How is this legal?

In this article, a Hispanic trucker has to fork over his life savings to DEA officers and then prove it wasn't drug money -- when there was no evidence he was a smuggler and drug-sniffing dogs found nothing? This is hard to believe. There is nothing that would keep DEA from simply taking people's cash if this is the case, but apparently, it really is the case. I plan to forward this article to my senator at the very least. Unbelievable!

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A trucker has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration, seeking to get back nearly $24,000 seized by DEA agents earlier this month at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas.

Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained "needles or cash in excess of $10,000," according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit Thursday.

Prieto told the officer he didn't have any needles but did have $23,700.

Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.

Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Prieto's right to be free of unlawful search and seizure by taking his money without probable cause and by fingerprinting and photographing him.

"Mere possession of approximately $23,700 does not establish probable cause for a search or seizure," the lawsuit said.

It said Prieto pulled into the weigh station about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8 and was let go about 4 p.m.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

They told him the process probably would take a year, the ACLU said.

The ACLU's New Mexico executive director, Peter Simonson, said Prieto needs his money now to pay bills and maintain his truck. The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

"The government took Mr. Prieto's money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night," Simonson said. "In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator."

The Death of Traditional Journalism

When I started college, I had the idea in my head that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I loved writing and had dominated the Journalism department in my high school, even running the small town paper when times got hard, and my dream was to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, exposing corruption, educating the public...

Well, fast forward to the summer after my sophomore year. I started working for a small, local paper as a cub reporter and I had a nose for scandal. I found out that some business had come in and bought out all the buildings on Main Street and was causing each business to close, one by one, by raising rents ridiculously high (Two and three hundred percent). But...I wasn't allowed to report it.

I found out the local factory had an asbestos problem and was exposing their workers. One man had gotten in to take photos of the asbestos piled and floating in the air, and had been promptly fired. But...I wasn't allowed to report it.

Why? Advertising dollars. Relationships with owners. Big business. Money.

I quickly realized that, in most cases, reporters' hands are tied. The editor's hands are also tied. The real decisions are made in the boardroom by the owners. And becoming the owner of a media company wasn't the subject I was studying.

That was practically an innocent time. I could not have looked 12 years into the future to see how the media would consolidate...and consolidate...and consolidate. But now the content of our news is in the hands of a few extremely powerful people. Seeing yet another consolidation -- the Wall Street Journal in the hands of the man who created Fox News -- makes me glad that bloggers are out there. We are part of the last bastion of free speech available -- we and a dwindling number of small, radical local papers, a few online news' sources, podcasters. My skepticism of traditional media mounts and more and more I read the experiences of bloggers as my news (Baghdad Burning in Iraq, for example). I may have dropped Journalism in school...but I still feel wishful about the concept.

May bloggers live long and bring down more politicians!

From Murdoch Prevails by Forbes

News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones will represent a coronation of sorts for Murdoch. With a prosperous TV network, a market-leading cable news channel, a soon-to-be-launched business news channel, a major film studio, big Internet assets like social-networking giant MySpace, and now The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch has arguably become the King of All Media.

This extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of one man will trouble critics of the media industry's continuing consolidation and those who disagree with Murdoch's conservative politics.

Regardless of what one thinks of his media empire, it's clear that where he leads News Corp. from here will in many ways be the story of where the media industry itself is headed. What does the future hold for newspapers, television, the film industry and the Internet? Keep an eye on News Corp. to find out.