Category: Police / Law Enforcement / ICE
Law professor says Clarence Thomas’ vote in Trump case should set off alarm bells
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: When corporations and the wealthy shouldered their share of taxes on income could provide for the needs of an entire family. Greed of the large employers destroyed that.
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Scottie’s world today
Just kidding I love the inter webs and even the trolls … sometimes.
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Republicans can’t hide their Russian agenda.
And yet rather than spend money fixing the electric system to ensure that the power stayed on, Abbot instead shifted state money to pandering gimmicks like finish building the wall on the border. In fact the big money donors from the fuel and energy industry gave large donations to stop any requirements that Abbot had talked about implementing to keep the power on. Now again in winter with freezing temperatures the power is again going off. They made no effort to fix the very issues that happened before and were told would happen again. Seems they care far more over their personal finance than the health and welfare of the people that elected them
We are a selfish country.
Conservatives are about submission. Their kids will rebel one day.
Kids have no problem wearing masks. It’s the parents who can’t think of others.
What is horrifying is the change in the Republican party that went from saying “Better dead than Russian red” to praising Putin and supporting Russia. Russia under Putin is still as authoritarian as it was under communism. Russia under Putin is still as much an enemy to the US and democracy as it ever was.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
This cartoon author is one of the right wing misinformation cartoonist normally but in this case I agree with her. The Chinese government has shown they will crack down on anyone who says what they don’t like even if done by the athletes. The big scandal in the comment section of the page is over Nancy Pelosi saying the athletes should be care and watch what they say to keep themselves safe, and she blasted the Olympic committee for picking China to host them. The right wing commenters can not seem to understand why she said these things and are attacking her at the same time they are attacking China. So it doesn’t matter what she said, the fact is them must scream in anger about anything she says.
Oh boy the right wing media is on fire over trying to make Whoopi the worst racist ever. Why? Because she is a left leaning black woman. They are drooling to attack her, it is a dream come true for them.
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And now some for fun
Repub. Declares WAR On Teaching Facts
DeSantis’ Supreme Court connection
Good Friday morning.
A legal matter — Gov. Ron DeSantis, who went to Yale and Harvard Law School, has of course, lots of strong opinions about the law and what’s constitutional, and what’s not.
Everyone’s a critic — The Republican governor even recently ripped into the U.S. Supreme Court over its decision to let a Biden administration vaccine mandate for health care workers remain intact while an underlying lawsuit proceeds. While appearing on the conservative Ruthless podcast last month, DeSantis said that both Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh did not have a “backbone” when they decided to allow the mandate to stand.
Call me — Well, it turns out that DeSantis may have his own direct connection to the Supreme Court.
CC time — Emails handed over to American Oversight, a group that bills itself as a government watchdog, suggest that DeSantis is in regular contact with Justice Clarence Thomas. In June 2021, Thomas’ wife, Ginni, who runs her own consulting firm, worked with the DeSantis administration to have the governor talk to a coalition of groups, including people affiliated with Judicial Watch, the conservative organization that uses information requests and lawsuits to investigate public officials.
The pitch — In one of the emails about having DeSantis talk to “conservative patriots,” Ginni Thomas says that DeSantis should be acquainted with her for a few reasons: she interviewed him for the Daily Caller when he was in Congress, saw him at a state dinner when Donald Trump was president, and “my husband has been in contact with him too on various things of late.”
Response — POLITICO’s Matt Dixon reached out to the governor’s office about this email, but did not get a response. Helen Aguirre Ferré, the executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, responded by saying “I can’t speak about any private conversations Governor DeSantis may or may not have had with anyone but both he and Justice Thomas believe in the separation of powers and defend individual liberty, the law and the Constitution as written.”
Admirer — There’s no question DeSantis holds Thomas in high regard. Back in 2018, the governor called the justice the “gold standard for a Supreme Court appointment.” The two also appeared together at a 2020 Federalist Society conference held in Disney World where DeSantis introduced Thomas as the “greatest living justice.”
— WHERE’S RON? — Gov. DeSantis is scheduled to appear with former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany at the Federalist Society conference being held at Disney World in Lake Buena Vista.
New allegations plague Florida’s controversial surgeon general
Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s former UCLA supervisor does not think he should be Florida’s state surgeon general.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked state surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, is currently doing the job, but he still needs to be formally confirmed by the Republican-led state Senate. To that end, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did a routine background investigation as part of the confirmation process.
It apparently didn’t go especially well. The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported yesterday that Ladapo’s former supervisor at UCLA discouraged Florida officials from hiring the controversial doctor.
“In my opinion, the people of Florida would be better served by a Surgeon General who grounds his policy decisions and recommendations on the best scientific evidence rather than opinions,” the unnamed supervisor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the Jan. 18 report prepared by a senior crime intelligence analyst for the Senate.
According to the local report, the UCLA supervisor added that Ladapo’s weird theories “created a stressful environment for his research and clinical colleagues and subordinates,” some of whom believed the doctor “violated the duty in the Hippocratic Oath to behave honestly and ethically.”
In the Florida Department of Law Enforcement report, Ladapo’s views were described as having led to “stress and acrimony among his coworkers and supervisors.”
The newspaper did not get a comment from Ladapo, but the press secretary for the Florida Department of Health “characterized Ladapo as a misunderstood visionary.”
This is not the first time Ladapo’s work at UCLA has generated scrutiny.
During his tenure, the physician claimed in a USA Today op-ed that his perspective on Covid treatments had been shaped by his experience “taking care of patients with COVID-19 at UCLA’s flagship hospital.” Two weeks later, Ladapo added in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had his experience “caring for patients with suspected or diagnosed Covid-19 infections at UCLA.”
Thanks to reporting from The Rachel Maddow Show, those claims have since been called into question. As my colleague Kay Guerrero explained in a report in November, “Several former colleagues of Dr. Joseph Ladapo … say he misled the public about his experience treating Covid-19 patients.”
One UCLA source also said, in reference to Ladapo, “A lot of people here at UCLA are glad that he is gone because we were embarrassed by his opinions and behavior. At the same time, we don’t wish this on the people of Florida. They don’t deserve to have someone like him making their health decisions.”
QAnon Flags Fly Onscreen After Fox News Describes Anti-Vax Truckers as ‘Mainstream’
Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner on Thursday teed up a segment on the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” by seemingly criticizing the notion that such anti-vaccine activists are “fringe,” instead claiming their beliefs have gone “mainstream.”
Moments later, the program rolled footage of such demonstrators waving flags and signs boosting the crazed far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which centers on the belief that Donald Trump is fighting a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiliac cannibals.
During Thursday’s broadcast of The Faulkner Focus, Faulkner declared that “Canadians say this is old, we are getting bold” while discussing the most recent developments in the ongoing protest—largely spearheaded by truck drivers who refuse to get vaccinated—against the nation’s coronavirus guidelines and restrictions.
In recent days, Ottawa was essentially shut down when thousands of protesters descended upon the Canadian capital, all while loudly honking 18-wheelers created gridlock by blocking downtown streets. The mass demonstration, which began when some truckers objected to vaccine requirements for crossing the U.S.-Canada border, has since morphed into a rejection of all of the nation’s COVID-19 policies.
After noting that the “Canadian Freedom Convoy” recently blocked a border crossing into Montana, the Fox anchor then brought up the fact that Canadian leaders have denounced the violence and some of the hateful ideology associated with the protests.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to paint them all as a fringe group, but the mainstream is embracing them now! People from other nations with loud support,” the midday news host proclaimed.
She then followed this up with a montage of protesters saying they “are here for freedom” and that they want Trudeau to “give people their freedom back.” Faulkner then turned to Fox News correspondent Molly Line, who pointed out that the Ottawa chief of police has acknowledged they may call on the nation’s military to clear out the remaining protesters in the city.
While Line delivered her dispatch, and after she said the protests had driven “some city residents a bit crazy,” the network aired b-roll footage of a demonstration that prominently featured large QAnon flags and signs.
One sign featured the notorious QAnon slogan WWG1WGA, which is an abbreviation of their rallying cry “where we go one, we go all.” Additionally, protesters also waved a massive United States flag emblazoned with the letter Q.
Line wrapped up her reporting by observing that “there are international elements” to the protests now as it has “galvanized citizens on both sides of the border” and resulted in a GoFundMe page that has raised millions of dollars.
The Canadian police, meanwhile, have set up a hate crime hotline related to the pandemic protests after demonstrators racially abused a homeless shelter guard, harassed a couple with a Pride flag, desecrated memorials and statues with anti-vax messages, and were seen waving swastikas and Confederate flags.
This isn’t the first time Fox News, knowingly or unknowingly, has boosted QAnon on its airwaves. Fox News star Tucker Carlson, for instance, has repeatedly defended supporters of the violent conspiracy theory as “gentle people” who merely love their country. Fellow host Jesse Watters ended up walking back his apparent endorsement of QAnon after he said its supporters have “uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein and it comes to the deep state.”
Let’s talk about Trump getting convicted….
Exclusive: Newly obtained records show Trump and Jim Jordan spoke at length on morning of January 6
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/politics/jim-jordan-trump-january-6/
The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is now in possession of White House records that provide new details about a phone call Donald Trump made to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on January 6, 2021 — as the investigation drills down on the former President’s communications that day and questions have long swirled around calls between him and lawmakers.
Two sources who have reviewed the call records tell CNN that Trump spoke on the phone at the White House residence with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of January 6. That afternoon, Jordan took to the House floor to object to the certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, and pro-Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol.A key focus of the committee’s investigation has been on the runup to the insurrection and the myriad ways Trump and his allies, including those in Congress, tried to overturn the election results. The new details about the morning phone call come as the committee is debating whether to move forward with a subpoena for Jordan after he refused to voluntarily appear for an interview.Since Jordan acknowledged last summer that he spoke to Trump on the phone that day, the Ohio Republican and Trump loyalist has waived off questions about it or been inconsistent in his answers.When asked on Friday about the White House records, Jordan told CNN that he had multiple calls with Trump on January 6 but could only confirm that he spoke with Trump after he left the House floor and did not remember whether they spoke that morning.“I talked to the President a number of times that day, but I don’t remember the times,” Jordan said.A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.One entry in the White House records shows a request from Trump to get Jordan on the phone from the White House residence on the morning of January 6. A second entry shows that the length of the call was 10 minutes.These call logs are among the documents the National Archives turned over to the House select committee investigating the riot after Trump last month lost his bid at the Supreme Court to keep them secret. The records have been crucial for congressional investigators as they try to build a complete narrative of what happened that day, and the call logs help to deepen that understanding.Records show Trump did not leave the White House until 11:40 a.m. ET on January 6, 2021, to give a speech to thousands of his supporters gathered at the Ellipse. According to footage of House proceedings that day, Jordan spoke on the floor for five minutes starting at 1:32 p.m. ET during the debate over whether to reject Biden’s electors from Arizona.Jordan later spoke to request a roll call vote on the Arizona challenge at 10:27 p.m. when lawmakers returned to the chamber after being evacuated as rioters interrupted the congressional proceedings.On Friday, Jordan said, “I don’t recall,” when asked specifically if he spoke with Trump in the morning before the violence started. “I know I talked to him after we left off the floor,” adding that he did not remember how long his calls with the former President lasted that day.Jordan’s previous recollections of his conversations with Trump on January 6 have been inconsistent.At a House Rules Committee hearing in October, Chairman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, specifically asked Jordan when he spoke with Trump that day.“I talked to the President after the attack,” Jordan said at the time.When McGovern pressed Jordan again and asked him to confirm that the call did not occur before or during the attack, Jordan replied: “Right. And I’ve been clear about that.”Months earlier, in July, he told a local reporter he could not recall when he spoke to Trump or how many times they talked.“Uh, I’d have to go — I spoke with him that day after. I think after?” he told the Spectrum News TV channel in Ohio. “I don’t know if I spoke with him in the morning or not. I just don’t know. I’d have to go back. I mean I don’t know when those conversations happened. But what I know is that I spoke with him all the time.”In the committee’s letter to Jordan seeking a voluntary interview, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the panel, said investigators specifically wanted to ask Jordan about his communications with the former President.“We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th,” Thompson wrote in December. “We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.”The committee also wants to speak with Jordan about meetings he had with White House officials and Trump in the months between the 2020 presidential election in November and the January 6 attack about “strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election.”Prior to the panel asking for Jordan’s voluntary cooperation, he was identified as one of the lawmakers who sent a text message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that the committee has in its possession.The message, which Jordan forwarded to Meadows on January 5, outlined a legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to stand in the way of the certification of the 2020 election. The text message is just one example of how Jordan provided a megaphone to the narrative that the election had been stolen from Trump.The panel’s letter to Jordan also sought to learn more about any communications he had with Trump’s allies, legal team and staffers about potential organizing, planning or strategizing around January 6.When Jordan indicated earlier this month that he doesn’t plan to cooperate and dismissed the committee’s investigation as illegitimate, a spokesperson for the panel said that Jordan is a “material witness” because he has admitted to speaking directly with Trump on January 6.The spokesperson also suggested, without evidence, that Trump and his team are the reason Jordan is not cooperating.“Mr. Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committee’s investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th,” the spokesperson said.Jordan was originally selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to be one of five GOP members serving on the committee back in July. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected McCarthy’s selection of Jordan, along with GOP Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, because she said their appointments could impact the “integrity of the investigation.”The committee has long viewed Jordan as a top target for its investigation. In August, Jordan was among a group of Republican lawmakers whose phone records the committee asked various companies to preserve. At the time, Jordan warned about the precedent the panel would be setting if it went after sitting members of Congress.The committee is still weighing whether it will take the next step and issue Jordan a subpoena, a move it is also considering with McCarthy and GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.The panel met on Thursday to discuss their options but did not settle on next steps when it comes to efforts to get their fellow lawmakers to cooperate. Chairman Thompson acknowledged on Thursday that it’s a complicated issue.“You know, you have to respect this institution,” he told CNN. “You know, we have to see whether or not it’s ever been done before. If it had, on what authorities. So, we just want to be right. And if we are not in good standing with it, then I mean, we probably won’t do it.”
Michelle Childs’s Punitive Criminal Justice Rulings Were Repeatedly Overturned
The candidate for the Supreme Court vacancy has a history of tough-on-crime sentences and opinions that higher courts subsequently tossed out.
FEBRUARY 2, 2022
CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP PHOTO
Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court, listens during her nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, April 16, 2010.
At the moment, South Carolina District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs is the only person confirmed by the Biden administration to be under consideration for the soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat. A favored pick of fellow South Carolinians Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the highest-ranking Black leader in Congress, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Childs’s work during her time as an attorney has recently come under scrutiny, as she defended employers against racial and gender discrimination allegations while working as a partner at the anti-union South Carolina law firm Nexsen Pruet.
Childs’s track record as a district court judge, a post she has held since 2010, has received less inspection. On numerous occasions, Childs issued such punitive decisions on criminal justice issues that those rulings were eventually overturned on appeal by higher courts. Throughout the 2010s, a period where criminal justice reform was increasingly prioritized for activists and Democratic politicians alike, Childs ruled against both plaintiffs and defendants who alleged everything from excessive force by prison guards to ineffective legal counsel to sentencing errors.
In March 2016, an inmate named Lewis Duckett sued the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ dietitian, alleging that the food he was forced to eat while in prison was so lacking in nutrients and vitamins that the state’s corrections facility where he was incarcerated was violating his Eighth Amendment right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment. Childs dismissed the case. Just one month later, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Childs’s decision, allowing for further proceedings.
In 2017, inmate Benjamin Heyward brought a civil rights action against prison guard Audrey Price, alleging use of excessive force after Price pepper-sprayed him in the face in the course of an argument that arose over a request Heyward made for some cleaning solvent to tidy his cell. As a result of the macing, Heyward reported that his eyes were swollen for three days. He suffered chest pain for five days, and had persistent headache symptoms for a week.
Judge Childs ruled against Heyward, claiming he was unable to prove use of excessive force. But eight months later, the Fourth Circuit ruled that Judge Childs had wrongly rejected Heyward’s excessive-force claim based on an “arbitrary quantity of injury,” and reversed her decision to grant the officer a summary judgment.
Childs’s rulings weren’t confined to inmates alleging abuse and mistreatment in South Carolina’s prisons. She also, on multiple occasions, ruled against incarcerated people who alleged that they were wrongly or excessively sentenced, only to have those decisions reversed later or overturned by the circuit courts.
In 2017, Judge Childs dismissed a motion brought by Gerald Decosta Whaley, who had been sentenced in 2014 to 262 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, for selling marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy with his brother. In 2015, Whaley argued that his lawyer had failed to provide him adequate legal counsel by not filing a direct appeal, and filed a motion to vacate or correct his sentence.
Childs dismissed Whaley’s petition without even granting him an evidentiary hearing, a decision that the Fourth Circuit found particularly objectionable. Less than a year later, that court reversed Judge Childs’s decision, finding in fact that Whaley “informed his counsel at sentencing that Whaley wished to file a direct appeal, but that counsel failed to file one.” In dismissing this motion without so much as a hearing, Judge Childs had “abused [her] discretion,” the court found.
Again in 2017, Judge Childs ruled against an inmate claiming to have been wrongly sentenced. In 2014, Jesse James Quarles pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Three years later, he was given an elevated sentence of 180 months on the grounds that he was a “career criminal,” thanks to three prior burglary convictions.
Before that sentence was handed down, Quarles filed a motion claiming that he had been improperly charged as a career criminal, citing changes in U.S. law that had since reclassified burglary as nonviolent felony, a change that would have reduced his sentence substantially. In November 2017, Judge Childs dismissed Quarles’s motion, and upheld his 180 months.
Just a month later, before a higher court could act, Judge Childs reversed her own ruling, admitting that Quarles did not have the requisite three felonies needed to be classified as a career criminal.
Judge Childs’s repeated opposition to leniency in sentencing and alleged abuse cases brought by prisoners is notable in its own right; that she made those decisions on such dubious grounds that they were routinely overturned by higher courts indicates a commitment to tough-on-crime rulings beyond the letter of procedure.
Given the salience of criminal justice reform to Democratic politicians nationwide, it’s hard to reconcile a judge with such a record on criminal justice issues serving as the Supreme Court nominee of the Biden administration. Despite thus far refusing to legalize marijuana, the White House has restarted pattern-or-practice investigations into police departments, and has continued to talk up the importance of criminal justice reform.
Rep. Clyburn has been Childs’s loudest supporter among Democrats. In response to a question about Childs’s rulings, a Clyburn spokesperson said, “The insinuation that Jim Clyburn would support a nominee to the Supreme Court with the intent to undermine criminal justice reform is so preposterous that it discredits the integrity of this entire report.”
Throughout 2020’s campaign cycle, the Biden-Harris pairing went to great lengths to assure voters that criminal justice issues were a top concern for them, and that both of them had disavowed their own tough-on-crime pasts and the Democratic Party’s notorious Crime Bill of the 1990s.
It’s difficult to imagine someone with a record like Judge Childs’s winning votes from criminal justice advocates like Sen. Cory Booker, or even Dick Durbin, both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee and have claimed that these issues are particularly important for them. Childs’s record, meanwhile, is not shared by other front-runners: Ketanji Brown Jackson, for instance, was a former public defender and sentencing commission vice chair.
