By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Congress has modified the Miranda rights: You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed to represent you, that is, if he or she is not furloughed, laid off or too busy to pay any attention to you. The initial reaction…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Both the U. S. and Mexican governments face some difficult policy questions in light of the surprise release from jail last week of one of the murderers of iconic hero DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena. With no advance warning and under highly questionable circumstances, an intermediate Mexican court overturned the conviction…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Among the many varieties of weeds on my father’s Southwest Iowa farm in the 1950s and 60s was the hemp weed. Dad called it “ditch weed’ because that was where it mainly grew, along with in fence rows and sometimes in our cornfields. My brothers and I hated ditch weed…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Recent studies have shown that, because of the barrage of technology like the social media, our attention spans are about half what they were ten years ago. For computer users, like ticklethewire readers, this attention span has been calculated to be 8 seconds, about the same as a goldfish. For those…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com The opening next week of the Enrique S. Camarena Elementary School in Chula Vista, California celebrates the legacy of a courageous DEA agent who was murdered by Mexican drug cartel members in February 1985. No doubt Special Agent Camarena’s family, especially his son Enrique S. Camarena, Jr., will pause this week,…
Ross Parker was chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit for 8 years and worked as an AUSA for 28 in that office. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com The acquittal Saturday of George Zimmerman in a Florida state courtroom has already brought cries by civil rights leaders for a federal…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com DEA Special Agent James “Terry” Watson had spent an enjoyable evening with friends at a Bogota restaurant watching Game 7 of the Heat-Spurs NBA Championship game. He was assigned to Cartagena but was in the Colombian capital as part of his duties. Agent Watson knew how dangerous being in law enforcement…
By Ross Paker ticklethewire.com Two months ago this column discussed the effect that America’s insatiable appetite for drugs was having on two contrasting Central American nations—violent and impoverished Honduras and peaceful and idyllic Costa Rica. Because of the success of DEA and the U.S. military at interdicting South American drug shipments by sea, the Colombian…
