Yet Another Case to Impeach the Chumph Traitorous POS

If the Chumph’s Republican collaborators in Congress were following the law and the Constitution. Of course, Republican white wingers really don’t give a damn about either.

Let’s hope that should there be a massive shift in elected officials in 2018, the the Democrats or Third Part folks who are elected don’t suffer any funcking delusions about “comity”, “bipartisanship”, or the fact the white wing gives a damn about America, and will lie, cheat, steal, and murder to maintain control.

Donald Trump’s Impeachable Offense

The commander in chief’s calls to abridge freedoms of speech and the press represent attacks on the Constitution he swore to protect and defend.

Whereas Donald J. Trump stood beneath American flags on the steps of the United States Capitol on January 20, 2017, placed his hand on a Bible, and spoke these words:

I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States; and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.

Whereas the Constitution of the United States reads in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Whereas Trump has responded to news coverage he dislikes by advocating that the freedom of the press be abridged by bureaucrats and legislators; and by calling the press a public enemy and a target of his “drain the swamp” agenda.

For example:

• “It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write and people should want to look into it.”
• “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”
• “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”
• “Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”
• “Drain the Swamp should be changed to Drain the Sewer – it’s actually much worse than anyone ever thought, and it begins with the Fake News!”
• “With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!”
• “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people. SICK!”

Whereas Trump has responded to protected speech he dislikes by calling for a punitive government response and issuing commands to private citizens like a king or tyrant.

For example:

• “It is about time that Roger Goodell of the NFL is finally demanding that all players STAND for our great National Anthem-RESPECT OUR COUNTRY”
• “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!”
• “The NFL has all sorts of rules and regulations. The only way out for them is to set a rule that you can’t kneel during our National Anthem!”
• “The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must respect this!”
• “If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect”

Whereas the aforementioned statements, individually or in aggregate, establish a clear pattern of failing to defend the Constitution and repeated attacks on its Bill of Rights.

Whereas it is a high crime to violate one’s sworn oath to the supreme law of the land.

Wherefore, Donald John Trump, through flagrant violations of the oath he took before God, country, and flag, warrants impeachment, trial, removal, and public disgrace.

 

Out of Control Cop Arrests and Handcuffs Nurse for Legally Not Drawing Blood of Crash Victim

This situation in Salt Lake City where a cop requests a nurse to draw blood from a comatose victim of a crash, When she points out that without a warrant or consent of the victim that it would be against the law to do so…He violently arrests her.

‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop roughs her up, arrests her for doing her job

By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient.

The detective didn’t have a warrant, first off. And the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give consent. Without that, the detective was barred from collecting blood samples — not just by hospital policy, but by basic constitutional law.

Still, Detective Jeff Payne insisted that he be let in to take the blood, saying the nurse would be arrested and charged if she refused.

Nurse Alex Wubbels politely stood her ground. She got her supervisor on the phone so Payne could hear the decision loud and clear. “Sir,” said the supervisor, “you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.”

Payne snapped. He seized hold of the nurse, shoved her out of the building and cuffed her hands behind her back. A bewildered Wubbels screamed “help me” and “you’re assaulting me” as the detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.

The explosive July 26 afternoon encounter was captured on officers’ body cameras and is now the subject of an internal investigation by the police department, as the Salt Lake City Tribune reported Thursday. The videos were released by the Tribune, the Deseret News and other local media.

On top of that, Wubbels was right. The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly ruledthat blood can only be drawn from drivers for probable cause, with a warrant.

Wubbels, who was not criminally charged, played the footage at a news conference Thursday with her attorney. They called on police to rethink their treatment of hospital workers and said they had not ruled out legal action.

“I just feel betrayed, I feel angry, I feel a lot of things,” Wubbels said. “And I’m still confused.”

Salt Lake police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Shearer told local media that Payne had been suspended from the department’s blood draw unit but remained on active duty. Shearer said Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown had seen the video and called it “very alarming,” according to the Deseret News…

 

White Wing Sheriff in Georgia Has Entire High School of Kids Physically Searched

Not sure HTF you do this without a Warrant – much less see any rational Judge granting the right for the sheriffs to do a pat-down on an entire school!

This breaks so many laws…Its ridiculous.

Local folks need to remove this dumb sucker jackass of a Sheriff.

A Georgia sheriff ordered pat-down searches for every student at a public high school. Now they’re suing.

Students at Worth County High School in Sylvester, Ga., have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against their country sheriff after he ordered what the complaint describes as a schoolwide drug sweep involving pat-down searches of hundreds of teenagers.

On April 14, Sheriff Jeff Hobby and dozens of deputies came to Worth County High School searching for students in possession of illicit substances. According to the students’ legal complaint, they proceeded to go to every classroom and physically search nearly every student present for drugs. The deputies, the lawsuit alleges, used “pat down” searches, with some deputies touching female students’ breasts and male students’ genitalia.

Tommy Coleman, a lawyer for the district, corroborated the students’ account of the search. “I thought the [students’] complaint in the suit very accurately described what happened,” he said. “We’d like for it to be resolved in the best interests of these kids.”

The district hasn’t joined the lawsuit on behalf of the students because it lacks the standing to do so, Coleman said. The lawsuit contends that the students, not the school district, were harmed by the searches.

In the aftermath of the search, the sheriff told local media that the pat-down searches of students were legal because school administrators were present. He also said he believed drugs were present at the school, and that a separate drug search performed several weeks earlier by police from the city of Sylvester had not been thorough enough.

Neither search turned up any illicit drugs, according to Coleman.

In the days after the search, the sheriff’s office acknowledged in a news release that at least one deputy had touched students in an inappropriate manner.

“After the pat down was conducted it was discovered that one of the deputies had exceeded the instructions given by the Sheriff and conducted a pat down of some students that was more intrusive than instructed by the Sheriff,” the statement said. “Upon discovery of the deputy’s actions, the Sheriff has taken corrective action to insure that this behavior will not occur again.”

The sheriff’s office did not provide more detail on the “corrective action” in the release, and it did not respond to a follow-up request about what that action entailed. Hobby’s office also refused multiple requests for an interview and declined to answer repeated requests from The Washington Post for more details about the school search.

The case is an extreme example of how the school system can become a battleground in the nation’s war on drugs. Law enforcement officials and school administrators have occasionally brought zero-tolerance, tough-on-crime policies into the nation’s classrooms, often with counterproductive results.

Meanwhile, teen drug and alcohol use is approaching historic lows. Experts cite a variety of reasons this may be the case. Lower rates of teen tobacco use may mean that fewer students go on to try harder substances. And the rise of social media means more teens are spending time with their peers online, rather than in the real world, where it may be easier to obtain drugs.

Worth County High School students are upset over their treatment by Hobby and his deputies.

J.E., one of the plaintiffs who is being identified only by his initials because he is a minor, said in an interview with The Washington Post that when deputies arrived at his 10th-grade agriculture class, they marched the students out to the hall, lining them up, girls on one side of the hallway and boys on the other.

The deputies, J.E. says, made everyone put their palms on the wall, spread their legs and take their shoes off.

J.E. says that during his search, the deputy put his hands in J.E.’s back pockets and then under his shirt. He then, J.E. says, rubbed down both of the student’s legs from his thighs to his ankles, and back up between them.

“He came up under my privates and then he grabbed my testicles twice,” J.E. said in an interview. “I wanted to turn around and tell him to stop touching me. I wanted it to be over and I just wanted to call my dad because I knew something wasn’t right.”

J.E.’s allegations of improper contact are part of a legal complaint filed jointly by nine students after outraged parents contacted Horsley Begnaud LLC, a civil rights law firm based in Atlanta.

According to the students’ complaint, some of the deputies — Hobby’s office brought more than two dozen, the complaint says — stuck their hands in students’ bras and underwear. The complaint includes allegations that some deputies cupped the genitals of the boys and exposed the breasts of some of the girls to their classmates.

Sometimes the deputies wore gloves. Other times they didn’t, according to the complaint.

Another student involved with the lawsuit was in a different class than J.E. at the time of the search but described a similar search procedure: Deputies ordered students out of his ninth-grade literature class and into the hallway, segregated them by gender, and then systematically physically searched each one.

“Some people were crying,” the ninth-grader said in an interview. “Kids weren’t allowed to go home; they weren’t allowed to tell their parents” during the search.

The suit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. In their complaint, the students contend the “unlawful and intrusive” searches violated their rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments.

The sheriff had no warrant to perform the search, according to the complaint. Coleman, the lawyer for the school district, says the sheriff’s office told school officials they suspected 13 students of possessing drugs in setting up the search. It’s unclear what information formed the basis for this suspicion — lawyers for the students said in an interview they haven’t seen it yet, and the sheriff’s office declined to provide details to The Post.

“I’m not aware of anything like this ever happening in Georgia,” Mark Begnaud, one of the students’ lawyers, said in an interview. “It’s obviously unconstitutional, a textbook definition of police overreach.”…Read More Here…

 

 

Articles of Impeachment for the Chumph

Here is a draft of what Articles of Impeachment for Trump would look like (so far).

The assumption in this set is that the result of the investigation into the Chumph’s collusion with Russia on the election hasn’t been released yet, so further criminal charges are not added. There is also a secondary investigation into the Chumph’s money laundering activities with the Russian Mob which has not reached conclusions.

Articles of Impeachment for Donald J. Trump

A first draft of an impeachment bill for the president.

The framers of our Constitution likely never imagined a President like Donald J. Trump. And yet, they inserted impeachment provisions into the original text of the Constitution, some 230 years ago, to empower Congress to act in case a rube, tyrant, or criminal came to occupy the nation’s highest office.

It’s not crystal clear which Trump might be, but the president’s latest outrageous actions—the reported passing of highly classified intelligence to Russian diplomats in the Oval Office—should awake Republicans and Democrats in Congress to the dangers posed by Trump to the nation in case that wasn’t already obvious. His conduct now goes far beyond mere offense or incitement to constitute actual damage to U.S. national security, the very definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” contemplated by the men who crafted the Constitution’s impeachment clauses. With this latest act, the time has come to commence the slow, deliberate process of demonstrating that Trump needs to be removed from office so he can harm the nation no more. A broad congressional inquiry should begin immediately, to inform drafters who will prepare articles of impeachment for consideration by the House and Senate. While Republican control of Congress means that such proceedings won’t occur anytime soon, it’s clear that they are warranted. We don’t yet know for certain what precisely such an investigation would yield, but there is enough public information already available to roughly map out what such articles of impeachment might—and probably should—look like.

Historically, impeachment articles have focused on broad violations of constitutional duty and specific discrete acts like clashing with Congress over Reconstruction, commanding the Watergate break-in, or testimonial perjury. In Trump’s case, there is ample evidence for both the more general violations and the more specific abuses, much of them admitted by the president through his own indelicate tweets (including admissions Tuesday morning regarding the passing of classified information to the Russians).

So what might an impeachment bill against President Trump include?

The Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton impeachment bills used common language to put their specific violations in context. Any Trump articles of impeachment should also include such language at the start of each article:

In his conduct while president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has engaged in conduct that resulted in misuse and abuse of his high office:

Beyond this preamble, the Trump impeachment bill might include, but not be limited to, the following articles:

Article 1: Compromising the integrity of the presidency through continuing violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. From his first day in office, Trump’s continuing stake in Trump Organization businesses has violated the clause of the Constitution proscribing federal officials from receiving foreign payments. The true and full extent of Trump’s conflicts of interest remains unknown. For his part, Trump has transferred day-to-day control over these interests to his adult children and the management of the Trump Organization. However, he remains the ultimate beneficiary for these businesses, so the fundamental conflict of interest remains. These foreign business ties violate both the letter and spirit of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, and arguably provide the clearest basis for impeachment based on the facts and law.

Article 2: Violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the duties of his office by disregarding U.S. interests and pursuing the interests of a hostile foreign power, to wit, Russia. L’affaire Russia began during Trump’s campaign for the presidency, during which several top aides reportedly had contacts with Russia and its intelligence service. His campaign manager also had reportedly worked either directly or indirectly for the Kremlin. These contacts continued, famously, into the presidential transition, when the president’s chosen national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had his ill-fated contacts with Russia. Beyond these contacts, Trump has substantively acted in myriad ways that benefit Russia, including dangerous diplomacy that has reportedly frayed relationships with our allies and allegedly put allied intelligence assets at risk. By offering classified information to the Russians, it was reported that Trump risked the intelligence assets of a Middle Eastern ally that already warned American officials that it would stop sharing such information with America if that information was shared too widely. In risking that relationship, Trump has opened up the possibility for the loss of that information stream for combatting terrorism, and potentially put American lives at risk from the loss of intelligence that could inform officials about future attacks on Americans at home and abroad.

Article 3: Impairment and obstruction of inquiries by the Justice Department and Congress into the extent of the Trump administration’s conflicts of interests and Russia ties. The Trump administration has systematically impeded, avoided, or obstructed the machinery of justice to obscure its business relationships, its Russia ties, and the forces acting within the Trump White House to animate policy. The most egregious and visible examples have been Trump’s firings of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey. [Update, 6:18 p.m.: The New York Times reported on Tuesday afternoon on an even more egregious case of apparent obstruction of justice, wherein Trump allegedly directly asked Comey to end the FBI’s investigation of Michael Flynn.] Each termination had what appeared to be a lawful pretext; subsequent statements or admissions have indicated each had more to do with obstructing justice than holding leaders accountable. Alongside these sackings, the Trump administration has also worked to starve Justice Department inquiries of resources and refocus investigators on suspected leaks instead of the White House’s own Russia intrigues. The Trump administration also interfered with congressional inquiries through attempting to block witnesses like Yates from appearing or selective leaking of classified information to House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, compromising Nunes so badly he had to recuse himself from the matter.

Article 4: Undermining of the American judicial system through felonious intimidation of potential witnesses. In his desire to continue Comey’s public humiliation, and ensure Comey remained silent about Trump’s possible sins, the president threatened Comey on Twitter with disclosure of “tapes” of their conversations. This follows a pattern of Trump roughly treating witnesses and litigation adversaries that stretches back for decades before his presidency. Since taking office, Trump has also used the bully pulpit of his office to threaten intelligence officials for purported leaks and badger former Yates before her congressional testimony. In addition to falling beneath the dignity of the presidency, these verbal assaults also constitute obstruction of justice, prohibited by federal statutes on witness intimidation, retaliation against a witness, and obstruction of federal proceedings. These attacks don’t just harm the individuals who are targeted; they assault and undermine the rule of law. As such, they constitute further grounds for impeachment of Trump and his removal from the presidency.

Article 5: Undermining of his office and the Constitution through repeated assaults on the integrity of the federal judiciary and its officers. During the presidential campaign, Trump publicly attacked federal district Judge Gonzalo Curiel on the basis of his ethnicity, saying Curiel had been “extremely hostile to (Trump),” and that the judge had ruled against Trump because of his “Mexican heritage.” Since taking office, Trump has continued his unpresidential assaults on the federal judiciary, particularly after repeatedly losing court battles over his travel bans. At one point, he described a member of the bench as a “so-called judge,” undermining the premise of an independent judiciary. These statements also undermined both the dignity and power of the presidency, and threaten the rule of law by attacking the integrity of the federal judiciary.

Article 6: Demeaning the integrity of government and its public servants, particularly the military and intelligence agencies, in contravention of his constitutional duties to serve as chief executive and commander in chief of the armed forces. Trump swept into office with considerable disdain for the government and its military. Indeed, during his campaign, he insulted former prisoners of war, Purple Heart recipients, and Gold Star families; criticized the military for its performance in Iraq; and said today’s generals and admirals had been “reduced to rubble” during the Obama administration. Trump carried this disdain into the presidency, through his attacks on the “deep state” of military and intelligence officials that he believed to be obstructing his agenda. He also demeaned the military and its apolitical ethos through use of military fora and audiences as public spectacle—first to sign his immigration order in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, and then to deliver rambling speeches at military and intelligence headquarters suggesting that pro-Trump elements in those agencies were grateful Trump had taken power. Trump has also continued to wage political war against his intelligence community, suggesting as recently as Tuesday morning that it was sabotaging his administration through leaking and other nefarious activities. In doing these things, Trump has undermined his constitutional office as president and commander in chief of the armed forces.

Article 7: Dereliction of his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the office of president by failing to timely appoint officers of the United States to administer the nation’s federal agencies. Shortly after taking office, Trump administration strategist Stephen Bannon articulated his plan for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” During its first four months in office, the Trump administration’s neglect of governance illustrates how this strategy is to be executed: delay of political appointments, failure to reach budget agreements with Congress in a timely manner, and deliberate neglect of governance and government operations. These actions and failures risk the health, welfare, and security of the nation, and represent a dereliction of Trump’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the office of the presidency.

 

Sally Yates Smackdown of Smarmy Ted Cruz

Bad news Ted Sleazy – the kind of folks who rise to high positions in the DOJ without political appointments during, at least, Democrat Presidencies tend to be both smart and qualified, and real lawyers. Which is why Sally Yates just had your ass for lunch.

 

Uber No More – Nationwide Boycott of Chumph Supporting Companies is Growing Fast

Rage against the Chump is rising very fast. The next major March Against Trump is planned for April. Here is hoping they put at least 3 million people in DC. At the rate things are going, if there is a march in June, it may draw 10 million. Breaking down the doors of the White House and Capitol buildings and hauling the right-wing miscreants to hang from the light poles going down Constitution Avenue…

About the only thing that is certain is that if the Republican scum in Congress continues to bloc investigations in to the Chumph’s dirty dealings and Treason (as in Charge Him, Try Him, Convict Him, and Hang Him) – the shit is going to hit the fan. Consider it a re-education as to whom politicians really are supposed to  work for.

#DeleteUber’s Creator: Resist Trump or ‘Pay a Price’

Silicon Valley companies like Uber don’t want to take a stand on Trump, but users won’t let them stay neutral. Now, protesters and even some forward-looking CEOs are saying the same thing: Resist or face deletion.

On Saturday night, as protesters swamped airports nationwide demanding foreigners be released from indefinite detention due to Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, Dan O’Sullivan inadvertently created a playbook for getting corporations to stop playing nice with Donald Trump.

O’Sullivan was the first to tweet the hashtag #DeleteUber, although he insists he didn’t invent the idea for an Uber boycott and doesn’t take credit for the phenomenon the hashtag became. His initial string of #DeleteUber tweets, all replies to Uber’s surge pricing announcement, have over 7,000 retweets.

“Let this be a warning: if you are a corporation who thinks you will ride out Trump, and quietly make money at his side, you will be made to pay a price,” O’Sullivan told The Daily Beast.

#DeleteUber wound up becoming the No. 1 trend in the country on Saturday night after the company turned off surge pricing to and from JFK International Airport, where thousands were protesting the Muslim ban. Earlier in the night, the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance announced its members would partially strike in solidarity with the refugees and affected immigrants by not offering services to or from the airport.

Protesters on Twitter alleged that Uber was promoting scab work, highlighting Uber’s stance that drivers aren’t considered employees to begin with, but only independent contractors. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had also been announced as part of Trump’s business advisory board in December.

Kalanick and Uber released several statements attempting to quell the furor, repeatedly insisting they disagree with Trump’s executive order and that they would pay out to drivers stuck in other countries due to the hastily implemented order, but it was too late.

Thousands were already tweeting the hashtag #DeleteUber along with screenshots of the account deletion page.

Direct competitor Lyft capitalized, handing out a $1 million donation to the ACLU, whose lawsuit granted a temporary stay to visa holders held in unlawful detention by Customs and Border Patrol.

“Deleting an Uber account, or tweeting a bunch about it, is quite literally the least anyone can do to register how disgusted one is by Uber’s exploitative labor practices and collaboration with Trump,” said O’Sullivan.

O’Sullivan wants Kalanick to resign from Trump’s board, and predicts this kind of boycott will keep happening to companies who don’t actively defy Trump’s policies that exploit and target their employees.

“The popularity of #deleteUber only exists because decent people around the country and world—including the unionized cab drivers Uber hates and targets—took to the streets, occupying airports in defense of refugees, immigrants, and Muslims,” said O’Sullivan.

“Trump is losing and is going to keep losing. Anyone who sticks with him will lose, too.”

Other tech CEOs had had enough, and finally used their apps to deliver calls to action. Dots CEO Paul Murphy was furiously texting with the co-creator of his big name mobile gaming company.

 Murphy had a user base of millions of people he could deploy to fund efforts to stop Trump’s discriminatory immigration ban, and he was a little fed up with leaders in his industry who refused to stand up for their employees—immigrant or otherwise.

“I’m still a little bit underwhelmed from the larger tech companies’ responses,” he told The Daily Beast. “I suggested we take over the game—to use that—since we have this big audience.”

So when users opened any of Dots’ mobile games on Saturday night or Sunday morning, they saw this message: “We believe America should be a welcoming place, particularly for those most in need, wherever they come from and whatever their religion.” It then linked out to an ACLU donation page.

When Murphy talked to The Daily Beast on Sunday, he said 4 million people had already seen the message.

“In my mind it’d be much more powerful for these platforms to be proactive—to interrupt people consuming services and remind them that these are products that are built from Americans, but also immigrants or people from outside the country,” said Murphy.

For some tech companies like Uber, however, being proactive in resisting the administration’s more racist and discriminatory policies isn’t just a “powerful” move. It’s a necessary move, if they don’t want a boycott that could directly impact their bottom line literally overnight.

 

 

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.

 

Keith Olbermann Ties One On

Olbermann gives the best righteous indignation speeches on television.

Love it!

And today –

 

 

 

Eye in the Sky Spying By Baltimore Police

Those of you involved in technology have probably figured it out, but a lot of the fancy gizmos and technology you see on the various”tech oriented” TV shows…

Doesn’t exist.

Technology, and the use of technology has been a moral issue for inventors and technologists since the days of the development of the Atomic Bomb. Not that the inventors of a lot of this stuff are ethicists but – it is a conversation at least some of us have.

After 9-11 and Katrina, my company was developing technology which would be capable to restoring communications over a disaster area in a matter of hours. The concept was based on putting a new type of radio communications system which could reconfigure itself by software command in either a tethered to the ground, or a geo-stationary blimp. Now, I am sure everyone is familiar with the Zeppelins of the 1930’s and the Hindenburg.

One of the big Gub’ment agencies caught on to what we were doing, and approached us to help one of BIG Gub’ment contractors on building their “Eye in the Sky” project. The idea was to mount a very high resolution video camera in a geostationary blimp over New Orleans, and tie it to behavioral analysis software. “Behaviorial” software was just being developed at that point. What it does is identify possible criminal activity by the actions of the people the camera sees. The technical problem in this case being getting the video feed  back down to the ground, and the equipment to make that happen not being too heavy to be lifted by the blimp. My partners and I figured out it was technically doable, but involved creating a bit of technology that didn’t exist yet.

First meeting, the Gub’ment guys stands up and explains what they want to do. Which was essentially put the entire city under surveillance and use the pattern recognition software to identify “bad guys” and people up to nefarious deeds. The problem being the system would spy on each and every citizen in the entire city constantly. The guy from the company developing the camera stands up and starts describing the new camera, which includes and ability to look through buildings (yes that exists).

I look at my partner, he looks at me…And I say I’m not doing this. This gives the government the ability to peer into anyone’s home, bedroom, or office without their permission, or even so much as a warrant based on criminal activity. This is unconstitutional.

We walked out and refused to do the work. It was the end of us ever doing work for these people…But that was fine.

Now I see in Baltimore some scumbag has reconstituted some of tat work, and come up with a “Poor man’s” version to spy and violate the constitutional rights of innocent citizens.

 

Eye in the sky: the billionaires funding a surveillance project above Baltimore

An experimental police surveillance program funded by Texas philanthropists John and Laura Arnold worries observers of private influence in the public sphere

Thousands of runners will sweat their way past the scenic highlights of central Baltimore in the city’s marathon on Saturday, but the action will not only be at ground level. An aircraft equipped with advanced cameras is set to circle high above their heads, as part of a secretive surveillance programme funded by Texan billionaires.

Last year, Radiolab, a public radio show, featured a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, which specialises in wide-area eye-in-the-sky technology. It flies a small plane for hours above urban areas, taking thousands of photographs that are sent to analysts who then track movements at street level.

After the radio segment aired, the philanthropist John Arnold got in touch with the owner of Persistent, Ross McNutt. Arnold and his wife, Laura, were intrigued by the technology’s crime-fighting potential and agreed to fund a trial somewhere. With $360,000 from the Arnolds, McNutt struck a deal with Baltimore.

From January to August this year, Baltimore police said at a news conference last week, the plane flew over the city for 314 hours, taking more than a million images. The police added that the plane would operate as an anti-terrorism measure during Fleet Week, which started on Monday, and the marathon.

This spurt of transparency was more than a little tardy. Until Bloomberg Businessweek ran a story in August, virtually no one knew about the surveillance programme, not even the mayor. Yet the technology raises obvious civil liberties questions, as does the way the plan was funded: by unaccountable private citizens in Houston whose wealth silently enabled a blanket tracking tool in a large city with notoriously strained relations between police and residents.

“[John Arnold] called me, and he just heard it on the Radiolab piece and asked what he could do to help, and he thought we could run a test with the system and I said we would love to and we appreciate his help,” said McNutt. “They’re fantastic people, they really are, and they’re doing great things and trying to help out as much as they can.”

The Arnolds are not universally loved. Two years ago, a Bloomberg profile of John Arnold was headlined: Giving Back Has Made This 41-year-old Retired Billionaire Less Popular.

The Dallas-born Arnold was a millionaire Enron trader who became a billionaire hedge fund manager. He quit at 38, having amassed a reported $4bn fortune, and started the Laura and John Arnold Foundation with his wife, a former attorney. They have committed to giving the bulk of their wealth to philanthropic causes and have an appetite for forensic examination of complex and often divisive issues.

According to the Foundation, it has awarded more than $617m in grant money since 2011, in line with its aim of seeking “transformational change” through “strategic investments in criminal justice, education, evidence-based policy and innovation, public accountability, and research integrity”….

A sceptic might argue that society cannot understand something it does not know about. David Rocah, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Maryland, said his organisation was concerned by the nature of the surveillance and the opaque way it was adopted.

“What the secret funding from the Arnolds meant,” he said, “is that it didn’t even have to be disclosed to the city’s purchasing folks and the mayor didn’t know, the city council didn’t know … nobody knew.

“The fact is that surveillance technologies are acquired by police departments all over the country all the time with zero public input, even where the Arnolds aren’t secretly funding it. This case is just an extraordinary, an extreme, example of a larger problem.”

Most of the money was passed to Baltimore through the Police Foundation, a not-for-profit research body in Washington that previously worked with the Arnold Foundation on a study of eyewitness identification procedure. As soon as next week, the Police Foundation intends to release a report that will examine the potential value of McNutt’s surveillance technology.

 

 

Gun Crazies Lose – No Constitutional Right to Carry Concealed Weapons

Federal Appellate Court in California covers several states in the region. As such, this decision has farter reaching consequences, and since the Supreme Court isn’t going to take this up…

Becomes the law of the land. This probably won’t have any impact in Red States.

Here’s a guy getting ready to give himself a “Hillbilly Vasectomy” as he blows his man parts off when the safety catches on his clothes.

Federal Court Shoots Down Concealed Carry 

Firearm owners have no constitutional right to carry a concealed gun in public if they face no specific danger, a divided federal appeals court in California ruled on Thursday, in a victory for gun control advocates.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sets a legal precedent in western states, was seen as unlikely to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future.

The San Francisco-based court, in a 7-4 decision, found San Diego and Yolo counties in California did not violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms, when they denied some applicants a concealed firearm license.

“We hold that the Second Amendment does not protect, in any degree, the carrying of concealed firearms by members of the general public,” Judge William Fletcher wrote in a 52-page opinion.

The two California counties had limited their permits to applicants showing “good cause” to be armed, such as documented threats or working in a wide range of risky occupations.

The ruling places the 9th Circuit Court in line with other U.S. appellate courts that have upheld the right of officials in the states of New York, Maryland and New Jersey to deny concealed carry applications in certain cases.

Under California’s concealed carry law, more than 70,000 residents or less than 1 percent of the state’s population had active permits last year, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, in the middle of a raging national debate on guns, declined to weigh in on whether firearm owners have a constitutional right to carry their weapons in concealment outside the home.

Gun rights group the California Rifle and Pistol Association declined to provide immediate comment.

 

Texas Republican Governor Helps Terrorists, Wants to Ignore Constitution

And you thought former Texas Governors George Bush and Rick Perry were stupid?

Yet another dumber than dirt Texas Governor, helping terrorists

Texas governor jeopardized secret investigation of Islamic State suspect: sources

Two Texas politicians made public details of an investigation into a terrorism suspect while it was still in progress, potentially jeopardizing the inquiry, three sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick released details from documents that were still under court seal, the sources said. A spokesman for Governor Abbott had no immediate comment. Patrick’s office was not available for comment.

The suspect, Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan, 24, appeared in court on Friday accused of providing material support to Islamic State overseas. He entered the United States as an Iraqi refugee in November 2009 and lived in Houston, according to a court document.

Abbott and Patrick are both Republicans and their party has been fiercely resisting Democratic President Barack Obama’s plan to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country over the next year, arguing that they pose a security risk to the United States. The Obama administration has rejected that assertion.

One of the sources said investigators believe Abbott and Patrick may have learned confidential details of the investigation from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Texas. The group’s members include local and state law enforcement officers. There was no immediate comment from the task force.

The sources said the politicians’ statements on Thursday night disclosing a terrorism suspect’s arrest forced federal authorities to wrap up their inquiries and rush out public statements and court papers on the case earlier than planned.

Hardan was already in custody at the time, but interviews of potential witnesses were still being conducted when the disclosures were made, the sources.

Texas Governor Wants To Amend The Constitution So States Can Ignore The Federal Government

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Friday proposed a series of amendments to the U.S. constitution that would permit states to override the Supreme Court and ignore federal laws.

One of the proposed measures would allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override federal regulations, while another sets the same threshold for overturning decisions by the Supreme Court. The governor also wants to change the Constitution to block Congress from “regulating activity that occurs wholly within one state,” and to require a supermajority of seven Supreme Court votes before a “democratically enacted law” can be overturned…More from Governor Dipshit here…

Here the 9 Amendments to the US Constitution proposed by Gov Abbott

I mean ..Think about it, There have only been 17 Amendments to the Constitution in the past 300 years (the first 10, were the Bill of Rights)…

Ans this Bozo wants to pass 9?

 

Uncle Ben Carson – “Muslims Unconstitutional”

Beginning to believe that if any of Uncle Ben’s patients survived…

It must have been because of the nurses holding his hand during an operation.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison first proposed the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom (the frame and basis of the later First Amendment to the Constitution) in 1779, the preamble began, “Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free.” Patrick Henry and other devout Christians attempted to substitute the words “Jesus Christ” for “Almighty God” in this opening passage and were overwhelmingly voted down. This vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia’s representatives wanted the law “to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” “Mahomedan” being the slightly less than politically correct term for the followers of Islam at the time.

The simple fact is, there is no stipulation for religious belief in the Constitution – and nothing which bars anyone of any religion from holding office.

Indeed for his secular view, Thomas Jefferson was accused of being a Muslim. Islamic persecution in America started far before we became a country, and the first Muslims in America were some of the slaves brought to America from Africa. According to some historians, the faith of those slaves has a direct connection to the development of the “Black Muslim, NOI” sect in America started by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad, and led to prominence by Elijah Muhammad.

Ben Carson Would Not Support A Muslim Running For President

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said that he would not support a Muslim running for president of the United States.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, host Chuck Todd asked Carson whether a president’s faith should matter. The question of how the Republican presidential candidates approach Islam has arisen since businessman Donald Trump was asked Thursday when the country could “get rid of” Muslims.

Trump said he would be “looking at a lot of things,” in response, and did not correct the suggestion that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and “not even an American.”

Carson, who placed third in the CNN/ORC poll of the Republican presidential field released Sunday, said a president’s faith would matter to him depending on what that faith is.

“If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter,” he said. “If it fits within the realm of America and is consistent with the Constitution, I have no problem.” 

He said that Islam, as a religion, is incompatible with the Constitution.

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” he said.

 

Tea Party Southern Myth vs 12 Years a Slave

Like the Holocaust Deniers scattered around the world in anti-Semitic clusters, America has its own peculiar breed of Denier of the unconscionable – The advocates of the Southern Myth.

Recognizing what they were doing as slavers was morally unconscionable from a Judeo Christian basis, the slavers sought absolution through first, perverting their religion to justify slavery, and second by attaching themselves to Chivalrous traditions creating a “Genteel” societal veneer. Indeed, in my State of Virginia Thomas Jefferson’s University, UVa – adopted the Cavalier as the school symbol. That wasn’t just because most slaveholders were Crown Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. Attaching themselves to the English Cavaliers was an attempt to gloss over, and add class to an evil society. No different than the Drug Lords of recent vintage using their ill gotten gains to project an image of respectability.

Post Civil War, this shifted into manufacturing a society’s existence under slavery which never existed. The brutality visited upon the slaves to force them to obey, which included torture, systematic rape of women and children, and murder became the “Good Old Days” of a slightly decadent but otherwise genteel society. The Civil War became the “War of the States” supporting the fiction that each and every Southern State’s Secession Articles didn’t list slavery as the “States Right” they were fighting for. These same stawarts brought America Segregation and Jim Crow.

The modern incarnation of this “Southern psychosis” is the Tea Party, the grandchild of the Second Klan of the 20’s, American Nazi Party of the 40’s, and Dixiecrats  of the 50’s and 60’s. Absorbing the Republican matra of blaming the victim. Like their poor, landless ancestors who marched off to be maimed and killed to [protect the rights of wealthy slave owners, today’s conservative confederate malcontents support the rights of the elite right who have eviscerated the American Dream, sold their jobs overseas,  and near destroyed the American Middle Class since Raygun. All under the banner of maintaining their fictitious racial superiority. It is OK with the modern Tea Bagger to take Food Stamps away from the poor, using much the same justification of the rapist that the “bitch deserved it”. It is OK to harass the poor, even though the economic condition of many Tea Parties would place them among the “white trash” – because in a country which has legislatively discriminated, at the Tea Bagger’s ancestors demand,  against minorities for generation – a higher percentage of minorities are poor. Despite class mythology, the only reason many of these white Tea Baggers aren’t scions of society has nothing to do with discrimination – and everything to do with their own personal, generational failures. no one has held them back, except their own ignorance and racism.

In front of the White House after disgracing th WII Memorial

Tea Party and ’12 Years a Slave’

“Twelve Years a Slave,” a movie based on the 1853 autobiography of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped into slavery in 1841, is a powerful antidote to the Tea Party’s poisonous nostalgia for the era of “states’ rights” and “nullificationism,” which became code words for protecting the “liberty” of Southern whites to own African-Americans.

The movie, directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup, reveals how lofty phrases about “freedom” often meant their opposite as Southern politicians developed an Orwellian skill for weaving noble-sounding “principles” into a cloak for covering up the unjustifiable.

And, for too many generations, it worked. Americans have romanticized the antebellum South, seeing it through the rosy haze of “Gone with the Wind” or learning from school history books that most slave-owners were kindly and paternalistic masters. Even today many Americans tell themselves that slavery wasn’t all that bad. To burnish their pride in the never-to-be-criticized USA, they whitewash one of the nation’s greatest crimes, the enslavement of millions of people based on the color of their skin.

 

Secession Again… This Time Let Them

Counties in a second State are arguing to secede. First there were the rural areas of Colorado, now it is the Western 3 counties in Maryland.

My view is…

Let them.

Under the condition that if they want to continue as part of the country, they have to reapply for admission to the United States – First as Territories.

There are a couple of other conditions that should apply here…

1) All Federal funds, in excess of the tax base paid by the new entity will be withdrawn. The new entity must be entirely “pay as you go”, prior to any consideration to being granted the ability to rejoin the Union.

2) The new Territory must demonstrate that it generates a positive cash flow in terms of trade for the United States as a precondition to admission.. Not taking any “Welfare Queens” here.

3) They will grant Federal Authority and ownership in perpetuity of any Interstate HIghways, Federal facilities, and or Military bases within their boundaries.

4) All Military bases, federally funded or operated ports, airports, or terminals are to cease operation until such time as they become states. No reason to provide any more charity.

5) On readmission, all residents are to take an oath of loyalty to the United States under penalty of death. Anyone who refuses to do so, immediately loses citizenship – and will be deported.The new state Constitution must recognize the primacy of the Federal Constitution in writing.

6) For a period of 50 years, the US Government may spend no more money in the state than the federal taxes paid by the state and it’s citizens.

Now…We’re talking! And here’s hoping the red downstate Virginia counties follow suit!

Western Maryland secessionists seek to sever ties with the liberal Free State

The push by 50 western Virginia counties to secede in 1863, forming West Virginia at the height of the Civil War, was led by a charismatic store-clerk-turned-lawyer who famously urged his supporters: “Cut the knot now! Cut it now! Apply the knife.”

West Virginia was the last state to break off from another. Now, 150 years later, a 49-year-old information technology consultant wants to apply the knife to Maryland’s five western counties. “The people are the sovereign,” says Scott Strzelczyk, leader of the fledglingWestern Maryland Initiative, and the western sovereigns are fed up with Annapolis’s liberal majority, elected by the state’s other sovereigns.

“If you think you have a long list of grievances and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately this is what you have to do,” says Strzelczyk, who lives in New Windsor, a historic town of 1,400 people in Carroll County. “Otherwise you are trapped.”

Strzelczyk’s effort is one of several across the country to separate significant portions of states from, as he puts it, “the dominant ruling class.” Nearly a dozen northern Colorado counties are the furthest along, with nonbinding referendums set for November ballots. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is making a move to join with parts of Wisconsin. Northern California counties want to form a state called Jefferson.

Historians, political scientists and the leaders of the movements say secession efforts are being fueled by irreconcilable differences on issues such as gun control, taxes, energy policy, gay marriage and immigration — all subjects of recent legislative efforts at state and federal levels. The notion of compromise is a non-starter. With secessionists, the term “final straw” comes up a lot.

“You don’t have to be a student of the details to know that people are just disgusted with what goes on these days,” says Kit Wellman, a political philosopher who studies secession at Washington University in St. Louis. “These people figure they are better off on their own if they could just be with like-
minded folks.”

Secession is a difficult political fight to win. The U.S. Constitution allows regions to separate only with the approval of the state legislature and Congress, and over the years there have been hundreds of quixotic and unsuccessful efforts, according to Michael J. Trinklein, the author of “Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States that Never Made It.”

In the 1950s, Northern California tried to form the state of Shasta, to protect its fresh water. The builders of Mount Rushmore also wanted it to sit in a new state: Absaroka, a reference to a subrange of the Rocky Mountains. Eastern Shore residents pushed for the state of Chesapeake in the 1970s to retain tourist tax dollars.

What’s different now is how the secession efforts illuminate a hard truth about the country: The rural-urban divide is increasingly a point of political conflict. The population boom in urban areas such as Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs near the District, the Boulder-
Denver areas in Colorado, and in Detroit have filled state legislatures with liberal policymakers pushing progressive agendas out of sync with rural residents, who feel increasingly isolated and marginalized.

In Maryland, the five western counties — Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick and Carroll — represent just 11 percent of Maryland’s population, according to 2010 Census figures. They earn less than the people who live in more urban areas. They vote overwhelmingly for Republicans in a deeply Democratic state. Nearly 90 percent of the residents are white, compared with 51 percent elsewhere. About 60 percent were born in Maryland vs. 46 percent in other parts of the state.

“If you don’t belong in their party,” Strzelczyk says of Democrats, “you’ll never have your views represented” in Maryland. “If we have more states,” he says, “we can all go live in states that best represent us, and then we can get along.”…

 

 

 

Clarence Thomas Fesses Up on ole in Conservative View of Constitution

No Tommy… The founding fathers didn’t include your black ass in the Constitution…

Thomas concedes that ‘we the people’ didn’t include blacks

It is true, Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged the other night, that the “we the people” extolled in the Constitution 225 years ago did not include people who looked like him.

But the Declaration of Independence did, he contended, and that was something that a black kid growing up in Savannah, Ga., was told early on.

“There was always this underlying belief that we were entitled to be a full participant in ‘we the people,’ ” Thomas told a crowd at the National Archives last week.

“That’s the way we grew up. It was the way the nuns, who were all immigrants, would explain it to us — that we were entitled, as citizens of this country, to be full participants. There was never any doubt that we were inherently equal. It said so in the Declaration of Independence.”

Thomas submitted to about an hour of extremely gentle questioning from Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar at an event called “The Constitution Turns 225,” co-sponsored by the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center and the conservative Federalist Society.

It was a packed house, drawn perhaps by the chance to see the “silent justice” speak. That’s far more myth than reality, of course.

It is true that Thomas hasn’t asked a question during the court’s oral arguments since 2006. But he speaks regularly to groups and law schools, and he put on a full publicity blitz when his memoir “My Grandfather’s Son” was published in 2007, including a sit-down with “60 Minutes” and a multi-part series on “Nightline.”

Thomas can on occasion be melancholy in his speeches, such as saying he sometimes envies the seemingly carefree lives he sees from his chamber windows. Several years ago, he told a group of high school students that he sometimes gets “morose,” and bucks himself up by reading inspirational speeches or retreating to the basement to watch the movie “Saving Private Ryan.”

He remains distrustful of Washington, although he mentioned during the discussion that he has lived here more than half of his 64 years. He often refers to it as “this city,” and says it is inhabited by ”cynical people who know it all.”

The “unlettered” people he grew up with, especially his grandparents, he said, withstood “the most difficult circumstances with a dignity that’s unmatched in this city.”

Amar repeatedly brought the conversation back to the point that under the original Constitution, people “like us” were not included. And Thomas spoke extensively about race — after noting with sarcasm that “people say horrible things about it — they say I’m not black, so I’m just a little doubtful I should say I’m black.”

“I always think it’s so fascinating to think of these black kids in the segregated school in Savannah reciting the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States or standing out in the schoolyard saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day before school,” Thomas said.

“I mean, everything so obviously in front of you is wrong. You can’t go to the public library. You can’t live in certain neighborhoods. You can’t go to certain schools. But despite all of that, you lived in an environment of people who said it was still our birthright to be included, and continued to push, not only to change the laws, but to maintain that belief in our hearts.”

Thomas also noted a period in his college years in which the belief was not so strong.