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It’s a nice gesture and all that you’re seeking to repeal the indefinite detention clause in the National Defense Authorization Act this past December, but what would have been really fucking special would be if you hadn’t voted to instill in the executive branch that kind of power to begin with, you dishonest fuckers. HuffPo:
A pair of lawmakers on Thursday offered a bill that would repeal laws that allow the indefinite detention of Americans and others by the military without trial.
The power of military authorities to arrest and jail people as long as they want stems from Congress’ 2001 joint resolution authorizing the use of military force against terrorists, but was explicitly codified into law last year after President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act on New Year’s Eve. While allowing military detention of anyone, the act mandated that certain terrorist suspects had to be held by the armed forces.
Civil libertarians on the left and right were sharply critical of the law, even though the president promised not to grab Americans.
Obama set out policy rules last month making good on that pledge, specifying that U.S. citizens and numerous other categories of suspected terrorists would not be clapped into the military system, which somewhat mollified critics.
But many pointed out that those rules are only good as long as Obama is president, prompting Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) to offer their bill Thursday.
“On the books, we have a law that gives the executive branch the power to indefinitely detain people here in the U.S., even U.S. citizens, and we believe we should take that off the books,” Smith said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “Even though you can make an argument that this executive will not exercise that authority, has not exercised that authority, we don’t believe we can afford to allow that kind of power to reside in the executive branch.”
This bill is a hollow attempt at making Team BLUE seem as if they care about our civil liberties. You don’t vote overwhelmingly in favor of a shitty bill, only to claim to be a hero by introducing another bill (one that is almost certain to fail, BTW) which seeks to nullify portions of the original one. If this isn’t a sad attempt at posturing for votes, nothing is.
Principles: how the fuck do they work?
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Our Saviour in Chief, the same guy who has steadfastly decried the role that money plays in politics, has used the power of his Presidency to appoint those who have donated vast sums of cash to his campaign to lucrative jobs within his administration. WaPo:
Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration.
Obama campaigned on what he called “the most sweeping ethics reform in history” and has frequently criticized the role of money in politics. That hasn’t stopped him from offering government jobs to some of his biggest bundlers, volunteer fundraisers who gather political contributions from other rich donors.
More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.
The man is a fraud who seeks to use his position to steal from some in order to line the pockets of his supporters. He is a political whore who will sell anything for a few dollars. Anyone who decries money in politics (*cough OCCUPY cough*) yet pulls the lever for Obama is full of shit and a fraud. He’s a lying fuck who’ll sell his mother if it meant getting a few more dollars to help secure his power.
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How is it that anyone could possibly argue that we have a police militarization problem? The Richmond Times-Dispatch on the police reaction to a pro-choice demonstration:
Still, the broader issue is worth drawing out. Saturday’s display of force is far from unique in the commonwealth. Homeland Security grants lavished on local police departments in the wake of 9/11 have only encouraged the tendency to blur the distinction between civilian and military operations. A number of Virginia localities now have armored assault vehicles such as the Lenco Bearcat — an 8-ton, quarter-million-dollar behemoth with half-inch steel plating. Among those localities is Warren County, a bucolic community of 40,000 people with an average of one homicide every three years — not exactly Hell’s Kitchen.
But the grants only accelerated an existing — and troubling — trend that started many years ago. Law enforcement exists to protect the rights of the citizens; maintaining order is a means to that end, not the end in itself. Police officers decked out like combat patrols in Fallujah send a far different, far more threatening message: that they have come not to protect and to serve, but to command and to conquer. Saturday’s events in the capital of Virginia stain a state with a reputation as the cradle of democracy.
Nope. No problem at all.
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School administrators calling the police and having a child arrested and detained in a “holding facility” for having what is described as a “bad attitude.” NECN.com:
Eleven-year-old Yajira Quezada, a sixth-grader at Colorado’s Shaw Heights Middle School, was handcuffed and taken to a holding facility for disobeying the orders of an assistant principal during lunch and being “argumentative and extremely rude”.
An Adams County Sheriff’s Office incident report says the assistant principal found Yajira walking in the hallway during lunch because the girl claimed she was cold and needed to get a sweater from her locker.
The report says the assistant principal was in mid-sentence when Yajira, “turned and walked away saying, ‘I don’t have time for this.’”
When intervention efforts with a counselor failed, Yajira was handcuffed and put in the school resource officer’s patrol car and taken to a juvenile holding facility called “The Link.”
An assistant principal feels slighted because an 11 year old decided that getting a sweater was more important than blindly obeying his/her authority, and so the obvious answer is to call the police and have this girl arrested. Disobey authority and be punished swiftly and decisively. That is the only lesson public schools seek to teach.
Notice also how the girl who was arrested has been identified in the report, yet the administrator involved remains anonymous. Nice touch.
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New Orleans to forgive $500k in traffic tickets issued to city workers using city vehicles on city time because they weren’t told that, though they be heroes, they too must follow the same traffic laws as the rest of humanity, no matter how base and unpalatable.
When it comes to paying for tickets generated by New Orleans’ traffic cameras, some of the biggest scofflaws are city employees driving taxpayer-financed vehicles. As of September 2011, at least 400 city vehicles had racked up fines totaling $547,580, according to records provided by City Hall in response to a public-records request.
And five of the 20 vehicles that owe the city the most money are city vehicles, the records show.
All that is about to change. But not before the slate is wiped clean, said Andy Kopplin, chief administrative officer to Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
Kopplin said he doesn’t think it would be fair to try to go after employees who have racked up tickets because the city has not spelled out clear rules thus far.
Why is it that city workers need to be told that they are subject to the same laws as everyone else? Are they that fucking stupid?
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I’m not exactly sure how the left has convinced America that racism and misogyny are characteristics that belong solely to the right, but it was a masterful con job. The Daily Beast:
This is not to suggest that liberals—or feminists—never complain about misogyny. Many feminist blogs now document attacks on women on the left and the right, including Jezebel, Shakesville, and the Women’s Media Center (which was cofounded by Steinem). But when it comes to high-profile campaigns to hold [journalists who clearly identify with the political left] accountable—such as that waged against Limbaugh—the real fury seems reserved only for conservatives, while the men on the left get a wink and a nod as long as they are carrying water for the liberal cause.
After all, if Limbaugh’s outburst is part of the “war on women,” then what is the routine misogyny of liberal media men?
It’s time for some equal-opportunity accountability. Without it, the fight against media misogyny will continue to be perceived as a proxy war for the Democratic Party, not a fight for fair treatment of women in the public square.
As long as those who vote for the political left continue to put up with misogyny by allowing journalists with whom they agree get away with it so long as they’re trumpeting some cause with which they agree, they’re nothing but a bunch of frauds.
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For a political publication based in Washington DC, you’d think The Hill would know that Congress can’t “overturn” a Supreme Court decision no matter how many times they throw a penny in the pond.
The House on Tuesday afternoon approved legislation that overturns a 2005 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the ability of states to take control of private property under the doctrine of eminent domain and hand it to another private developer.
As laudable as their motive of trying to curb the most evil of government actions may be,1 this law, even if passed, won’t get rid of Kelo.
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1. Of course I’m referring to government outright stealing property on a whim for any reason whatsoever, but specifically to government stealing private land from individuals so that it can be sold to another party.
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The Wall Street Journal on large corporate and individual donations to the Occupy movement:
A group of business leaders—including Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg—are planning to pour substantial funds into the Occupy Wall Street movement in hopes of sustaining the protests and fostering political change.
[. . .]
Mr. Cohen and other members of the group met with protesters in a Manhattan church Sunday night to pitch the idea to dedicated activists. Not all were impressed, on the theory it would only add bureaucracy.
“Essentially this is a group of very wealthy people who have picked a handler to deal with Occupy Wall Street,” said Ravi Ahmed, 34 years old, a protester who works as an academic administrator. “They’ve re-created what’s wrong with nonprofits and philanthropy structures.”
This is the Occupy movement being bought out by the very people they’re allegedly protesting. Good job, guys! Way to fold on your principles the very minute you finally understand that they’re fraudulent.
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Nationally, Team RED governors are worried about the tone and direction of the national campaign. National Journal:
On the sidelines of the National Governors Association Winter Meeting in Washington that wraps up on Monday, Republicans are skeptical that the reemergence of social issues in the political landscape is net positive for the party, and it’s clear they’re more comfortable steering the discussion toward the economy.
“Anything that distracts the campaign from President Obama’s policies and the effect of those policies is less beneficial than when we are talking about [them],” said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.
Even as the economy remains the primary political focus of both Democrats and Republicans, in recent weeks, social issues have reemerged in state and national politics.
Gee; sane people worried that there are people like Santorum out there who likes to talk about the “dangers of contraception” and other such culture war Christian morality claptrap that is a big fat highway to fucking nowhere amongst the vast majority of voters? You don’t fuckin’ say.
The day cannot come fast enough when cultural conservatism is a non-starter in national politics, and Team RED once again learns to focus on small government in all aspects of our lives. Until then, they can go fuck themselves and their so-called morality.
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Look at Spot
See Spot run
See cop kill Spot with gun
It both teaches kids to read a t a rudimentary level, and teaches them the very valuable lesson that, oftentimes, cops are NOT our friends.
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The General Counsel for the FBI has admitted that the law enforcement agency, after the US V Jones ruling which established that placing a GPS device on a vehicle constituted a search under the 4th Amendment, turned off ~3000 GPS tracking devices that were in use without a warrant.
Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.
These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law.
I wonder if he meant that the FBI turned off the devices, or “turned off” the devices.
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If your car has a “hidden compartment”, whatever that might be, don’t take it to Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch:
A hidden compartment in your vehicle, with or without drugs, could mean big trouble as Ohio officials get serious about slowing down drug-smuggling.
A proposed state law, advocated by Gov. John Kasich, would make it a fourth-degree felony to own a vehicle equipped with secret compartments. A conviction would mean up to 18 months in jail and a potential $5,000 fine.
So after 40 years and trillions of dollars fighting the war on drugs, it’s only now that Ohio is putting in to effect a pointless law about “hidden compartments” in cars that won’t stave off drug use one iota that drug warriors are “getting serious.”
Give me a fucking break.
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About 10% of federal workers owe back taxes totaling about $3.4B. The National Review Online:
A recent report by the Washington Post shows that in 2010, some 279,000 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3.4 billion in back income taxes, up from $2.7 billion in 2007.
Interestingly, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has the largest percentage of people with tax delinquency issues, while U.S. Treasury Department has the lowest one (Geithner excluded?). The U.S. Office of Government Ethics’s delinquency rate is the 6th highest, at 6.81 percent.
Not only are they leeches in that they actively take from productive people without adding anything of value back in to society (The Office of Government Ethics is clearly a federal entity that isn’t even coming close to doing its job), but they don’t even pay their share of taxes that goes towards their own paycheck.
There is no logical reason why each and every one of these people shouldn’t be fired immediately, and rendered incapable of getting another government job. Ever.
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It’s increasingly obvious that police aren’t concerned with accountability at all. Pixiq:
Relations between Oakland police and the city’s residents have never been good, which is one reason why the department issued body-mounted cameras to its officers last year.
The goal was to increase accountability, which is important for a department that is facing a federal takeover this March.
However, the above video, which shows several officers with their body-mounted cameras turned off – a departmental violation – is just the latest example of Oakland police officers not wanting any accountability.
There have been a rash of incidents in which video or audio footage which was supposed to exist has “disappeared”, or otherwise never existed because of a technological “glitch.” Were it up to me, ALL encounters between the police and the public should be recorded in some form. If there is some technological mishap, or the recording was never made, anything that occurs as a result of said encounter is void. The police are public servants. They need to held accountable for their actions, and the time when we can accept their word as gospel is over.
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I’m not even sure how to approach this one, so I won’t even try. Fox News:
A New Hampshire man who fired his handgun into the ground to scare an alleged burglar he caught crawling out of a neighbor’s window is now facing a felony charge — and the same potential prison sentence as the man he stopped.
Dennis Fleming, 61, of Farmington, was arrested for reckless conduct after the Saturday incident at his 19th century farmhouse. The single grandfather had returned home to find that his home had been burglarized and spotted Joseph Hebert, 27, climbing out of a window at a neighbor’s home. Fleming said he yelled “Freeze!” before firing his gun into the ground, then held Hebert at gunpoint until police arrived.
“I didn’t think I could handle this guy physically, so I fired into the ground,” Fleming told FoxNews.com. “He stopped. He knew I was serious. I was angry … and I was worried that this guy was going to come after me.”
The fuck?
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Vice Principal strip searching students because another student accused him of having marijuana. And all this AFTER a massive case where the Supreme Court ruled that under NO circumstances could students be strip searched, and another case in the same fucking school district where a strip search case was found to violate students’ 4th Amendment rights. Fox News:
A Georgia middle school student claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday he was humiliated and traumatized when he was brought to a vice principal’s office and forced to strip in front of classmates who said he had marijuana.
The student, then in the seventh-grade, said he still suffers from emotional distress because his classmates taunted him by calling him Superman, the underwear he was wearing when he was strip-searched. The student is suing the Clayton County school district for unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.
[. . .]
The student, identified in court documents as D.H., said officials at Eddie White Academy initially strip-searched three other students on Feb. 8, 2011, after suspecting they had marijuana. One of them accused D.H. of having drugs, and he was brought to then-vice principal Tyrus McDowell’s office.
While the three classmates watched, D.H.’s pockets and book bag were searched but didn’t find anything, the lawsuit said. One of the students told school officials he had lied about D.H. having drugs, but administrators continued the search as D.H. begged to be taken to the bathroom for more privacy, according to the lawsuit.
D.H. was ordered to strip and again, no drugs were found.
“The strip searches were done intentionally, willfully, wantonly, maliciously, recklessly, sadistically, deliberately, with callous indifference to their consequences,” according to the lawsuit, which also names as defendants the county’s sheriff’s department and Ricky Redding, the school’s resource officer.
The public school system is about nothing more than compliance, and in the face of non-compliance, humiliation.
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Michigan legislators, in their infinite wisdom, are seeking to turn kids in to criminals by outlawing toy guns.
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Good liberals should be sure to send their children to public school in order to get a crappy education, even if a private or home school education would be a better option for their children, because poor people, fairness and stuff. She also maintains, despite the evidence showing that, in virtually every academic metric, both home schooled and privately schooled children are better educated than their publicly educated brethren, that “government is the only institution with the power and scale to intervene in the massive undertaking of better educating American children” (read: the only institution willing to indoctrinate our children in the wonders of government and compliance with government authority). Slate:
Nor can we allow homeschoolers to believe their choice impacts only their own offspring. Although the national school-reform debate is fixated on standardized testing and “teacher quality”—indeed, the uptick in secular homeschooling may be, in part, a backlash against this narrow education agenda—a growing body of research suggests “peer effects” have a large impact on student achievement. Low-income kids earn higher test scores when they attend school alongside middle-class kids, while the test scores of privileged children are impervious to the influence of less-privileged peers. So when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.
Of course, no one wants to sacrifice his own child’s education in order to better serve someone else’s kid. But here’s the great thing about attending racially and socioeconomically integrated schools: It helps children become better grown-ups.
Unfortunately, this is the progressive dream. The author notes that publicly educated privileged children don’t suffer when exposed to those who are less privileged, yet fails to mention that they would have an opportunity excel at a higher level were they to be home schooled. She isn’t worried about the artificial ceiling of public education keeping some kids from meeting their educational potential, but with purposefully holding those children back in order to (maybe, perhaps, have the chance to create an opportunity to) facilitate a slightly better education for those who are less privileged. She wants parents to ignore what is in the best interest of their children, and choose what might help someone else instead. She purposefully wants progressives to bring the entire system down to meet the abilities of those less privileged rather than allowing some individual students to excel at very high levels. She doesn’t care about education, but about “fairness,” a fact exposed by conveniently forgetting to mention the many negative aspects of of public education.1 She’d rather see an entire society of mediocre educated children than one with some who excel well beyond what public education is capable and willing to provide because it would be unfair to lesser privileged children. Thankfully this is not the vision of all liberals, though that this view of what education should be, a race to the bottom, exists in America at all is lamentable.
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1. I agree with almost every point of Couture’s point of view, though it seems doubtful that she would acknowledge that even if it were the progressives of the 60s which created the modern homeschool movement, it is because of progressives and other liberals in government that we have the punitive public education system we have. One that is compulsory, with no choice whatsoever (especially for poor people), and teaches their students that compliance to authority is the way to success. Teachers unions and the liberal politicians they buy have created this system of compliance as education, and created the necessity to get out via home schooling.
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It gives me hope to see at least one town doing what they can to stave off unnecessary police militarization. Radley Balko at The Huffington Post:
“We’re going to have our own tank.”
That’s what Keene, N.H., Mayor Kendall Lane whispered to Councilman Mitch Greenwood during a December city council meeting.
It’s not quite a tank. But the quaint town of 23,000 — scene of just two murders since 1999 — had just accepted a $285,933 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to purchase a Bearcat, an eight-ton armored personnel vehicle made by Lenco Industries Inc.
But those plans are on hold for now, thanks to a backlash from feisty residents. Resistance began with Mike Clark, a 27-year-old handyman. Clark, who said he’s had a couple encounters with Keene police and currently faces a charge of criminal mischief, read about the Homeland Security grant in the newspaper. “The police are already pretty brutal,” Clark said, claiming he was roughed up in both his encounters with local police. “The last thing they need is this big piece of military equipment to make them think they’re soldiers.”
[. . .]
More than 100 people packed a Feb. 9 meeting of a city council committee, nearly all to oppose equipping the police deaprtment [sic], with about 45 sworn officers, with a Bearcat. One speaker quoted in the Keene Sentinel was Roberta Mastrogiovanni, owner of a newsstand downtown. “It promotes violence,” Mastrogiovanni said. “We should promote more human interaction rather than militarize. I refuse to use money for something this unnecessary when so many people in our community are in need.”
When a town of just 23,000 that has had a paltry 2 murders in the last decade, and has never had a situation in which a SWAT unit might be warranted (armed robbery with standoff, hostage situation, etc) feels they need an armored personnel carrier equipped to protect themselves from IED attacks and other explosions, you know that there’s something not right with the current state of law enforcement and the role it plays in American life.
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It appears that those damn models that climate scientists have used which show the end of the world haven’t yet coerced reality to join in on the doomsday scenarios. Clearly there’s something wrong with the climate because there’s just no way that the models could be wrong.
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