Please read the article.
First what you describe in 1 & 2 is perfectly legal, it is called 'plain view' (it's mentioned in the article). Basically anything that is in 'plain view' of a government worker while in doing their job is fair game. (Ex: Traffic stop, pot on dash. Warrant for drugs, child porn near bag of drugs, etc)

Secondly: They were searching for evidence of steroid use, they search the computer (which was allowed per warrant), they searched 1 file, and had to scroll to the left to see the column that shows the result of the steroid test. The act of scrolling is what this case is about... Seriously.

Lets think of ways this could have been avoided:
1) Set excel to default to 50% or 25% view.
2) Printed the file without viewing it.
3) Windows was set to a high resolution that showed all the cells.
4) Open it on a computer with a wide screen display.
5) Open it on a computer with more than one display.

Do you really think that scrolling an excel file to the right in considered an unreasonable action?

What's the point of the jab against the Obama (and Bush) administration(s). The point of the article was made in the first part of the summery it just seems like it was troll-bait. I know this is 'just a blog' and not a newspaper or something, but what is wrong with a least pretending to be impartial?

Yes, he basically did. He continued to publicize the event after it was lawfully shut down. Including falsely stating that Bieber was inside signing autographs after the event was canceled when Bieber never even made it inside.

"James Roppo, 44, the senior vice president of sales at Island Def Jam Records, sent out Internet messages to over 3,000 fans that Justin Bieber was signing autographs even after police dispersed the crowd, cops said."

""They are not allowing me to come into the mall. if you dont leave I and my fans will be arrested as the police just told us," Bieber tweeted."

(emphasis mine)
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/11/21/2009-11-21_island_def_jam_records_exec_.html#ixzz0Xq2XpBMl

Umm.. Maybe something like: Any order which in it's self is not unlawful.

IE:
You! Keep pressing on this guy's chest for CPR. Lawful order.
You! Help me load up my car with TVs from this store I just broke into. Unlawful order.

Is there a clear definition? Probabaly not. Laws are VERY gray, and even when they are not the interpretation of them is.

IANAL: Basically yes, Miranda only applies when both 1) Suspect is in custody*, 2) Suspect is being interrogated*. On TV shows when people are reading rights right when arresting is BS, officers don't need to do that unless they plan on questioning the person on the way to the station, which is a bad idea.

*: How these terms are defined varies from state to state, custody can be as little as an officer being in the room to suspect placed under arrest. Something along the lines of 'suspect not free to leave' might be a good middle-ground. Interrogated normally means something like: "being asked questions which are likely to invoke an self-incriminating response". "What is your name?", "You know Sally?", "What is your SSN?" Would normally be ok. "Did you kill bob?", "Why did you take the money?", "How much drugs do you have on you?", would be bad.

Again, all this varies widely from state to state.

Not sure either way, but that doesn't really matter. They could be arresting him for basically inciting a riot and gave him one chance to fix it without being arrested.

Dude (to crowd): "Riot!"
Crowd: *riots*
Cop: Tell them to quit it or be arrested.
Dude (to cop): Hell no!
Cop: *arrests*

Perfectly legal and a valid arrest.
(No idea what happened, I didn't even RTFA. But most the time the 'A' doesn't know what happened either, I'm talking theory here.)

I have no idea if this is the case, but all states don't have the same laws or breakdown of laws. Maybe in that state inciting a riot is like conspiracy to commit a crime, and all parties get charged with the event. Or maybe he just met the rules for exact wording of assault, it could be something similar to:
"A person is guilty of the offense of Assault in the Blank degree if a person:
a)blah
b)blah
or c) Intentionally or knowingly does any action which has a reasonable chance of causing bodily harm to an individual."

Or the media could have it wrong, they don't get copies of the police reports for on-going investigations, they get their information from 2nd or 3rd hand sources who are very often wrong.

Again I have no idea if any of these are the case, but it's safe to assume when you have a high profile situation like this the decision to arrest someone and what for is not being made by a random beat officer. Instead it would most likely be made by someone higher in command and someone fairly knowledgeable.

They didn't say that there were drugs or a person in the car, just that the dog alerted, dogs are not 100%, whether or not that actually happened, you nor I will ever know. Officers say it did, guy says it didn't (and he didn't even know what to look for).

Based on the officer's statements he did have probable cause for the arrest: the dog alerting in combination with his evasive and uncooperative attitude, it would lead a reasonable person to think he was hiding something.

Yes it is unfortunate that 'being evasive and uncooperative' contributes to probable cause, but it does. There is tons of case-law to support it.

He would have been much better off by cooperating with the arrest and then if it turned out to be false, sue the police department for wrongful arrest. But by resisting the arrest, he validated it.

As citizens we are not allowed to resist arrest, even a wrongful one (like all things related to the law, some exceptions exist). If you don't like that, write your congress person, or become a lawyer or something.

His profession as a reverend is irrelevant, reverends do many illegal and immoral things, they are human just like everyone else. Even if it was a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card, the officers at the time don't exactly have the ability to verify that, who is to say the person they have in front of them is an actual reverend or a drug mule saying he is a reverend with some faked documents.

Regarding your ramblings about the gas chambers: Grow up, he is a US citizen on US soil he had zero chance of being put in a gas chamber that day.

I can't tell if you are kidding or not. Most fire departments have volunteers in them, just not enough of them to run all the stations in the country 24/365. How many stations do you think you could run on a volunteer basis on Christmas eve/day. What do you do on Superbowl Sunday when the volunteers call in sick? Hope there are no fires?

BTW: All the equipment and training are paid for by tax-payers and I think they also get things like medical and maybe retirement (as incentives to have volunteers).

An airport is private property, they can search you if they want, the whole search and seizure thing only applies to government agents (tsa doesn't count, oddly).

And of course you don't have to answer the question, even if they took him to the police station he wouldn't need to, the only time he may need to would be at trial.

He was placed under arrest, when you are placed under arrest you don't get to sit around questioning the arrest to decide if you really are. If you look at the DPS footage you can't really tell what was happening when he was getting "beaten", was he resisting or fighting back? The only thing you can tell is that they broke the window and tazed him after he was being completely uncooperative.

A few notes:
1) In the first vid he talks about not hearing the dogs bark for the alert, they normally don't, that is only on TV. Barking would be a clear giveaway to the 'bad-guy'.
2) He asks about having the dog come out again, it doesn't work that way, there are no 'do-overs', if the dog didn't alert, would they go two-out-of-three next?
3) He is clearly being a jerk (second video 0:00-0:45) he repeatedly asks the officer questions and then when the officer is calmly trying to respond to them he asks another one.
4) Failure to obey an officer is an arrestable offense in many locations when it comes to vehicles.

Not knowing how laws work and then resisting a valid arrest and not liking the consequences is stupid.

Police officers do not want to wrongly arrest people, by resisting (not getting out of the car) he gave them exactly what they wanted, a reason to arrest him.

If you do a lot of typing the context key is useful, it allows you to fix misspelled words without using the mouse or using the full spell check.
Just move the cursor to the red-squiggled word and press the context key, and just the arrow keys and enter to fix.

Hey Pot, have you met Kettle?

Geez, relax. He advised them, not ordered. The guy wasn't carrying it in a show of constitutional rights to bare arms, just moving it. He was simply stating that "You know you have people around here that over react, unless you want us showing up again for this, please cover it when you transport it." Because when they get called again, they would have to go down again and bother Bungie again.

Sorta, for example robbery and terrorist threatening are upgraded if you imply you have a weapon, whether or not you do. But Hawaii has a special crime just for doing a felony while you have a gun that only counts if it's a real gun. I think there is a federal charge for basically the same thing.

Can't you read? I fully acknowledged that prohibition didn't and wouldn't work. I was merely replying to that one over-used point: "Why have pot illegal when alcohol is worse.".

Like it or not, society would be way better off if drugs and alcohol were not used, logistically speaking I know this is not possible. Your life might not be as good, and for this I'm sorry. Ingesting a chemical that instructs your body to feel good is a lazy way to be happy, IMHO.

Here is Hawaii a huge chuck of violent and property crimes are because of meth users. Drunk driving causes about 15,000 deaths a year in the US alone.

But that's ok, it is their freedom to kill and injure others.

It always bugs me when people use this argument, I would be all for banning alcohol as well, it does far more damage then other drugs, but unfortunately they tried at already and it didn't work.