Photos show massive crowds for nationwide March for Our Lives protests – Business Insider
hmmm
Category: Domestic Affairs,
Religious Freedom Counts First In This HHS Civil Rights Division
“Director Severino presents himself as a civil rights lawyer. And what he has done as OCR director is turn the idea of civil rights on its head,” says Harper Jean Tobin, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality.
That’s because Severino — a devout Catholic and political conservative — has put the right to religious [discrimination] front and center …in health care.
Religious Freedom Counts First In This HHS Civil Rights Division : Shots – Health News : NPR
Perhaps it is human nature to want to discriminate against others after you, yourself, have been the victim of of discrimination.
….Or maybe this guy is just a bigoted asshole.
‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer
Guccifer 2.0, the “lone hacker” who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia’s military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It’s an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.
…Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone admitted being in touch with Guccifer over Twitter’s direct messaging service. And in August 2016, Stone published an article on the pro-Trump-friendly Breitbart News calling on his political opponents to “Stop Blaming Russia” for the hack. “I have some news for Hillary and Democrats—I think I’ve got the real culprit,” he wrote. “It doesn’t seem to be the Russians that hacked the DNC, but instead a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0.”
Five months later, in January 2017, the CIA, NSA, and FBI assessed “with high confidence” that “Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data.”
…“Almost immediately various cyber security companies and individuals were skeptical of Guccifer 2.0 and the backstory that he had generated for himself,” said Kyle Ehmke, an intelligence researcher at the cyber security firm ThreatConnect. “We started seeing these inconsistencies that led back to the idea that he was created hastily… by the individual or individuals that affected the DNC compromise.”
…Guccifer was connecting through an anonymizing service called Elite VPN, a virtual private networking service that had an exit point in France but was headquartered in Russia.
…But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation.
…U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.
…Guccifer 2.0 maintained a sporadic online presence throughout the election, posting to his dedicated WordPress blog and on Twitter, and spilling more DNC documents, sometimes in private emails to journalists.
…Guccifer 2.0 reached down the ballot as well, posting documents from the Democrats’ national campaign committee on his WordPress blog. There, readers could find internal Democratic candidate assessments relevant to battleground states like Pennsylvania and Florida; internal assessments of key congressional districts, with granular analyses of their demographics; and campaign recruitment material.
…Sometime after its hasty launch, the Guccifer persona was handed off to a more experienced GRU officer, according to a source familiar with the matter. The timing of that handoff is unclear, but Guccifer 2.0’s last blog post, from Jan. 12, 2017, evinced a far greater command of English that the persona’s earlier efforts.
…“The attribution of Guccifer 2.0 as an officer of Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency brings the investigation closer to the Kremlin’s doorstep—and to Trump himself.”
hmmmm
Escaping Kakuma: How women find freedom through soccer in a refugee camp
The refugee camp is the third largest in the world, but it has been around for so long that it has lost any pretense it is supposed to be temporary.
…The refugees that reside there come from nations with prominently conservative cultures — primarily South Sudan and Somalia — where women are expected to stay in their homes and handle traditional household duties, like cooking, cleaning, and child-raising. The women you do see in the market are often carrying heavy loads of firewood. Every duty related to maintaining a homestead almost exclusively fall on women, while men — people who in a better world would be working — talk away their days.
…Unless you seek them out, refugee women are largely invisible in Kakuma. To be a refugee man is to feel ignored by the world. To be a refugee woman, then, is to be erased from it.
…There were still many more stories to tell within the world’s third-largest refugee camp, however, a place where sports have greater meaning as a way to combat idleness within an oft-forgotten population. This is a story about the women of Kakuma.
…Angelina Jolie Primary School stands apart from Kakuma’s hatchet-shaped cartography. It was opened in 2005 — funded by the actress and special envoy to the UNHCR — as a boarding school for bright or at-risk girls. There, they can be nurtured in a safer environment, away from the problems within Kakuma’s traditional borders. The girls are given a more focused education — the classrooms are much smaller than in the coed schools that pack upwards of a 100 students in one room — and they perform, on average, much better than the rest of Kakuma on Kenya’s standardized testing for secondary schools.
Escaping Kakuma: How women find freedom through soccer in a refugee camp – SBNation.com
hmmm
Medical Marijuana and Gun Laws Collide
The [9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] ruled 3-0 on Wednesday that a ban preventing medical marijuana card holders from purchasing firearms is not in violation of the Second Amendment, the Associated Press reports. There are nine western states under the appeals court’s jurisdiction, including Nevada, where the case originated.
Medical Marijuana and Gun Laws Collide | Fortune
hmmm
A new exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) delves into the Negro Motorist Green Book
Nat King Cole was the first to record the song and the great irony is that while the jazz legend helped romanticize the highway, it was incredibly dangerous for him: Route 66 snaked through cities and towns that were hostile and often violent toward black travelers.
However, touring musicians, like Cole, and other travelers had a secret weapon to bypass racist towns, restaurants, motels, gas stations, and other businesses across the country: The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide to establishments that were safe for and welcoming to African Americans.
…“The Green Book was like a treasure map that led [black travelers] to places that they could stop, from gas stations to food to hotels,” Adams tells Curbed.
…“America was promoting this idea of travel and using automobiles and trailers to explore the country, but it wasn’t something that black Americans had the privilege of doing,” Dexter Wimberly, the exhibition’s curator, tells Curbed. “What Green did was try to construct a space where black travelers can feel like all the other [white] Americans who can travel.”
…“In society, there so many opposition forces to deal with; focusing on the effects of the Green Book would be more enlightening to future generations,” Adams says. “Something so simple as putting a book together can be a way to deal with political unrest; something so simple that you can do on your own can affect people in a constructive way.”
How the “Green Book” changed travel for African Americans – Curbed
hmmmm
Ex-Playboy model on alleged Trump affair: ‘Somebody’s lying, and I can tell you, it’s not me’
McDougal alleges in court documents that AMI failed to live up to the deal they signed with her and that the company never intended to publish a story about her alleged affair with Trump. She’s alleging that the publisher instead engaged in the practice of “catching and killing” an unfavorable story about Trump. According to McDougal’s suit, AMI decided “they would buy the story not to publish it, because [AMI CEO David Pecker] was a close friend of Mr. Trump.”
…The payments to Daniels and McDougal have also raised questions about possible violations of federal election laws. Liberal advocacy groups have asked the Federal Elections Commission to investigate. Cohen has said that the payment to Daniels was legal and came from his personal funds.
hmmmm
Karen McDougal tells CNN Trump tried to pay her after sex
…recalled a time when Trump showed her around his New York apartment in Trump Tower, pointing to Melania’s room.
…Trump had complimented her by comparing her favorably to his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump.
“He said I was beautiful like her,” McDougal said
Karen McDougal tells CNN Trump tried to pay her after sex – CNNPolitics
hmmmm.
And the Ivanka bit? Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
For all their risks, opioids had no pain-relieving advantage in a yearlong clinical trial
In the first randomized clinical trial to make a head-to-head comparison between opioids and other kinds of pain medications, patients who took opioids fared no better over the long term than patients who used safer alternatives.
“There was no significant difference in pain-related function between the 2 groups over 12 months,” researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
…”Overall, opioids did not demonstrate any advantage over nonopioid medications that could potentially outweigh their greater risk of harms,” wrote the team led by Dr. Erin Krebs of the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System’s Center for Chronic Disease Outcomes Research.
… Over the course of a year, 41% of those taking opioids saw at least a 30% improvement in their pain severity, as did 54% of those who weren’t on opioids.
Measures of how pain interfered with things like work, sleep, mood and general enjoyment of life were nearly identical in both groups. On a scale of 0 to 10, the average score was 3.4 for those on opioids and 3.3 for those who weren’t. After 12 months, 59% of those in the opioid group and 61% of those in the nonopioid group reported an improvement of at least 30%.
…Patients in the opioid group had significantly more trouble with medication-related symptoms.
For all their risks, opioids had no pain-relieving advantage in a yearlong clinical trial
No shit, Sherlock?!
Georgia Gilmore: The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement
Georgia Gilmore, the Montgomery cook, midwife and activist whose secret kitchen fed the civil rights movement
When King and others held meetings of the Montgomery Improvement Association at the Holt Street Baptist Church, Gilmore was there, selling fried chicken sandwiches and other foods to the African-American men and women gathered there who’d pledged not to use the city’s buses until they were desegregated. Gilmore poured those profits back into the movement.
…Gilmore organized black women to sell pound cakes and sweet potato pies, fried fish and stewed greens, pork chops and rice at beauty salons, cab stands and churches. “She offered these women, many of whose grandmothers were born into slavery, a way to contribute to the cause that would not raise suspicions of white employers who might fire them from their jobs, or white landowners who might evict them from the houses they rented,” Edge says.
The money they raised helped pay for the alternative transportation system that arose in Montgomery during the 381-day bus boycott: hundreds of cars, trucks and wagons that ferried black workers to and from their jobs across town each day. Gilmore’s cooking helped pay for the insurance, gas, wagons and vehicle repairs that kept that system going.
She called the group of women who worked with her in this project “The Club from Nowhere” because, as Betty Gilmore, Georgia’s sister, told Edge years later, “It was like, ‘Where did this money come from? It came from nowhere.”
Meet The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement : The Salt : NPR
cool!
Philando Castile charity wipes out school lunch debt in district where he worked
Philando Castile, who was killed by a police officer during a 2016 traffic stop, used to help kids who couldn’t afford lunch. The school nutrition supervisor would dip into his pocket and pay the bill.
Now a charity run in his name has multiplied his mission by thousands, wiping out the lunch debt of every student at all 56 schools in Minnesota’s St. Paul Public Schools, where Castile worked.
…Pam Fergus, the Metro State University educator who runs the fund with her students, dropped off a check for about $35,000 this week at the school district’s office, she told CNN.
The money will clear every cent families owe for school lunches. That’s important because until the debt is paid, students’ caregivers cannot submit paperwork to request free to reduced-price lunches, based on need, Fergus said.
“They just keep accruing the debt, every day getting (further and further) into debt,” she said, adding that some families owed as much as $1,000.
Philando Castile charity wipes out school lunch debt in district where he worked – CNN
sigh….
Amtrak funding, including for long-distance trains, to be preserved
“There is an urgent need to improve the safety of our railways and this federal funding will help implement positive train control, grade crossing improvements, and other critical railway safety updates,” said U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “I was proud to have fought for these funds to be included in the omnibus language.”
Positive train control is an automated system to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments due to excessive speed and other accidents. Lack of positive train control has been blamed for numerous deadly mishaps.
The budget will provide $592 million for the federal Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program, which makes competitive grants to railroads and government agencies for safety and capacity improvements.
Schumer’s office said it was the first time the program received substantial funding.
Amtrak funding, including for long-distance trains, to be preserved
hmmm
Ben Carson Said Trans People In Homeless Shelters Make Others ‘Not Comfortable’
Testifying before a House subcommittee, Carson was reportedly asked by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) about the removal of HUD training materials that help protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, by guiding homeless shelters on how to ensure access to shelters for transgender people.
…Carson replied, “I’ll give you an example. There were some women who said they were not comfortable with the idea of being in a shelter, being in a shower, and somebody who had a very different anatomy,” Carson said.
…Last year, HUD removed guidelines from its website meant to provide training to homeless shelters on how to ensure equal access to transgender people.
…In November 2015, then-presidential candidate Carson said that transgender people should have separate bathrooms because they “make everybody else uncomfortable.” Earlier that same year, Carson said in a CNN interview that being gay was “absolutely” a choice, “because a lot of people … go into prison straight ― and when they come out, they’re gay.”
Ben Carson Said Trans People In Homeless Shelters Make Others ‘Not Comfortable’ | HuffPost
hmmmm
Vermont Is Now The Only State That’s Never Sent A Woman To Congress
On Wednesday, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant appointed the state’s Agriculture Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith to a U.S. Senate seat, replacing Sen. Thad Cochran. With that appointment, Vermont is now the only state to never send a woman to Congress.
Vermont Is Now The Only State That’s Never Sent A Woman To Congress | Vermont Public Radio
Well, now…
Hmmmmm.
Citigroup Becomes First Major Bank to Restrict Some Gun Sales
Citigroup Inc. plans to prohibit retailers that are customers of the bank from offering bump stocks or selling guns to people who haven’t passed a background check or are younger than 21.
The bank is imposing the restrictions on companies that use it to issue store credit-cards or for lending and other services, according to a memo Thursday. The lender also barred the sale of high-capacity magazines.
Citigroup Becomes First Major Bank to Restrict Some Gun Sales – Bloomberg
hmmm
Pennsylvania Chief Justice Criticizes Impeachment Moves
The impeachment resolutions, introduced by a Republican lawmaker, follow a tense battle over the commonwealth’s redrawn congressional map, which the Democratic-majority court imposed after declaring the previous map unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
Chief Justice Thomas Saylor, himself a Republican, said he was “very concerned” about the filings.
“Threats of impeachment directed against Justices because of their decision in a particular case are an attack upon an independent judiciary, which is an essential component of our constitutional plan of government,” he wrote in a statement.
Pennsylvania Chief Justice Criticizes Impeachment Moves : NPR
hmmm
When ICE Tries to Deport Americans, Who Defends Them?
The fact that Busse was almost deported from a country where he should have been protected by law as a citizen should not be understood as a freak mistake. For decades, U.S. citizens have been deported repeatedly, in isolated cases and en masse, due to racism and bureaucratic indifference, as well as the complexity of federal immigration laws, which can make it difficult for some bona-fide U.S. citizens to understand and document their status.
…In July, 2017, after some back-and-forth with Customs and Border Protection, Busse returned to J. F. K. for what he thought was a routine appointment. He found himself in a room with eight to ten officers. As he recalled, someone informed him, “You’re going into the deportation process.” He was handcuffed, shackled, and transported to the immigration detention wing of the Bergen County Jail, in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Busse found the detention facility “pretty hard to deal with,” he told me later. He shared a cell with a detainee from Guyana and encountered others in the facility who had been there for as many as five years.
…Two months after he was detained, Busse received his first hearing in immigration court, on Varick Street, in Manhattan. Immigration detainees arrive there early most weekday mornings, in shackles, wearing orange jumpsuits. When Busse arrived, he encountered a lawyer for the first time since his detention, thanks to a recent program enacted by the New York City Council, which pays lawyers to represent poor immigrant detainees. At “intake,” Gregory Copeland, a staff attorney at Legal Aid, appeared before a group of between ten and twenty detainees, and he and a colleague made a short presentation in English and Spanish.
…In the labyrinth that is U.S. immigration law, certain immigrants automatically become citizens if, when they are minors, their parents become naturalized citizens.
…The obvious solution to avoid mistakenly deporting citizens would be to provide lawyers conversant with immigration law to represent people in detention and at deportation proceedings, when they lack resources to find their own lawyers. …Yet the Supreme Court has not recognized that people facing immigration detention and deportation have a universal, constitutional right to a lawyer.
…Busse is back at his financial firm. Given the number of people like him who pass through immigration detention but have no lawyer to represent them, it is hard to know how many Americans have been inadvertently banished from their country during the last decade. To an extent, their typical profile is not hard to guess at: people with low incomes, without a high level of education, or who belong to certain ethnic or religious groups. Or maybe, some days, just Americans with bad luck.
When ICE Tries to Deport Americans, Who Defends Them? | The New Yorker
Jeezus….
Sacramento police release video of fatal shooting of unarmed man
Community activists and relatives of Clark have questioned why officers needed to fire 20 shots. In a statement, police said: “At the time of the shooting, the officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them.”
In the three law enforcement videos — one from each of the two shooting officers’ body cameras and one from a sheriff’s helicopter that aided them in tracking down the suspect — officers report several times before they confront the man that they believe he is armed.
…At no time can the officers be heard identifying themselves as police.
…Police acknowledged in their statement Wednesday that no weapon was found.
…They said, ‘Put your hands up, gun,’ and then they just let loose on my nephew,” Durham said.
“They didn’t give him a chance to put his hands up or anything, and then when they shot him down.”
Sacramento police release video of fatal shooting of unarmed man – NBC News
Incompetent, lawless, murderous thugs like these have no business wearing a badge. The idea that murdering someone is OK because you are scared is bullshit. If an officer can keep calm in a tense situation they have no business being an officer in the first place.
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