent to some of the other school staff that caused alarm.

The Bushmaster is the same type of rifle that was used in the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, and other recent mass shootings.

The teacher, Steven Davis, willingly handed over his weapon to police along with two high-capacity magazines. During a search of his home, police seized another 500 rounds of ammunition.

Davis' online postings had included angry rants about his job. In one Youtube video, Davis said he had plans for retribution.

"This is all planned and very well thought out," Davis said in another video clip. "I've studied military tactics and this is the way to go. it's all going to hit so hard, so fast and shut that school system down til they get things straight."

Davis' wife said she was unaware that he owned the firearm. Police say that she left the home with the couple's small children, and obtained a restraining order against Davis.

In the most recent Youtube video, recorded from his hospital bed, Davis pleaded, "Is there any way to get a lawyer? For you guys to find me a lawyer right now?"

Mitt Romney has stated publicly that he likes being able to fire people. But Big Bird? Yes Big Bird was put on notice, as was the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS and the entire PBS network.

Debate moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS asked each candidate to describe the difference between his plan to attack the deficit and his opponent’s.

“I’m glad you raised that,” Romney said. “I think it’s frankly not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing that those burdens are going to be passed on to the next generation. They’re going to be paying the interest and the principal all their lives, and the amount of debt we’re adding -- at a trillion a year -- is simply not moral.”

Cutting the deficit, said Romney, can be done by cutting taxes, cutting spending and growing the economy. And finally, after being accused continually of failing to give specifics about things like which loopholes he would close in the tax code to offset the tax reductions he’d like to make, Romney spelled out some cuts he’d enforce. “Obamacare is on the list,” Romney said. “I apologize, Mr. President. I used that term with all respect.”

If Romney was trying to throw Obama onto the defensive, it didn’t work. “I like it,” the president interjected.

“OK, good. So I get rid of that.”

Then, looking at moderator Lehrer, Romney said, “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS…. I like PBS, I love Big Bird -- I actually like, you too -- but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for.”

Romney vowed to return the control of some federal government programs to states, though he didn’t specify which programs, and reduce the number of government agencies and departments, and the number of federal employees, though he hastened to add that would be through attrition.

And finally, he slapped at the president for promising to reduce the deficit and instead presiding over a massive increase.

“The president said he’d cut the deficit in half,” Romney said. “Unfortunately, he doubled it -- trillion-dollar deficits for the last four years. The president has put in place almost as much debt held by the public as all presidents combined.”

Whoa...Mitt Romney needs to spend a little more time with his budget reports. It seems that Romney not only likes to fire people, he seemed to really enjoy tossing out bogus "facts." The statement above on the deficit and public held debt? Romney’s claim is close to true, though he’s using a different debt measure than the one his party used at his nominating convention. On the day Obama took office, the total public debt was $10.6 trillion, according to the Treasury Department’s website. Today, it’s $16.2 trillion. That $5.6 trillion increase is a bit more than half of the debt incurred by the chief executives who preceded Obama in the White House. Looking only at the debt held by the public, the measure quoted by Romney, Obama has added about $5 trillion while the presidents who came before him ran up a $6.3 trillion tab.

Of course, a truly honest debate over the deficit and debt reduction can't be had without mention of the pattern of obstructionism on the part of the Republican congress, largely influenced by Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan:

Mr. Ryan’s enormous influence was apparent last summer when Representative Eric Cantor, the second most powerful House Republican, told Mr. Obama during negotiations over an attempted bipartisan “grand bargain” that Mr. Ryan disliked its policy and was concerned that a deal would pave the way for Mr. Obama’s easy re-election, according to a Democrat and a Republican who were briefed on the conversation.

When President Obama pointed out that Ryan’s budget plan offers a “deeply pessimistic” vision for America that would cut crucial investments in the middle class and jeopardize health care for seniors, Ryan took the criticism personally and said it “definitely damage[d]” the chances that he’d accept a bipartisan grand bargain on debt reduction.

And back to Big Bird, someone in the Twitterverse responded to Romney's threat to terminate the beloved Sesame Street Character by creating a @FiredBigBird account, which, as of this writing had almost 23,000 followers.

Facebook users chimed in too, with someone creating a page called "Big Bird for President."

Portland, Ore., resident Sam Chapman responded to the buzz by creating an indiegogo.com campaign to "Save Big Bird." All funds from the campaign go to PBS, according to the indiegogo site. "Let's show PBS some love," the webpage read.

Hacktivist group members of the Anonymous collective are calling for a global protest against Trapwire, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security deployed electronic surveillance system uncovered in WikiLeaks latest Global Intelligence Files (GIF) series documents.

The global protest is scheduled for Saturday, October 20.

Information about the protest is being shared by Operation INDECT (OpINDECT International) and there is an #OpINDECT/#TrapWire Facebook Event Page.

It is not the first INDECT protest, but recent news about TrapWire from the Wikileaks leak of private intelligence firm Stratfor's documents has added new fuel to the fire.

According to Trapwire's website, the surveillance system uses data from a network of CCTV systems and numberplate readers to figure out the threat level in huge numbers of locations:

"Trapwire detects, analyzes and alerts on suspicious events as they are collected over periods of time and across multiple locations. Through the systematic capture of these pre-attack indicators, terrorist or criminal surveillance and pre-attack planning operations can be identified"

An in-depth report published by RT.com, states that TrapWire has been deployed "in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs)," as well as in multiple Las Vegas casinos, for the state of Texas, as well as for the Pentagon and other military agencies. It said TrapWire was created by a company called Abraxas, which features a management team largely drawn from the intelligence services and military branches. An Abraxas spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the company's relationship with TrapWire.

Uh oh. Facebook’s share price dropped below $20 on Thursday—its lowest price yet—and the company has now lost half its value since its $38 debut on the market in May. Analysts said investors are worried about the social media company’s growth prospects as well as the high-level departures—and the looming deadline of August 16th, when 271 million shares will be available for trading. “The sentiment on this thing is so negative,” said Topeka Capital Markets analyst Victor Anthony. In other bad news for Facebook, the company admitted in company filings on Thursday that it believes there are 83 million illegitimate accounts out of the 955 million registered users.