Poor Mojo's Newswire

Authorities have sent 37 speeding tickets to Dave Vontesmar, claiming he'd been captured each time by speed camera. Dave denies he's at fault, saying he doesn't resemble the monkey driver portrayed in camera images. Police claim to have done surveillance on Vontesmar and observed him putting on a monkey mask before hitting the Arizona street, proving without a shadow of a doubt he's at the helm of the distinctive Subaru, thus the issuance of the many, many tickets. Faced with the evidence, Vontesmar responded, "Not one of them there is a picture where you can identify the driver, the ball's in their court. I sent back all these ones I got with a copy of my drivers license, and said, 'It's not me. I'm not paying them.'" Ballsy. It seems to us the police have a case for one of the traffic tickets, if it were issued on the day of their surveillance operation, but all of them? While this might seem like a technicality, one is innocent until proven guilty, even in traffic court, and unless police can prove it was Vontesmar who donned the mask every single time, it seems he's got a point.

A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were crack and arrested him. May told Eyewitness News they wouldn't let him out of jail for three months until tests proved the so-called drugs were candy... May was pulled over for an expired tag on his car. When the officer walked up to him, he noticed something white in May's mouth. May said it was breath mints, but the officer thought it was crack cocaine. "He took them out of my mouth and put them in a baggy and locked me up [for] possession of cocaine and tampering with evidence," May explained.The officer claimed he field-tested the evidence and it tested positive for drugs. The officer said he saw May buying drugs while he was stopped at an intersection. He also stated in his report May waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily admitted to buying drugs.

Today, Stockholm’s district court took action to completely remove The Pirate Bay from the Internet. The court ordered the site’s major bandwidth supplier, Black Internet, to disconnect TPB from the Internet or face penalties of 500,000 kroner ($70,600). The ISP complied, saying that it had no choice but to uphold the law. . . . Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that they “got a new connection to the net.” The tracker is still down and is expected to be fully operational tomorrow morning, we were told. Ever since their servers were raided back in 2006 they were prepared for takedown attempts like this. “The MAFIAA has spent millions of dollars and endless amounts of time to get this ban in order. Our guess is that they also bribed a bit to get it since it violates so many laws not only in Sweden but also in the EU, not to mention violations against human rights. And what do they have to show for it? 3 hours of partial downtime,” the Pirate Bay team adds.

But now everyone’s having a good laugh about how two local police officers had no idea who Dylan was when they stopped and detained him after some residents reported an elderly man acting “suspiciously.” I don’t know. I find it pretty depressing. There was a time when we condescendingly used the term “your papers, please” to distinguish ourselves from Eastern Block countries and other authoritarian states. Post-Hiibel, America has become a place where a harmless, 68-year-old man out on a stroll can be stopped, interrogated, detained, and forced to produce proof of identification to state authorities, despite having committed no crime. I guess I just don’t see the punchline.