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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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With a Republican house I'm afraid they might vote down the Supreme Court rather than tolerate an all-Lib team up.
Either that, or the Reps will become a fringe party and the Dems will split between centrists and leftists.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.The Senate confirms executive and judicial appointments, including Supreme Court justices, and it's entirely plausible for the Democrats to claim that institution next year.
edited 3rd Nov '15 7:06:15 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There have been a bunch of interesting stories coming out within the past few days that are worth following.
1,000 police officers were stripped of their badges for sexual misconduct in a six year period
.
The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York – with several of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies – offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.
“It’s happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country,” said chief Bernadette Di Pino of the Sarasota police department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).
“It’s so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”
Even as cases around the country have sparked a national conversation about excessive force by police, sexual misconduct by officers has largely escaped widespread notice due to a patchwork of laws, piecemeal reporting and victims frequently reluctant to come forward because of their vulnerabilities – they often are young, poor, struggling with addiction or plagued by their own checkered pasts.
The next two will also be cross posted to the Race Thread.
Supreme Court hearing a case about racial discrimination in jury selection
Still, prosecutors found ways to get around this new rule, as demonstrated by an infamous training video made in Philadelphia in the late 1980s after the court's decision in Batson. The video features then-Assistant District Attorney Jack Mc Mahon advising trainees that "young black women are very bad, maybe because they're downtrodden on two respects ... they're women and they're blacks."
He goes on to recommend avoiding older black women, too, as well as young black men, and all smart and well-educated prospective jurors.
But, Mc Mahon reminded the trainees that they had to come up with a nonracial reason for their strikes: "When you do have a black juror, you question them at length and on this little sheet that you have, mark something down that you can articulate at a later time if something happens," he says.
...
At Timothy Foster's trial in Rome, Ga., the prosecutor used four of his nine peremptory strikes to knock out all the qualified black jurors in the jury pool. The defense cried foul, but the trial judge and every appellate court after that, including the Georgia Supreme Court, accepted the nonracial reasons. The prosecutors gave as many as a dozen reasons for striking each black prospective juror. These justifications included things like "failure to make eye contact," looking "bored," being "divorced," or "a social worker," and so on.
The appellate courts continued to accept these excuses even after Foster's lawyers obtained the prosecutor's notes in 2006 under the Georgia Open Records Act. It is rare that defense lawyers ever see these notes, and in this case, the prosecution's worksheets were not subtle.
The name of each black prospective juror was highlighted in green, circled and labeled with a "B." At the Supreme Court on Monday, defense lawyer Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights will tell the justices that everything about those notes reeks of racial discrimination.
"They were referred to by B1, B2, B3," Bright says. "There were comparisons made among the black jurors that, if we have to take a black, maybe Ms. Hardge will be OK, or maybe Ms. Garrett will be OK. They didn't, of course, take either one of those."
Bright contends that the state of Georgia continues to change its story about the justifications. For example, prosecutors initially said they struck juror Eddie Hood because he had a son close to the defendant's age. Later, when it turned out that two white jurors had sons who were close in age, too, the prosecutor gave a different "bottom line" reason: Hood was a member of the Church of Christ.
"They insisted that the Church of Christ took a strong position against the death penalty and that any member of the Church of Christ would vote against the death penalty," Bright says.
In fact, the Church of Christ took no position on the death penalty; the prosecution notes reflect that, and Hood testified that he could vote for the death penalty.
The paper reports that, as a result of the financial crisis, some banks have retreated from giving home loans to African Americans. According to the Times, of the 1,886 home loans approved by Hudson City Savings Bank, the largest savings bank in New Jersey, just 25 were to Black borrowers.
"Banks have tightened their standards, which is exactly what they should be doing," said Times reporter Rachel Swarns who wrote the story. "But some banks have stepped over the line and have just decided that they are going to exclude communities altogether regardless of whether there are creditworthy people who would be eligible for loans, and that of course is illegal."
Both of the above stories have can be listened to in full, which may go into more detail than the written articles, at the links above.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Rachel Maddow had a segment on Keystone XL on her show last night. It's a stunning about-face from TransCanada, but only if you don't know the context for their decision. Obviously, the decline of global oil prices is a major reason, but there are significant political issues involved. Among them:
- The Canadian general election has put in place a liberal national government that will not reflexively support Keystone for ideological reasons, and a liberal local government that openly opposes it.
- Obama has been sitting on the Keystone approval but recently issued a statement indicating that he would render a decision before leaving office. This puts TransCanada in something of a bind.
- If he approves the pipeline, great. But that seems very unlikely at this point, a long-shot bet.
- If he rejects the pipeline, the deal is off, probably forever. Big risk.
- All of the current likely Democratic candidates have indicated that they would reject Keystone.
What some pundits suspect is that TransCanada has decided to delay its application in order to leave the option on the table of reapplying should a Republican candidate win the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
edited 3rd Nov '15 9:18:24 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Jury reform is part and parcel of what we need in criminal justice reform, along with massive amounts of new funding for public defenders (could be funded by a high tax on private legal-court services, maybe? Make those absurd "billable hours" work for someone other than large law firm partners). Jury pools need to be balanced to be reflective of the jurisdiction's demographics, and we'll take no excuse to not serve on a jury (unless they're away at college, prolonged business trip, in the military, caring for a terminal family member, or sick themselves). Employers will be required to give jurors leave at full pay.
Jury selection is undoubtedly a major factor there, and you can't reform it with the ideas you mentioned above. That said, I'd support paying jurors the difference between their current employment income (that is mandated by law) and an inflation-adjusted living wage.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Reuters expose on a radio station just outside Washington D.C. that broadcasts pro-Chinese news
. They may not necessarily take over the world, but they can take over radio stations. I rarely bother with them these days myself...
Having a Jewish President would, in my opinion be more significant than having a women President. Lots of countries have elected women heads of state,not all of them paragons of equal gender rights, but I can't think of a country besides Israel that has allowed a Jew to be the head of state.
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Well, guess that game gets a new Hilarious in Hindsight entry.
X3 UK had a Jewish PM way back when I believe. Just checked, yep we did.[1]
Well Jewish born at least, religiously he was Anglican, what is Sanders' faith as opposed to ethnic grouping?
edited 3rd Nov '15 8:32:53 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
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I think he's something of an agnostic. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if conspiracy nuts, and Islamic radicals, have a field day with his religious status, regardless of how opposed he is to things that are considered to be part of the the evil Zionist plot for world domination TM.
It is rather funny that nobody, even on the Republican side, has brought up Sanders' Judaism.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If Sanders gets elected I am totally going to browse all conspiracy theory websites I used to so I can see all the ZOG posts about having a Jewish president.
It is going to be very amusing.
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Possibly because a good share of the Reps supporters are Jewish and the whole Pro-Israel thing.
edited 3rd Nov '15 8:41:12 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesWhile Sanders is proud of his Jewish heritage, he's very much a secular humanist.
And while bringing up the Jewish religion might work in a local backwoods election, it's not a good idea in the a national race, it would be pounced on and there's a faction fo the GOP that very much wants to try to woo J Ewish support away from being tilted towards Democrats.
edited 3rd Nov '15 8:45:14 AM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |I just want to see the conspiracy theorist's heads explode when they try and understand Sanders being Jewish but actually supporting a Two-State solution, it will be a full Nixon-China moment.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Also maybe, they already know her, they like her politics, and she's a woman.
You gotta believe me when I scare you away, all that I wish for is that you would stay