What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
In a deal with federal prosecutors, former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager admitted to using excessive force in the shooting death of Walter Scott.
Ex-officer Michael Slager pleads guilty in shooting death of Walter Scott – CNN.com
hmmmm
Siebel did let not the jury hear a claim of illegal entry against the cops, even though a recording shows he opened the door for police and told them he was fine and didn’t need help, the lawyers argue.
The appeal claims the cops ignored him and riled him up, which they then used as justification to force their way in — guns drawn.
…The lawyers also object to Siebel’s decision to dismiss an excessive force claim against Sgt. Keith Martin, a patrol supervisor who shot Chamberlain four times with beanbag rounds from a shotgun before Carelli fired the fatal bullet.
“During discovery, we learned that each projectile struck Mr. Chamberlain with a force greater than a Mike Tyson punch and that he, not surprisingly, was brought to the ground from the impact,” Cohen said.
Appeal filed in 68-year-old’s fatal Westchester police shooting – NY Daily News
hmmmm
Roy Oliver, who is white, was charged on Friday with murder for the death of Edwards.
…The lawsuit filed at a federal district court in Dallas on Friday by Odell Edwards seeks undisclosed damages from former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver for shooting his son Jordan Edwards, 15, with a rifle, court papers showed.
It also named Balch Springs, a predominantly black and Hispanic city about 15 miles (25 km) from Dallas as a defendant. The lawsuit accuses the city of failing to properly train Oliver, a person plaintiffs described as having a short fuse and a history of abusive behavior toward citizens.
…“Defendant Oliver shot Edwards in the head in plain view of his brothers … with total disregard to the safety of others,” the lawsuit said.
…The lawsuit alleges the two brothers were subject to racist comments, and the brother who sat beside Edwards when he died was handcuffed at the scene but not charged with any crime.
“(The brother) was not given any explanation and could not understand why he was being treated like a criminal,” the lawsuit said.
Jordan Edward’s Father Sues Police Officer For Killing His Son | HuffPost
hmmmm
“I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,”
…[Senator] Brian Schatz: “Mr. Attorney General: You voted for that judge. And that island is called Oahu. It’s my home. Have some respect.”
….Asked for a response from Mr. Sessions, Ian Prior, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said in an email: “Hawaii is, in fact, an island in the Pacific — a beautiful one where the attorney general’s granddaughter was born. The point, however, is that there is a problem when a flawed opinion by a single judge can block the president’s lawful exercise of authority to keep the entire country safe.”
(The State of Hawaii is a chain of islands, one of which is also called Hawaii; the judge’s chambers, however, are in Honolulu, which is on the island of Oahu.)
1.) I haven’t stopped laughing about this.
2.) Some get Sessions and his staff some geography lessons. Hawaii is a state. It shares the same name as an island in that state. Hawaii is an island in Hawaii, but it’s not the one where the Judge in question is. Also, the state of Hawaii encompasses many islands, the majority of which are not named Hawaii.
3.) If Sessions’ knowledge of the laws of this country truly does not include a basic understanding of how and why a Federal Judge can issue a stay on an Executive Order then he isn’t particularly well suited to his job, is he?
4.) What pedestrian old-white-man racist bullshit.
5.) The upside is that his kind will die out sooner than later.
In 2012, the city of Maplewood, Missouri ordered Rosetta Watson to vacate her home. But the city wasn’t done punishing Watson yet and also barred her from living anywhere in the city for six months. Her offense? She called the police four times seeking protection from her abusive ex-boyfriend.
Under Maplewood’s local ordinance, more than two calls to police regarding domestic violence within 180 days qualifies as a “nuisance,” as do commission of acts prohibited by federal, state, or local laws at a property. The ordinance does not exempt situations where residents need to call police for help or where they are crime victims.
Maplewood officials concluded that Ms. Watson should be removed from her home and banished from the city because she made calls for help with domestic violence, even though it was clear from the city’s own records that her ex-boyfriend had physically assaulted her. She was forced to move to St. Louis, where he again attacked her. This time, he broke in and stabbed her in the legs.
Because of her experience in Maplewood, she feared calling the police and instead took herself to the hospital. When the hospital contacted police, she was relieved to learn that law enforcement would not punish her. Her ex-boyfriend was arrested, convicted, and incarcerated.
sigh…
A new study shows that in 2015, when a record-high three women sat on the Supreme Court, 65.9 of interruptions happened as the women made their oral arguments.
…Interestingly enough, the women on the court actually speak less often and use fewer words when they make their argument (it’s unconfirmed if this a defense mechanism to cope with the inevitability of a male justice interrupting them). However, that doesn’t stop their male colleagues from interjecting at a much higher rate than they would for the other men sitting on the bench. Case in point: In 2015, Ginsburg was interrupted 11 times by Anthony Kennedy; Sotomayor was interrupted 15 times by Kennedy, 14 times by Samuel Alito, and 12 times by Chief Justice John Roberts; Kagan was interrupted over 10 times each by Kennedy, Alito, and Roberts. In contrast, only two of the men court were interrupted upwards of 10 times and the highest number of interruptions coming from one of the women was seven.
…Worse, this behavior even carries through to advocates who appear before the Supreme Court. These men show less deference for the women on the Court and interrupt the women regularly, even though Court protocol prohibits such behavior and the Chief Justice is expected to intervene when such a matter occurs.
Here’s How Frequently Women Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted by Men | Glamour
Unacceptable to show such disrespect to SJC justices.
F*ck Roberts and the hack horse he rode in on if he can’t a tighter lid on interruptions in his courtroom. Clearly his own respect for the rule of law and the institution and the country he serves is nil. Until he regulates and insists on respect for all justices ont he bench, he’s simply a useless, inequality fomenting, injustice perpetrating f*ckstick.
There were 25 debates during the presidential primaries and general election and not a single question about the attack on voting rights, even though this was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act.
…27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID.
On Election Day, there were 868 fewer polling places in states with a long history of voting discrimination, like Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina. These changes impacted hundreds of thousands of voters, yet received almost no coverage. In North Carolina, as my colleague Joan Walsh reported, black turnout decreased 16 percent during the first week of early voting because “in 40 heavily black counties, there were 158 fewer early polling places.” Even if these restrictions had no outcome on the election, it’s fundamentally immoral to keep people from voting in a democracy. The media devoted hours and hours to Trump’s absurd claim that the election was rigged against him, while spending precious little time on the real threat that voters faced.
The GOP’s Attack on Voting Rights Was the Most Under-Covered Story of 2016 | The Nation
sigh…
“Lordy, has this been difficult,” says James Comey of the fallout from his Clinton decision.
ehhhhh grrrrrrr
A new anti-protest law implicates anyone “found to be a conspirator” with a convicted trespasser, threatening environmental groups with huge fines.
Oklahoma Governor Signs Anti-Protest Law Imposing Huge Fines on “Conspirator” Organizations
hmmmm
FBI Director James Comey erroneously told Congress last week that former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded “hundreds and thousands” of emails to her husband’s laptop.
…The emails weren’t marked as classified.
…”Imagine for a moment if Hillary Clinton had said something this inaccurate when she testified for 11 hours,” Merrill tweeted Tuesday.
Comey’s claim to Congress about Clinton aide’s emails wasn’t true – CNNPolitics.com
Lying to to Congress and the American people? How little respect for integrity of our political system this scumbucket shows. If the American Justice System was just, he would have been in handcuffs by now.
Even if this was an innocent mistake he still deserves to be removed from his post for incompetence. And because lying to Congress is NOT an innocent mistake, he really, really should be facing charges for abusing the public trust that is central to his position and intentionally interfering with a central tenant of our Democracy: free and unfettered elections.
How can anyone trust the work of the entire FBI while this unreliable man is at the helm?
Screams and commotion took over Fort Lauderdale’s airport Monday as travelers clashed with Spirit Airlines employees and police.
: Spirit Airlines cancels flight, passenger brawl breaks out – CNN.com
What the faaaaaaaaaa?
A police officer has been charged with murder after shooting a teenager who was leaving a party in Dallas.
Texas policeman charged with murder over teenage death – BBC News
It’s a start.
Gather ’round, kids.
It is now conventional wisdom that one of the worst mistakes the country ever made was launching its idiotic, wasteful “war”on drugs. In the three decades in which this “war” has been waged, we have lost two generations of African-Americans to the prison system, shaved the Bill of Rights down to a nub, tied the hands of the judiciary, and, finally, made not an appreciable dent in the problem of drug use and drug addiction. We have blessed ourselves with private prisons and militarized police forces, so there is that.
…There was a strong, evolving, and bipartisan consensus that it was time to call a truce on the “war” we were making on our own citizens. The country was getting sensible about marijuana and mandatory minimum sentences at the same time; conservatives abandoned simplistic law ‘n order coding and hopped on the bandwagon of criminal justice reform; in many cases, they took the wheel on it. And, at least rhetorically, the response to the opioid crisis was more reasoned and measured than the response to the crisis of crack cocaine was—and the reasons for that are worth exploring. But nobody wants to, least of all JeffBo. Over the weekend, we learned that this brief, fragile truce had ended.
Jeff Sessions Wants to Kick the War on Drugs into High Gear
Sigh….
The protester was one of three convicted of interrupting the confirmation hearing of the attorney general.
Woman convicted after disrupting Sessions hearing ‘by laughing’ – BBC News
Aggggghhhhh! This administration could not be more un-American.
A program intended to assist victims of crimes committed by immigrants mistakenly lists names of small children in immigration detention.
WTF?!
President Trump is considering breaking up the 9th Circuit Court after a federal district court judge in its jurisdiction blocked his order to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities.”
In a Wednesday interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said “there are many people who want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous.”
In the interview, Trump accused liberals of “judge-shopping” for a court that would strike down his executive order.
Trump says he may break up 9th Circuit Court after rulings go against him | TheHill
OK, King George.
It rebuffs a request by a committee investigating former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
White House blocks Flynn document request – BBC News
WTF?!
Through cabinet appointments, Trump is gutting federal agencies that have improved citizens’ lives in ways that most will no longer take for granted.
Donald Trump: 100 Days of Deconstruction — Part 2
Sigh…
Remember when Trump promised to “take care” of African-Americans? Sessions is now in charge of carrying that out.
…Sessions’ claims are based on a combination of half-truths and outright lies. There is no crime wave or “plague of violence” in the United States. In fact, crime is at or near record lows in most places, including President Trump’s home city of New York. Sessions also, by implication, is continuing with the disproved claim that there’s a war on America’s police (in reality, being a police officer is one of the nation’s safest jobs) or are somehow unfairly restrained by being forced to show minimal respect for the civil liberties of the Americans they supposedly “protect and serve.”
…Sessions’ promise to further unleash America’s police on the “inner city” in order to make sure that “every neighborhood” is “safe and peaceful” reflects a larger set of values and political priorities.
The president’s inner circle of advisers includes an alarming number of apparent white supremacists and alleged neo-Nazi sympathizers, who view people of color as a threat to white, Christian American identity.
Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions ramp up their crusade against black and brown Americans – Salon.com
hmmmm
And so it begins….
I wonder how many Trump administration officials will have to face charges before one of them sings like the proverbial canary.
While still short on specific policy changes, Sessions has made it clear that he plans to crack down on drugs and immigration while resuscitating the harsh sentencing laws that have given the United States the world’s highest incarceration rate.
Jeff Sessions is quietly preparing to double down on mass incarceration – VICE News
Sigh…
Officers stopped men wearing hats from entering the church sanctuary unless they removed them, and men who would not remove their hats were asked to leave. The issue led to arguments between members of the public and police.
They also escorted people out who used profanity inside the church.
“There’s a couple people that’s arrested,” Johnson said. “There’s a couple people cussing in the church, disorderly conduct.”
Multiple people arrested at Flint water town hall meeting | MLive.com
What the faahhhhk were the doing holding it in a church, making me take off their hats, and arresting people for swearing anyways???
“Marijuana is not a factor in the drug war,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said Sunday.
hmmmm
He is thought to be the first immigrant protected by the DACA program to be deported under the Trump administration.
A 23-year-old ‘Dreamer’ sues the Trump administration over his deportation to Mexico – LA Times
Figures. Trump doesn’t deliver on his agreements, why should the federal government honor any of their own deals while he is in office?
Then as violent crime rates fell under George W Bush and prisons became clogged, prosecutions eased. The war on drugs fell out of fashion. Barack Obama called it “unproductive” and sent memos guiding prosecutors away from pursuing low-level offenders.
Now a new administration looks set to turn back the clock. Attorney General Jeff Sessions likes to reminisce about the aggressive law enforcement of the 80s and 90s and recently labelled cannabis “only slightly less awful” than heroin.
…Between 1980 and 2015, the number of people in prison for drug offences increased more than 10-fold, from 40,900 to 469,545, and the average sentence more than tripled, according to data compiled by the Sentencing Project. The majority of them were low-level offenders with no criminal record.
…A 2013 study published in the British Medical Journal found that since 1990 US drug prices nationwide had fallen while purity increased. And a 2012 study by the University of Florida found that the threat of severe punishment was “generally weak and insignificant” at deterring drug crime or lowering addiction rates.
Officers rue the return of US ‘war on drugs’ – BBC News
It is beyond hard to belive that Sessions or any of his cronies could possibly be that stupid. They the War on Drugs didn’t do the country any favors but they simply seems not to care. Just another way for the old, rich, white guys to beat down and separate everyone else.
Incompetent, asinine, racist hacks.
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