Depiddy Lawn Jockey Gets Slammed on Faux

Nice one by Eboni Williams.

Why isn’t this clown in jail yet…For murder?

Fox News anchor swats down Sheriff David Clarke for disrespecting Rep. John Lewis

Controversial right-wing former Sheriff David Clarke got more than he bargained for when he tried to cast aspersions against the character and record of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

According to Mediaite.com, “Fox and Friends” weekend host Eboni Williams — who got her undergraduate degree in Communications and African-American studies before going on to graduate from Loyola University law school — decided not to let Clarke’s talking points go by uncontested.

When asked what he thinks of Lewis’ decision not to attend the opening of Mississippi’s Civil Rights Museum, Clarke — who was busted for plagiarizing sections of his master’s thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA — said, “John who?”

“John Lewis — he was bloodied on the Selma bridge, Sheriff, when trying to protest voting rights and a variety of other things,” said Williams.

Clarke tried to smear Lewis as “the most irrelevant member of Congress” before Williams cut him off and said, “Sheriff let me say this to you. For you to say that nobody cares about John Lewis is inaccurate because I assure you that there are many people across this country that absolutely do care about him.”

The former sheriff — who is accused of allowing an inmate to die of dehydration in a Milwaukee jail and of forcing a pregnant prisoner to give birth on the jailhouse floor, resulting in the death of her baby — tried to run to the bogus Republican talking pointthat Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act, which Williams corrected him on.

“I appreciate that history lesson but as somebody that holds a degree on the subject I really don’t need you to update me on who was required for Lyndon B. Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act,” she said icily.

 

Kareem Cuts Loose

This IS – the Second American Revolution. Hopefully we can get rid of the hater in the white’s only house peacefully.

 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar compares NFL fight to American Revolution

Weighing in on the simmering debate over football players kneeling during the national anthem, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar slammed President Trump and those who have criticized high-paid players for their apparent lack of gratitude.

“That’s pretty much what the British said about the leaders of the American Revolution — the wealthy were making money by colluding with the British, so they should just be grateful. Fortunately, those leaders couldn’t be bought off,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

“The implication here is that black athletes should be grateful that they’ve been invited to dine with the white elites and if they want to keep their place at the table, they should keep dancing and smiling and keep their mouths shut. The myth of the Happy Negro needs to be dispelled once and for all.”

In two interviews with International Business Times, the NBA legend said that he is encouraged that athletes are unifying in protest against racism that is “getting worse under the current administration” and against “the attempt to curtail the First Amendment by a rich, entitled white man who thinks only he should be allowed to speak freely.”

Responding to IBT questions on Sept. 26, after a weekend in which the NFL protests had accelerated, Abdul-Jabbar praised the now-unemployed quarterback who started the “Take the Knee” movement a year ago.

“It’s to Colin Kaepernick’s credit that he was willing to protest institutional racism when he was almost alone and without much power,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “His goal was to make America aware that there is an underlying racism present and that we need to address it. President Trump’s statements at Charlottesville and about the NFL proved to many Americans that Colin was right. It’s a testament to the bravery and commitment of all those other players, coaches, and owners across all sports who have joined in the protest.”

The former Lakers center — who remains the league’s all-time leading scorer — is no stranger to protest. He attended the famous “Ali Summit,” in which he and other high-profile athletes stood in solidarity with Muhammed Ali as the boxer refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War. He also boycotted the 1968 Olympics. In recent years, he has written books and columns about political issues — and has publicly tangled with Trump. During the presidential campaign, Trump sent Abdul-Jabbar a handwritten noteslamming a column he wrote in the Washington Post.

Abdul-Jabbar denounced Trump for saying protesting athletes should be fired.

“I can think of instances when a president’s opinion could be worthwhile, especially when trying to uphold principles of the Constitution or the well-being of the players,” Abdul-Jabbar told IBT. “However, Trump’s comments are direct attacks on the constitutional principles of free speech. For someone who has sworn to uphold the Constitution, this is either an example of immense ignorance or willful treason.”

But asked whether sports team owners should be allowed to fire players for speaking out on political issues, Abdul-Jabbar acknowledged owners’ potential concerns.

“Sports teams are a business and business owners have the right to punish players who the owners think might be harming their business,” Abdul-Jabbar told IBT. “There is a risk when a player chooses to protest. Hopefully, the owners will take into consideration what is being protested and the passive, non-violent method of protest.

“Two things are being protested right now. The original issue of systemic racism is still around and getting worse under the current administration. But the second issue that has brought so many athletes together is the attempt to curtail the First Amendment by a rich, entitled white man who thinks only he should be allowed to speak freely.”

Abdul-Jabbar also addressed the issue of white privilege, responding to a quote from Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who recently said: “Race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that unless it is talked about constantly, it is not going to get better. … People have to be made to feel uncomfortable; especially white people. We still have no clue of what being born white means.”

“Coach Popovich is absolutely right and he stated it eloquently,” Abdul-Jabbar told IBT. “Many white Americans are aware that white privilege is embedded in American society and are eager to fix this disparity. Others have been affected negatively by the economy so it’s hard to see how they have any privilege when they are struggling so much. Naturally, it angers them to be told they have an advantage yet still are fighting for survival. It’s like blaming them for not being more successful.

“However, this understandable resistance to the facts can be overcome by a consistent and persistent effort to educated open-minded people. This is difficult because systemic racism seems hidden and therefore easily overlooked. But it isn’t hidden to those suffering from it. By exposing it — which these protests by athletes are trying to do — we have hope of overcoming it. Seeing all these athletes, coaches, and players across the different sports kneeling together and locking arms gives me more hope than I’ve felt for a while.”

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of IBT’s Sept. 7 discussion with Abdul-Jabbar, who has just published a book about his college experience as well as a graphic novel about the brother of Sherlock Holmes. Podcast subscribers can click here for the full conversation.

How did you first become politically aware and engaged? What turned you into a political activist?

For me, it started with the murder of Emmett Till. I was in the third grade when that happened. I didn’t understand it. I saw his picture in Jet magazine, when his mother exposed his body to show what had happened to him. I thought it was horrible. I asked my parents about it and they really didn’t have the words to explain it. It bothered me a lot.

I started paying attention to what was going on racially in our country. I kept silent about it, but it troubled me each year of my life at that time while I was in grade school. Things were happening because the civil rights movement was gaining more momentum. I got drawn into it that way, but the one incident that really was the critical moment for me was the murder of Emmett Till.

When you decided not to go to the Olympic Games, sports announcer Joe Garagiola suggested that you should leave the country. How did that feel? Do you think the same hostility to protests and dissent exists today?

I think Mr. Garagiola was voicing the sentiments of most conservative people because America was just great for them. But for a Black American, we had to put up with people being murdered and denied the most basic rights: the right to vote, the right to go into a restaurant and order a meal. These are very fundamental things. We had to use separate bathrooms. I got a chance to see all of that up close and personal. I didn’t like it. I wanted it to change. I was voicing the feelings of almost every Black American at that time…

 

Rep. John Lewis on Trump Racism

Lewis lays it out as clear as a bell here.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe marching  in the streets and singing “We Shall Overcome” is going to do much this time around. We need to find much more direct ways to resist. Whether economic, or breaking the established systems through non-cooperation there needs to be a hard stop. I am certainly not advocating bomb throwing (yet) – but if Counselor Mueller fails to take this Piece of Shit out, or Congress politically refuses to react to the evidence…

Then it may well come to that.

 

 

Bank Has Arab Family Locked Up For Depositing Check

This one looks like a major lawsuit in the making.

Had a situation once where I had deposited a large check into a business account, from an out-of-state bank The bank promptly notified me they would have to “hold” the check 10 days to “verify” the check. Having worked on two the five “FEDS” in the US, I knew this was bullshit. The checks clear overnight once submitted through the FED. The bank gets the money, that night. Major row with the bank resulting in a call from my lawyer – ending in the bank having to issue me a cashier’s check for the amount drawn on their bank as they already had sent the check through. Changed banks a week later to a bank with a bit more common sense than to try and rip off the customers by “holding” money in their investment account (making them money) for long periods of time.

But that is nothing compared to what these whackjobs did in Kansas…I am not even sure of the legal basis to do this prior to contacting the originating bank to verify the check would be honored. Even worse – under what mutilation of the Law is the whole family arrested?

The Chumph’s America – racist to the core.

Bank has entire Arab-American family arrested after father tries to deposit large check from home sale

In Kansas, an Iraqi-American doctoral student was arrested along with his family after attemping (sic) to deposit a large check from the sale of their old house.

According to Wichita State’s student newspaper The Sunflower, Sattar Ali, who moved to the United States in 1993, took a check for $151,000 from the sale of his family’s old house in Michigan to Wichita’s Emprise Bank. As he told local news station KAKE, he brought verification documents along with him, but a few minutes after he first presented tellers with the check, he was in handcuffs.

After being taken outside, Ali discovered his wife Hadil and their 15-year-old daughter Hawra were in the backseat of the police car waiting for him. Sometime during their three-hour detainment, Ali said police called his 11-year-old son’s school to tell them to hold him because his parents had been arrested.

He said he didn’t discover until after they were released that he and his family had been arrested because the bank claimed they could not verify the large check and believed it was fraudulent.

“No one told me why I was being arrested until we were being released,” Ali told The Sunflower. “They didn’t read me rights or anything.”

“We were devastated. Terrified. Crying the whole time,” Ali said. “We had no idea what the arrest was for.”

Ali told The Sunflower he believes he and his family were racially profiled because the large check came from someone with his name and not someone named “James or Robert.”

“Let’s assume I made a mistake and gave them a bad check,” Ali said. “Why would they arrest my wife and daughter?”

Ali, who along with his wife and children are American citizens, lived in Wichita from 1998 to 2008, and was returning to get his doctorate in engineering from Wichita State, where his eldest son is a freshman. He said the arrest marked his first time feeling unwelcome in the Kansas city.

“I would expect this in the 1950s,” Ali said. “Not now.”

 

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Jesse Jackson’s Relevant Moment

Been a long time since Jesse Jackson had relevance. Yesterday, he hit the nail on the head.

The Chumph, once again – showed his true colors. The idea the a Jefferson Davis Sessions led FBI “investigating” racists is a joke.

The Chumph and Sessions are the people who have diverted the FBI from going after white supremacist terrorist groups in the US. White supremacists and neo-Nazi groups have been ecstatic.

KKK Jeff’s reopening of the white right’s search for the non-existent unicorn of discrimination against whites, and renewal of the racist attack on Affirmative Action further fuels the fire of white racists.

Renewal of the “Drug War” and mass Minority incarceration of Minorities as a method of social control.

It ain’t really about what these racist POSs say, it is what they do.

 

Sessions Goes After LGBT Rights

Well… Jefferson Davis Sessions just went after LGBT people. Likely as part of an overall attempt to eliminate Title IV and Civil Rights Law.

The New Jim Crow for LGBT people.

Why Trump’s Justice Department Just Increased the Stakes In the Fight for LGBT Workplace Rights

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice on Wednesday undercut the stance of the Obama administration’s DOJ and another autonomous federal agency, by arguing that an existing law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not bar an employer from firing a gay employee because he or she is gay.

The filing came the same day as President Trump’s announcement that he would bar transgender troops from serving in the military. Together, the two actions fueled outrage from lawmakers, activists and other leaders who argue that the administration is seeking to roll back the rights and protections won by the LGBT community in recent years.

As a candidate, Trump largely avoided talking about issues related to sexual orientation, but often implied that he wouldn’t interfere with recent progress, even going so far as to promise gays and lesbians, “I will fight for you.”

Since his inauguration, however, Trump has been largely silent on the issue. Social conservatives were key to his election victory, and, notably, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has been a longtime opponent of extending job protections based on sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation is not explicitly listed in Title VII, which protects individuals against employment discrimination on the basis of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in July 2015 that discrimination based on sexual orientation is, in essence, discrimination based on sex. Because sexual orientation can’t be defined or understood without reference to sex, the commission held, discrimination based on it is “premised on sex-based preferences, assumptions, expectations, stereotypes, or norms” and therefore barred by the law. The EEOC’s ruling was hailed as a victory for the LGBT community at the time, and under President Obama, it became the interpretation that the DOJ abided by.

Trump’s DOJ on Wednesday challenged that stance, arguing just the opposite: that Title VII does not protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The DOJ’s opinion, filed in a brief in an ongoing legal case between a worker and his boss being heard by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, says “the sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination. It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”

The EEOC filed a motion in the same Second Circuit case just last month, reiterating its 2015 finding that Title VII bans bias based on sexual orientation.

In its filing, the DOJ acknowledged, rather frankly, that its stance on the matter contradicts that of its fellow government agency. “The EEOC is not speaking for the United States and its position about the scope of Title VII is entitled to no deference beyond its power to persuade,” the ruling says.

It’s true that courts are not bound by EEOC positions; they’re only required to honor legislation and the rulings of courts to which their cases can be appealed, including the Supreme Court. (It should be noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit made the same determination as the EEOC in a case in April.) But the EEOC’s decisions matter because the commission enforces Title VII, has the authority to bring lawsuits based on its rulings against private employers, and adjudicates cases brought by federal workers against federal agencies.

The DOJ meanwhile, is the defense attorney for the United States, so, in many ways, it’s just like any big employer that files an amicus brief in a case. But enforcing discrimination law in contexts outside of employment—housing, voting rights, disability—is part of the department’s mandate, meaning its stance on such issues carries more weight than other employers’, says Marcia McCormick, an employment law professor at St. Louis University School of Law.

Its filing in the Second Circuit case this week extends what has been a years-long debate over the scope of Title VII. The EEOC’s ruling on that matter in 2015 recognized that federal courts had concluded the opposite, but it said that those decisions were “dated.”

The EEOC’s stance on Title VII’s reach—spelled out in 2015—was considered a landmark decision because it gave gay workers extra cover in states that hadn’t passed their own laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation. As of this April, 20 states have passed laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; another two have passed legislation against bias based on sexual orientation only, according to the Human Rights Campaign, meaning there are 28 states where gay employees can be fired for being gay.

The DOJ’s new stance on the matter says that determining such workplace protections should be done through Congress, not through the courts. Lawmakers have pursued that route before. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and, in more recent versions, gender identity) nationwide, was first introduced in 1994. Congress considered it at least 10 times in the following decade and a half, but it never became law. The current Congress, whose GOP leadership includes many social conservatives, seems highly unlikely to act on a similar bill.

 

Lighting a Short Fuse – the Chumph Goes After the LGBQT Community

In a tweet more likely aimed at diverting the public’s attention away from Chumph crimes and failure to pass legislation, the punk-in-charge decides to take on the most powerful minority in America – the LGBQT community.

Bad move.

Out trots whipping boy Sessions to defend the Chumph’s attack on Transgender Military personnel and to try and overturn Civil Rights Law banning discrimination against the LGBQT community.

Trump Administration Argues Federal Civil Rights Law Does Not Protect Gay Employees

 

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit discrimination against gay and bisexual employees. The DOJ’s brief was not solicited by the court or any party to the case. Rather, in an unusual move, the Trump administration elected to weigh in with an aggressively anti-gay stance, arguing that gay Americans have no protection against workplace discrimination under federal law. Its decision is unsurprising in light of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ vigorous opposition to LGBTQ rights.

Title VII does not explicitly outlaw sexual orientation discrimination in employment. However, it does forbid “discrimination … because of sex.” which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission interprets to encompass anti-gay discrimination. For at least 15 years, many federal courts have agreed, and in April, the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Title VII does, indeed, protect gay employees. Both the 7^thCircuit and the EEOC relied on three theories of sex discrimination:

1. “But-for” sex discrimination

This theory holds that anti-gay discrimination qualifies as sex discrimination because, but for the gay person’s sex, she would not be discriminated against. Imagine, for example, that a homophobic employer fires a female worker because she marries a woman. But for that worker’s sex, she wouldn’t have been fired: Her boss has no issue with men marrying women, only women marrying women. The employee’s sex was fundamental to the discrimination she suffered—so it can therefore aptly be described as sex discrimination.

2. Sex stereotyping

The Supreme Court held in 1989’s Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that sex stereotyping is a form of sex discrimination. Thus, when an employer mistreats a worker because she fails to conform to certain gender norms, it has engaged in discrimination “because of sex.” Initially, sex stereotyping was applied to masculine women and feminine men. But as the 7^th Circuit pointed out, gay people are “the ultimate case of failure to conform” to sex stereotypes, which, in America, have historically held that men should date only women and women should date only men. By intimately associating with people of the same sex, gay individuals violate this stereotype. And so, when they are discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, they have suffered sex stereotyping.

3. Associational sex discrimination

Under this theory, anti-gay bias constitutes sex discrimination in much the same way that anti-miscegenation laws constitute racial discrimination. The Supreme Court has held that when a state prohibits a white person from marrying a black person, it has engaged in discrimination because of race. Similarly, the 7^th Circuit ruled that when an employer mistreats a gay person for associating with a partner of the same sex, it has engaged in discrimination “because of sex.” Consider, for instance, a gay man who places a photo of his husband on his desk at work, and is fired for it. In effect, his employer is punishing him for being a man and intimately associating with another man. Change the sex of one partner and the discrimination disappears. This reveals, as the 7^th Circuit wrote, that “the discrimination rests on distinctions drawn according to sex.”

This fall, the full 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will evaluate these theories after the circuit’s chief judge essentially urged the court to adopt them. It is this litigation that spurred the Justice Department to declare that Title VII does not, in fact, protect gay employees. (Under President Barack Obama, the agency took no position on the matter, although it did determine that Title VII protects transgender workers.) By filing this brief, the DOJ has created an odd situation in which one federal agency (the EEOC) disagrees with another (the Justice Department) in federal court.

The DOJ’s primary argument is that Congress’ failure to add “sexual orientation” to Title VII—either in 1964 or in the years since—proves that the law does not currently cover gay employees. This theory is rather strange because the absence of legislative action is not typically considered to be a useful tool of statutory interpretation. Congress’ failure to act could mean that it does not wish for Title VII to encompass sexual orientation. But it could also mean that Congress believes the law already protects gay employees. More than 125 members of Congress recently signed a brief asserting their belief that Title VII currently bars sexual orientation discrimination. At the very least, the absence of clear legislative guidance on the matter is obviously ambiguous.

 

To repudiate the three theories of sex discrimination listed above, the DOJ deploys some extremely questionable logic:

• In response to the “but-for” theory, it argues that homophobic employers discriminate against gay men and women equally, taking sex out of the equation. But sex cannot be removed from the equation. When an employer discriminates against a white woman for dating a black man or vice versa, it is still guilty of race discrimination: Race was obviously the key factor in its discrimination. Similarly, when an employer discriminates against a man for dating a man, it is guilty of sex discrimination, because sex was the foundational element of its bias.

• In response to the sex stereotyping theory, the DOJ argues that gay men and lesbians may only raise a claim of sex stereotyping if they face discrimination because of their mannerisms—not because of their sexual orientation. So, according to the DOJ, a lesbian who “has masculine manners or clothing” may raise a sex stereotyping claim, but a traditionally feminine lesbian may not. Likewise, an effeminate gay man may suffer sex stereotyping, but a traditionally masculine gay man does not. To reach this conclusion, the DOJ asserts that employers may hold “moral beliefs” about sexuality that “need not be based on views about gender at all.” This argument simply defies logic. Homophobic employers may well hold “moral beliefs” about gay men and women. But those beliefs are always rooted in a stereotype about how men and women should behave.

• In response to the associational discrimination theory, the DOJ argues that discrimination against gay people based on their intimate associations is unlike discrimination against interracial couples. The brief insists that discrimination against interracial couples is rooted in a belief that one race is superior to the other—and that true sex discrimination is similarly rooted in beliefs that one sex is “inferior.” But this presumption is utterly incoherent. Everyone knows that interracial marriage bans constitute race discrimination because they take the race of each partner into account. It’s no different with anti-gay discrimination: When an employer discriminates against a gay person, it is objecting to his intimate association with someone of the same sex. You simply cannot escape this fundamental sex-based consideration, which Title VII proscribes.

The left-leaning 2^nd Circuit is almost certain to side with the EEOC and against the DOJ. But this fight is ultimately heading to the Supreme Court—and the Trump administration has now signaled loudly that it will encourage the justices to rule against gay employees. That may be disappointing to civil rights advocates, but it is not devastating to the cause. With arguments this unintelligible, the Justice Department seems unlikely to change anybody’s mind.

 

It is Time to Remove Sessions

It is time for Congress to take up the issue of the removal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The legal basis for doing so is comprehensive –

1. Jeff Sessions perjured himself in testimony about his Russian meetings before Congress
2. There is is direct evidence of multiple meetings between Sessions and Trump’s Russian ally on at least 2 occasions, and possibly 3-4. None of these meetings as Sessions has claimed (again – perjury) had anything to do with his role as Senator
3. Sessions stonewalled Congress using the legally non-existent justification of his non-existent Executive Privilege in testimony this week. For the Attorney General to use an unconstitutional and illegal tactic to cover up in testimony is another form of perjury
4. Sessions was part of the Chumph’s team decision to fire Comey, violating his statement of “recusal” from the Trump-Russia collusion investigation

Democrats should make Sessions removal an absolute priority, and should be using any method necessary to short circuit Sessions dismantling og Civil Rights and along with it Voting Rights.

The Sessions is doing his best to protect his white supremacist and KKK favorites.

Trump administration quietly rolls back civil rights efforts across federal government

or decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious.

Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.

The move is just one part of a move by the Trump administration to limit federal civil rights enforcement. Other departments have scaled back the power of their internal divisions that monitor such abuses. In a previously unreported development, the Education Department last week reversed an Obama-era reform that broadened the agency’s approach to protecting rights of students. The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also announced sweeping cuts to their enforcement.

“At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,” said Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama.

Consent decrees have not been abandoned entirely by the DOJ, a person with knowledge of the instructions said. Instead, there is a presumption against their use — attorneys should default to using settlements without court oversight unless there is an unavoidable reason for a consent decree. The instructions came from the civil rights division’s office of acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore. There is no written policy guidance.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for the DOJ, declined to comment for this story.

Consent decrees can be a powerful tool, and spell out specific steps that must be taken to remedy the harm. These are agreed to by both parties and signed off on by a judge, whom the parties can appear before again if the terms are not being met. Though critics say the DOJ sometimes does not enforce consent decrees well enough, they are more powerful than settlements that aren’t overseen by a judge and have no built-in enforcement mechanism.

Such settlements have “far fewer teeth to ensure adequate enforcement,” Gupta said.

Consent decrees often require agencies or municipalities to take expensive steps toward reform. Local leaders and agency heads then can point to the binding court authority when requesting budget increases to ensure reforms. Without consent decrees, many localities or government departments would simply never make such comprehensive changes, said William Yeomans, who spent 26 years at the DOJ, mostly in the civil rights division.

“They are key to civil rights enforcement,” he said. “That’s why Sessions and his ilk don’t like them.”…

On March 31, Sessions ordered a sweeping review of all consent decrees with troubled police departments nationwide to ensure they were in line with the Trump administration’s law-and-order goals. Days before, the DOJ had asked a judge to postpone a hearing on a consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department that had been arranged during the last days of the Obama administration. The judge denied that request, and the consent decree has moved forward.

The DOJ has already come under fire from critics for altering its approach to voting rights cases. After nearly six years of litigation over Texas’ voter ID law — which Obama DOJ attorneys said was written to intentionally discriminate against minority voters and had such a discriminatory effect — the Trump DOJ abruptly withdrew its intent claims in late February….More…

 

 

 

The Chumph Moves to Eliminate Civil Rights Enforcement

The New New Jim Crow under the Chumph and KKK Sessions…

The Chumph and Sessions work to roll back, or eliminate enforcement of Civil Rights

Trump administration plans to minimize civil rights efforts in agencies

The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House’s newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights.

As outlined in Labor’s fiscal 2018 plan, the move would fold the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, now home to 600 employees, into another government agency in the name of cost-cutting.

The proposal to dismantle the compliance office comes at a time when the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices.

The new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has proposed eliminating its environmental justice program, which addresses pollution that poses health threats specifically concentrated in minority communities. The program, in part, offers money and technical help to residents who are confronted with local hazards such as leaking oil tanks or emissions from chemical plants.

Under President Trump’s proposed budget, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights — which has investigated thousands of complaints of discrimination in school districts across the country and set new standards for how colleges should respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment — would also see significant staffing cuts. Administration officials acknowledge in budget documents that the civil rights office will have to scale back the number of investigations it conducts and limit travel to school districts to carry out its work.

And the administration has reversed several steps taken under President Barack Obama to address LGBT concerns. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, has revoked a rule ensuring that transgender people can stay at sex-segregated shelters of their choice, and the Department of Health and Human Services has removed a question about sexual orientation from two surveys of elderly Americans about services offered or funded by the government.

The efforts to reduce the federal profile on civil rights reflects the consensus view within the Trump administration that Obama officials exceeded their authority in policing discrimination on the state and local level, sometimes pressuring targets of government scrutiny to adopt policies that were not warranted.

Administration officials made clear in the initial weeks of Trump’s presidency that they would break with the civil rights policies of his predecessor. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a review of agreements to reform police departments, signaling his skepticism of efforts to curb civil rights abuses by law enforcement officers. His Justice Department, meantime, stopped challenging a controversial Texas voter identification law and joined with the Education Department in withdrawing federal guidance allowing transgender students to use school bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.

While these decisions have been roundly criticized by liberal activists, administration officials said that civil rights remain a priority for the Trump White House.

“The Trump administration has an unwavering commitment to the civil rights of all Americans,” White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in an emailed statement.

But Vanita Gupta, who was the head of Justice’s civil rights division from October 2014 to January 2017, said that the administration’s actions have already begun to adversely affect Americans across the country.

“They can call it a course correction, but there’s little question that it’s a rollback of civil rights across the board,” said Gupta, who is now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights….

 

The New Jim Crow at the DOJ

There is a particularly virulent and dangerous type of white-right racist out there, who plays the white-victim game.

This type of racist is set to destroy much of Civil Rights in the country and further establish the New Jim Crow under chief racist Jeff Sessions.

The white-victim game works like this. The biggest kid in elementary school is the schoolyard bully. A Martial Arts studio opens up in the town, and some of the other kids, tired of being beat up, begin to take classes. Afraid some of his victims might be able to defend themselves, he goes to his Dad, who sits on the City Council, and convinces him to pass a law making Martial Arts studios illegal in the town because “they encourage violence”.

The white-right racist victimrat plays this game. During the Bush administration these people were put in charge of destroying the DOJ’s Civil Rights division. They spent 8 years searching for that elusive instance where a white person had been discriminated against by a minority, nearly ignoring the more than 20,000 cases a year referred to them. In years, they found exactly 1 case. During this entire time denying the existence of racism against blacks and minorities.

The DOJ under Sessions may as well be the KKK. They are becoming the enemy of the entire country.

The new DOJ “Civil Rights” Division under Putin’s Bitch and Sessions

How Trump Will Dismantle Civil Rights Protections in America

The same way Bush did: by politicizing the DOJ.

If you talk to people who worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the George W. Bush administration about their old jobs, you might hear one of two stories. Each can be viewed as a possible prelude to what the DOJ’s “crown jewel” division is poised to go through now that Donald Trump is president and Jeff Sessions is attorney general.

The first story takes place in Ohio during the lead-up to the 2004 election, when local officials were sued over a Republican plan to send thousands of “voter challengers” to polling places in predominantly black districts. The practice, putatively aimed at identifying ineligible voters, stemmed from a controversial Ohio law that civil rights advocates considered a vestige of Jim Crow.

One person who didn’t see it that way was Alex Acosta, the head of the Civil Rights Division at the time and now Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor. Less than a week before Election Day, Acosta wrote a letter to the judge overseeing the Ohio case to express his support for the “challenger” law and to argue that its purpose was to create a “balance between ballot access and ballot integrity”—not to intimidate voters.

The surprising thing about Acosta’s letter was that no one had asked for the DOJ’s opinion. The federal government was not party to the Ohio case, and Acosta was under no obligation to comment on it; in fact, he was defying a long-standing Civil Rights Division norm by taking action on a voting issue so close to an upcoming election. The “challengers” were ultimately allowed to go to the polls. Among liberals, the episode went down as a defining example of how zealous and brazen Bush-era political appointees could be in pursuing a partisan agenda.

The second story you might hear from alumni of Bush’s Civil Rights Division concerns a litigator named David Becker, who had been working in the voting section since the tail end of the Clinton administration. In 2005, Becker decided to quit—but not before getting involved in a DOJ lawsuit that accused the city of Boston of “improperly influencing, coercing, or ignoring the ballot choices of limited-English-proficient Hispanic or Asian-American voters.”

Becker, who had years of experience helping jurisdictions make their elections accessible to minority language–speakers, believed that Republicans in the Justice Department were pursuing the lawsuit for political reasons. In a series of letters to Boston officials, Becker asserted that the case was “largely without legal merit” and was being brought, in part, because Boston had voted Democratic in the 2004 election. Though he was still working for DOJ when he first reached out to city officials, Becker offered to help them fight against the government when he left.

The Becker story is not particularly well-known. But for some conservatives, it remains a galling example of the kind of treachery that Bush’s team encountered from career civil rights staff when Republicans took over the division in 2001. Bradley Schlozman, who worked in the “front office” of Civil Rights from 2003 until 2006 and was despised by many of the former career lawyers I spoke with, recently brought it up to illustrate what he called the “extraordinary unprofessionalism” he encountered in the division as a Bush appointee.“In my opinion, these were extremely partisan attorneys who had difficulty separating their political views from their obligations to their client: the United States,” Schlozman told me.

These two stories—both of them, as it happens, about letters that probably shouldn’t have been sent—serve as a reminder of the destructive, politically polarized rancor that plagued the Bush-era Civil Rights Division. Remembered by many DOJ alums as a traumatic and humiliating low point in the division’s history, the period was marked by an unprecedented level of hostility and mutual distrust between career attorneys and the “politicals” who supervised them.

“As time went on, it became more and more abrasive and overbearing,” said Albert Moskowitz, who oversaw the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division between 1999 and 2005. Particularly during Bush’s second term, he said, “People were abused and treated terribly, and there was just no one to tell and no place to go.”

At the heart of the rift was a fundamental misalignment of goals. As one lawyer hired into the Civil Rights Division under Bush, J. Christian Adams,described it in his 2011 polemic on the Obama-era DOJ, the conflict was part of “a larger war between two camps”: “militant leftists” who believed “civil rights laws do not protect everyone equally, but only certain ‘oppressed’ minorities,” and conservatives “who support a race-blind future.”

To frame it in a slightly less bellicose way, most attorneys who joined the Civil Rights Division before the Bush administration did so because they wanted to help the federal government challenge policies that discriminated against historically marginalized groups. The conservatives in charge under Bush, by contrast, were generally skeptical of federal intervention and believed in devoting more of the division’s resources to investigating things like voter fraud and human trafficking. In applying what they called a “race-neutral” approach to enforcement, they also made a point of bringing civil rights cases on behalf of white victims.

“Even attorneys who had served the division through the Reagan years and the [George H.W.] Bush years found it unbearable,” said Kristen Clarke, who started in the division a few months before Bush took office and now leads the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Nearly a decade since Bush left office, Trump and Sessions have started making their own moves to transform the DOJ and reorient the Civil Rights Division in particular to fit with their agenda. As we look for clues about how far they’ll go, the turbulent 2000s are a reminder of just how bad it can get, and how a new political team might go about pushing the division’s long-serving career attorneys out of the way.

So far, those attorneys haven’t even been told who their new boss will be, as Trump has not yet nominated anyone to the post. In the meantime, looking back on the Bush years is a way of putting down markers—an exercise in bracing oneself and establishing a worst-case precedent against which to measure the next four years.

If they deny you your legal right to vote…Its time to “Stand Your Ground”. The Ballot…Or the bullet.

 

 

Putin’s Bitch Covers His Tracks at DOJ

In another attempt at massive coverup, the Chump ordered all Obama appointed Lawyers to leave the DOJ. He is now free to appoint as many racist white supremacists as he wants to defend his base from prosecution for their hate crimes. The DOJ has just become as “fair” as the KKK at a lynching.

Trump era US Attorneys

Trump team ousts Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys

The president had previously asked Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in New York, to stay on.

President Donald Trump’s administration asked remaining U.S. attorneys appointed by President Barack Obama to offer their resignations Friday, a seemingly abrupt move that surprised many—including the officeholders asked to leave.

At the top of that list was Preet Bharara, who oversees the powerful Manhattan office, which is known for handling high-profile Wall Street and terrorism cases. In November, Bharara met with the president-elect at Trump Tower and then held a press conference in the lobby to say that he would continue to serve the new administration.

People in the White House, however, said the dismissals had been discussed for weeks. “Been in the works for awhile. Decided to pull the trigger today,” said one senior administration official.

“We were always planning for it on about Day 50,” this person said.

The removal of U.S. attorneys has been politically fraught for years, with the midterm dismissal of eight chief federal prosecutors in December 2006 causing a firestorm that ultimately led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The timing and scope of such dismissals have often led to charges and counter-charges that they violated prior precedents. President Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, asked for resignations in March 1993, but allowed U.S. attorneys to stay in place until their replacements could be confirmed.

It appears the Trump administration plans to handle the dismissals differently. “The attorney general has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys to tender their resignations in order to ensure a uniform transition,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Flores said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “Until the new U.S. attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. attorney’s offices will continue the great work of the department in investigating, prosecuting, and deterring the most violent offenders.”

Flores initially declined to comment when asked if the prosecutors had to leave their posts right away, but said later Friday that the resignations were to be “effective immediately.”

While the White House initially indicated to reporters that all 46 of the remaining Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys were told to depart, a senior administration official told POLITICO Friday night that the list of which prosecutors would be told to exit was “not finalized.”

The White House has not yet lined up replacements for the Obama-era U.S. attorneys being shown the door, a senior administration official told POLITICO. Trump has not yet formally nominated anyone to a U.S. attorney post.

When the mass ouster was first announced it was unclear whether it included the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Virginia, Dana Boente, who is currently serving as acting deputy attorney general, or Trump’s nominee to serve in that position on a permanent basis, the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein.

However, the Justice Department said Friday evening that Trump decided Boente and Rosenstein would continue in their posts. “The president called Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein tonight to inform them that he has declined to accept their resignation, and they will remain in their current positions,” Flores said.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders referred questions back to the Justice Department.

 

White Woman at the Center of Emmit Till Murder…Admits to Lying

60 years later, the white woman who accused Emmit Till of fondling her has confessed that it didn’t happen.

‘Not true’: Woman admits she made up claims that led to Emmett Till’s brutal lynching

The woman at the center of the brutal murder of Emmett Till — which helped launch the civil rights movement — has revealed for the first time that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her testimony, reported Vanity Fair.

Carolyn Bryant Donham has never spoken publicly since she testified in the murder trial of her then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, who were each acquitted less than a month after they kidnapped, tortured and executed the black boy.

After their acquittal, the pair proudly admitted what they’d done to Look magazine, saying they basically had no choice but to kill the teenager for behaving lasciviously toward Bryant’s wife.

But Donham, who later divorced Bryant and married twice more in the following years, admitted to author Timothy Tyson that she’d made up some of the claims that led to Till’s death.

Donham was 21 years old in 1955, when she spent about one minute alone with the 14-year-old Till, who was visiting family in Mississippi from Chicago, while working in the store she owned with her husband.

The teen, whose mother called him “Bo,” bragged to his cousin and some other boys that he had a white girlfriend back home — and the boys dared him to speak to the woman working behind the counter.

A 12-year-old cousin briefly went inside but left Emmett alone with Donham for about a minute, and she later claimed Till had grabbed her and made lewd comments.

His cousin, Simeon Wright, recalled decades later that couldn’t have been possible — and, it turns out, he was right.

“That part’s not true,” Donham told Tyson, who conducted the first-ever interview with the elderly mother of two for a new book, The Blood of Emmett Till.

She also claimed Till had wolf-whistled at her, but Tyson notes that might not have been intentional because the boy had a lisp.

Donham claims she couldn’t remember anymore the rest of their brief encounter.

The interview was actually conducted in 2007, after Donham approached the Duke University scholar about helping to write her memoirs.

“That case went a long way toward ruining her life,” said Tyson, who said the Donham family reminded him of his own.

He said Donham’s views on race had changed over the years, along with much of the country’s.

“She was glad things had changed [and she] thought the old system of white supremacy was wrong, though she had more or less taken it as normal at the time,” Tyson said.

Donham told the author she “felt tender sorrow” toward Mamie Till-Mobley, who insisted on an open casket to show the world her son’s mutilated body, and she expressed something like regret about her role in his slaying.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Donham said.

Donham, who retreated back into seclusion, has also written a memoir, “More Than a Wolf Whistle: The Story of Carolyn Bryant Donham,” but it will not be available to scholars until 2038, at her request.

 

Chicago Police Department – “In Violation of Constitution”

Rushing to produce findings before the Chumph’s KKK takes over, the DOJ just unloaded on the deeply troubled Chicago Police Department…

And built a bridge to help them get their act together.

Chicago would seem to be testament to “if the Police break the law, then so do the people”. Without a solid, standing beacon of legitimacy, honesty, and ethics in the form of Law Enforcement for and answerable to the people – Lawlessness and violence prevail.

Justice Department to find constitutional abuses by Chicago police: sources

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to announce it has found the Chicago Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the U.S. Constitution, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Tribune.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will make the announcement Friday, according to the sources, but the details were still being worked out Wednesday.

It could not be learned how sweeping the conclusions of the 13-month investigation would be, but the two sources said the Justice Department found constitutional abuses of citizens by Chicago police.

The federal investigation was launched in December 2015 amid the fallout over the court-ordered release of video showing the fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald.

In announcing the investigation in December 2015, Lynch said the probe would focus on the Police Department’s use of force — including whether there were racial, ethnic and other disparities in how force was used. She also said the Justice Department would look into the police system of accountability.

Speaking to the City Club of Chicago in September, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon said the investigation had grown into the largest such probe ever undertaken by federal authorities and was proceeding at a “record pace.”

Fardon said investigators have done a “deep dive,” analyzing “tons of data,” interviewing hundreds of people, conducting ride-alongs with officers and studying police policies.

The Tribune reported last week that the Justice Department sped up its timeline to get the report done before Democratic President Barack Obama hands over the White House on Jan. 20 to President-elect Donald Trump — a tough-on-crime, pro-police Republican.

Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is a longtime law enforcement advocate who has been critical of civil rights investigations that paint police wrongdoing with a broad brush.

At his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Sessions said federal litigation against police departments “can undermine respect for police officers. … We need to be careful before we do that.”

“I think there’s concern that good police officers and good departments can be sued by the Department of Justice when you just have individuals within a department who have done wrong, and those individuals need to be prosecuted,” Sessions said. “Filing a lawsuit against a police department can have ramifications sometimes beyond what a lot of people think.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has tried to get ahead of whatever findings the report makes. Last week, he said he would continue his efforts to reform the Chicago Police Department, no matter the outcome of the civil rights probe.

 

Could You Pass the Voting “Literacy Test”?

Under the Chumph and Republicans we are headed bak to the days of Literacy tests to deny minority voting rights. The following is one such test of black voters used by Louisiana, Of course there were few schools for black children, which racists insisted played no part in being able to pass the test. Remember – one wrong answer, in the 10 minutes allotted to complete the test means you aren’t smart enough to vote… This test was sourced form the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement site which contains a lot of information as well as historical artifacts. Go there, it is well worth a visit.

 

Dear Racism – I Am Not My Grandparents…These Hands

As always I am on the lookout for sites with a fresh perspective and a new view on things. Doing this blog as fun means I am not always up on the very latest (I do tend to spend time on my other hobbies – woodworking, building, tech projects, photography)..as well as those thing income producing.

This from a recent discovery – Very Smart Brothas. The site is worth a visit. But warning – that language can be a bit overboard.

THOSE “I’M NOT MY GRANDPARENTS; YOU CAN CATCH THESE HANDS” SHIRTS ARE DISRESPECTFUL AS FUCK (AND WRONG)

I was invited to New York City Friday evening for an advance screening of the screen adaptation of Fences — August Wilson’s iconic play. Afterwards, the cast — including Denzel Washington (who also produced and directed the film) and Viola Davis — took part in a panel discussion about the story the film told, August Wilson’s genius, Pittsburgh (where each of Wilson’s plays took place), and the importance of bringing these characters and their specific truths to light.

Fences, of course, is set in the 1950s and revolves around Troy Maxson, a 53-year-old man whose entire existence is a struggle and whose every moment is a fight. There are frequent moments of levity in Troy’s life, but even those are clouded by, engulfed with, and sometimes a direct response to racial and societal adversity. He is the pipe and America is the pressure. Left to pick up his pieces are his wife (Rose), his two sons, his brother, and his best friend while each of them are also fighting against and existing within the same forces he is.

Fences is about one family in the Hill District. Well, one man in particular and how his actions affect the people closest to him. But Wilson’s work continues to resonate because his plays are snapshots into the lives of our parents and grandparents and great aunts and uncles. Troy Maxson isn’t every man, but the world that shaped him — hardening and tempering him — is the same world our ancestors existed in. And our existence today is proof of their perseverance. That their struggles weren’t for naught.

This took a level of strength and endurance and pugnacity that few of us today have had to possess. When Kendrick Lamar starts “Alright” with “All my life I’ve had to fight” there’s a bit of accepted creative hyperbole there. With Troy (and Rose) Maxson, however, that proclamation is literal. And its with this context that those “I’m Not My Grandparents” shirts (and the sentiment behind them) are so fucking disrespectful. And not only disrespectful, but wrong as fuck too.

Now, I do get why they exist. America just elected a man who seems intent on doing exactly what he said he was going to do during his campaign. To quote Charles Blow, “it would be hard to send a clearer message to women and minorities that this administration will be hostile to their interests than the cabinet he is assembling.” And this has apparently given quite a few closet racists and basement bigots the confidence to be themselves. The message the shirt is attempting to convey is “you better not try that shit with me.”

But this message can be communicated without disparaging the legacies of those who fought like a motherfucker — with words and protests and faith and actual fists — in an America that was much, much, much more hostile towards them than the one we currently exist in. To paraphrase Dr. Regina N. Bradley, a better and more appropriate shirt would say “These are my grandparents’ hands. Catch ’em if you want to.”