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“This is the most transparent
administration in history,” President Obama has said. The
new Reason-Rupe poll, however, finds 57 percent of Americans
disagree with the president’s statement. Only 37 percent of
Americans think the Obama administration is the most transparent in
history.

Eighty-one percent of Republicans, 61 percent of independents,
and 34 percent of Democrats say the Obama administration is not the
most transparent administration in history.

As income rises, Americans become more skeptical of President
Obama’s transparency assertion. About half of Americans making less
than $50,000 a year disagree with the president’s promise compared
to 68% of Americans making more than $90,000 a year disagree.

A majority (54 percent) of Hispanics disagree that the current
administration is the most transparent while 41 percent agree.
Nearly two-thirds of white Americans disagree while more than
two-thirds of African-Americans agree that Obama’s administration
is most transparent.

A plurality of young Americans 18-24 agree with President Obama
on his administration’s transparency, but 60 percent of older
millennials (35-34) disagree.  Roughly 6 in 10 Americans over
35 also disagree the Obama administration is the most transparent
in history.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013 interviewed
1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505) phones, with a
margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates
International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns
may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results,
detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the Reason-Rupe
poll here.

• Three
  years after the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation
  bill, regulators have
  approved the so-called “Volcker Rule,” which will limit banks
  from certain kinds of investments and relationships with private
  equity firms and hedge funds.
• Kathleen Sebelius
  announced an inspector general will review the botched
  Obamacare website rollout, and promised to keep trying to improve
  the site.
• The NSA’s collection of Internet data could
  cost up to $35 billion in lost business for Silicon Valley,
  according to a new think-tank study. Google’s
  opened its first two data centers in Asia; basing one in
  Singapore and the other in Taiwan.
• Former Phoenix police officer Richard Chrisman
  entered a guilty plea for manslaughter for shooting and killing
  Danny Rodriguez during a domestic violence call in 2010, avoiding a
  retrial on the charges. He faces up to fourteen years in prison. In
  the deal with prosecutors, a charge of animal cruelty Chrisman
  faced, for killing Rodriguez’s pitbull, will be dropped. The former
  cop also faces up to fifteen years for an assault charge he was
  convicted of related to the incident.
• A man who says his confession was tortured out of him by the
  Chicago Police Department had his conviction overturned yesterday,
  and was
  released from prison after thirty years behind bars.
• Japan’s new defense plan
  calls for an amphibious marine unit and the deployment of
  surveillance drones.
• More than 200,000 people have signed
  up for four slots in a possible one-way mission to Mars planned
  for 2025 by Mars One. 

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In November
2013, Robert Farago of the Truth About Guns blog began publishing
letters received by gun owners in New York City demanding the
surrender of rifles and shotguns that hold more than five rounds.
While New York state recently passed the controversial SAFE Act
imposing registration and restrictions on “assault weapons” and
“high-capacity” magazines, the city law has been on the books for
years, though apparently only intermittently enforced. Amidst the
post-Newtown debate over gun control, though, Big Apple officials’
new dedication to poring over registration records and weeding out
forbidden weapons couldn’t help but fuel fears of confiscation—and
thereby spur defiance of already faltering registration schemes in
New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere. The problem for gun control
advocates, writes J.D. Tuccille, is that they keep promising that
no way will registration lead to confiscation of firearms, even as
it does just that.

View this article.

Stories about
cops gratuitously killing dogs are
sadly common, but this is the first
parakeet stomping I can recall. According to a federal lawsuit,
it all started during a 2012 Labor Day weekend barbecue at the
Staten Island home of Evelyn Lugo, a 57-year-old mother of 10.
Police officers stopped Lugo’s son Edwin Avellanet as he was taking
out some trash and asked him about an orange cone that someone had
used to save a parking space in front of the house. The cops
demanded identification, and Avellanet replied that he did not
have to provide any, since he had done nothing wrong. One of the
officers grabbed Avellanet’s arm, but he broke free and ran back
into his mother’s house. The suit says police then forcibly entered
the house without a warrant, breaking windows and at least one door
in the process.

During the raid, the cage containing Lugo’s cherished blue and
green parakeet, Tito, was knocked onto the floor, and the bird
escaped. Lugo’s daughter Anna Febles
told the New York Daily News that she then
exclaimed, “The bird!” She said one of the officers replied, “Fuck
the bird!” and deliberately crushed it beneath his foot.

According to the lawsuit, the cops also attacked several humans,
repeatedly walloping Lugo’s son George and a family
friend, Luis Ortega, on the head with batons. The
justification? The NYPD isn’t talking, but I’m going to guess
something like “resisting arrest.” Arrest for what is not clear.
Criminal charges against Ortega, George Lugo, and his sister Alba
Cuevas were dismissed, and no charges were ever filed against
Avellanet, whose insistence on his civil liberties apparently
provoked the home invasion.

There is also no word on exactly what the parakeet did to
deserve his fate, but presumably the officer who killed it felt
threatened. “Ever since then I have been sick and
depressed,” Evelyn Lugo told the Daily News. “I was hurt
on the inside, in my heart.”

[Thanks to Richard Cowan for the tip.]