Category: Domestic Affairs,

Reality Winner is serving 5 years in jail for leaking one document. Her mother says she’s being silenced

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

A US Air Force veteran, was sentenced to prison for more than five years in August 2018 as part of a deal in which she pleaded guilty to leaking a classified NSA document providing details of a 2016 Russian cyberattack on a supplier of US voting software.

…Winner, 27, who worked in the US Air Force’s drone program, is serving the longest sentence ever given to a journalistic source by a federal court, according to the Department of Justice.

…The government secured Winner’s conviction under the World War I-era Espionage Act, though prosecutors do not call her a spy, and in her plea agreement, government attorneys recognize that the document she leaked was sent to a news outlet rather than a foreign adversary.

…Winner-Davis said her daughter should never have been charged or convicted under the Espionage Act. “She’s not a traitor. Reality served her country,” she said. “She protected and defended us.”

“What did she release? She released something that actually helped us to defend ourselves against an attack by Russia,” she said.

…”It was very frustrating for her, day after day, to hear the news, to know that the country was struggling with not knowing the truth, and then seeing that she had the truth right there … in front of her on her desk.

“She printed that document out and she kept it on her desk for a couple of days before sending it. This is not something that she just did on a whim … in her mind, this was the right thing to do for America. This is what needed to be done.”

…”She has paid the price, but I wouldn’t change what she has done because I think that what she did was noble, and I think that what she did was patriotic.”

Reality Winner is serving 5 years in jail for leaking one document. Her mother says she’s being silenced – CNNPolitics

hmmmm

Ben Carson’s Ignorance Is Just as Much a Threat to Our Democracy as Trump’s Corruption

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

Carson, a groundbreaking pediatric neurosurgeon-turned-failed presidential candidate, may no longer physically hold the lives of children in his hands. But the decisions he and his agency make affect millions of people—many of them low-income children. That he could casually joke away his ignorance is yet another outrage in an outrageous presidency.

But Carson is just an extreme example in an administration full of unqualified appointees, starting at the top. And while much has rightly been made of President Trump’s kleptocracy, the type of behavior Carson displayed is no less problematic.

…There are the garden variety grifters and criminals like former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and former EPA head Scott Pruitt. But then there’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who, during her confirmation hearing, appeared ignorant of a fundamental federal education law and was unfamiliar with one of the biggest debates about education policy. There’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Kathy Kraninger, who had no experience in consumer affairs, financial services or regulation, or government (and who was also thoroughly schooled in a hearing by Rep. Porter).

And then there’s Jared Kushner, poster child for mediocre rich men failing up, who reportedly blocked the views of legitimate State Department experts from reaching his father-in-law, presumably so that he could single-handedly broker Middle East peace.

…There are real consequences of the wall-to-wall incompetence. It’s why the Department of Homeland Security confiscated children from their parents at the southern border with no tracking system or plan in place to ultimately reunite families. It’s why five migrant children have died in U.S. custody in the past six months—when none perished in the previous decade. It’s why Puerto Rico is still suffering the effects of Hurricane Maria two years ago, and why 3,000 Americans died in its aftermath.

Ben Carson’s Ignorance Is Just as Much a Threat to Our Democracy as Trump’s Corruption

sigh….

Hope Hicks is facing an existential question or a subpoena, depending on whom you ask.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

Hope Hicks is facing an existential question or a subpoena, depending on whom you ask.

We have gone through the looking glass. A subpoena is not a fucking existential question. The stupid twit (and she is a stupid twit, check out who she was dating when she left the WH) can either follow the law or not, but she’s not a hero for refusing to incriminate herself, she’s a self-interested twit.. “Lock her up”.

Trump quietly shuts down HIV cure research to appease the religious right

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

A “pause” on research that uses aborted fetal tissue, something Christian conservatives strongly oppose, was announced by the Trump administration this past September. The move will affect numerous biomedical research programs.

Congressional Republicans have tried to ban all fetal tissue research for years to appease the religious right. 85 Republican House members wrote a letter to the head of the FDA asking for a ban on fetal tissue research shortly before the “pause” was announced.

…Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division that would handle complaints from health care providers who did not want to take part in an abortion or treat transgender people.

Trump quietly shuts down HIV cure research to appease the religious right / LGBTQ Nation

Aggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Kansas Supreme Court: Abortion now a constitutional right in state

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Local Interest,Leave a comment

The court said the Kansas Constitution gives women the right to make their own decisions regarding their bodies. That means abortions would be legal in Kansas even if Roe v. Wade is reversed at the federal level.

“Our Supreme Court had not made a ruling in that regard until today,” said Robert Eye, a lawyer who represents two abortion doctors in the Supreme Court case.

Kansas Supreme Court: Abortion now a constitutional right in state

hmmm

Beyond Romantic Advertisements: Ancestry.com, Genealogy, and White Supremacy

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

In the past year, Ancestry changed its search engine to detach the history of slavery from basic genealogical inquiries. When searching for an individual’s name, Ancestry.com stopped including results from the 1850 or 1860 United States Census Slave Schedules.

…Before this change occurred, Ancestry.com subscribers would often have to face the uncomfortable fact that their family kept others enslaved. …Attempting that research today would hide this distressing (though important) aspect of [a] family’s history.

The search engine functions to hide both slave ownership and enslaved people from the eyes of contemporary genealogists. 

…Even if a casual observer did suspect a family history of slave ownership and had the inclination to then search the slave schedules themselves, they found the schedules no longer searchable by name on Ancestry.com. 

…While Americans who are descended from enslavers are now less likely to discover the full truth of their family histories, this change also presented similar difficulties for professional historians. The 1860 Slave Schedule represents the gold standard among Civil War historians wanting to establish whether someone owned another human being. 

…These recent issue with the census slave schedules do not appear to be a conspiracy to hide slave ownership, but instead the byproduct of trying to please a small group of customers without thinking through the societal ramifications of those choices. …The tech world is overwhelmingly populated with white men. Diversity isn’t just about doing the right thing morally—although perhaps that should be enough. It is also about making certain that products function well and don’t accidentally reinforce racial disparities by privileging one group’s search for the past over that of another.

…Bad historical knowledge can lead modern inequities to appear as solely the fault of the impoverished and not the product of centuries of discrimination. In this twisted world view, affirmative action can be understood as reverse discrimination because historically created inequality does not appear to even exist. Denying the existence of institutional racism, produced by a long history of oppression, serves to maintain inequality today. The danger of hiding slavery’s extent, horrors, and legacy is that it leads Americans to fundamentally misunderstand why racism remains such a problem. And you can’t solve a problem if you do not understand its roots.

Beyond Romantic Advertisements: Ancestry.com, Genealogy, and White Supremacy – AAIHS

sigh…

Woman whose rapist was granted joint custody of child speaks out – CBS News

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Chick Stuff,, Modern Parenting,Leave a comment

Woman whose rapist was granted joint custody of child speaks out – CBS News

Agggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Why the fuck can people who are involved with out in-justice system fucking THINK?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The judge who made the original ruling should be in jail.

Vox goes off on Ari Fleischer for pushing a false narrative about what lead up to the Second Gulf War

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Middle East,, Military,Leave a comment

There were numerous occasions when Bush and his advisers made statements that intelligence agencies knew to be false, both about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and about Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent links to al-Qaeda. 

…The CIA had informed policymakers it had “no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” The “massive stockpile” was just literally made up.

…In August 2002, Cheney declared, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” But as Corn notes, at that time there was “no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation.” 

……“Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.”

…While some noble dissenters, like the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and technical nuclear weapons experts at the Department of Energy, pushed back on the prevailing view in the intelligence community, the community as a whole clearly failed and vastly overestimated the likelihood that biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs existed.

…The atmosphere of impending war, the commission continues, “contributed to the too-ready willingness to accept dubious information as supporting the conventional wisdom and to an unwillingness even to consider the possibility that the conventional wisdom was wrong.”

…To engage in world politics is to weigh in on matters of life and death. Policymakers will get things wrong and they will cause people to lose their lives.  But engagement in world politics does not necessitate lying to the American people and the world at large.

Ari Fleischer is wrong: Bush did lie, and people did die – Vox

hmmmm

Trump’s pick for ICE director: I can tell which migrant children will become gang members by looking into their eyes

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Race,, The Americas,Leave a comment

“I’ve been to detention facilities where I’ve walked up to these individuals that are so-called minors, 17 or under,” Morgan said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in January. “I’ve looked at them and I’ve looked at their eyes, Tucker — and I’ve said that is a soon-to-be MS-13 gang member. It’s unequivocal.”

…The view that unaccompanied minors are more likely to become criminals is unsupported by statistical evidence. Studies have shown immigrants — legal and undocumented — are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

Trump’s pick for ICE director: I can tell which migrant children will become gang members by looking into their eyes – POLITICO

For the love of Krrrr-eyest….